Free Toon Characters – Released Early!

wsterdan

Sorry for not getting more tips and tricks up sooner, I lost a little too much time getting the Webboids re-rigged, etc., so I'm a little off my original timeline.

Speaking of timeline, Petege gave us the ability to convert G3 and G8 poses to the Webboids, which lets us use our existing libraries for posing, which to me is huge.

If we want to convert Mixamo poses (still and animated) the Webboids work fairly well for that.

I had originally intended to convert a bunch of Mixamo animations and poses to Webboids and share them, but I've looked online and I am unable to find anywhere that states clearly that it's legal to do so. As far as I can find, Mixamo allows people to download and use the poses for free, both privately and commercially, but nowhere can I find anythings stating that we can share the raw data, which is what I'd be doing. If anyone can find anywhere that if officially states otherwise, please let me know and I'll start build a library to share.

In the meantime, here's what you have to do to make your own...

You need a free Adobe account to access Mixamo:

https://www.mixamo.com

Once you have your account, let's make an animated Webboid pose.

First, let's load a Webboid in their default pose. In this image, I've added shorts (for the DAZ censors) and eyebrows (certainly not needed).

Ideally, don't add any clothing or add-ons, for the pose just use the base Webboid to keep things simple.

Select your Webboid and choose Export/FBX; you should get this menu popping up:

These settings work best for me, but your mileage may vary. I'm using the DAZ Alpha, 2025. If these settings don't work for you, you may need to tweak some settings, like version of FBX, turning limits on or off, etc.. Hopefully these will work.

Once exported, go to Mixamo.com and import your figure. If there's no issues, the "AUTO-RIGGER" will show up and show your Webboid animated in their default idle/glancing around pose.

If the Webboid has come in this far, you can hit "NEXT" and it'll take your Webboid to the pose library and viewport.

Pick the pose you want (there's lots to choose from!) and see it applied to your Webboid. I've chosen "Sitting Idle" because I need to sit my Webboid down at a starship console.

Once you've chosen your animation or pose, hit "Download" and you'll be presented with some options:

 

You can set your frame rate to 24, 30 or 60 fps (I like to use 24) but I'd recommend using "Keyframe Reduction". If you don't, it keyframes pretty much every frame, which can be a hassle to work with if you want to make any changes. For my purposes, I use "non-uniform" but experiment to find what works best for you.

Return to DAZ Studio and with a new, empty scene, import your FBX. I find these settings work well for me (my export/import versions of FBX don't match, you can experiment with which version or versions work best for you):

And if it imports correctly, you should see something like this:

Note all the keyframes showing; this was exported *without* reducing keyframes... basically, the stuff of nightmares (at least to me).

Let's make a pose preset for this animation.

Select Save as/Pose preset:

For my pose, I'm going to export the whole animation using these settings.

Now, with animated poses, you can take one animated pose and make a whole set of single-frame poses by scrubbing through the timeline to find a single pose you'd like to save and do the same steps as for an animation but select either "Current Frame Only" or a range or subset of a *piece* of the animated pose.

I've saved mine in a "Mixamo Poses" folder. Now, let's make a new file import our Webboid and apply our "Male Sitting Idle" pose to him.

And you can see it works:

Let's see how it works with other Webboids; let's dial in a female Webboid with a few different morphs dialled in:

And applying the pose, we get this:

As is common with applying poses meant for one figure to another, you might need to fine-tune the pose, but for the most part they should work fairly well. If you do need to adjust the pose, you can save the adjusted pose for your dialed-in figure.

Hopefully this will help you to make new pose libraries for yourselves.

wsterdan

Just a quick heads-up, the official release date has shifted slightly from June 22 to July 01 (partly to align with Canada's Birthday).

wsterdan

Some quick screen shots of some of the simple prop hair that will be in the final release package for the Webboids. 

I'm in the process of converting some Creative Commons hair .obj files to smart props, after which I'm planning on adding poses/morphs to help them fit both the default Webboid and the Semi-Realistic (shown). I've never done either before, so we'll see how it goes. The hair props themselves are all PBR material.

Eustace Scrubb

I'm working on a toon/comic shader package for DS4--unfortunately, it's not going to work with the current DS6/2025 versions as it's built in 3Delight and ShaderMixer--but I'd love to include Webboid preset options.  (The figures work quite well in the earlier edition of the software.)

