Digital Art Zone

DaWaterRat - 19 August 2012 07:44 PM

Please indulge me in this quick reminder: While these scaling numbers are great starting points and “averages”,  kids are not a “size = age” situation.  Especially in the 8-18 range.    My advice would be to focus more on the face morphs and getting that to look the “right” age, and use the scaling as a base to start from, not an absolute.

My daughter grew like a basic weed and developed very early.  When we moved ashore, she was 13 and looked closer to 17-18.  This process continued through her teens until she was 18-19 and finally stopped growing.  One of the neighbor girls who became her friend was 14 and had the right shape but her face and stature were those of a 10 year old.  Noelle stopped at 5’-9” and Shellie never got past 4’-11” and wound up with the face of a 12 year old even when she was in her 20s but with the right curves for a 20+ year old.  (Add to this she had natural blonde hair that, last I saw her, she wore down to her waist and the loveliest crystal blue eyes.  They simply enhanced the image of being a well developed 12 year old.)  They got along wonderfully, I think because they were such extreme cases.

Anyway, the bottom line is that DaWaterRat is right.  A child in that age range can be almost any size & shape with pretty much no restrictions - within obvious limits, of course - and that can extend into adulthood in some cases.  It’s kind of fun watching it all happen. 

Various human proportion calculators are available, such as http://hpc.artofuldis.com/.

Such calculators generally use head height, measured vertically from the top of the head to the bottom of the chin, as the unit of measurement. The human head is large at birth, and grows relatively little thereafter.

The attached table includes a selection of data taken from the calculator.

Here’s one I’m working on.

Sculpted body/morph with basic child for height scaling and little of one of Jabba’s faces thrown in (I liked the look of mixing that face with my sculpt)...I’m not happy with the lighting, but for a ‘test’ it’s fine.  The skin used is A4 Rosina by wintervon (winteryvonne200/von200/winter200) and the DS shader settings from the Lana sample included in DS.

http://www.sharecg.com/pf/full_uploads.php?pf_user_name=winteryvonne200

DaWaterRat - 19 August 2012 07:44 PM

My point is not to discredit the work Murgatroyd has done, (which is great)  but simply to point out that kids the same age can come in many heights, and especially if you’re going to do a picture with several kids, you don’t need to (and probably shouldn’t) make them all the same height to be the same age.

I just dialed up five randomly selected ten year olds, shown here with V5.

Thorne - 25 May 2012 06:50 PM

I am currently working on a “Basic Youth” set for Genesis which will include both a teen girl and teen boy shape.  These have been in development for a while now and so should be surfacing in about another month, just finalizing some of the extra included morphs and the new texture sets, of which there will be one each for the boy and for the girl.

The boy will look much more boyish than in the preview below—he just has a V4 texture in this image, because his isn’t finished yet,  but this shows the basic shapes.  These have all new joint parameters and any Genesis clothing will fit them perfectly.

Soon.

OK….. SO I AM REALLY HOPING that this product will FINAL be released in the coming days of the PC sale!!! It’s been well over a month now. I really really really want it My avatar needs some updating with morphs that just aren’t anywhere else!!

Thorne you rock! I really cant wait to get my hands on it

Westland44 - 21 September 2012 04:12 PM

Various human proportion calculators are available, such as http://hpc.artofuldis.com/.

Such calculators generally use head height, measured vertically from the top of the head to the bottom of the chin, as the unit of measurement. The human head is large at birth, and grows relatively little thereafter.

The attached table includes a selection of data taken from the calculator.

This is very useful indeed!     However, I must stress that such a table should only be used as a guide. I have been studying proportions for well over 7 years now, and of a ever growing pool of studying people in person and taking photographs for documentation, the proportions truly do vary between individuals.

There is ‘unique individuals’ and there is ‘averages’ and ‘idealized’ proportions and heights. Make sure that all these wonderful contributions from everyone of neat charts and clean statistics are all used as a reference only, not a definite answer to all your beautiful creations. We are all unique, and from my personal research and study of anatomy and proportions as well as fine arts and visual arts, every instructor I have spoken with agrees with this statement.

Thanks Westland! that is a good table to add to the pool of reference materials

...a quick shot at this before I consider uninstalling.

Genesis Based version of my Leela using a healthy portion of the Steph4 body shape with a bit of Thorne’s Princess, and the Basic Child shape.  Clothing fits done with the Transfer Utility rather than Autofit.

Texture is JW’s Tindra Thompson MAT.

Just over 3 hours to create and about 4 min to render.

Hey - I think you got your Leela back!
And you did get the Tindra mat to play nice.

Princess is really nice. I wasn’t sold by the promo shots but in practice it magically takes years off characters’ faces.

I made a new version of it where the eye position gets autofixed as you dial it though.

My formula is like BasicChild 20% (I have Genesis load up at Child=20%!) any-female-shape 50%, some Princess, some Asian face (I got the Almond Crush freebie for Candy Factory hooked up to a dial), and some D-form-based morphs to shrink the chest, pelvis, maybe legs. I don’t like using actual body part scaling because poses tend to reset that… I saved some scaling effects out as morphs.

