Perhaps what one could do would be to make a general reference to an easily googled link site, such as "Morphography Links". In the individual threads like this one, it would just say, check our MNE on Morphography Links (or some place else), they have a new XY. If there are links missing on an open linkpage like that, they could be added there?

Hi, I found this thread by looking for water-related materials - and it still looks really impressive!

I wonder if you have ever tried to adapt use this type of material on extremely shallow water surfaces? I am primarily for procedually generated tears (and teary eyes). I have been playing around with a shader by RedViper from ShareCG. For pretty much everything else, I am meanwhile getting better results outside of Firefly (e.g., Reality and Luxrender) - but not for this kind of thing.

Any advice?

Still not happy with the new design here either. I feel like I have given it some time now to get used to it (that always takes a while), and it's still simply not as good as it used to be. I can understand that many websites have an interest to catering for display on mobile devices, etc. - and perhaps it is a tiny bit better for those now. However, this site is about a topic where people tend to want to also use some of the things that they buy, and you cannot really use any of this on a small smart phone. On my screen, at least, it looks like a terrible waste of space left and right.

Well, if it's not going to happen, that would be nice to know as well. Seems like real life (or something) has interfered (?).

Have there been any news on this? I am still hesitant to buy things for Dawn because of this missing link...

Quote - > Quote - Nice work Baggins, I am sure that no living person on earth can make a better procedural human skin texture. But I have a question. Ideally, in the dreams would be if you could blend together your proc texture with the original mats, and set the percentage for both, how much each will influence the final result.

Is that possible to do?

Absolutely possible to blend between procedural bump and mapped bump. However, you would do that if the mapped bump was actually a bump map and improved things by representing the small-scale height of the skin - pores and wrinkles. If instead it is, as usual, a gray scaled copy of the color map, which has brighter areas exactly where the burned-in-specular highlights are, not exactly where the skin is higher, then this is not such a good idea. When you use the locations of specular highlights as if they are heights of skin, instead of a properly heighted skin, you get a diseased skin.

Same with the specular map. I could blend the procedural specular modulation with the map, or I could use the map alone. But the map is not a specular map - it does not indicate where there is more shine or less shine. Instead, it is a gray-scale contrast adjusted copy of the color map. As such, it is showing where the specular highlights fell from the point of view of the camera taking the reference images at the time and place that the photo was taken.

Burned-in specular highlights to do not directly represent the allocation of oily versus dry skin. Rather, they incorporate local bump, angle and strength of light sources during photography, and the position of the camera taking the photo. The resulting "map" is not a specular map at all - it's a manipulated photograph. It looks pretty weird when you use it to drive real specular effects. (Unless you happen to recreate the original situation where the reference photo was taken - then it's perfect.) Using it a little bit (blending it with procedural) is a way to make your render only a little bit bad, instead of very bad.

How difficult would it be to create a bump and specular map that would add something beyond the procedural? The tutorials I have found seem to be about the simple way of a few filters and one-click modifications of the color map. Isn't this basically about a relatively simple bit of painting over things like dimples and eyebrows in the greyscale image?

I have seen maps that look like the color map was indeed just flipped to greyscale and blurred, and some others (e.g., Danae's London) that look like they have seen some additional manual work. However, even those seem to be a combination of modified details (pores, eyeybrows, hair, etc.) on a background layer of the greyscale photograph.

Would it not be possible to use the procedural for the "background" in Poser, and blend it with bump -and specularity that only modify those details? I.e., a neutral monotone-grey map with some bright and dark spots for pores and dimples + bright (bump) or dark (spec) hair painted where it occurs?

The mesh for the raised eyebrows looks really promising! I "can't wait" on the one hand - on the other.. better take as much time as you need to fix whatever little issues are still remaining.

I only just now realized that RedViper has meanwhile put a link to his old stuff on ShareCG (below the signature). Sorry if this has been posted before:

http://www.sharecg.com/pf/full_uploads.php?pf_user_name=redviper2012

Is there a big educational market out there for 3D-figures for children? Would not a default figure with a handful of clothing items be entirely sufficient for that kind of age range?

There's a lot of content already shipped with Poser that would seem to be entirely sufficient for this, or the default Victoria 4? Apart from art-related things, models for eyes, ears, inner organs etc., for example to learn about the digestive tract would come to mind- but probably not necessarily a state-of-the art figure with lots of clothing, hair, expressions, etc.?

Going OT, But when I went to school (25 years ago?), I recall some rather educational Biology classes at the end of that age range (no pun). A lot of giggeling from all corners, certainly, but it would not have occurred to people to censor nude pictures on the topic in textbooks, nor the anotomical models that belonged to the biology collection. I believe the philosophy behind it was not to support the future of the porn industry - but rather that young people would be able to make more informed life-decisions if they are ..well.. actually informed.  I recall spending a year at a US highschool some 6 years later, and the content of "Public Health" classes would instead focus on a "Just Say No!" type of philosophy. Cultural Differences, in capital letters.

Will Dawn be able to raise her eyebrows realistically? With realistic, I mean that it should be possible to have horizontal skin folds appear on the forehead when the eyebrows are raised.

I don't mean displacement maps, but some level of density of the mesh on the forehead. That skin really has to go somewhere when the eyebrows are raised, even in simple speech. Sadly, none of the figures I have seen so far support this. Apparently, figure creators seem to think the forehead is a place where polygons can be saved. But why - it's such a basic movement that people do all the time. Certainly much more frequently than to put ones hands on top of the head.

Yes, a few facial expressions would give some great hints on how good the figure is at this point :-)

Thank you! Was looking for something more "innocent", but might work!