Hi operaguy,

I'm thinking maybe buffer bones and material zones.  Lady Cherry over at the art door is working on a tutorial about it.

Cheers,
Patorak

I honestly can't help with the conversation. I have never even attempted to put together a model before, but I wanted to bookmark this thread since it is very interesting watching it all come together. Very nice work so far!

Hello destro75,

Thank you.  If you see something that can be improved upon please let me know.

Happy new year,
Patorak

Here are the eyelids and eyeballs,  now attached to the frame.  I've made a full cornea and a reflective lens.  The only problem is how do I make the Lens reflective.  I wish I had a texture artist to lend a hand.  Any takers?  Anyways,  other than the texture,  how do they look.

Cheers,
Patorak

She is looking very nice! It is a shame that no one seems to care over in the LW forum...

Hello Parthius,

Thank you.  Seems like the lightwave forum doesn't get a lot of traffic.

Cheers,
Patorak 

Main thing about the eye-parts: DO NOT WORRY ABOUT MATERIALS!  As long as they are different materials, They can be handled later.  The transparent parts are best handled procedurally, anyway.  Fantastic stuff so far!

That's a relief.  What I did was model a full cornea encasing the eye.  Made the pupil cup shaped,  and placed a reflective lens over the irises.  I'm trying to get the eyes so the irises sparkle.

Create something different with the skeletal rig. Perhaps fan bones betwen the shoulder blades, it would be more difficult to pose, but much more fluid. Pay special attention to the elbows, knees, and hip, and neck area to achieve greater realism. Don't settle for Joint controlled morphs, or  magnets, do it with rigging. Rigging and proper joint parameter settings should be enough. You might use magnets to simulate squash and stretch, gravity, compressed flesh. They are also useful when a character bends, not for covering up poor rigging, but to simulate the pressing of flesh against flesh, which isn't present in many, models out there, unless you rig them in MAX, or MAYA, and set up muscle constraints, and soft body dynamics to simulate flesh.
Just a few thoughts.

The only problem is how do I make the Lens reflective.  I wish I had a texture artist to lend a hand.  

Saw this at the LW Forum, as well.  Why not add a cornea?  What I do is simply copy the eyeball to another layer, make it uniformly smaller, keep it labelled as eyeball...cut it and paste into the figure layer, click on the larger version, select all that mesh and control q, label as lcornea, etc..  Then, pick out a nice reflective glass material.

Quote - Create something different with the skeletal rig. Perhaps fan bones betwen the shoulder blades, it would be more difficult to pose, but much more fluid. Pay special attention to the elbows, knees, and hip, and neck area to achieve greater realism. Don't settle for Joint controlled morphs, or  magnets, do it with rigging. Rigging and proper joint parameter settings should be enough. You might use magnets to simulate squash and stretch, gravity, compressed flesh. They are also useful when a character bends, not for covering up poor rigging, but to simulate the pressing of flesh against flesh, which isn't present in many, models out there, unless you rig them in MAX, or MAYA, and set up muscle constraints, and soft body dynamics to simulate flesh.
Just a few thoughts.

Admirable goals, but it doesn't sound like you've done much rigging in Poser (either that, or you've done more than anyone else and are more talented than anyone to date).

JCMs and Magnets / Deformers are useful for covering up "limitations in the Poser rigging system" (my prefered phrasing).  I'm all for innovation and new ideas, but you shouldn't pretend that there aren't limits to the Poser rigging system.  Labeling it as "poor rigging" or "don't settle for... do it with rigging" is just an insult to (presumably) everyone who's every tried to do a nice rigging job in Poser.

If you have rigged some figures in Poser that defy the limitations of the Poser rigging sytem (?), that would be great - I'd be really happy to study your work and I'm sure e-F, Daz and others would as well.  If you're just trying to encourage some innovation, that's another story. - but let's not ignore the boundries ;).

Poppi,  thank you I'll try it.

ccotwist3d,  I agree,  right now,  I'm developing a schematic of the upperarm bones.  It will involve a buffer bone,  a ghost bone,  and the shoulder bone.  I'll start with a cylinder first.  This will give me an idea of what the mesh needs.  I'm also wondering about parenting bones to material zones.  Is it possible?

