I know Midnight_Stories has one of these going here now.  I had a nice one at Daz that went on for 25 some odd pages before the forum reboot.  I tried starting a new one at the new daz, but it just didn't turn out to be as lively, productive, or rewarding. The rational is the same as before. I make a lot of stuff, much for personal use, some for commercial release (25 items here, 1 at daz3d), lots for free (73 items at sharecg) and a great deal of which I just kind of forget about because I've got a habit of working on things as long as they're fun and then quitting.

Zbrushcentral is full of sketchbook threads, but as the ultimate end application of my work is poser and studio, their site just wouldn't be the place for a thread of my own. So I thought I'd give it another go here.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

I've got a couple of your morph sets and I love them.  A thread here would always be welcome, I'm sure.

I expect that a lot of threads at Daz are fading away only because of the post bumping failure, and not because of a lack of interest in the topics themselves. Hopefully, they'll fix the forums.... within a reasonably short period of time. :)

---

PoserPro 2014, PS CS5.5 Ext, Nikon D300. Win 8, i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz, AMD Radeon 8570, 12 GB RAM.

One of the things I've been putzing around with is my own Ninja Turtle based on the Genesis platform. I know there’s a commercial ninja turtle already out there that I could easily buy and save myself the time, but I thought I’d try my hand at making my own anyway.  I’d started one a couple years back for M4, but gave up when I realized I’d have to use vertex snapping to get rid of the extra fingers (I don’t believe zbrush can do that, and I didn't want to buy the creature creator morphs).  So that’s my first attached render with the bandana, an old headmorph for M4.  The bandana was quickly modeled using zbrushes retopolgy tools which I've come to realize are just as handy for throwing together base meshes as zspheres.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

More recently I started a fresh project inspired particularly by the illustrations of these two artists:

http://cghub.com/images/view/159057/

http://cghub.com/images/view/225716/

 

Up until now I've focused primarily on morphs with very little attention to textures.  The only exception being my duck people, but even their textures are fairly simple in their way, just being a lot of repetitive feather work.   For the turtle I did more specific detail work as I developed the displacement maps for the  various wrinkles and scales.

Putting the textures together, I made good use of filterforge generating source images to be used in spotlight during the polypainting process.  Anyway, most of the skin was generated from this moss/grass texture:

http://www.filterforge.com/filters/5376.html

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Here's a couple shots of the turtle posed and wearing it's shells.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

and again

@Daz3d
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I've also started drafts of the belt and bandana.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Now because I've got the attention span of a gnat, and like many people I saw Dark Knight Rises this past weekend, I've also started putzing around with a catwoman suit for V4.  Years ago I threw together a very simple head prop based on the Darwyn Cooke design.  Now that I've learned a few things I figured I'd take a stab at doing a complete costume, trying to merge elements from the movie, Arkham City, and Darwyn Cooke's illustrative work.

Here's an early shot of the suit with a hex pattern and showing the topology.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Here's a few fast renders with the suit on V4.  This first render uses "Nasha Hair", which is similar to that Hathaway has in the film.  As a shameless plug, the headmorph is from my "Extraordinary girls" collection.  I think I also used tiled textures in the suit for this render.  I've since replaced those with dedicated texture maps so that it'd be easier to move back and forth between poser and studio.

 

As I'm freely bandying about labels like "catwoman" and "ninja turtle",  these things aren't intended for commercial release.  Though the boots and hair I'm about to show might be.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Here are a few other renders.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

another

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

a third (and I've since tweaked the hair to eliminate the monster roots)

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Hi Joe,

I am not a fantasy render type person, but I sure appreciate what you do.  I used to browse your thread on the old Daz forum every so often, but I don't go to the Daz forums anymore (it is too hard to find anything) so I forgot about your thread.  I, for one, am glad you started one here.  I really love watching your projects.

I have your M4  Classic Trench Coat, and it is one of those go to items when I want to put a coat on a guy.  I haven't found an item yet that it will not fit over.

 

While I liked the overall movie look,  as I put the character together I decided to go with something more practical on the footwear than thigh high boots with heels.  I tried to figure out what the boots on the Darwyn Cooke costume would like like in real life and go from there, using the same buckle from elsewear in the costume for consistancy.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

I couldn't quite tell what the deal with the cuff was in the illustration.  This is what I wound up with.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Wonderful work.  The Ninja Turtle reminds me of one tale which places them in a different light in feudal Japan.  I like the look of your model.

And Catwoman looks awesome!!!

> Quote - Wonderful work.  The Ninja Turtle reminds me of one tale which places them in a different light in feudal Japan.  I like the look of your model. > > And Catwoman looks awesome!!!

