We know that Daz3D is currently developing Vicky III, and probably planning for Mike III. Let's make a list of what we would like to see for these new figures, to help them get an idea for what to think about. Post your wishes here! 1. Mimic Optimization 2. A "Breathe/Inhale" morph 3. Face Room Compatibility 4. "Super Joints" - i.e. natural bends, when stretching 5. Multiple Limbs 6. "Melting" Fingers, "i.e. turn mikes 5 digit hand into a 3 digit, etc.) 7. Broken limb morphs What do y'all suggest?! Ben MessianicArt.com

Multiple limbs would probably be a bit much for a base figure, but I'm with you on the breathing morph and switchable-geometry hands. DAZ's Millennium Dragon has a breathing morph, by the way. :)

well, I've only seen them on my wishlist, so can't say much! ;p hmmm.... how about limbs that look correct when bent beyond 90 (or at least, actually broken). Probubly don't have to ask for this one, but how about those nice anime-syled ears you gave Mike & Steph. I'm also with you on the breathing morph! ~DM

1. A real ribcage on Vicki. Preferably morphable. 2) Vertebrae morphs (for bending positions) 3) "Scoliosis" repair. Vicki's back develops a large hump in certain positions. 4) More "small" breast morphs. A morph to change the distance between the top of the breasts to the collarbone. 5) Higher res hips 6) Improved eyes. 7) Better UVMapping 8) Fixed shoulders that's off the top of my head. I am sure i can think of more. ;)

Alternate expression MT's.... No matter how you shape the features, the expression morphs are always standard. No matter how de-Vicki-ed the face, the expressions always make Vicki characters look the same. Same with Mike. The two of them together give me spooky nightmares.... I like your joint and hand ideas.

I would like to see true genitals for Vicki III and Michael III. I hope we are old enough for them! Like the other ideas, breathing, great. Chris

Eye shapes morphs. There are very few and none of them create a truely different eye shape, but people have so many. I can create my own, but still the lack of them in the version 2 products seems a terrible oversight.

Great input for DAZ in your posts. I second them and would add a request for more animal morphs. Definitely I'm willing to wait some more for a Vicky 3 compatible with the Face Room.

It would be nice to have them based off an entirely new mesh, so that there are no worries with LE distributable versions as there are with version 2. It also be nice to include a low-poly version and a SDS (sp) version for Poser 5 users.

• Absolutely more polys in those ears, would be nice to see them smooth. A - ALL head morphs that change 2 sides of the face only, split into 2 morphs so the sides can be changed independendly. - More polys in both finger and toenails and at least morphs to change each nail indepedendly (width AND length). - More detailed hands and feet, muscle morphs. Independendly moving toes. Morphs to change the shape (petite or worker hands, muscular or flat feet, etc). - Full body morphs (or MATs) for different limits: normal, old, souple person, etc. - A high poly head for better closeups. - More polys in the bending parts of a body: elbows, knees, wrists, etc. - Detailed and more morphs for the belly button and the skin around it: knot, hole, dented skin (slender people), bulging skin, etc. - Facts of life morphs like pregnancy lines, wrinkled hands. - Positional morphs like denting buttocks when a person sits, bulging, denting, stretching muscles in the most obvious and visible places. Get that ERC working! I can think of more, but this will do for now ;-) MaxxArcher

How About ear morphs, to change the shape of the ear more?

Upper arms and armpits that don't look like Gumby's when you raise the arms over the head. Another vote for breathing. And a smoother transition between abdomen and chest. No man-boobs for the male; no six-pack abs for the female (unless the user dials 'em in).

Defintely the articulated hands and feet, as well as the variable digit numbers on both sets of extremities, and the eye shape varations. All the other stuff sounds excellent, as well. And if it is feasible, maybe a doc or pdf for the 3rd party people, to give them the info they need to adjust their products to be useable with all the new goodness.

1-Another vote for breathing morphs 2-Running gravity morps for both, Mike & Vicky. (When you run if the women have big breasts they will pull up and down no matter how tight they are tried to kept in place with clothing. Same thing for muscular men, a male bodybuilder runing like muscular 2, 3 & 4 every muscle bounces in diferent direction depending on its bone position, chest, quads etc. A very built female bodybuilder will have the same thing. 3-A sweating option were you can actually see small 3D water beds all over the skin. 4-A better vascular map for Mike 5-Another vote for support for Mimic. 6-A better Muscular morph for Vicky. 7-A morph that turns Vicky into a more voluptuous woman than the options we have right now, kind of like voluptuous Vicky but more rounded. 8-A Hulk like proportions morph for Mike. 9-More default face types like bony structure, baby fat, model, etc. Maybe they can include famous people type of face structures like Betty Davis, Margot Kidder, Christoper Reeve, Arnold Schwartzenaeger, Robin williams, Daryl Hanna, Michelle Pfeifer, Danny DeVito etc.

