As I wrote in the other thread, I'm working on a scuba diver suit.
I just want to show you guys the progress so far and ask for your opinion on it.
The texture is in it's early stage and low res, it's just to test my workflow.
I decided to work with textures and bump mapping instead modeling or sculpting the details into the mesh.

Nothing wrong at all with using texture and bump maps for detail. 8-)

Sent you a PM

Bump mapping should work well for both Firefly and Superfly.  But the wet suit design you proposed for the figure is wrong.  I've never seen a suit include the booties attached; AFAIK, they don't exist.  The booties are either tucked under the pant legs or over them.  And if the wet suit material is made of neoprene, it's tough to put on without plenty of talcum powder.

Perhaps what he can do is create a "boot morph" that makes the top of the boots stand out a bit more from the suit.

That can work just as well then rigging separate shoes for the figure.

Thanks a lot for the feedback so far.

@DCArt, I read the PM, you are right. I know the program and it's already on my bucket list. Thanks for the recommendation.

@hborre, you are absolutely right, point taken. I will cut the boots and make them separate items. The solution with the sculpted overlapping would get the job done, but with separate items I have more flexibility. She can have one boot on already and slip in the other, or she's barefoot on the beach, or surfing board. Thanks for the input and attention to the detail. 

In the next few days I will update the mesh and build a 4k texture set with a bump map, a normal map and specular. 

The original body suit I made in Blender had glove's also. Turned out this part of the geometrie got damaged in the fitting room I believe, because I checked the mesh in Blender and couldn't find any errors. All faces were connected and the normals are facing outward. In Poser after the fitting room simulation the mesh broke, showing crack's between some of the fingers. So I guess I have to re-build them too.

Overall, this is so much fun, I didn't expect this to be so entertaining and educational at the same time. 2023 started be become an interesting year.

"The original body suit I made in Blender had glove's also. Turned out this part of the geometrie got damaged in the fitting room I believe, because I checked the mesh in Blender and couldn't find any errors. All faces were connected and the normals are facing outward. In Poser after the fitting room simulation the mesh broke, showing crack's between some of the fingers. So I guess I have to re-build them too."

Probably not enough polys between each finger or a child group touching a child group. You need to have a row, ideally 2, of polys between each finger that belongs to the hand group, separating all the first finger joint groups from each other.  If you used autogroup, it's probably the culprit.

@primoge

Thanks, I will have that in mind if I modelling the gloves again.

blackbonner posted at 1:01 PM Sun, 29 January 2023 - #4454877

@primoge

Thanks, I will have that in mind if I modelling the gloves again.

No prob. Nice job too.

<straightface>

Hi folks, here is a little update to my attempt on making a Scuba Diving Suit for LaFemme.
I followed the advice from @hborre and seperated the boots from the suit, created a UV Mapp and build a 4k texture for the suit.
From this texture I made a Bump map, a Normal map and a Specular map.
In Poser I build a material for the suit and did some test renders.
Here is what I go so far.
If you like, tell me what you think.

Very nice!  I'm impressed with how the textures look on the wet suit.

To be honest, and this is only my opinion, you could have left the boots on. Then you could have modeled a separate pair of flipper fins for the feet. You still can with no boots. I forget what they're called but they're straps worn under the foot. Women wear them on tights all the time. Stirrups????

Stirrups is an option on wet suits, not every manufacturer provide them.  Dry suits can have attached bootie but not often.  Sure, you could have them attached but that is not realistic in real world usage.  Believe me,  form-fitting neoprene suits will not move much once you have them on.

A simple bump map around the ankles will make it look like she's wearing booties, won't it?

Following the discussion on the boots topic I have to say, I have honestly no idea why I chosed to build the suit with boot attached.
I'm not a diver nor a surfer, but I have friends and family who are.
Some of them use wet suits, some the dry suit variante, one has some special gear because he is a cave diver.
In no case I remember that the boot are part of the suit.
However, instead of cutting the boots from the mesh, I could have go a differend route by using a transparency map.
In fact, that is exactly what I chose to use to get more options out of the base mesh.
As you can see below, I made a transparency map to get rid of the arm parts and made the trouser legs into shorts this way.
I also tweaked the materials settings, especially the specular for the surface to appear more on the rough side, less reflective.
One thing I spend hours to wrap my head around was getting rid of "ghost-shadows" in the transparent areas. Turned out that I had to make a new bump map that takes the transparent areas out of the picture.
Just in case someone is interested, next to Poser 12 I only use free and open source software like Gimp, Blender and Krita.
I don't say proprietary sofrware is bad or not worth the money. I just can't afford software like PS, 3DS Max, Cinema 4D or Subtance Painter, at least not right now.
So far, I'm pretty happy with the results and I think this suit will be online for free the upcomming weekend.

Very nice and a good approach to solving the problem.  Looking forwards to seeing this soon.

Looking good Blackbonner!

@ EClark1894

Thanks for the suggestion.
I will give it a shot, sounds promissing.

Looks fabulous. Can't wait to see the finished boots. Does she need a hood, too?

Looks fabulous. Can't wait to see the finished boots. Does she need a hood, too?

