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Added another 300 mats to the SummerSun set. Still have more to do and a Poser issue to work out.
Wow! :) Looking forward to it all!
Finally sorted out the Poser issue that has been holding things up for awhile. Had to use a bit of a kludge, but at least the blouse buttonholes no longer have the black marks around them. With that out of the way, I've added ~1000 mat files and thumbnails. There's still more to be sorted out., but most of it will be ready for final testing.
I'm also working out how to batch process poser files with 7Zip. Poser can do it, though apps are much more aggressive at crunching file sizes. With 7Zip I got over 200MB of pz2 files to <10MB of p2z files! With that down, the DS mat files are now the biggest part. Script compression couldn't ring more than 20% out of them, so it's not really worth the hassle. I'll probably put them into a separate zip for DS users.</p>
Working on finishing off the last sets of mats. I know I don't post in-production pics very often, mostly because I don't take the time to do renders unless I'm doing render test. Here's a few of the from the set of ~2000 mats to choose from.
In the first pic is the beach shoes for the Xmas shoes. The set includes solid and coordinated colors, with options for solid or see-through mesh.
The second pic is of the sun sandals with one of the double-strap cloth styles and wood sole options. The sandals have mats for cloth or rubber straps, each in 5 styles. For the soles, there's two wood and rubber styles that can be used with any style of strap. The rubber options come with 18 solid colors and the cloth straps have 18 textured and 18 solid-color mats to match the other items in the set.
The third is of is the blouse with one my layered sheer textures. Merely turning down the transparency setting doesn't properly simulate overlapping layers of cloth, so I created a layered technique to create almost any level of sheer transparency with only a single set of textures. In this set, I have 3 preset sheer thicknesses and a "wet" cloth version as well. It comes with 6 textures and 18 solid-color mats, each with solid and sheer options and five button styles. In addition to all of that, I've converted the blouse into a man's shirt and have a complete set of mats for it as well.
Beneath the blouse is the sutsuit with the sport top style and another of the solid-color mats. The set has matching textures, each with options for a onepiece or a separate top with 6 styles and a bottom. The top or bottom can be set separately with any mat option, or removed to use it with other clothing items.
There's even more goodies for the LuxPants, LuxSkirt, and HotBikini included in the set as well. I'll try to make up some previews for those later.
Looking great!
Things haven't been well these past few months. Lost my car, been out of work, loosing my health and damn near my mind. Nonetheless, I'm still here. Got another car and hoping to get back to work soon.
Looks like I missed the summer deadline for my summer project. Oh well, still going to get this out anyway.
Oh, dear - I can relate to having a bunch of challenges going on. Sending you {{HUGS}}
You never said which summer. ;)
Hope things improve for you, anyway!
You never said which summer. ;)
Hope things improve for you, anyway!
Sure, it'll be summer down under in about a month. ;)
It's been a long time since my last status update, so I'll try to recall all of the little bits I managed to sort out.
Slowly, but surely I got all 2300 poses and mats for Summer Sun DONE! All with thumbs too. And yesterday I managed to do a new promo render. This time with some of the guys from the Little Family.
In my "downtime", I came up with a way to reduce DS3 mats. It's not something I would normally bother with, but right now they weigh in at ~65MB by themselves. With a bit of hacking, I'll be able to get them down to 1MB! Basically, I moved all of the redundant bits to external files, and then optimized those even more! In fact, the mats themselves now look something like this.
The code for each item "type" was consolidated into files like this:
Each of the mats with identical settings were condensed into a single "case", and the rest of the code that's identical for every mat was moved to a single file, DSMatScript.dsa.
OK, this level of reduction is a bit extreme, I'd admit, but each of these techniques nets between 20-80% reduction in file size and can be used as you see fit.
I've also made progress with getting Little Miki2 and the G2 Teens working in DS4 and will have updated morphs as well. Actually, I had a solution to the PMD morph issue some time ago, but the cr2 loader was causing other odd problems. This time, it was Poser that wouldn't read the files properly! I almost threw in the tile on this one, but I managed to discover an even odder solution. (That's par for the course here at the Splendiferous Symposium of Superfluous oddities).
cr2 loader:
PMD loader:
Now, you may notice that the PMD is in fact being called twice. The problem is that even though Poser and DS will read the morphBinaryFile command just fine, Poser sometimes will not load the morphs properly. In those cases, the injectPMDFileMorphs command will still work, however, DS doesn't support it. So, putting injectPMDFileMorphs first will get Poser to load the PMD correctly, and ignore morphBinaryFile, while DS will ignore injectPMDFileMorphs and use morphBinaryFile instead. Even though there's two calls, each program will only use one of them.