I forgot to add that the running gravity morphs I am proposing should be made ready to work with the walk designer.

While we're talking about hands, how about webbing? What would be really nice whould be a number of different hand and feet types. Maybe even something replaceable. Millenium Hands and Feet for Mike and Vicky? And some face morphs to really make it easier to lose the "Mike" look in his face. Animal face morphing. More control of the curves of the back, maybe 2 or 3 in addition to the current abdomon and chest. Real genital morphs and nipple morphs for Mike. Rounder muscles in the chest (now a high muscle morph makes the muscles look like boxes). And speaking of the chest and torso, how about a seperate layer on it like the eyebrows that can be used to add differing chest hair? Legs and arms too. Then a base texture could be sold as hairless, then chest and body hair could be added as desired from differing packages. The same as for pubes now. But the bigest one is still the arm and shoulder rework. Posing arms above or behind the head looks way to plastic. Of course, most (not all) of these are there now in different packages. Boris and Musclebound Mike have a lot of these, and there are lots of free morphs available to fix the other problems, but I'd love to see them all together. And since it should come P5 ready, how about taking advantage of some of the new controls? Preset grow hair stuff maybe? I'll have more ideas AFTER I get p5 and play with it for a few.

I totally forgot: Smooth lines at the seams of the various bodyparts/materials, makes creating/spawning custom props much, much more ease....

Different body types for michael besides super muscle man. How about stocky and short, even a midget morph for dwarves.

Hmmm... for me, I would care for, in order: 1) more realistic posing -- joint, muscle movement when sitting, bending, etc. This is probably not a DAZ issue as much as a CL issue (or both). I know this is a hard one to work, so I'm not expecting it anytime soon. I'm already happy with what we get for the money! 2) Much more detailed eyes, lids, etc... this is a big differentiator between Vicky II and say, the girl from Final Fantasy. Hard to make very realistic eyes.. those folds and stuff would be awesome. That's about it... CL and DAZ have given me everything else I could ask for at the moment :)

A collection of expressions that look realistic. 'Yell' looks ridiculous on all the Millennium figures excepting possibly Stephanie. I realize we're a ways away from muscle-based figures, but even Shamms Mortier knows that you have to model your expressions based on a knowledge of facial musculature (one of the few useful parts of his book, btw). Please improve the facelength morphs for Mike. Dan Farr's face is handsome but its length is not a suitable average; when I dial the length down closer to my own round proportions the region outside the morph target (i.e., the space between eyes and cheekbone) starts to look concave as the cheeks draw upward. Can the morph be redone with a more subtle transition between areas? Jowls. Go look up Anthony Appleyard's photo self portrait here to see what I'm talking about.

A head size that's actually in proportion to the body, instead of these teeny-tiny heads on there now. I was at Sydd's site a few days ago and saw a render of a texture she has for the MilMan, and he seriously looks like someone whose head got caught under too much hot water and shrank. Fashion illustration proportions are all well and good, but how about some reality?

Head shaping (instead of just the face) and a better range of aging morphs so we can do in-between generations (and so that they don't all have the same pattern of crow's feet).

Forgot to add, break the joint areas into 2 or 3 areas, rather than 1. A good example is the hip/buttock combination. When sitting a figure, it creates sharp lines you have to touch up, an extra segment at the buttock might correct the problem. Whould that work?

Full Mimic compatability. Period. And how about an easy patch to give full Mimic compatability to the current Millennium figures, too.

This is a very minor one but I would like Vicky to have an "Ears Up" dial just like Mike and Steph do. Would also like to see those ears to be able to go up to the top of their head without the side of their faces distorting. Question: Can the dial for Ears Up from Mike or Steph be added to Vicky's head at all and work? Just asking :)

First of all, I want to thank publicly everyone who has sent us feedback. We read every last email and appreciate all criticism, thank-yous, and suggestions that we receive. Please, please, please, never stop telling us what you want, because thats what we want to give you. We always look through your ideas, in fact we are already getting things ready to produce some amazing items using the Mimic code that will be tailored to the Millennium Figures (jjsemp: Im talking to you ;). We also already have inhalation on our list. Many new head/facial morphs, improved eyes, ears, UV mapping, and more. We are always trying to do what we can to help foster the community where-ever possible, and while the idea of incorporating Victoria 3 into the Poser 5 Face Room was very much in tune with our line of thinking, the $30k price tag (per figure) that Curious Labs asked to charge us unfortunately was more than we could afford.