One thing I did notice, though, was that geoshells don't always scale up with the figure when the morph dials scale them (Male Fit/Hero/et c), and though the shapes are correct, the scales of the shells have to be tweaked manually.

wsterdan

Eustace Scrubb said:

One thing I did notice, though, was that geoshells don't always scale up with the figure when the morph dials scale them (Male Fit/Hero/et c), and though the shapes are correct, the scales of the shells have to be tweaked manually.

Thanks for letting me know; I hadn't noticed, as I don't normally use geoshells that often. I'm at a total loss as to what would cause that or how to fix it.

Ths shaders sound great, I'm looking forward to seeing them in action. 

Petege

WendyLuvsCatz said:

a walk for Webboids

USAGE RIGHTS:

CMU places no restrictions on the use of the original dataset,
Bruce Hahn places no additional restrictions on the use of his BVH conversion... 
and BrokeAss Games, LLC places no additional restrictions
on the use of this conversion either.

 

Here's the relevant paragraph from mocap.cs.cmu.edu:

  Use this data!  This data is free for use in research and commercial
  projects worldwide.  If you publish results obtained using this data,
  we would appreciate it if you would send the citation to your
  published paper to [email protected], and also would add this text
  to your acknowledgments section: "The data used in this project was
  obtained from mocap.cs.cmu.edu.  The database was created with funding
  from NSF EIA-0196217."

silly video, awful Plask mocap at the end will only be shared if insisted on 

hair and dress WIP 

needs much more progress 

On this website https://outworldz.com/Secondlife/Posts/CMU/ there are the BVH versions and working for Genesis 2.

I worked on the pose converter for the Webboids, and it can also convert Genesis 2 poses. Another addition is that it can convert animations now. I want to have it that it converts only the keyframes and not every frame like it is now. For that, I need to find out how to move to the next keyframe with script.

Petege

Today I was working on a hair prop for the Webboids, it is still WIP.

I created it in Blender with the hair particle system and let it replace a hair with a three sided UV mapped cone mesh. Will add some materials for the hair later.

wsterdan

Looks good! 

wsterdan

Petege said:

On this website https://outworldz.com/Secondlife/Posts/CMU/ there are the BVH versions and working for Genesis 2.

I worked on the pose converter for the Webboids, and it can also convert Genesis 2 poses. Another addition is that it can convert animations now. I want to have it that it converts only the keyframes and not every frame like it is now. For that, I need to find out how to move to the next keyframe with script.

Sounds promising, especially the addition of converting Genesis 2 poses (the more the merrier!).

Thanks for continuing to improve your script. 

Petege

You are welcome. I am also working on an outfit for her that fit with that hair.

The scripts will get more functionality in.

Eustace Scrubb

wsterdan said:

Eustace Scrubb said:

One thing I did notice, though, was that geoshells don't always scale up with the figure when the morph dials scale them (Male Fit/Hero/et c), and though the shapes are correct, the scales of the shells have to be tweaked manually.

Thanks for letting me know; I hadn't noticed, as I don't normally use geoshells that often. I'm at a total loss as to what would cause that or how to fix it.

Ths shaders sound great, I'm looking forward to seeing them in action. 

Further twiddling shows that the shells don't like following body transforms at all.  Not for the figure, anyway.  I'm using D|S 4.22.0.19.

These are unretouched renders:  the halftone is part of the shader.  I've also included a Geoshell Outline option so that the Shell is using the same shader as the primary mesh (which might be a mistake, as big as the shader is).  All surfaces use the same base shader.

What would really be good is a PowerPose template.

Here's Geoshell Outlined, Geoshell + Toon (Edge-Blend/Normals), Toon Only, and No Outline.  Hair is a Poser prop by StudioMaya.
Somehow, my geoshell tints its contents even when forward normals are 100% transparent.
 

Eustace Scrubb

With a few adjustments and another skintone...

wsterdan

Cool stuff! Still no idea about the geoshells, sorry. Shaders are looking pretty cool though.

wsterdan

One of Evil Innocence's freebies converted to the Webboids, his Torn Shirt for Genesis 8. This will be available on the Webboid launch day.

wsterdan

In case you missed the announcement on July 1st, they're now available at:

https://webboids.com

The latest version of the Webboids is always available from the front page, and new freebies are being uploaded regualrly. Check it out, and have fun!

mindsong

Hey there Mr. Sterdan (and the other generous contributors),

Thank you.

--ms

wsterdan

You're very welcome.