1404 - Not Found

Bischof Trowller: You blathering fopdoodle!  This the the Book of Extreme Unction.
Bruder Güggler:  Pardons,  a million pardons, your excellency.  I could not locate the Rites of Baptism.
Frau Bauer :  But we came for the exorcism, we did.
Urban Shabby Chic
Wyatt Hair for Genesis 2 Male
Summer Edition Josh
The Washroom
Fantasy Creature Creator HD Morph Pack for Genesis 3 Male
Balneae  (I think I drew one too many ;)

Thanks for starting this thread. It wasn't just you. The pattern Daz had established this generation was 2 females, then a male, or so I thought. But we have three females in a row, none of which I purchased (although buying the hairs from the Mika 8 Pro Bundle plus the additional hair is almost the same price as buying the Pro Bundle with the additional hair and one more item; so, I may just cave).

I'm still basing my male characters out of Genesis 3 because Ollie and Owen and Darius do not get me far enough away from the Michael/Lucas/Edward look for my goals, even with massive dial spinning using every morph pack available (unless I'm making a funny-looking [regular] guy, but it's hard to keep them looking real). Additionally, the male full head packs I've seen do not depart enough from the G8M Base's look to be useful.

But I have hopes that the 17th or 24th will bring us a non-stylized male without skin of wax.

JCade, I actually do have three different maps for the SSS, though they are procedurally generated versions of the same source JPG.  There's a red-tinted, untinted (yellowish tan), and green-tinted layer.  My triple-layered SSS shader is essentially a Poser adaptation of one or two Blender shaders that I thought gave excellent results.  Trust me, it makes a world of difference!  That's one thing I can say with great confidence!  As for Diva's face details, I see one very deep crease along each lower eyelid, but that's not a universal human trait (the crease itself may be, but not the depth of it).  Besides, are you telling me you don't see a similar crease in the latest render of my auburn-haired, hazel-eyed character?  It may not be as deep, but it should definitely be visible.

Rashad, thanks for the in-depth feedback, and I'm glad you and I seem to agree on so much.  I'm actually working with Genesis 8, though it was relatively easy to create a functional transgender-morphing version.  If you're interested (and use Poser), I have a freebie on ShareCG that will do most of the work for you.  My male and female characters all use the same skin and eye textures, with only masked features like facial or pubic hair differing between them.  In fact, together with transgender morphing, those material parameter dials I talked about allow you to switch easily between sexes.  The main one is a "Male" dial.  At 0, it applies the female masks for eyebrows and body hair, and at 1, it applies the male masks.  The facial stubble can be controlled with its own dial, so if you want a juvenile or otherwise smooth-faced male, you can do that.  Body hair (i.e. pubic hair for both genders and armpit hair on males) can also be independently turned on or off.

I'll toy around with adding noise to my maps and see where it gets me.  Actually painting details in Photoshop might not be a feasible option for me.  I have a mild-to-moderate case of cerebral palsy, and one of the effects is significantly hindered dexterity.  I'm not saying it's necessarily impossible, since I have had some success working with Poser's morph brush, but it will likely be much more laborious for me than someone with a more delicate hand would probably expect.  Heck, even my characters' eyebrows, where I think the most improvement has been made, weren''t created by careful mouse strokes with my custom brush (which itself was a bit tricky to create).  Instead, I drew a Path along what would become the middle of the eyebrows and used Photoshop's automatic Stroke function.  Still, I think I'll at least try to paint some skin details if the easier tactics ultimately prove insufficient.

In any case, I'm certainly open to collaborating with you!

Just I'm surprised the PAs don't extend the choice, I mean no Arab/Indian character like at Renderosity.

First law of IT business: never change a running system... or: don't try something new, if the same old - same old sells anyway

Not that I would like it.. but as long as the stuff gets bought, more of the same will get produced...

And I have to admit, I also belong to the group of people not needing "sexy male toons", as a look at my runtime shows: George, Old Chap, Ollie, Bolnnar the Dwarf, Orc Brute and a couple G8M from either PC+ or freebie sources - which gives me, with the morph programs, all the flexibility I need, for the stuff I want to do.

The list of females isn't that long either, though... and right now I'm still looking for G3F rather than G8F... or better, G3/8F, of which there are quite a few..

In the end, it's usually the extras that make be buy some new "generation" figure, like free pro packs of previous generations...

I went ahead and bought Jonah, even though I don't have Ollie. He's hella buff without Ollie, and his head morph at 100% is a bit odd. IMO he looks fine around 70%, and I do love the freckles on his skin. So, I'll keep him, and wishlist Ollie for later.