If you're talking comics, I know what you're on about.  When I was a kid I would em up at the 7/11, and the only issue of ninja turtles I ever grabbed was just wildly different than what I saw saturday mornings.  pretty recently i looked it up online to find out what the deal was.  turns out it was a scattered several issue arc by michael zulli.  but yeah, it was distinctive!

http://marswillsendnomore.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/michael-zulli-ninja-turtles007.jpg

@Daz3d
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I don't know if this is true with other modeling apps or other peoples workflows.  But if you're putzing around with this stuff on your own, it's been my experience that (at least within zbrush), edgeloops make all sorts of things possible.  you might look at something like the back of the turtle shell, or the bottom of the boot and think that it'd be a royal pain.  But in both cases I started off with a smooth surface and just put the poly's into groups, added a couple edgeloops, and infated the centers of them. 

To make the grouping easier, I made each poly it's own uv group which then allowed me to use autogroup by uv's to make each poly it's own group.  I could then click in the middle of clusters of them and group them.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

those same example groups with an edgeloop

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

then with the groups in the middle inflated

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

When I did this for the actual boot, i went with slightly different groups than than I did for the reconstruction, and I didn't just do it one row at a time.  I put them all into groups, edgelooped them all, and then inflated them all.  This was the final product.  The back turtle shell was made in much the same way.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Cool

Many thanks for the ZBrush tips Joe!

Wonderful tips.  And yes, that is exactly the issue.  Still have it in my collection.

Oh, loving that V4 suit! Consider it bought if you do release it. Have you considered an "Alien Force"-like morph set for V4? 

Quote - Oh, loving that V4 suit! Consider it bought if you do release it.

I think at best it would be a freebie, since it's DC Comic's Catwoman outfit. There are some nice things in this thread ;).

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?170100-ZBrush-4R4-Are-YOU-read

 

Good grief, almost makes me a little sad that I've got to take off for a honeymoon vacation in Venice followed by a Mediterranean cruise in a few days  (well, that and the fact that an off chance of an olympic timed underwear bomb or good old fashioned random airplane crash into the ocean just terrifies me).

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

I saw that announcement this morning... I haven't even got to R3 because I'm backlogged on stuff so I don't want to upgrade when i'm in the middle of things.

Glad to see you starting a Sketchbook here-the Daz forums are a mess! I used to spend a lot of time there on certain topics/

joe, I love this. I can't say you give me ideas because I can't do the stuff you're doing. But I enjoy seeing you do it.

I might start one of these myself regarding materials.  

---

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

Quote - joe, I love this. I can't say you give me ideas because I can't do the stuff you're doing. But I enjoy seeing you do it.

I might start one of these myself regarding materials.  

I'd enjoy following it.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?964061&p=964061&viewfull=1#post964061

Over at the zbrushcentral, one of the modelers at gameloft posted a bunch of renders of his work on the Catwoman model for the Dark Knight Rises Mobile game.

It's phenominally cool.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

That is amazing work he's doing. My only nit would be the skin is a little too translucent, but I bet that gets fixed before it goes in the game. Makes you humbled to see someone doing that kind of work. I really need to save some money and invest in some good programs. I have Blender, but I can't do anything with it. Maybe I'll get off here and put everything away until I learn to use that program...

If I had a nickle for ever time a woman told me to get lost, I could buy Manhattan.

An inspiration, Joe.

@ rokket,

I have issues with Blenders variation on cartesian coordinates and RMB to select... Lovely AND powerful piece of software though. every time I start to mess with it I lose my patience and end up back at Wings and Poser (Zbrush 2 for higher res sculpting).

Zbrush 4r4 came out a few days ago and added another amazing slew of features.  As a result, I started working on a purely Darwyn Cooke designed suit, using the new insert mesh and curve brushes to add detail.  I'll be low on free time for a few weeks, when i get some again I'll probably see if I can't make do morphs to make the zipper work and the buckle buckle.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

more

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

more

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

with a buckle

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

without smoothing

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

That's looking fantastic!

It's great to see your work in progress here... especially relative to your use of ZBrush, which I'm just starting out learning to use myself. Thanks very much for sharing

Some more bpr renders.  The cowl will probably have some seams added to the geometry, and I'll redo the boots using the same zbrush insert curved multimesh brushes as on the collar. 

The basic premise of the new insert multi mesh curve brushes in zbrush is that you draw a line and it inserts a mesh with a predefined start and stop mesh and a tiling middle mesh.  The zipper is one of the imm brushes that comes with zbrush 4r4 and the straps are a part of the growing multimesh repository.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

smoothed

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

head

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

belt

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

full

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

goggles and hair

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

three quarters

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Catwoman's looking awesome!

