A greatly underrated DAZ creature...
Fire Angel
Posts: 284
...which I am currently working on updating. It's the DAZ Hydra, made many years ago but so good it can happily stand alongside many modern DAZ creatures. I have improved the rigging of the tail already and I am going to work on it further, trying to improve the rigging of the necks. I have also made a new MAT pose for it to improve the rendering in Poser and I will attempt the same in DAZ Studio. Once this thing is working better I will approach DAZ about getting it into the product as a free update. I won't be looking for a share in sales either, so I hope they will go for this.
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Comments
He looks great. I agree that is a cool creature!
ghidra
I was just using the Hydra yesterday myself. LOL Always one of my favorites.
Laurie
I would REALLY love people going back and redoing textures, since a lot of the earlier content can only be so good with 1000 or 2000 resolution maps.
The problem is that I'm not sure people are permitted to rework textures and distribute them without permission, even free.
Edit: Although hey, I have the hydra... and that's actually a decently high resolution map! They are 5000x5000, which is unusual ...
I'll say this, some of the early models might be rough, but you're right, this is underrated. Some of these early models are REALLY nicely configurable. I was impressed by the octopus, too.
The main body texture is 5000x5000 and earlier versions of Poser were restricted to 4000x4000 or 4096x4096, and would scale textures over the limit downwards in size to fit. The head textures are 2000x2000 which is adequate given the small relative size of the heads. I agree this is a great creature even compared to most current fantasy beasties, but it is harder to use than it needs to be and the bending of the tail and necks is not as good as it could be. Improvements so far:
Further improvements I intend to make are:
Old it may be but I love the beastie and I think it's worth updating. I hope that DAZ will accept the files when I have finished and provide them to all purchasers as a free update. To some extent that will be decided by the level of interest that people show in my work. I will post here as I make progress, showing the improvements, and I hope people are interested enough to get it moving.
I'm hopeful for your work. ;)
I'm doing a render right now and, like a number of old/good products, I'm finding it looks great adapted to Iray.
There is apparently a new hydra in thr works http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/1714401/#Comment_1714401
And here's an example render.
Better rigging would be great, as would having more skins to play with.
Rework textures...no, those can't be redistributed. Create completely new ones from the templates...yeah, that's fine. Just like making texture sets for clothing.
This is one I did with the hydra last year when iray first appeared in DS. I love how you can change the heads independently.
If you must already own the hydra to use it, and created your own textures from scratch, I don't see why you couldn't give it away as a freebie. It would probably increase sales for the original model... But I'm not a Daz employee...
Being a DAZ employee isn't relevant here, as a 3D artist you should make sure you understand copyright law and keep to it. I cannot distribute my work, even just the improved .CR2 file (which is no use without the rest of the product) without permission from DAZ. They own the copyright on the unchanged parts of the product including all the morphs in the .CR2 and so they have a RIGHT to decide who gets a COPY of that and who doesn't; that's the meaning of COPYRIGHT. I do own the copyright on the changed parts but that's still only a small percentage of the file. It's illegal to distribute ANY PART of somebody else's copyrighted product without their permission, free or not. Making my own textures would make no difference to the legal position.
Making my own textures would also be a huge undertaking for this creature, particularly as the original textures are of superb quality and I would have to work very hard indeed to make any that were equal to them. I am not even going to attempt it, though I may load the existing textures into Photoshop and make colour-shifted versions for my own use.
Technically there is a path to distributing my work without DAZ involvement as I think I could probably make an injection pose that would add the changes, but it's a lot of work to do that and still wouldn't automatically reach everybody who has the hydra. If DAZ accept the updated product from me they can then email customers who have the hydra in their account and everybody who has it gets the chance to download the update. That's a far better way of spreading the joy around than any other method. It also means DAZ have a better product in the store for future sales to other customers, with better Poser materials and proper DAZ Studio files to go with it. The original item is useful to Poser users without changes but could be better rigged, but it's only useful to the more competent DAZ Studio users who can update the materials. Once it's updated it becomes useful to anyone with Poser 5 or above and any version of DAZ Studio from 3.2 onwards, and both Poser and Studio users get the better rigging so potential sales increase. Everybody benefits including DAZ which is what I would like.