Spanki,  don't worry I haven't ruled out JCM's or magnets.  I'm also rigging Jane in lightwave to help with the bending issues.

Quote - - but let's not ignore the boundries ;).

I agree... Plus even if you manage to come up with something really innovative, I wonder how well it will work with existing props/clothes. If there are too many issues, then your mesh is gonna be just one more that is ignored and left to rot. There's a long line of such meshes that failed because of this dependence on legacy content.

I would say if interesting and realistic rigs are the goal, then stay with your native modeller and import pre-posed stuff into poser if you have to.

Hi tekmonk,

Thanks,  that's very sound advice.

couple of things:  i like the pointy breasts.  some women have more conical shaped breasts than apple shaped ones.  i think the join of buttocks to back could be more accurate - right now they kind of look as if there's a slightly odd roll of flesh at the top of each one  that i don't think i've ever seen even in unfit women. 

i like the shape of the eye a great deal.  on the eye geometry itself i'd say recess the iris. everyone's going on about how v4 looks more like a doll or more toony or whatever.  i think most of that is because people focus on the head, and because her eyes are very unrealistic, imho.  i've seen lots of different textures and read a tutorial, and all of them looked almost unacceptable (again, imho).  one reason is the shape of the her eyes, a hurdle i think you've already jumped.  but the other is the depth to her iris.  as bast black said over at daz, she looks like she's wearing contacts.  depth isn't acheived just with highlights and reflections- it's created with shadows.  all the modern eyes i have (awful eyes, millenium figure's eyes, and the light version black eyes that came with irina 2.0) have recessed irises.  v4 has a confusing number of layers to her eye, but the best textures still look more dead to me  than i can get v3's to look with just flat colors and the right material settings.

Great idea on the eyes.  I'll dish the iris.  Do you think I should add a reflective lens between the iris and cornea?  On the hip,  I'm going to wait for any adjustments until I do another bend test.  I'm going to try a buffer bone and ghost handle in that area.  As for the breasts,  I'm considering adding a bone there as well.  Hopefully,  it will add movement and gravity to them.

Also for ref, you can get a very nice and free video tutorial from GNOMON on making realistic eyes here:

http://forums.thegnomonworkshop.com/showthread.php?t=20

Though he uses Maya, he mostly only uses common techniques which you can duplicate in any app, including LW and poser. (It is 600MB or so though).

 My comment was intended to be encouraging Spanki. I can't own to being a whiz when it comes to rigging in poser yet Spanki. My rigging knowledge comes from other applications, primarily Maya. However, If I do come up with something I'd be more than happy to share it.
I don't know about grouping the bone to a material group, but you could create more groupings to include breasts, nipples, ears, and things like that, and create bones for them. They could serve as guide bones for area specific motion (ears stick out, bend, Breasts rotate, swing, so forth). You could make ghost bones for even more control, and set up erc dials for them.

Understood ccotwist3D, thanks for the clarification.  I was really hoping that you did have some magic to share :). 

The general issue I had was the general statement: "Rigging and proper joint parameter settings should be enough".  The problem is, due to limitations inherit in Poser's rigging system, that's just unfortunately not true - or at least not practical.  As tekmonk mentioned, there are other things that also have to be considered beyond what might be remotely possible (given some creative/innovative rigging) when you're creating Poser content for the Poser masses.

Hi Everyone,

tekmonk,  thanks for the link. 

ccotwist3d,  great idea on the ERC for the ghost bones.  I want to set the genitals as the hip and the hip as a second abdomen.   Right now though,   I'm still running bend tests in poser.   I want to see if  I can simulate weight maps. 

Spanki,  could the rigging be shared through an INJ file?

Cheers,
Patorak

Quote - Spanki,  could the rigging be shared through an INJ file?

You mean to allow 3rd-party developers an easy means of rigging conforming clothing?  Yes, but easier and more complete is just to provide a 'blank' .cr2 to work from.  The .cr2 would have all the rigging in it.

