What would be the steps (workflow) be to create a Genesis NearMe?

24

Comments

  • Testing6790Testing6790 Posts: 1,091
    edited December 1969

    I'm not happy with the face yet, so I'm not showing that yet, buuuuut:

    http://i.imgur.com/xHb7WcY.png?1

    Pretty happy with how close I have the shapes.

  • TJohnTJohn Posts: 11,010
    edited December 1969

    Very good so far!

  • Testing6790Testing6790 Posts: 1,091
    edited December 1969

    http://imgur.com/a/vvXy8#0

    Here's what I have so far. I'm having a hard time getting beyond this.

  • ghastlycomicghastlycomic Posts: 2,528
    edited December 1969

    Yeah, shape presets would be probably better. Textures for my character are going to be hard to find. I use an old v4 anime skin. I accidentally loaded a v5 skin and it was a nightmare. It'd be cool if I could make a UV template to use NearMe textures, but that's really not my field of expertise.

    The stock K4 skin that comes with Genesis actually makes a pretty good skin for anime figures. While it's lack of realism hinders it for actual human figure renders it plays very nicely for anime characters.

  • ghastlycomicghastlycomic Posts: 2,528
    edited December 1969

    http://imgur.com/a/vvXy8#0

    Here's what I have so far. I'm having a hard time getting beyond this.

    The thing to keep in mind with those stylized anime figures is there is practically no nose, and no lips on the model. The eyes are also very flat, not life like like the Genesis figure and the eyelashes as one solid line of varying thickness.

    When I designed my big eye morphs I contemplated reshaping the eyelashes so that they could simply be set to a mapless black and be the right shape for an anime figure but decided against it because some people might want more complex eye lashes and you can get the same effect very easily with a texture map.

    I'm still contemplating getting rid of the eyes all together (either turn them off or a morph that moves them out of the way, and using a non-conforming eye prop so that the flat eye look can be more easily achieved. the eyes were the hardest part of the big eye morph. I had to make a custom morph to make them close and it took me forever to the the eyelashes in the right place after I'd sculpted the lids.

    I find Sculptris is great for sculpting bodies but it has problems with the face. Even if you apply masks to things like the teeth and eyelashes they still deform slightly when you get a sculpting brush too near them. It's frustrating.

    So I usually do my bodies in Sculptris and my heads in Hexagon.

  • zigraphixzigraphix Posts: 2,787
    edited December 1969

    http://imgur.com/a/vvXy8#0

    Here's what I have so far. I'm having a hard time getting beyond this.

    The thing to keep in mind with those stylized anime figures is there is practically no nose, and no lips on the model. The eyes are also very flat, not life like like the Genesis figure and the eyelashes as one solid line of varying thickness.
    .

    No lips, no teeth in most images (NearMe has no teeth and no tongue), very small nose with no nostrils, no lacrimals in the eyes, very large irises, etc.

    I recommend using plain diffuse colors for all parts of anime figures unless you specifically need more detail somewhere. Using "realistic" textures ruins the toon effect very quickly. But SnowSultan's Anime Eyes products are quite good, and include skin textures with minimal detail.

    I've been considering replacing the eyes for my own attempts at manga characters, but I haven't quite given up on morphs yet. ;)

    I like Blacksmith3D for making morphs, but the version I have is a bit clunky in places.

  • ghastlycomicghastlycomic Posts: 2,528
    edited December 1969

    zigraphix said:
    http://imgur.com/a/vvXy8#0

    Here's what I have so far. I'm having a hard time getting beyond this.

    The thing to keep in mind with those stylized anime figures is there is practically no nose, and no lips on the model. The eyes are also very flat, not life like like the Genesis figure and the eyelashes as one solid line of varying thickness.
    .

    No lips, no teeth in most images (NearMe has no teeth and no tongue), very small nose with no nostrils, no lacrimals in the eyes, very large irises, etc.

    I recommend using plain diffuse colors for all parts of anime figures unless you specifically need more detail somewhere. Using "realistic" textures ruins the toon effect very quickly. But SnowSultan's Anime Eyes products are quite good, and include skin textures with minimal detail.

    I've been considering replacing the eyes for my own attempts at manga characters, but I haven't quite given up on morphs yet. ;)

    I like Blacksmith3D for making morphs, but the version I have is a bit clunky in places.

    When I first designed my big eyed character I had the eyes looking really good but unfortunately they were completely unposeable. Up and down in particular was a no go. The irises of most manga/anime character are oval rather than round I ended up going with a compromise just so I could maintain the genesis pose controls.