Those really look great :) I have to stick all that info in my little brain for future possible use :)
Don't worry, just PM me if you need help. ;)
Another promo for Summer Sun! This time with the young adults from the Little Family.
Don't worry, just PM me if you need help. ;)
Thanks :)
And another promo for Summer Sun, this time with the youngest of the Little Family and some of the solid color options. Finally got the swimsuit skirt to flare out properly.
Need to finish testing in Poser, but it's been tied up with other things lately. In the meantime, I got back to testing the G2 Girls in DS4.6. Fixed a few problems with the morphs, but the morphs caused problems with the joint parameters and deformers when posing the arms and chest. Had to edit the JPs by hand--oh joy. Jessie still needs some work, but I think I got the rest squared away now.
As soon as I can get the testing finished, Summer Sun will be ready. Hopefully Little Miki and the G2 Girls will be close behind, perhaps by Christmas. I'll have to see if I can fit some winter outfits for the promos. :)
Haven't been sleeping well. At least I'm getting some work done during these fits of insomnia. :) Still testing Summer Sun for Little One, it's a freakishly big set, but in the meantime, I've also got Jessie for the G2 Girls updated to the latest version. Just dawned on me that in the last go around at the morphs that I managed to shoot pass "teen", so I'll be changing the project name to "G2 Girls" to reflect the age reduction. I think I've got the figure's deformer issues sorted out, and the clothing patch for the updated JPs seems to be working fine. After Summer Sun is done, I'll be working on getting the clothing morphs updated too.
Here's a little promo I did last night.
LOL - great!
LOL! Love the promo!
Got Poser 9 when it was on sale and have been busy rearranging my runtimes. There wasn't a separate install for the new stuff like there was with Poser 8, and content-wise there wasn't much new since then beyond the weight mapped figures and a few sets. So, rather than have multiple runtimes with the same stuff in each version of Poser, I decided to purge the duplicate files and use the Poser 9 runtime for all versions. In fact, all that seems to be absent was a few props from Poser 8, and bunch of things from Poser 5. Luckily I still got the Poser 5 stuff when the download was available years ago.
I did keep a few things around for compatibility though. For instance, Sydney's folder has moved with each version. I'll probably have to make multiple loaders for each one.
The new preview is really nice, and really lags on my PC. I wish I'd got a new view card as well. :( Genesis works OK, and the Poser weight-mapped figures pose much better than the old ones too. While testing them out, I tried porting my old Alyson character to Alyson2. The rigging on the head on the original was a complete mess and just didn't work out, so I never bothered to mention it. (Actually, I have quite a few oddities that I never released.) Luckily, the new setup turned out pretty well. I'll post some renders if anyone is interested. I'm having problems with the hair not fitting right though. None of the conforming hairs that were supposed to work with Alyson 2 pose right, not even the ones included with Poser 9. I copied the scaling to the conformed hair, but it just doesn't set right when posed. Not sure what I'm missing.
Don't worry, I haven't abandoned my projects for the older figures. My texture projects were originally done in Poser 7 and will still be compatible. Just recently discovered that the mesh smoothing in DS 4.5 can be used on older Poser figures too. With smoothing enabled, the old figures pose much better in DS than they do in Poser!
Well, enough playing for now. Back to testing!
Been a rough week, haven't been sleeping well. Since I've been up a lot anyway, I'd been testing Summer Sun. Still hope to make it by Christmas. I just have a fit pose to redo (apparently I overwrote the original with a bad copy) and finish the promos. Here's some of the renders. The first two are of lady's apparel, pastel swim or sports set with a sheer skirt and a shear plain blouse with a bikini. The next two are samples of the menswear, a mens shirt and sports set. And then the last has a some of the footwear options. That's only a few of the many options in the set that can be paired up to make many different styles.
Promos for Summer Sun are done. It's compatible with DS3 and 4 and Poser7 and up. (might work in Poser 6, but I haven't tested it.) Here's the final list of all that's included:
HotBikini:
+ 6 SodaPop textures
+ 12 Spotted textures
+ 18 solid color mats
LuxBlouse:
+ 6 SodaPop textures
+ 18 solid color mats
+ 5 button styles and 5 shader variations
Includes wet cloth and 3 mutli-layered sheer cloth shaders
LuxPants:
+ 6 SodaPop textures
+ 12 Spotted textures
+ 18 solid color mats
+ 7 styles: pants, cuffed pants, capri short pants, shorts, knee-length long shorts
and two skimpy shorts
LuxSkirt:
+ 6 SodaPop textures
+ 12 Spotted textures
+ 18 solid color mats
+ 4 styles: skirt, mini skirt, swimsuit skirt and wrap
+ 4 shader variations
Includes 3 mutli-layered sheer cloth shaders
SunSandals:
+ 5 strap styles, including single-strap and two-strap variations
+ 6 SodaPop cloth strap textures
+ 12 Spotted cloth strap textures
+ 18 solid color cloth strap mats
+ 18 solid color rubber strap mats, with solid and transparent variations
+ 18 solid color rubber sole textures with 2 variations
+ 2 wood sole textures
SunSuit:
+ 6 SodaPop textures
+ 18 solid color mats
+ 5 styles: one-piece, tank top, mid-riff short top, sports top and bottom
Includes low-cut neckline variations
Xmas Shoes:
+ 6 matching styles for SodaPop textures, with white and black variations
+ 12 matching styles for Spotted textures
+ 17 solid color shoe and sole mats
Includes solid and transparent mesh variations
BONUS: LuxShirt, a men's shirt conversion of LuxBlouse. Includes conversions of
LuxBlouse mats.