But if you thought the special on Mimic was good- and even if you think the offering of the Millennium Dragon is good- just wait, oh just wait, until you see what ELSE is coming from Daz in 2002! (You will be utterly dumbfounded, I promise you!). Thats all I can say for now, but just you wait, because Im not even talking about Victoria 3.....

Thanks again,

Steve Kondris
DAZ Productions, Inc.

Steve, At last! I'm glad to hear that Daz is devoting attention to my one big gripe. Thanks. My job here is done. I can now ride off into the sunset with my faithful Indian companion, Tonto, before the townsfolk turn to thank me and ask my name. Hi yo, Silver! Awaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy...! -jjsemp

That's good news, Steve, thanks for responding to this thread. I'm a bit lost on the face room thing though. We won't be able to use V3 in the face room because CL wanted $30,000.00 from you? For what? Why? Would you have to use some of their copywrited stuff inside V3 to do it or what? I was looking forward to that. :(

I think in order for a figure to use the face room CL has to set it up, hence the fee.

If that's the case, the Face Room won't work with any previous models. Hence, P5 isn't "fully backwards compatible" as promised.

Maybe we should start a new thread on this subject, but while it's still here. How long do you thing somebody will write a patch to accept Mike and Vic in the face room. I'm sure there are some talented people who will have that done over the first few months after getting p5.

Jackson, CL explicitly stated, way back when, that while models such as Victoria can be rendered and used in P5, that new features may not be compatible with the older models.

EEEEEE!!!! Oh what is coming, what is coming? Tell us, tell us!!!!! hehe, just kidding. I'm at the edge of my seat though. Tis enough. I have hope again. :o)

Oops, I think you're right, Kiera. I'd forgotten about that. My bad :( But eric501 has a point, too. I mean $30,000.00 per character?? C'mon, if that's out of DAZ's price range, it's out of everyone else's, too. So CL is making it so NO 3rd party characters will work in the face room. Why? It couldn't be the money, cuz no one will pay it.

Ok, here's my two cents on this. 1) DAZ3D made a serious error posting this information to this forum. To me it looks petty and unprofessional. But, what's done is done. 2) We don't know what would be involved in making a new model compatible with the face room. For all we know, it takes hundreds of man hours that could easily add to up to a 30,000 cost. Best not to speculate about what we don't fully understand.

It's not a matter of understanding, it's a matter of having the facts. We don't have the facts, that's why I asked why. And it would be DAZ making the model, so the expense in manhours would be on their end, not CL's. I'm curious: why do you think DAZ made a serious error and that it was petty and unprofessional telling their customers the some of the facts of the matter?

How about a 19 digit lock/key that you have to input everytime you want to use Vicky 3.... (ducks) One thing I'd love to see on the eyes is a material added to the eye lids around the eye openning that can be set to varying translucencies. This way we can soften the barrier between the eyeball and the eye to get rid of the hard line look that blows most render's realism. Also multi layer mapping would be awesome. Have another geom layer a tiny bit larger over the figures so we can apply a secondary texture layer without having to conform a figure. Can be used for adding sweat, pantyhose, thin costumes, layered skin options like tattoes, body hair maps with bumps etc. Also could be used to get different rendering effects like softer skin. Also arranging materials so all head materials are on one sheet and body on another with the exception of high detail items like eyeballs, lips, eye lashes and eyebrows which could be on a 3rd sheet. Perhaps adding a new joint in the knee called a knee cap that is the child of the thigh and parent of the calf. This way we can better control the knee in bends.

Hmmm... Personally I don't see this as any sort of error on DAZ's part for mentioning this. Obviously, people would eventually ask why Victoria, Michael or other figures weren't adapted to Poser 5 and simply stating: "It was equitable for our company to do so" would've created a huge sh!t storm of the likes which we are seeing now. DAZ customers would've felt they were "put off" by DAZ for not making the products P5 face room ready, most likely complaining that DAZ was too cheap to create supportive products for P5. By throwing out the figure qouted to them by CL, this tells the customers of DAZ that the cost to make DAZ characters P5 face room ready was more than readily attainable. The only way in which to recoup that high cost would be to raise the cost of those items, which would go against what DAZ represents to this Community. DAZ reconizes that the Community is primarily made up of individuals on tight budgets and that the cost to make a product and then have CL make it Face Room ready, would knock the price of that figure up well past $100 Having seen the sales of Dina and other tailor made characters, I can promise you that $30k would be the more than the entire sales that character could generate. At that cost, I don't see Jim Burton taking SMV (or his other excellent figures) or Diane taking Dina (and other figures) paying for this service to be added to their models either. No, I am glad that DAZ informed us of how much it would cost to have this added to a figure. It tells me that they would rather forego that feature (at least till it is more cost effective) and keep their products at attainable prices for all of us, and now others know how much that service would cost. Jack

Well, I dont know about the rest of you but the comment from Mr. Kondris tells me one thing. First, let me apologize in advance if this opens up a can-o-worms (and feel free to tell me Im wrong). At least for me, that message gives me some serious doubts about the ability of the P5 face room. Im now getting the impression that it works off of something like morphs, rather than modifying the actual geometry of the character. If this is the case, then the face room will be rather limited in it abilities. I really hope Im wrong, but thats the only way I can see new characters not being able to take advantage of this system. Also, a $30k price tag? I hope thats incorrect If thats the cost of making a figure ready for the face room, then Its probably a safe bet that the only characters that will take advantage of this is Don & Judy. If thats the case, the face room will be useful for a while, but the demand for hi-resolution characters will basically render this feature useless. Like I said, I hope Im wrong, and I misunderstood Mr. Knodriss post. If not, Im just a little worried If the face room is nothing more than just an auto dial setting kludge, then how are the other features done? ~DM

After seeing the disaster that that is Victoria 2, it would take a lot of persuading to get me interested in a Victoria 3. Certainly it would have to be based on a new and more rational mesh, and I would want to know that the designer of Victoria 2's cr2 had not been let any where near it.

Based on the demos of Poser 5 that I saw at DragonCon, the Face Room is code that was developed externally from Curious Labs. It has a set of morphs that are used to modify the face. These are different morphs from the ones available in the Pose Room. It is the modification of the head part of the model and the creation of these morphs that apparently is very expensive to do. In addition to creating the numerous morphs for the Face Room, the head model needs to have the geometry at the neck done so that the head from the Face Room can be put back on to the model. Add to all of that the requirements for the photo mapping and it gets time consuming and expensive. All of this information is based on what I saw and heard at DragonCon and could have no basis in reality.

Oh, and for the record, while I'd like the DAZ models to work in the face room, I much prefer them to be affordable. After all, it really doesn't matter if they work in the Face Room is none of us can afford them.

[Oh, and for the record, while I'd like the DAZ models to work in the face room, I much prefer them to be affordable. After all, it really doesn't matter if they work in the Face Room is none of us can afford them.] Well said JKM, well said indeed!! Jack

Hea, guys ... we won't be limited to the face room for our "face* modeling, you are forgetting "mprph putty* ... we could probably use that for non Don/Judy based models. It would just be a variation. I have a theory ...if we make the face "maps" in the face room that they will work on Mike and Vicky and Steph as well ... the morphs wouldn't, but that's where "morph putty" comes in. Okay, I've had too much time planning my model making. I have a whole list of models (About 60 of them as a matter of fact) and have divied up which models I'm going to use to create them. I've got a lot of useless theories that I hope to test out once I get my copy of P5. :) Boni

Thanks for posting that, JKM.

I stand by my original statement.

Daz's post makes it look like CL is trying to cheat Daz, which I highly doubt is the case. Hence my post on the matter. It would have been just as easy to say "it would be prohibitively expensive to purchase a license for the face room technology, driving the cost of the models up much higher. as a result, we decided to.. etc etc."

Just my opinion. I still buy products from Daz and respect that they sell quality meshes so cheaply. I just don't like it when companies toss subtle snipes at each other in public.

As I understand it, the photo mapping feature in the Face Room probably won't work on the Millennium models until they become Face Room compliant. To get the map to line up right, the head might need to be morphed to fit the shape of the head in the photo. It is possible that the UV mapping for Don and Judy will line up with the UV mapping for the Millennium models but I have no idea if that is the case or not. (It sure would be nice if it does.) The post from DAZ simply said that the price was too high for them to afford, not that it was unreasonably high for what needed to be done. I took the comments from the person at DAZ to be simple economics and not as a slight against anyone. To be fair to Curious Labs, it very well could be the third party that developed the underlying code for the Face Room that is setting the price. Curious Labs may have no control over the price.

