Hi, I'd like to play too. Below are some regular girl headmorphs I've sculpted for V4 and some fairly odd looks I've put together for Apollo. I'd love to do some characters for Antonia. Where do I get ahold of the latest files? Still odf's page here or do I need to be invited to the google group?

http://www.madmodpoetgod.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/nosebrigade_600.jpg

http://www.madmodpoetgod.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/apollos.jpg

I really like that top V4 in that link, joequick... she looks like real women I've seen.

joequick: great work. I saw those head morphs you made for V4 before and was really impressed.

You can still use the files from my file locker. I'll probably post an updated version soon, but the head hasn't changed. The parts we're still working on a bit are the hands and feet and the organization of the cr2. Character morphs shouldn't be affected.

When you've done some morphs for Antonia, show us pictures, and I'll let you into the secret treehouse.

tlc: Yes, I have the Poser File Editor. Very useful! Thanks to phantom3D's generosity, I also have another bunch of Dimension3D's great tools now, including the Binary Morph Editor. That one lets you read and convert morph targets from various formats, select the ones you want, make FBMs and create INJ/REM poses.

(Where's that content advisory button for product placement? :lol:)

"(Where's that content advisory button for product placement?"
There IS one?
A lot of folks that post to the galleries around here, don't even know what an advisory IS! LOLOLOL:laugh:

You're own your own with that one,mate!

Her thighs look a bit dark to me. I don't remember BE's texture looking like that.

Is that just the lights?

You can distribute her with the shaders after VSS puts them on her. That's part of the VSS deal. VSS is supposed to work like a merchant resource. Once you apply it and it plugs in your maps, you can distribute that.

bagginsbill: Oh cool! I'll do that then. I was looking for something like that in the readme's, but maybe at the wrong spot.

JOELGLAINE: Yes, the legs are considerably darker in the texture. I suspect the person which the reference images were taken of must run around in shorts a lot. :lol: I've only shown VSS renders so far, in which the texture didn't come out as much because of the simulated sss and other effects.

This might be one of the things I'll change before I distribute the materials. So my crappy little training wheels shader is good for something, after all.

Quote - You can distribute her with the shaders after VSS puts them on her. That's part of the VSS deal. VSS is supposed to work like a merchant resource. Once you apply it and it plugs in your maps, you can distribute that.

Yes, but can I also allow others to redistribute it, possibly modified? That's what the Antonia base license will say, so I need to know whether I can include VSS based materials in that.

Goon on ya, then. I been busy with other project lately, and not able to devote much energy to this lately.  I'll take a look later.:laugh: So much to do, and no time.

Quote - > Quote - You can distribute her with the shaders after VSS puts them on her. That's part of the VSS deal. VSS is supposed to work like a merchant resource. Once you apply it and it plugs in your maps, you can distribute that.

Yes, but can I also allow others to redistribute it, possibly modified? That's what the Antonia base license will say, so I need to know whether I can include VSS based materials in that.

I hadn't really thought about that, but I suppose it amounts to yes.

Consider - VSS (free version) is free and anybody can use it to generate the same shader for their own copy of any figure. They are then allowed to modify the resulting shaders (or not) and distribute them with their character.

So what difference would it make if I told you you cannot grant others the right to take your VSS-shaded character and further modify and re-distribute? 

The key thing I'm holding in reserve is you're not allowed to re-distribute or grant rights to the VSS software, or the templates I supplied with VSS.

See, the templates are different. The shader you end up with does not have the generality and re-usability of the template, because the template has elements in it that make it possible to use with-or-without various maps. Whereas, the resulting shader that gets applied is hard-coded to expect certain maps, including specific names, and the very existence of the maps in the first place, specific name not withstanding.

For example, if you have Specular Map and Bump Map, VSS will generate a shader that requires both to work properly. Whereas, the template it came from does not require those and will substitute other nodes if they are not present. So the template is like a stem cell in biology - it has the potential to become any kind of cell, and therefore is very powerful and valuable. Whereas, after a stem cell becomes a particular kind of cell, it is no longer that interesting.

Here's a comparison of BluEcho's texture with my simpleton shader and my current VSS based material. I'm slowly digesting what all the controls in VSS 3 do, so this might not yet be the best in can do with that texture. At any rate, what's obvious is that the difference in brightness between the legs and the rest of the body is much less noticeable.