I wanted to do an open zipper morph on my cat suit, but I wasn't quite sure about the smartest way to do it, the way that would involve the least amount of needless work. For those of you who already know this trick, this is going to be a "no duh" moment.  But for me, this was kind of an "oh wow" realization. 

I was confused by the Daz Supersuit when I first saw it. Before I wanted to make a working zipper, this is what got me thinking about the issue. On the one hand, I knew exactly what the supersuit was.  It was an edgeloop suit, just like any of Midnight_Stories' edgeloop suits (other than the fact, I would presume, that Midnight_Stories' meshes are original, and the SuperSuit is just Genesis with some toe caps, a few extra edgeloops, and the nose, lips and ears lopped off).  But how did the supersuit do what it did? How could you inflate the various edgeloop regions?  I could imagine a tedious way of setting up those morphs, manually masking and inflating the geometry,  but that didn't seem like a smart way to make something.  I knew it had to have been made more cleverly than that, and that clever way would save me time doing my zipper morph.

In Poser and Studio, there are two kinds of groups.  You've got the grouping that goes with the rigging, your bodyparts, and you've got your material groups.  In zBrush (so far as i know), you've just got one single system of groups. You can have material groups, you can have body groups, but you can't have both. So what I would do would be model my outfit, do my grouping based on what I wanted my material groups to be, go into poser and assign those groups materials, then run the mesh through autogroup, do some tweaking, and then run it through quick conform.  I would never see the material groups in zbrush again, as, in order to make morphs, I would have to morph the mesh that had the body groups.  Loading a full body morph in any of the tools I use in conjuction with Poser 7 (Morph IMP more recently, earlier PhilC's Poser Toolbox), that didn't have the same bodygroups, will cause them to crap themselves.  Studio's no different.

From a materials group stand point, I could have things like zip pull, left zipper teeth, right zipper teeth, etc.  As, for something supersuit like, you might have a left pec pad and a right pec pad and all the loops that surround them in order to facilitate your inflating that group and allowing an inlaid boarder. From a body groups stand point, in either example, that would all just be chest.  In zbrush, then, to open the zipper (or inflate the pec pad), I'd have to mask half of the suit (and more of a hastle, half of those zipper teeth), and then pull the other half away (in the supersuit like example, mask off everything but the pec pad, hit inflate).  Then repeat for the other side (or the loops in the supersuit like example, or any other "pad"). If I could select half of those teeth at once and mask them, it'd be much easier (or just select the pad or it's loops), but if I was going to load that morph into poser (as far as my experience has taught me), I'd be forced to make the morph on a mesh where that kind of simple selection was no longer possible.

Here what I  figured out to work around that false limitation:

In both Poser and Studio, your grouping situation doesn't have to match up when you're just loading morphs into an obj.  So I can make the morph on the material group version of the mesh and load it into the body group version of the mesh obj in either program.  Then I can export out the new morphed body group version and load that in as a morph in the cr2 via morph imp in poser or the morph loader tools in studio.

I know, for many of you, the response to that is "no duh".  Still, for others, this is useful new info. This how I was able to make the zipper morph work without driving myself crazy masking off zipper teeth one by one, and this is how the morphs for an inflating edgeloop suit like the supersuit could also be done in zbrush, added  to a  cr2, and saved out for us poser 8 minus users.

Hmmm, M4 and V4 inflating edgeloop suits by Midnight_Stories with heroic/scifi/fantasy poser materials by BagginsBill and Parrotdolphin?

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

It could happen.

---

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

"Here what I  figured out to work around that false limitation:

In both Poser and Studio, your grouping situation doesn't have to match up when you're just loading morphs into an obj.  So I can make the morph on the material group version of the mesh and load it into the body group version of the mesh obj in either program.  Then I can export out the new morphed body group version and load that in as a morph in the cr2 via morph imp in poser or the morph loader tools in studio."

*whuh?

is this how to morph across body parts?

---

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Quote - "Here what I  figured out to work around that false limitation:

In both Poser and Studio, your grouping situation doesn't have to match up when you're just loading morphs into an obj.  So I can make the morph on the material group version of the mesh and load it into the body group version of the mesh obj in either program.  Then I can export out the new morphed body group version and load that in as a morph in the cr2 via morph imp in poser or the morph loader tools in studio."

*whuh?

is this how to morph across body parts?

No, this is how to work on a mesh with different grouping than the cr2's obj file and still get a working morph out of it.  At least in zbrush, it can be easier to work on a mesh with material groups than body groups if you want to be able to quickly select material based mesh groups (quickly mask a zipper as opposed to an arbitrary chunk of chest.)