Ran into issues with the shoe's mesh in Poser9 though, displacement was causing mesh splits. :( Don't recall having that issue with previous version during testing. I'll have to make a note in the readme for Poser users who have problems to remove displacement maps on the shoes. Not a huge issue since displacement is only needed for close renders.
I almost forgot to add instructions for the multi-layer transparency shaders. Basically, it allows you to realistically blend multiply layers of sheer and transparent fabrics. Several presets are included for some of the items, but the shaders can be set to almost any cloth density. The Poser version includes all of required logic, just set the value on the shader and it does all the math for you. The DS version uses layered images, so the transparency levels for each layer will need to be set manually. (sorry, I never got around to learning how to create custom DS shaders). On the upside though, Daz's layered images give superior blending. Poser blurs the edges of the layer masks. :-S I tried my best to compensate.
Merry Christmas! Summer Sun is up on DeviantArt. I'll have it on ShareCG this evening. The site is just too busy right now to complete the upload.
ShareCG link:
http://www.sharecg.com/v/73843/view/11/Poser/Summer-Sun-for-Little-Ones-clothing
Looks nice! Merry Christmas to you, too... :)
Thanks WandW. And a happy New Year too!
The next in my Little One series is the Little Family character set I've been using in all of my promos. The character morph poses are finally done. I'd been having problems with the joints getting screwed up in DS4.5. Turns out that posing the figure, then applying a pose that sets the scale parameters on the legs throws them completely out of whack, even when setting them to 100%! Clothing won't conform anymore either. However, applying another pose that does NOT set the scaling will usually get it working again. This is a HUGE bug! Luckily, I didn't need to scale those parts, so I removed all the unneeded scale parameters from the poses and everything's good to go. If I can get the promos done, I can have them up by New Years.
In the meantime, I'd also been testing a few things out with the G2 Girls. I recall someone asking me sometime ago about doing younger versions of the G2 men (SM's older gen2 figures Simon and James, not Genesis2). I wasn't too happy with the results, couldn't smooth out their bulky musculature very well and all of their textures looked to be in their 30's or older. Well, since the I managed to dial the girls' age back so far, I figured I'd to put the odd in oddity and try a bit of gender bending too.
Here's the Jessi version of my experiment.
I was testing out various outfits for the Little Family and decided to just bring them all together for a little outing.
Another new promo for Little Family. I would have gotten this done sooner, but I was going though the old files from the original project to see what else cloud be included. I had planned to do several pose sets, but only a few of them were finished and I would rather get this out than hold it up any further. However, there was also a feature I'd totally forgotten about. It was a simple animation that could be used to create characters of ages in between those included in the set. Just set the keyframe number to the desired age in years, then save that frame as a new pose. Poser users would have to use PoseWriter, accessable from the Scripts menu, because the standard save pose function doesn't include scaling. I needed to create a separate DS version too, as it counts frames from 0 rather than 1.
Here's a quite animation I did to demonstrate the age selection feature.
EDIT: I don't know what's up with the animation at the end. That glitch isn't in the original and I've tried uploading it twice. It doesn't happen in the preview window either. :-/
While testing a few things in Poser, I was reminded that it doesn't automatically set the clothing scale like DS does. Poser 8 and later has a similar feature, but it's turned off by default and doesn't even work right with some figures (notably their own!). The new scale conforming works with Little One just fine, so I made a script for the poses to automatically enable it for all items conformed to the figure. Older versions required setting the scaling for each item separately, a real PITA, so I also added support for them as well. :D
This version of the script will either set the scaling for a conformed item, or set the scaling for all items conformed to a figure, depending on which is currently selected.
fixScale.py
Even though Poser 8 has the scale conforming feature, it setting doesn't seem to be available to scripting, so I had to make this companion pose file.
SetConformScale.pz2