    I found I got good results by using the default Genesis female material preset and then ditching all the diffuse maps and then swapping the eyes with the K5 eyes. Then setting all the skin tones to 191:147:120. I'll have to make a diffuse map for the face since there's no eyebrows this way but other than that it looks pretty good. I haven't played with any toon shaders yet but they should give a neat effect.

    In the end if you wanted a figure that looks exactly like NearMe it would probably be easier to make a morph for a free anime figure like Kururu than push Genesis into that stylized a form. Of course there's no such thing as "the" anime/manga style since every artist has their own drawing styles which can be radically different, so there's no loss of authenticity in creating your own stylized anime morph.

  • larsmidnattlarsmidnatt Posts: 4,511
    edited December 1969

    I suggest making your own facial expressions when you create your own character head. You can do the same for the eyes too. Sure you won't be using the genesis pose controls, but making your own work fine.

    Just because default expressions/pose controls don't work, doesn't mean you can get some good results with your own.

  • Testing6790Testing6790 Posts: 1,091
    edited July 2013

    zigraphix said:

    I like Blacksmith3D for making morphs, but the version I have is a bit clunky in places.

    I've found that sculptaris fits my style the best. Very fluid and the interface is picked up extremely quickly.

    I suggest making your own facial expressions when you create your own character head. You can do the same for the eyes too. Sure you won't be using the genesis pose controls, but making your own work fine.

    Just because default expressions/pose controls don't work, doesn't mean you can get some good results with your own.

    Hmm I could do that. I have problems getting the eye close morphs. The default stuff still works, it just acts strangely with the eyes.

    Post edited by Testing6790 on
  • Testing6790Testing6790 Posts: 1,091
    edited December 1969

    I think I may make something similar to NearMe's eye planes. If own her hide everything but the eye and you'll see what I mean.

  • larsmidnattlarsmidnatt Posts: 4,511
    edited December 1969

    I've found that sculptaris fits my style the best. Very fluid and the interface is picked up extremely quickly.

    I recently became a fan myself. i've used it for a few things including clothing morphs. While I would normally do morphs in hexagon, hexagon is so sickly slow when you more than a few polys on the screen I found sculptris can be used for some types of alterations.

  • Testing6790Testing6790 Posts: 1,091
    edited July 2013

    I'm still a super newbie with it, but I managed to make this morph out of the default Genesis, so all is not lost. I'm trying to figure out how I can make the eyes of my model shape into ones similar to nearme without affecting the face around it. Do you know if it's possible to hide geometry in Sculptris?

    Post edited by Testing6790 on
  • larsmidnattlarsmidnatt Posts: 4,511
    edited July 2013

    I'm still a super newbie with it, but I managed to make this morph out of the default Genesis, so all is not lost. I'm trying to figure out how I can make the eyes of my model shape into ones similar to nearme without affecting the face around it. Do you know if it's possible to hide geometry in Sculptris?

    Honestly I don't. But perhaps you can hide the eyes before you send it to sculptris...I saw a tutorial on morphing figures for poser a long time ago and they actually hide the eyes in poser before they exported it to hexagon. They morphed the face, then loaded the morphed OBJ with morph loader pro and it was all good. Not sure why this worked, i would think it would mess up the vertex order and such...but it worked for the person who set up the tutorial.

    I have not had chance to try myself though. May be worth testing with a simple quick morph. Hide eyes in daz, send to scultrips, do a simple pointy horn morph and see if it works. If not then you know its a bust. I would try myself but I don't have daz studio on me ATM.

    Post edited by larsmidnatt on
  • Testing6790Testing6790 Posts: 1,091
    edited December 1969

    I actually meant the opposite, but that would work as well. Hide everything but the eyeballs, make them planes, reimport, unhide.

  • larsmidnattlarsmidnatt Posts: 4,511
    edited December 1969

    I actually meant the opposite, but that would work as well. Hide everything but the eyeballs, make them planes, reimport, unhide.

    Worth a test anyway, but don't spend too much time on it just in case it goes to poo.

  • Testing6790Testing6790 Posts: 1,091
    edited December 1969

    I always have two .obj's saved: Current good and the working copy. I import the "current good" obj, choose an area (last night I had one iteration dedicated to smoothing the ridges around the eyes from hyper extending the eyes with the grab tool), do my changes, export it as the working copy and if I like it in DS I export it as the current up-to-date model. Works great as a impromptu version control.

  • JoeQuickJoeQuick Posts: 1,698
    edited December 1969

    I suggest making your own facial expressions when you create your own character head. You can do the same for the eyes too. Sure you won't be using the genesis pose controls, but making your own work fine.

    Just because default expressions/pose controls don't work, doesn't mean you can get some good results with your own.

    Best practice is to use mcms (morph controlled morphs). You wire them up so that they kick in when the genesis morph dials are spun.

  • Testing6790Testing6790 Posts: 1,091
    edited December 1969

    Joequick said:
    I suggest making your own facial expressions when you create your own character head. You can do the same for the eyes too. Sure you won't be using the genesis pose controls, but making your own work fine.

    Just because default expressions/pose controls don't work, doesn't mean you can get some good results with your own.

    Best practice is to use mcms (morph controlled morphs). You wire them up so that they kick in when the genesis morph dials are spun.

    This is actually something I hoped existed but never knew how to ask it. Are you saying that I could make a morph that would do extra movement / replace movement when I did something like "eyes - up" on genesis?

    Would it work to transfer morphs to parented props? I kind of want to make upselectable props for the eyes that are parented to/in front of the actual eyes. Then, I'd like to use morphs on the eyes to affect my eye props.

  • larsmidnattlarsmidnatt Posts: 4,511
    edited December 1969

    Joequick said:
    I suggest making your own facial expressions when you create your own character head. You can do the same for the eyes too. Sure you won't be using the genesis pose controls, but making your own work fine.

    Just because default expressions/pose controls don't work, doesn't mean you can get some good results with your own.

    Best practice is to use mcms (morph controlled morphs). You wire them up so that they kick in when the genesis morph dials are spun.

    Thanks I knew MCM's existed but never did any myself. makes sense for folks who wish to share there shapes with others to so something like this though.

  • JoeQuickJoeQuick Posts: 1,698
    edited July 2013

    Joequick said:
    I suggest making your own facial expressions when you create your own character head. You can do the same for the eyes too. Sure you won't be using the genesis pose controls, but making your own work fine.

    Just because default expressions/pose controls don't work, doesn't mean you can get some good results with your own.

    Best practice is to use mcms (morph controlled morphs). You wire them up so that they kick in when the genesis morph dials are spun.

    This is actually something I hoped existed but never knew how to ask it. Are you saying that I could make a morph that would do extra movement / replace movement when I did something like "eyes - up" on genesis?

    Would it work to transfer morphs to parented props? I kind of want to make upselectable props for the eyes that are parented to/in front of the actual eyes. Then, I'd like to use morphs on the eyes to affect my eye props.

    The eyeball thing is beyond my area of experience. But here's the documentation on mcms:
    http://wiki.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/userguide/creating_content/assembling/tutorials/creating_morph_controlled_morphs/start

    Post edited by Chohole on
  • Testing6790Testing6790 Posts: 1,091
    edited July 2013

    Joequick said:

    Thanks, I googled but could find NOTHING on them.

    Post edited by Chohole on
  • JoeQuickJoeQuick Posts: 1,698
    edited July 2013

    Thanks, I googled but could find NOTHING on them.

    Heh, What I linked to was the top google result for "daz mcm".

    Post edited by Chohole on
  • Testing6790Testing6790 Posts: 1,091
    edited December 1969

    When I google that all I get is the blank WIP page

  • larsmidnattlarsmidnatt Posts: 4,511
    edited December 1969

    Anyone plan on taking responsibility for breaking the formatting in this thread? Anybody? I mean we had some nice styling going on until recently and BLAM, now the formatting is all joed up. I think I know what did it, but ain't pointing no fingers.

  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604
    edited December 1969

    I am not seeing any broken formatting. However I do understand that some browsers still don't display long links word wrapped, so has that helped any

  • Testing6790Testing6790 Posts: 1,091
    edited December 1969

    I hope it wasn't me T_T. I have no idea what would cause the formatting to break though, so it very well could have been me.

  • zigraphixzigraphix Posts: 2,787
    edited December 1969

    I want to try an experiment of making the eyeball really big and using a transmap to hide whatever sticks out past the skull. That way I could get a flat oval and still use eye direction controls. It's probably not the easiest way to go about it, it's just something I'm interested in trying out. If I get to it, I'll post the results here.

    Even more than NearMe, I've always wanted my own Wikipe-tan figure. ;)

  • Testing6790Testing6790 Posts: 1,091
    edited December 1969

    Welp, that exists I guess lol.

  • Testing6790Testing6790 Posts: 1,091
    edited July 2013

    I didn't consider an opacity map. I wonder how that would work. Hmmm, I'll check it out. My plan was always to parent objects to the eyeballs and then hide them, or make them clip through as a solid color and use the whole eyeball as an iris.

    Post edited by Testing6790 on
  • larsmidnattlarsmidnatt Posts: 4,511
    edited December 1969

    chohole said:
    I am not seeing any broken formatting. However I do understand that some browsers still don't display long links word wrapped, so has that helped any

    Ah that explains it Cho, at work I use Safari or on the go I use safari. But at home I use FF and it's fine now.

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