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Quote - "Here what I  figured out to work around that false limitation:

In both Poser and Studio, your grouping situation doesn't have to match up when you're just loading morphs into an obj.  So I can make the morph on the material group version of the mesh and load it into the body group version of the mesh obj in either program.  Then I can export out the new morphed body group version and load that in as a morph in the cr2 via morph imp in poser or the morph loader tools in studio."

*whuh?

is this how to morph across body parts?

Working in zbrush, to make a morph across groups, I just open up the obj and sculpt the morph.  Back in poser, I use the script Morph Imp to load the morph.  There are other scripts that do the same job.  Studio does it out of the box.  I believe newer versions of poser do it out of the box as well.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

with this method, could you make the suit behave like is on a breathing character? 

:) assuming even super villains and heroines have to stop to catch their breath once in a while.

---

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Quote - with this method, could you make the suit behave like is on a breathing character? 

:) assuming even super villains and heroines have to stop to catch their breath once in a while.

You could make a breathing morph any old way. This is about morphs in zbrush where it benefits you to be able to isolate particular material groups rather than body groups.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

it would be nice if poser could also select material across body parts in the cloth room.

---

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And I'm back. 

I did a rig of my more recent catwoman suit. Now I know why the J-Suit has multpiple zipper pulls for each of the down zipper morphs (it stores them hidden inside vicky's body when they're not in use).  The pull, at whatever it's default position is, is a part of that body group (neck, chest, etc). Wherever it winds up in the morph, it's still part of that body group, so it could be down in the woman's cleavage and still be bending to follow the movement of her neck.

Rather than mimic the J-Suit's approach, I think I might just break my zipper pull off the conforming suit and try the smart prop approach.  The end user will have to tweak it's position.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

While I was away, it looks like someone released a commercial Catwoman costume.

On the 8 hour flight to Venice (and back to Illinois), I reread most of Grant Morrison's Batman run, which has led me to do some other inspired costumes.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Together, it's gloves, a bodysuit, boots, a vest a hooded cape and a couple of smart props.  About half way through, when I thought I was done, I had to go back and rerig the suit and redo the shoulder JCMs because I realized I'd put the elbow pads well above the elbows and also had asymetrical material grouping in the knee pads.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

back

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

belt and mask

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

what the body suit looks like under the vest

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

gloves

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

m4 headmorph and a hair prop I wound up not using (it's really blotchy in the back)

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

a suit, vest and cape on m4 (scaled to be a young teen)

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

lace up boots.  I was very happy with these.  a year or so ago I'd tried something similar (I think for a supergirl character or maybe mary marvel (black costume version). I didn't get anywhere near as far with them then.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

full costume on m4

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

With a Dick Grayson Batman

@Daz3d
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playing around with the costume on an adult m4, no vest.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

different colors

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

On my catsuit, I went back and put chunkier buckles on the boots to match the buckles elsewhere in the outfit.  These buckles are from the zbrush multimesh repository.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

And then (because why would I just use the golden age set that I spent months making and the hero jaw morph), I started working on a Dick Grayson specific Batcowl inspired by Frank Quietly's work and the old campy tv show.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

As well as a "Bruce Wayne" m4 headmorph (I'll probably combine it with the ++ morphs to make the eyes smaller in any actual renders).

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

And, of course, a Bruce Wayne specific cowl.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

At this point, I've got a good starte on a Batman Incorporated animated series.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Awesome Work!!!!! "Bravo" Love the Turtle and Robin Outfit,Beautiful Catwoman Outfit

Very well done!!!  Interesting take on the darker red on Robin; a brighter color might make him an easier moving target.

went back and gave dick an original cowl with elements from the quietly design as well as from the old campy tv show (which influenced that portion of morisson's run)

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

and again

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Just the Grayson cowl and belt

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Bruce Wayne Batman

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

and again

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

another costume in the same general family

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Joe

You and your sketchbook never fail to impress!!

Quote - More recently I started a fresh project inspired particularly by the illustrations of these two artists:
http://cghub.com/images/view/159057/

http://cghub.com/images/view/225716/

 

Up until now I've focused primarily on morphs with very little attention to textures.  The only exception being my duck people, but even their textures are fairly simple in their way, just being a lot of repetitive feather work.   For the turtle I did more specific detail work as I developed the displacement maps for the  various wrinkles and scales.

Putting the textures together, I made good use of filterforge generating source images to be used in spotlight during the polypainting process.  Anyway, most of the skin was generated from this moss/grass texture:

http://www.filterforge.com/filters/5376.html

Love 'em Joe!  Those are awesome, dude!

Just one thing, in Zbrush, where do I find those new strap brushes?  I'm using the 4R4 release.....

 

 

Poser Pro 2012/3DS Max 2013/Adobe Photoshop Elements 10/Zbrush/

PC: HP Z820 Workstation, 3.30 ghz 8 core Intel Processor, 2gig nvidia Quadro, 16 gig of Ram and 2TB Hard Drive.

 

Nice work Joe! I started out modelling by redoing body meshes. I got Blender, and the only thing I learned how to do with it so far is import a mesh for shrinkwrap. If Wings could do that, I would never even use Blender. It's too complicated for me right now. But your work is inspiring. I may go back to costume design later on. Right now I am doing props and vehicles.

If I had a nickle for ever time a woman told me to get lost, I could buy Manhattan.

Joe, you are one of the coolest individuals and artist I think ever. The last renders you did of the Robin suit are just amazing. With just the change of color you pretty much created an entirely new character. 

More realistic materials, Batman and Son.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Looks great Joe! 

---Wolff On The Prowl---

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wow , fantastic work !

Quote - > Quote - More recently I started a fresh project inspired particularly by the illustrations of these two artists:

http://cghub.com/images/view/159057/

http://cghub.com/images/view/225716/

 

Up until now I've focused primarily on morphs with very little attention to textures.  The only exception being my duck people, but even their textures are fairly simple in their way, just being a lot of repetitive feather work.   For the turtle I did more specific detail work as I developed the displacement maps for the  various wrinkles and scales.

Putting the textures together, I made good use of filterforge generating source images to be used in spotlight during the polypainting process.  Anyway, most of the skin was generated from this moss/grass texture:

http://www.filterforge.com/filters/5376.html

Love 'em Joe!  Those are awesome, dude!

Just one thing, in Zbrush, where do I find those new strap brushes?  I'm using the 4R4 release.....

 

 

 

IMM Curve (insert multi mesh curve), it's the one that looks like a strap.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

I love what I'm seeing here. Great work. I can really appreciate all the work that went into your Duckies for Genesis; I think it's amazing what can be done without any geografting. I've had a lot of fun playing around with the Duckies morphs.

Joe,

 

You're my hero.

 

 

:)

some catwomen, lots of recycled poses, playing with different material settings

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

some catwomen, lots of recycled poses, playing with different material settings

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

some catwomen, lots of recycled poses, playing with different material settings

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

some catwomen, lots of recycled poses, playing with different material settings

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Amazing renders.  They all look great.

tim drake

@Daz3d
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draft of a group shot, still working on dick grayson.  will also go back and model in detail to drake's bo, which is only a primitive cylinder.

@Daz3d
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migrating away from doing grayson in his *batman and robin/batman inc* batman costume and starting to put together a quick nightwing suit instead.  i'm not sure how i feel about the spectrum of variation between it, with all its edgeloopy regions and the other smoother and more fabric costumes.  the robin costume has a little bit of that kind of thing, but the grayson suit is much busier.

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smoothed normals

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with pants.  i did the top and pants as seperates.  not sure how that's going to wind up looking (nightwing:I'm wearing body armor. harlyquinn:some good that'll do you if I can just reach up your shirt!).  I may go back and just do a fabric bodysuit with wrinkles and the blue chest and shoulder regions as an appliqué which fit on top of it.  that might also be more consistent with the rest of the group.

@Daz3d
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with gloves, hair and domino

@Daz3d
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smoothed normals

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

I like the armor, its awesome

 

a fabric one would be cool too though

I wound up ditching the armored look and did more of a fabric bodysuit for grayson.  here's a cartoony render of the group so far.

@Daz3d
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more realistic

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

batman doodle

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grayson doodle

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tim drake red robin doodle

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damian wayne robin doodle

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Joe how far did you get with the Armor

Looks like something i could really use.

Quote - Joe how far did you get with the Armor

Looks like something i could really use.

It's modeled and uved but not mat grouped, body grouped or rigged.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Pizza Mam!

I've always tried to mess with the eyes as little as possible during morph creation, since screwing with them causes all manner of issues.  In this afternoon's doodle I opted to ignored that bit of wisdom.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Thats great Joe.

Street Sharks! Street Sharks! Jawsome!

Awesome sharkman morph!

Love the Batman and Robin work too

Some tweaks, rendered with Smay's Hyde textures and a 50/50 split of hyde/freak 4 to bulk up the body.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

actually, I'm a dolphin, ma'am...

 

Uh..sir.

 

er...

Candygram.

Awesome!

Quote - Some tweaks, rendered with Smay's Hyde textures and a 50/50 split of hyde/freak 4 to bulk up the body.

If this were a commercial product, I would have to buy it.

Just sayin'...

Hey Joe, question about your Merchant Resource Genesis Suits? The working in the add leads me to the impression that you are cool with the files being used to make clothing for Genesis and you don't care whether that new clothing is sold or given away as long as you original mesh is changed significantly.

 

Is that correct?