(prior to Genesis I never used The Girl, now Child 20% The Girl 50% is like my default starting point, she’s great)

Genesis Sadie is awesome too but I haven’t quite figured out how to work her in. (And that randomizable bodysuit product is great; the hairstylz are great)

I recently got Thwaite’s baby morph. I tore out all the dialed stuff aside from the actual custom morph, and added some propagating head scale. That is kinda nice for youthenizing a face too.

I check the store every day for Thorne’s product… That’s the last thing I’m still waiting for

Oskarsson’s baby probably isn’t as helpful as Thwaite’s, but it’s an even smaller baby in case someone needs one.

It’s rather amazing to dial it in and watch Genesis shrink.

Kerya - 10 October 2012 02:35 AM

Hey - I think you got your Leela back!
And you did get the Tindra mat to play nice.

...Yeah she does look pretty darn close to the drawings I did several years ago, even closer than the PP2010 version.

Didn’t use my height guide yet as I just wanted to get the basic appearance worked out. 

I thought that GenerationX was supposed to allow the use of morphs and characters of the various body shapes, however can’t seem to get the NPMs or some of Steph’s general morphs to work.

One thing I noticed was when I tried to dial in a bit of V5, her stature actually got smaller.  Strange…

Another curious issue was using any Gen4 pose made the feet curl upwards. Most likely this is due to the fact Gen 4 characters had “Crucifix feet” (pointed down) While Genesis is flat footed.  Didn’t think to try any Gen3?Aiko3 Poses (they also loaded “Flat Footed”). Oh, and when I tried applying a Genesis toon pose (like Jasmin or Amy) it also injected the actual toon character into the figure as well.  In 3A, I could use a number Sadie and even a few Mavka poses with V4/Steph4/Aiko3 without them affecting the figure’s appearance.

Yeah, seems the Tindra MAT behaves when you build a character from scratch rather than importing from an earlier version of the programme like I had been doing.

Definitely the Transfer Utility is a vast improvement over Autofit as it handles footwear much better.  It is also much faster than the Morph Follower in 3A, even on my old 32 bit system.  Still need to fix pokethrough now and then but if hte clothing also has adjustment morphs that isn’t a big deal.  Anyone try that pokethrough utility that was released a while back?

The one annoyance I ran into on occasion was having the Viewport go blank when setting a morph or pose.  Undoing the previous action would fix it and everything would be fine again.  Most likely this is due to OpenGL issues my old system has as it is right at the borderline in this respect for running 4.5.  Seems I have to go a bit slower and be more “gentler” with adjustments than in 3A.

Seems some of the memory management issues with 3A and earlier versions of 4.0 that I found so vexing may have been resolved as I never could cancel a render, and try another one without first closing and reopening the app. Also cancelling a render immediately ends the process unlike in older versions where it would keep running, sometimes for a long time before clearing.  Still wish they had a background/queue rendering mode like Poser Pro 2010/2012 have though.

Going to try a few more poses expressions and settings as well as recreating the Harpsichord scene but this time with her elven friend Tracey (who will use a bit more of Princess) to see just how far I can push things.

I guess I should maybe put Throne’s Teen character on the “virtual wish list” however Princess works so good, especially for getting a more youthful face as TZORG mentioned.

OK, so guess I was a bit harsh on 4.5/Genesis.  Most of my initial experiments were with the early releases of 4.0 which admittedly did negatively colour my opinion.  The body shapes (I have all the Gen4 and AIko/HIro3 ones) along with GenerationX help a lot and actually make this interesting again.  The original Leela took years to “perfect” as best as Gen 4 could handle it. Only 3+ hours from basically “nothing” to a fairly finished character with Genesis is, frankly, amazing.

OK, everyone,  grab those cocoanut creme pies and begin throwing.

TZORG - 10 October 2012 08:54 AM

I check the store every day for Thorne’s product… That’s the last thing I’m still waiting for

DAZ is *Still* holding out on us :( I’ve been waiting ever since Thorne made the announcement. Like you, checking almost every day since.

‘Daz soon’ is like never.

Kyoto Kid - 10 October 2012 08:57 PM

OK, so guess I was a bit harsh on 4.5/Genesis.  Most of my initial experiments were with the early releases of 4.0 which admittedly did negatively colour my opinion.  The body shapes (I have all the Gen4 and AIko/HIro3 ones) along with GenerationX help a lot and actually make this interesting again.  The original Leela took years to “perfect” as best as Gen 4 could handle it. Only 3+ hours from basically “nothing” to a fairly finished character with Genesis is, frankly, amazing.

OK, everyone,  grab those cocoanut creme pies and begin throwing.

You know, if you could pick up cosmetic surgery as quickly….

I’m also pleasantly surprised with 4.5.  It’s probably the best behaved version I’ve had since one of the older 3 releases.

And for Generation4 poses:
http://forumarchive.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=170864
http://www.sharecg.com/v/60135/browse/21/DAZ-Studio/Genesis-V4-pose-adjust-script

...thanks. Picked it up.