Looks fabulous. Can't wait to see the finished boots. Does she need a hood, too?

VedaDalsette posted at 11:17 AM Sun, 5 February 2023 - #4455352

Looks fabulous. Can't wait to see the finished boots. Does she need a hood, too?

EClark is correct about the hood however its use is dependent on where you are SCUBA diving.  You lose a considerable amount of heat through your head which necessitates some type of headgear to keep warm in cold winter areas.  The same applies to diving, you would don a hood in cold water regions like off the coast of Northeastern American and Canada and the Pacific coast where it gets frigid water from the Arctic region.  SCUBA diving around the Caribbean and Southeastern United States will have warmer water from the Gulf Stream making it not necessary to wear a hood.

Interesting how this thread developed.
I'm not gonna comment on that topic, I have only one dive experience under my belt, I assume that does not really count.
It was fun and that's all I could say about it.

Yes, there will be a hood.
I'm also working on googles, fins and an aqu lung, including a diving/rescue west.
Unfortunally I first had to remake on of my dresses from scratch, because the mesh was made from triangles and the UV map was unusable for futher texturing, so my time table is slidly off.
I also made two additional textures for the scuba diver suit and I think this package will be online on wednesday this week, followed by the rest of the gear in the next week.
If everthing runs like it should, I will start a new project in the second half of the month. This time I thought about sky diving, to be precise, a wing suit.

I recently downloaded the Wet Suit and I am anxious to install it into my P12 Library.  A bit of constructive criticism, upon opening the compressed file, I noticed some grievous errors in setting up the folder hierarchy for the Poser runtime.  This is something dbwalton has been complaining about recently and I totally share his views and opinions about it. 

When you prepare your ZIP file for distribution, I suggest that you make the Runtime folder your primary folder in the hierarchy rather than nesting it within a content folder; it makes it easier to install it either directly from the ZIP or using Poser's installer.  Any 'Readme' and promo pics can be placed into a content folder and placed into a Documents folder, it's easier to find.  ATM, all the files you provided are not in relevant folders which means that the content will become lost within the Poser runtime, free-floating, and not recognized.  On my end, I will correct the mistakes myself and redirect all the pathways so Poser will not have to search for the files.

@hborre

Yes, I see your point and will have it in mind when I upload the next file.

Yesterday I uploaded  the boots for the suit and there are no specific folder's either, I'm afraid.

The fins will come next and I will prepare the runtime as you suggested.

Sorry for the inconveniences. Does everything else works fine? 

@hborre

To streamline things, could you check this Runtime Hierarchy?

I'm talking about something  like this:

-Product named folder 

      -Runtime

            - Documentation

                  - Read Me 

                  - Promo Pics 

              - Geometrie

                  - Product named folder 

             - Textures 

                   - Product named folder 

             - Library 

                  - Character 

                        - Product named folder 

                  - Pose 

                         - Product named folder 

                  - Props

                         - Product named folder

Etc.

Thanks in advance.

Yes, that looks fine.  That's the way it should look.  For the Documentation folder, you should put those files into their own folder and rename the readme.txt to something more identifiable otherwise you will overwrite it when there is another content install. 

I quickly had a look at the suit and everything appeared to work.  I am puzzled by the negative values for your bump maps, they seemed a little odd.  So I converted them to normal maps; I will do a side-by-side comparison at some point.

Thanks for helping me out on this. I will proceed with this structure.

The reason for the negative numbers for the bump maps is I created the bump maps with the wrong orientation in Gimp. I wanted the bump on the seams go inward and that worked only with negative numbers. It's funny how things go wrong in this process and I'm really glad to have a community of like-minded people who are pointing this errors put to me. Still learning everyday.

That's what I thought.  I'll play with it and see what I can render.  BTW, you can generate Normal maps in GIMP.  IIRC, it's built into the program.

If you want to retain positive values for your bump map, add an Invert Node between the Image Map and the PhysicalSurface.  That will correct the direction of the normals without bringing the texture back into GIMP.

This is an excellent Wet Suit.  It conforms and accepts body morph transfers very well.  The renders below illustrate a Muscle Me morph applied to LF and transferred to the suit.  The scenes are rendered with diffuse and specular HDRIs I created, with no additional lighting.  I corrected the bump map and attached the specular map to the PhysicalSurface keeping the color chip gray.  From the two renders, I like the material response to the specular HDRI lighting.

Specular lighting

Diffuse lighting

The invert node! Never ever used it before 😂. Thanks for the hint.

I don't know if you are aware of it, but the boots, or I should better call them socks are online as well. 

Thanks.  Just picked those up.

Looks kinda funny to see other people using my product.
Glad you like it.

I really like the colors  and the surface in this lighting situation.
They look surprisingly real.
In my test renderings I used an infinite light and the doom of the construct served as a emitting light source.

Ya done good, blackbonner!  Jumping in with both feet is the best way to learn!  You get a gold star 8-)

@DCArt

Thank you for the flowers, as we say in germany.

The render looks outstanding.  Great job on the outfit.

Gorgeous!

Looks good!