 

The license that comes with it states differently but I think it is a boilerplate license from Rendo trying to protect itself but it states: "

Purchase of the Product from Renderosity grants the Buyer a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use the contents of the encapsulating zip file. The Buyer may use the Product commercially in the form of rendered images but may not distribute the Product or any of the Product’s files. The Artist (Author) retains all copyrights to the files. The Buyer shall not copy, modify, reverse compile, or reverse engineer the Product, or sell, sublicense, rent, or transfer the Product to any third party.

This License does not grant permission to produce a real, tangible replica of the 3D mesh/model/product acquired. An additional license for production rights may be purchased by contacting Renderosity and will be subject to negotiation and approval by the vendor. Renderosity will contact the vendor on the Buyer's behalf.

The Buyer shall not redistribute the Product, in whole or in part, in any file format for sale or for free. The Buyer shall not store the Product any place where it could be used by another person or party (whether it is on a network or on the Internet). The Buyer shall not convert or recreate the Product to any other media format and re-distribute the files, regardless of whether it is for sale or free. The Buyer shall not use the Product in such a way that the original materials could be extracted. Products sold at Renderosity shall not be used for illegal purposes."

 

Which leads me to believe I would be in trouble if I made new stuff and put it out there. Just wondering if you could help larify what's up.

 

Love your stuff, btw.

 

And thanks for your time and response.

You just can't redistribute the mesh unmodified.  So long as you're not just rigging it and rereleasing it, we're fine.  

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

thanks, boss.

I have another question for you, Joe.

 

At one point we were discussing doing symmetrical morphs in Zbrush and Shannonhope mentioned using the Morph Target Palette to make symmetrical morphs in ZBrush... now, I think I got most of it...

 

Some helpful info VERY neatly laid out by ShannonHoppe in THIS thread about Making Two Symmetrically Mirrored Morphs in ZBrush but to paraphrase:

1. Send the model to ZBrush via GoZ
2. Store Morph target.
3. Activate symmetry (x)
4. Sculpt away. When done…
5. mask the half you want to keep.
6. Use morph brush to return the unmasked area to original form prior to GoZ. Send the model back to DS.
7. Save the morph in DS.
8. Switch back to ZBrush (via the OS, not via GoZ. Just change the active application window).
9. Undo in ZBrush which will negate the change just made with the Morph brush. Now mask the other side and apply the morph brush to the opposite.
10. Hit GoZ to return to DS.
11. Whalah! Your other side of the morph with symmetry.

 

But I am unfamiliar with using the Morph Target Palette and the Morph Target  Brush. 

What little things might have been missed in this step-by-step that a beginner needs to know?

I am having problems following it, unfortunately.

Thanks you for any help you can offer, sir. And, as always, beautiful work!

 

I'm still not sure what good GoZ does anyone, so in this tutorial, I'm going to ignore that it exists.

0)make sure you have the geometry .obj for whatever figure you want to work on.  older figures will have their geometry in the runtime geometry folder, studio 4 figures like genesis and the new "horse" will have have their geometry exported out of studio.  make sure you've got the figure set at 0 subdivisions before exporting out your .obj

1. open zbrush

2)load .obj for figure you want to morph

3. over in the morph target menu somewhere on the right hand side of the screen, click StoreMT

4)sculpt your morph

5)mask off any area you don't want to return to default

6)use morph target brush to restore unmasked area to default

7)export

8)load morph via morph loader in studio

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Thanks, Joe. I appreciate it!

Same here Joe, thank you.

 

Hey how are your latest projects coming along

If you have already saved Genesis with a morph on both side before hitting storeMT, can you then somehow load in a subtool of the original Genesis and ask ZBrush to use the other mesh as the Morph Target?

Nevermind. A kindly person in the ZBrush forum set me stratight.

He said:

---

So long as the topology is the same (make sure you use the correct subdivision level) you can:

1. Store a Morph Target.
2. Import the original model.
3. Press Tool>Morph Target>Switch.
4. Use the Morph Brush to paint back those areas that you want restored to the original mesh.

---

Land Shark FBM

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Toonier Duck

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Awesome work Joe

 

I sent you a site mail

Just realized I could make a Duck Tales-inspired set of pictures... Duh!

I was so caught up in comparing your duck morphs to George Lucas' Howard the Duck that I missed a better use for them...

By the way, that Shark-Man FBM looks great! Any plans for it?

Phenomenal work on the suits Joe! Your continious thirst for knowledge has made you a zbrush master, not to mention your modeling and rigging abilities... This is an awesome to follow sketchbook...and you are giving me ideas...

I started putzing around with my own rumpled suit for genesis.  I just need to add the buttons and delete some of the inside shirt geometry.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

just the shirt and it's extra internal geometry.  at the moment it's two sided, but if I use smoothing in studio that will be a disaster, so i'll probably delete all the internal geo but for the shirt tales and the collar.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

normals smoothed

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

with the topology more visible.  what you can't see is the elbow patches.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Aside from Zbrush, I'm working in Poser 7 and DS 4.5, so I can't run a cloth sim with Genesis.  My work around, which I thought was clever, was to make a morph for V4 that gives her body the default Genesis neuter shape.  Then I can run my cloth sim and have her do a crunchy while bending her arms to get the outfit to wrinkle right.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

looks really good so far Joe

You astound me, sir.

 

Someone very dear to my heart is nicknamed: The Boy Wonder. I have been dying to get a Robin suit to be able to do some renders for him.  Nothing i have stumbled across (there's not much) has come even close to this work.

 

PLEASE!!! I'm begging, seriously :)

Shirt on V4 approximation of genesis shape, now with buttons.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Shirt and Jacket with buttons and polypainted to give a basic sense of color, also on V4 Genesis Approximation.  Again, I did the V4 morph so I could run clothing sims on something genesis shaped in Poser 7 and then rig the wrinkled clothing to work on Genesis in studio.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Amazing work Joe. Your Fabrics look like fabric.

 

Hey did you get the site mail I sent you

Quote - Amazing work Joe. Your Fabrics look like fabric.

 

Hey did you get the site mail I sent you

 

The last message I remember (and it may have been a post in a forum and not a pm), was asking if I needed any help with anything.  If you've sent something more recently, I may have deleted it.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

I actually sent something recently here

One thing I love to see hit your store is a your Americas Greatest Heroes set, and maybe a golden age set 2.

I would love another cowl like your golden age set one only this time with finsand minus the cape.

 

http://www.whatsyourobsession.com/images/2010/bowen-designs-wolverine-x-force-statue-sneak-peek.jpg

http://www.marvelscustoms.com/hornet/albums/Photo_WIP/Wolverine_XForce/x-force-wolverine.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuKQ3Oc97Wk

 

 

Quote - One thing I love to see hit your store is a your Americas Greatest Heroes set, and maybe a golden age set 2.

I would love another cowl like your golden age set one only this time with finsand minus the cape.

 

http://www.whatsyourobsession.com/images/2010/bowen-designs-wolverine-x-force-statue-sneak-peek.jpg

http://www.marvelscustoms.com/hornet/albums/Photo_WIP/Wolverine_XForce/x-force-wolverine.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuKQ3Oc97Wk

 

For Wolverine, mix the Nadino Mask with the fins that are near the back of my ShareCG freebies.

I'm going to try to wrap up the America's Best Comics add-on/volume2/whatever soon.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

I was actually able to do a render with the fins on another head but its not as realistic looking as your golden age cowl.That thing is just awesome, Its one of my favorite pieces in my entire runtime.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2356363&user_id=424381&np&np

Ya know, is there a way to hide the cape on the golden age cowl.

Quote - I was actually able to do a render with the fins on another head but its not as realistic looking as your golden age cowl.That thing is just awesome, Its one of my favorite pieces in my entire runtime.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2356363&user_id=424381&np&np

Ya know, is there a way to hide the cape on the golden age cowl.

I made a really crap morph that can, but I'm not a fan of it.  I get the idea of liking the cowl and wanting to use it on things, but it was made to fill a nitch.  There were no cape/cowl combos for M4, so that's why that cape and cowl exist.  There's a pretty wide array of other cowls with no cape attached to them that could be used to make a Wolverine cowl.  You might look at morphing out the ears on either of Hal's Bat Cowls, I think I've got an old stand alone bat cowl too, and there's also one that was part of that free batman project.

I did the wrinkles and the brows on the Golden Age cowl using geometry, but you could also make a displacement or bump map to give the nadino mask the same look.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

This was a first take on the shirt on M5, I decided to go back and make the collar a little bit less retro fabulous after seeing this render.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

here's the shirt with a more sensible collar.  i'll have to admit, I looked critically at the new suit by sickleyield.  i thought I could easily come up with something that bent in more natural ways.  having tried it now, the way the collar and buttons deform when moving and adapting to standard genesis morphs is a duzy. it would take a lot of custom fit morphs, mcms and jcms to keep it from looking like crap.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

The toon duck and the land shark both feature gobs more work on the eye sockets than i'd ever attempted before.  both will take mcms in order to make blinking possible.  Here's what I did up for the duck.  I went back and split the morph into right and left parts.  I haven't tested them out yet.  I need to go and find that tutorial on how to link all the morphs up again so that the adjustments work invisibly.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

New textures for the toon duck, the ones from the last genesis duck didn't quite work.  The image I'd posted earlier was post worked.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

rendered

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Joe that looks great!

