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Ethnicity quistion

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  • HavosHavos Posts: 5,581

    I have used Poser a lot in the past, hence my curiosity where other sites selling content for it are. I know DAZ/Rendo are not the only stores out there, but they are the ones with by far the most new releases, and the largest back catalogues. There maybe bigger sites elsewhere (for example in Japan), but I am unaware of them.

  • HavosHavos Posts: 5,581

    Good luck with getting Genesis 3 into Poser, I have seen a lot of people want it to happen (though there is also a vocal crowd that do not want it to happen!). Clearly it will be a lot better if you can reconstruct the facial bones, as better expressions are a key feature of Genesis 3.

    Regarding your Miki 4 question, if it is Poser weightmapped, there is no easy way to getting her into DS with the weightmapping intact. Perhaps you could try fbx import/export, though I know very little about that. Naturally you could turn her into a character without WM in Poser, and then save the CR2 for import into DS, but that is unlikely to be what you want. The same issues apply to Star, V4WM and all other Poser weightmapped original characters. I guess most people here feel they can do without these figures.

  • jpb06tjpb06t Posts: 272
    Leana said:

    Oh of course, a 2 minutes search with Google Images will definitely give you a high-res skin merchant ressource with the proper usage rights for any character you may want to create... <sarcasm totally intended too>

    Reference information, the things that will guide you to create something. E.g., tons of pictures of the F-22, not the blueprints Lockheed uses to actually build the thing.

    B.t.w., it is not a 2 minutes search, I spend days in order to get references for hard surface objects I plan to create and there are people who invest even longer times in the preparation phase. E.g. I saw descriptions of the workflows to create plane models in which in was stated that hundreds of pictures were taken from actual planes in museums and that was only part of the whole documentation process.

  • caravellecaravelle Posts: 2,653
    Rashad Carter said:

    This is an issue I constantly mull over in my own mind. For me there are four issues that interplay.

    1. Sales driven

    Supposedly CG vendors recreate that content which the public will purchase. But this is really only half true if we are fully honest with ourselves. Most of the time vendors (because they are mere humans afterall) tend to create the types of content they themselves would like to purchase, and hope that others will agree by showering them with sales and requests for more stuff in the same vein. It is usually only a veteran or otherwise highly skilled vendor who can create content by requested commission only and have it turn out to be any good. Therefore, if you personally tend to like to render lighter skinned females, then those are most likely the types of skins you will attempt to create for yourself and to sell to others. If for example you tend to produce renders with characters that are "sexy,"...considering that what is considered sexy is highly subjective...then if you personally do not find darker skinned individuals attractive, you will have little reason to ever purchase a darker skinned texture. Users with a broad artistic sensibility outside of what is safe and cute and sexy are less likely to fall into such traps. And indeed, it is a trap. I always think the whole point of this fantasy stuff is to delve into areas where we are less familiar. More on that in a moment.

    2. Familiarity

    Similar to what is stated above, a good deal of what makes a human being or a skin texture attractive is our degree of familiarity with the subject matter. If you live in an area where darker skinned people are quite rare, then chances are you may not have a very clear impression of what a darker skinner person could or should actually look like, so you may find yourself with a library full of seemingly light skinned characters. You might ask yourself Just how dark is "dark. And just how light is "light?" Unsure of what the answers might be, one might decide to play it safe with skin tones they see every day. As a darker skinned person myself, it is a struggle I face when rendering lighter skinned people. How much red should there be in this character skin? How many freckles and blemishes? It would not be surprising that if I was to vend a custom skin texture it would be a skin tone I am highly familiar with in my own personal life. Some people do not see the need to go outside of their comfort zone, and those people are really missing out in my view. Even if you arent familiar with a particular ethnic group, one should still know the basics of skin and how to make it look good. One of the biggest pieces of advice I've given people as they study skin rendering in unbiased engines is to not be stuck on any one particular skin texture or range of skin tones. The real "truth" of skin rendering only reveals itself after you've tested lost of different ranges and found the common threads between them. Which is another reason why I try to discourage people from trying so hard to make finished "art." and instead they should allow themselves to focus on technical studies sometimes with no expectations. This way you have a reason to render skins outside your comfort zone even if you don't have a particular project that demands it...yet.

    3. Resources

    "Ain't nothing like the real thing"...so the song goes. Most of the skins we see in the store are based off of real photographs of real humans. The good is that its based on something real. The bad thing is that all that realism means one has a very narrow range of options for useage that will look good. Morph an asian looking character and put an Elite Rob texture on him and it will look quite odd. For this reason there are lots of different human skin references each representing a particular and narrow range of usage. Also realize that with darker skin tones, very often some degree of white specular is captured during the photoshoot, distorting the color profile drastically as well as lowering saturation. Even if you can find a good skin tone in the medium ranges like that of a s guy like "Drake." you're still faced with making him look like he should after he is rendered.

    4. CG Rendering and Lighting

    Part of the issue is with the million different ways we have to light and render our characters. The rather light and rather dark skins are easy to spot. It is those tones in the middle...those Beyonce type skins that are so tough. Even in real life, depending on the lighting conditions, Beyonce could appear quite light or dark skinned. The Sean character in the store is an example of a skin tone that is darker than the average caucasian, even possible a person of some mixed caucasian and african, perhaps even a latino person. This is a very beautiful skin tone quite rare in the Daz store likely for the reasons I mentioned above.

    All this to say that if things work out the way I have planned, there will be products that finally address those skin tones we so often see neglected in the store currently. Cannot say much more on it yet as its still a WIP. But yeah, we can and should do better than this. The time is coming.

    Thank you, Rashad, for this excellent piece. I am looking forward to your products!

     

  • wolf359wolf359 Posts: 3,931

    "The head is irrelevant. BTW, if the Asian male has non-human, alien skull geometry, 
    what makes it Asian - the different torso proportions of Asians compared to Caucasians?

    This makes it Asian

    My  Sci fi story may need a geneticly engineered korean/Asari Hybrid

     

    alien 6.jpg
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