Try:

Diffuse Reflectivity = .8 or .85

As you know, it is necessary to tune the shader. People have produced diffuse color maps that are all over the map in terms of luminance, hue, and saturation. That's why you really can't just take the VSS shader and use it as is. Almost every character requires adjustment, since the starting point of what's in the color map is so wildly different from different people.
 

If I'm not mistaken, the diffuse reflectivity is already at 1 here. I could either make the skin tone brighter or edit the maps. They are pretty orangy, so I used a greenish yellow skin tone to counteract that. Maybe reducing the saturation of the maps and adjusting their hues a bit would be a better solution.

At any rate, I think the VSS version actually looks pretty good. It's just that the white background doesn't match the lighting I used, which is entirely my fault.

I think the eyewhites are a bit dark here, so I'm trying to reduce the AO distance.

Yes - remember those are still the original eyewhite shaders from PR1, and I had calibrated them for too much light in the beginning.

I should put out a new set of shaders. I have improvements on all of them.

Putting a bump map on the eyewhites made a big difference as well. Without it, there's still a bit of a glass eye effect.

odf, you've got the texture looking much better.

The one thing about using photo references is that most people have varying body shades, like the legs here.
A lot of customers want realism but then ask why the different shades on the body parts.
That's realism, if you make them even tones all over, that's not realism.
So we texture creators have to try to find a happy medium between the two. :)

I've used this texture as a base for my older woman set but added parts from  photos of an old woman.
The legs in it are more even toned than this one but the back and her buttocks are different shades.

BB, I discovered you updated the vss on your site so I downloaded it and the manual.
I wanted to see how my milhorse textures would look with it applied.
But it didn't work as is.
So I will study the manual and learn how to change the rules and, maybe, get my horse textures lookin better too. :)

I won't be looking later.  My main computer's motherboard is toast. We just had a tornado hit the area and power went out when it was restarting.  Now it won't boot. I reset the cmos chip and used the bios jumper to reset setting, but it still won't boot.  My 'trash PC' which I built out of discarded parts (which has half the speed and RAM, but works, so I can post, internet,and watch TV on it) still functions, but no Posering until I get a new PC,

I could bitch, whine and complain, but the area south of me was DEVASTATED.  I live in southeast Nashville,Tennessee.  I used to live at Thompson lane and Murfreesboro road. That area looks like a nuclear war was just raged there.

My building was missed, didn't even rattle here.  There are at least two dead, dozens injured--complaining about a toasted mother-board seems like whining to me right now. Seeing a neighborhood that I spent 25 years in just GONE leaves me numb.

Tornadoes are frightening.
We had a couple of nasty ones down on the MO/AR border in the late 1980's.
One took 260 acres of woodland and flattened it just a mile from where we were. It passed over us.
Another one took down a huge tree in our front yard and another one just behind the house.
It set the one behind the house down inches from our propane tank but left our house untouched.

I am glad you are okay.
A fried motherboard is a lesser loss than your life.
Hang in there. :)

I know.  I feel like such a whiner just mentioning it. In comparison to other people having their homes flattened, motherboards are peanuts.

Except you can't eat them.:laugh:  Unless you are a silicon based alien.  Which doesn't live with me any more because he was a freeloader and wouldn't pay rent..:lol:

I have to joke about this stuff  from my point of view. I saw a ex-neighbor of mine on TV. Her house was just gone. I remember when she gave me an angel-food cake one time. Jeez, this is really damned sad.:closedeyes:

Well, don't feel like a whiner, you lost something that was important to you.
And remember, computers still do cost a bit, plus the information you collect that's important.
So do a bit of whining, you need to to let it out. :)

LOL I don't know if the hard-drives are fried.too.  It won't boot up to tell. I'll go find a used pc, if I have to. If the HHDs are toast, I won't even bother.  I can test them in my trash built pc tomorrow.  I'd have to move furniture to get to the other pc. Feh.

I just have one request.
I haven't read this whole thread, so maybe this has been brought up already, but when you make it available, please include a low poly version of it, preferably all quads. To use in sub-d mode in Lightwave and other programs.
What we have now is, all the best figure meshes are very high poly, which works great for Poser, which doesn't have subdivision ability, but not so great for apps that do.
That's not to say I think you should only do a low poly version, just that I think it would be a great idea to have one for Poser and one for other apps.

Straight out of D|S, no procedurals, no plug ins, nothing special and nothing on the actual skin yet.  I need to redo the eyelashes, they don't look natural enough to me yet.  I'm quite happy with the brows (yes, it's transmapped.)
All the eye parts I created from scratch...  need to check the readmes on the two merchant resources I use for the brows and lips to make sure I can use those for freebies..