To quote Darth Vader- "Impressive... most impressive."

With the Jacket and Shirt.  I kept running into issues with collision and smoothing with the jacket and shirt as seperate complete items, so I combined them and stripped out much of what became unecessary.  In this render, it's just the shirt collar and shirt front, the jacket still has lining in the front, but none in the back, ect.  Basically, the only geometry that exists is the geometry that's visible.  This way The shirt sleeves aren't coliding with the jacket sleeve lining and freaking out.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

With the teeth visible (if you're into that kind of thing).

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

HAHA AWESOME WORK JOE

And a newsboy cap. 

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Sweet!

KNOCK, KNOCK

 

 

...

 

 

caaaaaaandygram.

Quote - here's the shirt with a more sensible collar.  i'll have to admit, I looked critically at the new suit by sickleyield.  i thought I could easily come up with something that bent in more natural ways.  having tried it now, the way the collar and buttons deform when moving and adapting to standard genesis morphs is a duzy. it would take a lot of custom fit morphs, mcms and jcms to keep it from looking like crap.

 

What about making a rigidity map for them? I think I saw a tutorial on oit in YouTube. I haven't done it but it may be the answer. I think it keeps the structure intact but changes size and placement only, if I am correct. Lemme see if I can find it.

 

EDIT: Here is one by smay who did a shirt with a gun holster...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUg0Q1KiqiU

Quote - > Quote - here's the shirt with a more sensible collar.  i'll have to admit, I looked critically at the new suit by sickleyield.  i thought I could easily come up with something that bent in more natural ways.  having tried it now, the way the collar and buttons deform when moving and adapting to standard genesis morphs is a duzy. it would take a lot of custom fit morphs, mcms and jcms to keep it from looking like crap.

 

What about making a rigidity map for them? I think I saw a tutorial on oit in YouTube. I haven't done it but it may be the answer. I think it keeps the structure intact but changes size and placement only, if I am correct. Lemme see if I can find it.

 

EDIT: Here is one by smay who did a shirt with a gun holster...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUg0Q1KiqiU

A good suggestion.  I've never attempted that before either.  I will tell you, though, that after my first try, I've got a lot of buttons floating around disconnected from the figure. Though at least they're not deformed.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Quote -
A good suggestion.  I've never attempted that before either.  I will tell you, though, that after my first try, I've got a lot of buttons floating around disconnected from the figure. Though at least they're not deformed.

 

Either ghostly floating buttons or, if for a figure like Mr Hyde, prolly requiring surgery to extracate from his chest cavity. chuckle

Working to finish off the Toon Duck and the Shark.  If anyone hasn't played with Surface Noise for a while in zBrush.  It's dramatically improved in the latest release.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Full Body

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

awesome work joe

 

can't wait till they are done

This will be the morph thumbnail

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

here it is compulsively postworked with the colors adjusted and film grain added.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

These are a couple of rough draft promo images.  working on them made me realize that I wanted to go back and add a few more details to the textures.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

one with a superhero

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

now with gills and scratches/scars

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

awesome render joe

the hero looks like he just crapped his pants

I remember seeing Rosemaryr's Marvelous Designer Turbins a while back and thinking, "when I eventually get tired of failing to model a knot in zBrush, this is the person I'm going to bother for help".  And I eventually through in the towel on knot tying, and over the past couple of days she kindly through this mask together, knot and all.

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

back shot of Rosemaryr's mask, where you can see the wonderful knot

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Rosemaryr's mask on a turtle skinned Muck

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Rosemaryr's mask on a Cobalt Crusading Duck

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Shark Promo

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Quote - I remember seeing Rosemaryr's Marvelous Designer Turbins a while back and thinking, "when I eventually get tired of failing to model a knot in zBrush, this is the person I'm going to bother for help".  And I eventually through in the towel on knot tying, and over the past couple of days she kindly through this mask together, knot and all.

 

Hehe.

Glad to see it fits your morphing needs!

 

RosemaryR
---------------------------
"This...this is magnificent!"
"Oh, yeah. Ooooo. Aaaaah. That's how it starts.
Then, later, there's ...running. And....screaming."

She did a great job on the mask and the turtles are coming out amazing!

I've started keeping my sketchbook at tumblr now: http://josephquick.tumblr.com/

@Daz3d
@ShareCG

Thanks for the heads up Joe - I have subscribed ;-)

My genesis turtles saw release as part of the Daz PA holiday giveaway, if you missed the links in that thread they are now archived over at sharecg: http://www.sharecg.com/v/66255/browse/21/DAZ-Studio/TrtlPWR

@Daz3d
@ShareCG