I think the bigger issue comes about just by the nature of doing some non-standard rigging.  For example, additional bones means that existing Pose files probably don't work well (or defeat the purpose of having he extra bones).  The Poser masses would need to be re-trained in how to achieve the best results ("what? I have to manipulate 3 bones to get the knee bent?"), etc.  Non-standard rigging also likely reduces or eliminates the possibility of things like Wardrobe Wizard being able to get existing clothing moved over (those bone groups won't exist in older clothing), etc.

Some of this is already taking place with newer figures like Sydney and V4.  The (hidden) magnet deformers on V4 replace some of the JCMs (not all of them), but do end-users know how or remember to use the included Magnetize poses to make clothing work?  Everything's a trade-off between ease-of-use and acceptable level of functionality (fully clothed figures have fewer issues with what the bends look like than nudes).

Thanks,  I didn't even think about wardrobe wizard.  I wonder what the specs are for the figure to be compatible?

THAT is something best done by opening a dialogue with Phil Cooke.  He's the one that wrote Wardrobe Wizard and would know better than anyone.  He can be contacted at the email I PM'ed you.

Also he is Uncannily canny about poser figures, bones and rigging more than ANY I can think of in the whole of poserdom because it is literally his stock in trade!  Asking him for some thoughts on poser characters anf what he likes to see/and use might be eye opening.

Wardrobe Wizard is probably doable, considering how many other meshes Phil has brought under its umbrella. I'd bet it would not be difficult to persuade him to work up your new mesh.

Getting your model under WW is pretty important...that means she has clothes. The "hair fits" issue is there, but not as critical; most poser people know how to maneuver a hair model into place for and parent it to the head of the human model.

Texture libraries....now there you have a challenge.

Just my opinions.

Much encouragement to you on this project, especially if you can make her move and bend well in the shoulders and upper arms.

::::: Opera :::::

Cool!  Thanks.

Just to throw encouragement, don't be hesitant about trying new rig designs. Anton did that with Apollo Maximus, and while it does take a bit of getting used to, it can produce some better results. Right now, Poser is starting to be used more and more -as- an animation tool; getting folks to think outside the standard rigging box is a good thing IMHO. The non-linear animating capability is also going to require breaking folks of the habit of doing it all in one layer.....but the results will be better animnations and more reuseability of some motion patterns. Folks are going to have to adjust to the fact that Sydney has that extra torso joint, which kind of blows most of the old poses to one degree or another, unless you can get them all saved as universal poses. But the result is that unlike any other mesh, Sydney can bend forward better and further before the mesh breaks. Don't hobble yourself. The greatest thing about Poser is the ways that creative folks find to compensate for the fact that it was born and still bears the burden of being a virtual woody. A lot of the things we have now are the direct results of the likes of Syyd, Yamato, Traveller, PhilC, Anton, Ziggie, Dodger, Maz, and a hell of a lot more pushing that poor old P4 app in ways that no one intended. A lot of things we the user asked for found its way into P7. A character that shines....but would positively flouresce with further improvements in the app might be just the thing to fuel the next leap forward. Maybe even a 'Pro' version built from scratch just for the animators and pro crowd.....

Hi Dale B,

Hey,  remember Steve Torino's freebie Eve.  I wonder where daz got the idea for Victoria's rigging?

Cheers,
Patorak

going backwards...

it's going to take something to get people to use anything but one figure anyway. merchants are all switching to v4 only, and everyone who critiques v4 is told that in a few months, it'll be all v4 and nothing else in the galleries.  and that's probably accurate, even though v3 is so different in appearance ,  i think of v4 as just a whole different figure.  that is, i think they don't fill at all the same purpose in terms of figure types, and i can see using both.  v4 may have better bending, but miki still has better expressions, body shape and general facial realism than either, imho, but i haven't replaced all my unimesh stuff with her and i've bothered to acquire v4.

i think new figures appeal to the people who bother to learn new things and use new technologies and use more than one figure in the first place.   some people had to learn to use apollo, but those that did touted his advantages loudly.   and the most praise was about his most difficult and least standard aspect- his rigging.

personally, i'm interested in new figures because of the diversity they'll bring to my renders and the advantages that come from many innovators instead of one or two groups.  i'd rather have much, much better bending and a realistic and different body shape.  if a figure isn't much different in the body than an existing and popular figure, i'd much prefer body morphs and a new head.

bones for breasts - it seems like a good idea to me.  i've always heard good things about figures that did that, and i've often wanted them for other figures. 

i don't think there's a need for another surface on the eye. v4's eye has all these surfaces, and i can't see a need for them at all yet.  if i want to layer types of highlights, i can do it in the material room.  i'm not sure what benefits all the different layers are supposed to have. that isn't to say there aren't great uses possible for all those layers, but i've yet to see results on par with eye props that had fewer layers.