Hi Fisty, everyone

Very  good to see your work on Antonia. Man! This is great to see lots of different people putting things together for Antonia.  It is uplifting for me to see people taking an interest.

I'm still around, just lurking

cheers,

Mike.

She's really quite beautiful

JOELGLAINE: If we all followed that logic, few of us would ever get to rant or complain about anything.

MIkeJ: Yes, I was going to make the low poly mesh available. But if you want to use it in other programs, you'll have to take care of the rigging yourself.

Fisty: Looks like a nice start. Good luck! As phantom3D said, it's good to see people taking an interest in Antonia.

That's great to hear, odf, thanks!
Keep us updated. Do you have a mailing list people can subscribe to or something?
As for rigging, yeah, no problem. I can't rig in Poser to save my life, but in Lightwave it's not a problem. Low poly meshes in sub-d work best though.

Okay, so anyone interested in a MR for her?

I can make one using the base I have and making the skin tones more even all over.
Eyelashes may be a problem though, so far the ones I've done don't look too great. :rolleyes:

If anyone is interested, I'll work on it between my other projects so it will take a bit of time.

All right, all right, I'll make it a freebie, sheesh twist my arm. :lol:

I think if we promote her a bit and get folks interested we might make the retail products sell better.

/raise hand

What's an 'MR' and the lashes I tried look like crap,too. Is the mapping that hard? I think the ends of the uvs on the lashes are bizarre,IMO.  I can't tell where the ends are and what the orientation is.

MR = Merchant Resource.

This is what mine looks like..  it's got all the right stuff in the right place but it's a bit too perfect and the lashes are a little too thick, gonna have to give 'em more pixels.

What she said: left is left, right is right, up is up and down is down. I realize now that the vertical stretch makes hand-drawing harder. I'll fix that.

Ah! I didn't realize they were distorted! I was thinking one to one. That explains a lot.

 Efficient UVMap for sure. But for the ease of painting I would personally prefer them a little more apart.

I'm a little puzzled about the "mid" - are they "folded in half" or does "mid" simply indicate the side that is towards the nose?

Quote -  Efficient UVMap for sure. But for the ease of painting I would personally prefer them a little more apart.

Good idea! I noticed that right after I posted.

Quote - I'm a little puzzled about the "mid" - are they "folded in half" or does "mid" simply indicate the side that is towards the nose?

I meant towards the nose (=mid-face :lol:). Would nose - temples be clearer?

 I guess "mid" is ok. I was just not sure if it meant what I thought it meant LOL

Perhaps "center" instead of mid? Although that could possibly also be interpreted wrong. At least "nose/temples" is clear - except if someone started looking for a temple to put their Antonia in... ;)

Quote -  I guess "mid" is ok. I was just not sure if it meant what I thought it meant LOL

Perhaps "center" instead of mid? Although that could possibly also be interpreted wrong. At least "nose/temples" is clear - except if someone started looking for a temple to put their Antonia in... ;)

With a sword?

WHy not?  She's already nekkid! LOLOLOLOL:laugh: Soon as me PC is on-line again, I gotta make the poor woman some shorts or something and a top,or a body suit.

First working PC, THEN worry about clothes!  Sorry, case of cart before the horse going on here. :laugh:

Just wanted to tell everyone that I now have a finished MR for Antonia.
It consists of 1 body texture, 1 head texture, 1 lip png and 1 eyelash transmap.
I made one mc6 file with no shaders so it will be easier to work with.

I will zip and upload it to the developer's site later tonight.

Oh, I'll also post a render here tonight for you all to see what it looks like. :)

Any chance of uploading it somewhere else instead? (so us non-dev-site-enabled folks can get it)

I don't have access to the dev site..  and mc6..  why?  MR is textures, what's the point of making a matpose?  Just wondering..  I won't use it anyway.. I don't convert my stuff to Poser until I've gotten it perfect in D|S first. 

Okay, I'll upload to my site and give a download link here.

A few people like to have an mc6 or pz2 file to load the texture in easy.
And they usually edit it to whatever they name their file.
I've had requests for mc6 or MAT files for my MR sets before so I thought I'd just add it in. :)

Just a little message for those with no access (yet) to the developers site: don't worry, I'll shortly start another site for hosting Antonia and free stuff made for her. That one will be open to the public. But I'm waiting until I have a new, beta-ish version of the base package to put up there. It would be weird to have a public site with accessories for a figure that is not publicly available. :lol: