Digital Art Zone

Fauvist - 11 November 2012 03:55 PM

Cybersox13 - 11 November 2012 03:39 PM

There are some amazingly gifted artists out there distributing them.  Ironman13 and Darkworld at Renderosity and Tempesta3D at both Rendo and Content Paradise, in particular, have done some absolutely amazing work that’s a fantastic base to build upon.  It’s also well worth it to pick up extra eye textures like http://www.daz3d.com/shop/l-i-e-makeup-layers-for-v4 as su,btle details like smudged and running makeup and glittering eye reflections can be the key to selling subtler emotions.   

FWIW, my personal process tends to be to work things out on a base V4 or M4, then transfer to the final figure and adjust for eye lines and lighting, then do a last final adjustment in photoshop, where just a tiny distortion at the edge of the mouth or tweak of the exposure on the eyes can often convey far more than what’s possible with just a morph.

Thanks for pointing these out.  I’ll take a look at what’s available.  Just to check - all these 3rd party morphs for V4 can be transferred to Genesis? 

And what happened to Victoria 5?  Is there any advantage of using Victoria 5 over Victoria 4?

Yes, facial expressions are just morphs, so they can be transferred via GenX.  They will look a little different, depending on how far you take the Genesis mesh from the base Gen4, but that’s equally true if you start morphing V4 towards A4 or even S4, etc.  As for V5, she’s a souped up Genesis morph, so what applies to base Genesis applies to her as well.

Cybersox13 - 11 November 2012 03:55 PM

Man, I miss TY2.  Her body was hinged a little oddly in the middle, but given that she began as a mainstream advertising model rather than a commercial hobbyist product, she was way ahead of most of the other figures of her time in terms of design and subtlety of expression.  If they’d ever produced a male counterpart, she might have given Aiko3 a good run for her money, but…

Totally agree.
I get by with morphing various figures to appear as suitable counterparts but a true counterpart would have been wonderful.

jmper - 11 November 2012 02:37 PM

My vote goes to ...G2 Male line.

Seconded.

Fauvist - 11 November 2012 03:34 PM

Joequick - 11 November 2012 02:12 PM

While I don’t own her and have never used her (making this pure speculation), my instinct (based on promotional material) has always been that Ang 2.0 was probably the most expressive figure.

http://www.mankahoo.com/index.php?l=product_detail&p=137

I’d watch the video on that page.

Thanks for pointing out Ang2.  I watched the video.  It was interesting.  They were using Poser 9 or 2012.  Most of the facial expressions seemed to be created, not by turning the Ang2 morph dials, but by using Poser’s “morph tool”.  I think that was what the little green dot that they were pulling around was.  Or am I wrong?  If it was just the morph tool, then those expressions should be achievable with the Daz figures too.

When the morph dials are turned in the video, they seem to do pretty much what the DAZ figure morph dials do - open the mouth, make the nose bigger, etc.

Ang2 has no Wardrobe Wizard support so none of the DAZ figures clothes will fit her.

They were handles… if you just started grabbing random points on a meshes face, you wouldn’t be getting controlled effects like smiles, mouths opening, etc… you’d get a distorted mesh.

Fauvist - 11 November 2012 03:34 PM

Ang2 has no Wardrobe Wizard support so none of the DAZ figures clothes will fit her.

  Of course, wardrobe (or more correctly, the lack thereof) has pretty much been the major problem with every single figure ever produced outside of the primary male and female Daz figures, and had the Ang2 character ever proven even moderately popular, there almost certainly would have been a WW or Crossdresser fit set.  That said, having looked at Ang2’s product page and demo, I suspect wardrobe wasn’t really a particularly high item on the “must do” list as far as that character’s marketing target went. 

Not as bad as poor old Eroko, though, who AFAIK never got a single outfit…

Joequick - 11 November 2012 08:51 PM

They were handles… if you just started grabbing random points on a meshes face, you wouldn’t be getting controlled effects like smiles, mouths opening, etc… you’d get a distorted mesh.

Oh, they’re handles?  They seem awfully effective.  Is there a reason why there aren’t expression handles made for DAZ figures?  How would one go about making a handle?

One of the problems with smiles for Victoria 3 & 4 is that the stock face is very broad. People who are trying to create a pretty character narrow the face down. People creating the expressions work with the stock face. when you apply the character and the smile, the morphs try to use the same vertices and the morphs don’t work together.

For smiles, I prefer Terai Yuki 2.