I'm curious. Would it be possible to use readscript to have multiple rigs for a character? You could have them point to different .cr2 files in the geometry folder. If you could have several rigs, you could have a character that could be a baby, child, and adult, by just using morphs, and not geometry switching. Would it be possible to inject a rig? That would really open up alot of options. You could have one mesh that covered multiple age groups. I wonder if you could set up the .cr2 file to use python scripting to switch just the rigging portion of the character file? I'm sure someone has thought of this before. It's just something I'd wondered about.

Just to be clear, I agree with the comments above.  As I mentioned, I'm all for innovation - and it's going to take some for things to move forward.  Particularly in free models like this one, you can afford to be creative and help drive things forward.

Quote - Hi Dale B,

Hey,  remember Steve Torino's freebie Eve.  I wonder where daz got the idea for Victoria's rigging?

Cheers,
Patorak

Oooh, yeah, that I do. I still have Eve in my runtime and use her, in fact. Actually, I think that the ones I don't have are Maya's ball jointed doll and Clark. Maybe some esoteric meshes from Japan or elsewhere that you have to join a site to get, and the joining process is.....obscure, shall we say?

Quote - Hi Dale B,

Hey,  remember Steve Torino's freebie Eve.  I wonder where daz got the idea for Victoria's rigging?

Cheers,
Patorak

Interesting that you should mention that... it ironically helps illustrate a point, which is that 'some things work and some things are red-herrings'.  If you notice, V4 (and Sydney, for that matter) no longer has buttocks 'buffer' joints (first done in Eve).  Buffer joints, as it turns out, don't really give you anything that good fall-off zones can't give you.

They can be of some use as alternate/additional rotational centers or behaiviors (unfortunately, almost noone uses them this way), but if used just to keep some mesh from being deformed, you can tidy up your falloff zones instead.

Daz has always been good about uhm... incorporating other's ideas, but they've also come up with at least a few and tried out things on thier own.  I don't recall if it was V1 or V2 (or both) that had 2 neck joints... but those went away too.  The old tri-split chest (ala V3) reverted back to the mono-chest of Posette in V4 as well.  Now we have a new chest/neck/head grouping being tried out (mostly to accomodate a new uv-mapping layout).  Etc.

cobaltdream,  Thanks on the eyes.  As for the rigging I'm considering doing a lite Jane  and an advanced  Jane.
ccotwist3d,  Injecting a rig would be great, especially for 3rd party developers.  I wonder if a dial could be used to call up the python script? 

Spanki,  I'm sorry  you were misled but,  this isn't going to be a free model.  What I will make free though is a merchant developer package.  Which will include her rigging.

Cheers,
Patorak

patorak -  it's the placement of the thread that misled.   you can't make commercial posts to the poser forum.  in fact, i think all commercial w.i.p. threads have to go to the developers forum, and not even the product showcase.  i know seraphira's threads got moved there when she was working on kaimira (who i really wish had been completed).

Ahh.. sorry, yes.  I just assumed it would be free because you had the thread in here. 

I am so sorry everyone,  please forgive me.  Thread closed.

Well even if the discussing the mesh here is no longer a good idea, i think the rigging discussion is OK.

So i'll just ask if anyone has done research on setting up layered rigs in poser. I dont think poser has anything like a 'parent' feature (or does it ?) but maybe through scripting ? Cause layered rigs are an elegant solution to the problem of getting good rigging along with compatibility. ie you would have separate deform rigs and pose rigs. The deform ones can be as nutty as you like, and as long the pose rig is fairly standard, various poses, props, clothes etc should work just fine with the char.

Or if its not possible now, maybe we should be bugging them to add some more basic rig tools to poser so we can do this sort of thing in the future.