Oh, and I'm doing the work anyway so the improved Hydra is more use to me, but once it's done I would really like to see the update distributed by DAZ as my personal tribute to the creator of this creature. In the days when it was created very few creature products on DAZ 3D or any of the other Poser/Studio marketplace sites were anywhere near as well made. Even though it's well over ten years old it stands up well to use alongside many present day creature products and with my modest improvements it is well up to the current standards. Amazing when you compare other ten or twelve year old products to their current equivalents; it would take a lot more than a few hours work to bring most of them up to scratch...
Lovely creature. How come I missed it so far? I wonder what else I might find in these DAZ stores some day...
Odds are the new hydra will only work in Daz Studio so getting an update for the original one would be terrific.
That is one kickin render!
That's an awesome render. Well done!
Nice — which reminds me, I haven't used the Hydra in years...
When Leonard Nimoy passed away, I felt motivated to complete a scene that had sat unfinished for quite some time. My goal was to interpret the 1974 model kit (designed by Aurora (known for its various movie monster kits) and distributed by AMT in the US), expanding upon and enhancing the elements of the kit. Yes, the original version of the assembly kit included a 3 headed space hyrda and Mallen Lane's mythological beastie proved the best choice. Funny enough, Lane's Sea Dragon would also have worked as the head and its morphs are nearly identical to those of the Hydra. Because the model kit depicted the monster's heads all springing from a central neck, I had to use three copies anyway, hiding all body parts except for the central neck and head.
Credits
Michael 2 P4...DAZ.com
Face morph...Porthos
Uniform tunic...XCalPro
Uniform pants...XCalPro
Uniform boots...XCalPro
Tricorder...XCalPro
Phaser...MechMaster
Communicator...MattyManx/Sgreco
Spock hair...Mylochka
Dragon's Keep...AntFarm
Twister sky-dome...AntFarm
RDNA XenoFlora...Traveler
Hydra...MallenLane
Enterprise...MattyManx/David Metlesits
*** *** ***
Sincerely,
Bill
Very nice model that just needs some TLC. I always welcome improvements to models. I maybe wrong but I believe you can encode a patch to upgrade model so only owners of original model can use upgrade.
Umm... you should be aware that this is in testing right now, and has been in production for almost two months...
I had that one...and a couple other Star Trek ones.
Made me made when my little brother lost some parts to it...before I got it all put together.
I love the hydra. I agree, a lot of the older models work very well still. I have a ton of dinosaurs that still look pretty darn good.
@ D.Robinson and Byrdie, many thanks :) I might revisit the scene and use the iray knowledge gained since then.
You are probably thinking of RTEncoder - which has been allowed by publishers, it isn't automatically be OK without that permission..
Making new presets, like Iray presets, using the existing maps is allowed. The presets will require the maps to be installed in the default location (best), so without having the item installed, nothing happens.
Creating completely NEW maps is also allowed. That's what the templates are for.
Recoloring or editing the EXISTING maps is what is not allowed to be redistributed.
So, it's best to just make either new settings or new maps and be done with it.
Val, that looks good!
Redfern, such nostalgia... Think I remember the cover art for that model kit. Ace work with that.
The kit was reissued about 2 or 3 years ago. For several years it was believed many of the old kit molds were destroyed, but the staff of "Round2" found the molds in good condition, still retaining the alterations intended to make Spock look (more or less) as he did in "The Motion Picture". Round2 removed the little "dams" so all spaces could be filled with molten plastic again, buffed away the scribed lines suggesting the "pajama" uniform and reworked the hands cavities so he'd be holding his communicator and phaser once more. oint being, I had the kit itself (though not yet assembled) as references when composing this piece.
Sincerely,
Bill
As nice as your figure looks RawArt, nothing rigged D|S now apparently works in Carrara unless you do Poser versions.
There are exceptions I have but no idea what is going to work and what won't these days so hesitant.
I know the old Hydra will work and do not have him yet, am considering chucking the blighter in my next cart.