Since there is some discussion here related to our P5 face room technology and development costs related to that, it seems appropriate for me to add some words to this thread. First, I consider any conversations between DAZ and CL regarding business matters are private discussions between partners. To hear details of those private conversations is a little disconcerting, but I understand the context of those comments. Let's talk a little more about basic business. When structuring a deal, you put out a number. The party you're dealing with counters. The number mentioned above was never countered, even after direct comments from us that we were expecting a counter. nuff said on that... The face room relies on a database of difference vectors and morph targets. We licensed that database at a reasonable, yet significant cost from a third party. We invested many months polishing, tweaking, interfacing and correlating this data to work with both the application and with our set of figures. Every new set of figures added to the face room represents man-months of time. The new figure's head needs to be precisely correlated so that it's unique mesh can be modified by the face room vectors and morphs, it needs testing and fine tuning, and it needs an updater for the database so the new head will be recognized. All this is quite an investment in time and capital. The time on our end has a cost above the physical costs. It costs us opportunites. Finishing the MAC version, updating MAX/LightWave/C4D plug-ins, translating into German, French, Japanese and possibly Spanish, and addressing any issues with the current code along the way. All these experience some fashion of a delay if we divert that focus to correlating new figures for the face room. Those are lost opportunties that need to have some value assigned to them. For that opportunity, we estimate the time needed and established a fee. That fee isn't written in stone. And ultimately only you, the folks that will use the Poser 5 face room can gauge whether it's useful or not. It's all a crap shoot until this lovely technology is in your hands. Sincerely, actually sincerely hoping that private conversations stay that way ;-) Steve Cooper Curious Labs

A quick addition here in case there is any confusion on the issue- the work to correlate a new figure, test and update the face room happens on our end, and needs to be done at the OBJ level. So in the case of existing DAZ figures, Stephanie and Michael would be a single figure, since they share the same OBJ. Vicki annd the Mil kids would work as one effort as well, as they also share an OBJ. A custom CR2 based on a face room prepped OBJ would work with fine with the P5 face room.

I was suspecting such an arrangement. I also figured it was the 3rd party add-ons that caused the delay in the MAC version. I look forward to receiving my pre-ordered copy of P5. I've been around computer tech people for over 10 years (Spent the time in the San Jose, CA area) ... there are some consistantcies that can be quite annoying at times amongst us geeks. We are looking for problems before they even arise. Now in a troubleshooting environment that is welcome. But when we are eagerly awaiting a product that we haven't even used first hand ... and looking for problems and difficulties ... I find that "looking" for trouble. Come on people. Let's see what P5 can do before we complain and trash the companies that are providing us with a great artistic tool. Kupa, Thank you very much for being so responsive to customer concerns and questions. It's reasuring and encouraging to see so much support from a company. I sopport your company and it's efforts to provide a quality product, affordable price and excellent customer service. Although that all sounds a bit ... "kissing up" ... I assure you I am being sincere as are the majority of Poser 4 and soon to be Poser 5 users. Just wanted to even out the complaints with a few kudos as well. :) Sincerely Boni

I thought morph targets were difference vectors. `B^) My guess from what you're saying is that Face Room morphs are difference vectors assigned to a "master head" mesh and that each FR-compatible head mesh has a data table correlating its unique vectors to the (geographically) equivalent vectors on the master. I guess that because it's the only way I could imagine it working, short of an AI-based magnetic system (and that system would take any head, so obviously you're not using it). That said, I can't see the advantage CL stands to gain by monopolizing the business of adapting heads to the Face Room. For better or for worse, the people who created the meshes are capable of mapping their datasets to yours, saving CL the time and trouble of doing it. Moreover, if CL is the only route to adapting heads, then creators like Nesterenko, Diane, Mobius et al are given a substantial disincentive to develop new character meshes for Poser. Please tell us this isn't the case; one of Poser's greatest strengths is the encouragement it's given to develop new characters from scratch and use them on equal footing with the stock ones. If I'm talking out my butt, I apologize in advance.

Duane, I heartily agree with you in spirit, but I somehow suspect that Steve does as well and that the issue may very well be that CL's licensing agreement does not allow them to "pass along" to a 3rd party the tools and data needed to adapt a mesh. That's the first thing that came into my mind, at least. I hope that DAZ and CL will choose to find a way to work this out, because the ability to use a feature with only the default meshes is sadly limiting. Phoenix