Hello tekmonk,

I agree,  the riggging discussion should go on.  I think it's time we had an openGL rigging.  One that would be free of restrictons and continually developed.  much in the tradition of Steve Torino's Eve.  Also,  I don't think we should limit ourselves to bi-peds either.

Queston is should we keep this thread or start a new one?

Cheers,
Patorak

patorak, while i personally would welcome another discussion of the rigging, I'd say you can make the loudest statement by developing and releasing a model that employs something superior to what is out there for Poser.

If you are making a "Jane Lite" a freebie, then the thread doesn't need anything done to it, IMHO.  THAT is how DAZ should have done V4.  They did a base figure and charged people for the Dev version.  I mean--what is the difference in them? @____@;;

Doing a freebie Dev version would be a great movement to encourage people to make items.  I'd encourage you to make another thread in the other forum about the commercial aspects of the figure, and keep this thread open for rigging and other figure developmental suggestions.

Lets get real for a moment.  Everyone wants to make characters and have them appreciated.  It's even better if you could sell them and have them wildly popular and have them be the "Next big thing".  Having a frank and open discussion about what works and what DOESN'T work in poser figures and how to build a better mousetrap is only going to help EVERYONE who has interest in rigging and making ANY poser character!

Leave the thread open, and lets get back to it! ^___^ V,,

Joel,  ~ getting real for a moment ~...

Your arguement for keeping the thread open in here for what will eventually become a commercial product is pretty much exactly the reason they aren't allowed in here, to start with.

If I could come in here - the most popular forum on the site - and thus getting the maximum exposure possible to 'hype' my 'Next Big Thing' in the Poserverse, this forum will become nothing but an advertising tool.

Personally, I'd be posting a new Next Big Thing thread each time I had some idea for a new product that I wanted to make sure got maximum exposure (everyone else would too, so I'd have to, in order to keep on a level playing field).

There's nothing wrong with technical discussions about rigging and such (actually, they'd be more appropriate in the Poser Technical forum), but people don't come to this forum to be barraged by ads for comercial products and if you open those flood gates, you better get out your hip-boots.

The "Jane Lite" argument doesn't work for me either.  It's a dodge, that doesn't address the above issues.

These are all just my opinions, of course.  ~ shrug ~

^ Good points.  Alrighty, the thread needs to be moved.  I wasn't really thinking the thing through.  That's what I get for posting after being up for 24 hours without caffiene. :lol:

actually, i agree and disagree with spanki.  i think he's right about the issues of commercial threads.  i pretty much don't care either way, but i do think we should be consistent.  if people can't post their threads about any of the other products they're developing, then this shouldn't be allowed.  i think it  innovations in uv mapping and realistic shape would be have more importance to the community in the pursuit of  the "perfect" figure than rigging (since most people do simple portraits or pinups), and tons of people are interested in how to start modeling.  there are all sorts of aspects of development whose discussion would be highly beneficial to the community.  but the ptb decided that it was more important to keep this forum from being full of advertisements.  

and it's not as if the developer's forum excludes everyone but people who have 3ds max serial numbers.  if people want to know more about rigging, they should read and post there. 

conversely, i'd say a free base figure would change the nature of this thread.  i believe dodger posted his sariel threads here and they were not moved  precisely because his unimesh was going to be unavailable and the base figures made from it  were going to be free.  if this is about the development of a free product, that it will have commercial add-ons isn't the point.  but then the development of the free part should be the focus.

i will say this: i have a few things for h.e.r. because her base was free.  rikishi looks great, but i won't get him until i have a render that really calls for him.  daz made v3 and m3 free after sixus1 had had a great deal of success with the free base / commercial add-ons model.

Hello Everyone,

I agree the thread should be moved.  So if anyone is still interested in the development of a poser figure in general and jane in specific,  I'm moving it to  http://theartdoor.com  In the lightwave forum you'll see the developement of the mesh.  In the poser forum you'll see the developement of the rigging.

Cheers,
Patorak

BUMP

Well more that just bump.  Sorry to be a necromancer but she is done.

Here's a preview of her.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTiE5pXQXJc

You know,  I completely forgot about this thread...

Look at the date when I started this thread.  Dec 27,  2006.  My how time flys.

Just downloaded them.  I hope lots of people make stuff for them.