Since my laptop that can do Iray is currently occupied, here are a few simple 3DL renders of him. Do bear with me as i am absolute crap at 3DL, and this is my back up old-as-balls XP laptop so these renders will be small.

Head at 62%

Head at 100%

Body/head 100%

So, not a bad character for $10. I can't wait to get him into Iray, and really make those freckles SHINE!

Well, I'll buy the Bundle but I just don't know if I should right now. If I remember right, options did get better with the recent bundles within the promo period.

And I have to say it again that this news Figure 7 for Figure 8 is a mess. I have Mika 7 but as I use Gen8 more often recently, I want to be able to have the older shape/texture available easily. Sure could go the manual morph transfer route but why the heck is DAZ not better discounting those products for the owner of the older Generation/Bundle. Heck, actually that product should be free if one owns both Figure 7 as well as Figure 8.

Hello everyone, when I started using Daz3d I found one big problem for myself which I can't understand how to solve: if I want to create a new morph for character figure I need to use default low polygonal body mesh for that. Unfortunately aroung 17000 faces on body is not enough for me to work with and I need at least twice bigger count. First I thought those HD character models in the store is what  I am looking for, but as I can see this is the same low polygonal body meshes... So, can someone tell me where I can get full riged female model with 34000 faces on it for which I would be able to create detailed morphs? Or maybe there is some other way to do this? Thank you for your attention.

Long post....

Magnumdaz,

My feedback is always very detailed so please bear with me.

This is a beautiful morph. I've always loved this face. This is a Victoria 3 model, correct? Though a touch on the angular side, it still reads as sufficiently feminine to be pleasing to me. The tonal saturation might be a smidge too low, but like you I too would prefer to err on the side of undercooked saturation rather than overcooked. The blotchiness of the skin, providing a random sense of unevenness to the tone, works well here. It looks like skin damage caused by the sun and other life stresses which is believeable indeed. This effect however can also appear at times like a poorly captured photo of the real skin, that has been overly processed with contrast filters of various sorts. I feel like I see overprocessing of real human skins very often when sold as products, but more on that some other time. In this particular case it works quite well so no complaints. When building textures from scratch I accomplish this effect with turbulence noise brushes I use to create maps I steal from the terrain generator in Bryce. So man useful filters I can create there such as voronoi celluarl patterns and the like that I find essential to huma skin generating from scratch. But more on that later. Clearly the posing is a strong aspect. I find that whenever characters can interact with themselves in some way, by making contact with their own bodies, it somehow makes the scene seem more lifelike and believeable such as the hand at her waist. Nice work as always!!

Gregorius,

More crazy detailed feedback. Sorry but I can't help myself I love this stuff too much!!

Great great great!!!!! So many things. Firstly, you and I are on similar paths and I think we may even be able to work together at certain points in time. Maybe we can PM and talk a bit. Due to the fact that I am already working in a similar manner to yours, i can offer a few thoughts on what I'm seeing so far. Soon I hope this week I'll begin posting some of my own studies, and hopefully you'll chime in with feedback. Thanks, Bro!!

I love that you are working with Genesis 1 during this skin development study because I too find that swiching between genders helps me to see issues with skin textures I might not otherwise observe. In my opinion most male textures will look acceptable on females if one can separate out the masculinizing aspects such as stubble. When building your own texture from scratch such options of removing stubble become feasible. If it looks good on a female then there's a good chance it will look good on a male.

The examples you are posting are getting better and better for sure in terms of realism. Huge huge huge improvements!!!! I do agree with you that the texture demonstrates the potential for photorealism at this point in time. Potential is key and I'll return to this ideal in a moment. From what I can see there is a sufficient amount of height map detail to begin to make specular effects look reasonably realistic which from a PBR standpoint is essential. However as I've stated before, I do not think your height maps have the degree of detail and sharpness that they should have. What I would at least TRY if I were you would be to add a Gaussain Noise filter (Linear/ Monochrome) just to the height maps (Bump) at about 25%. This will help to replace some of the information that has been lost due to having to derive the height map info from the original color maps. Its not truly possible to do it without losing some info at some point so finding a way to replace some of that info is essential. This is why I abandoned trying to derive details like height from color, its just not the same at all.

In a similar manner I might try also try adding a slight Noise filtering to the color maps, but this time even more subtle at 10% and this time with a chromatic setting. Again, just a taste, as we don't want the noise to draw attention to itself but we do want to give the impression that the texture has greater resolution that what the camera is picking up at the current moment.

Some things however are missing, such as the deeper pores at the cheeks, also the fine line wrinkles under the eye. On the hands I believe we are missing the varying types of leather grain on the back of the hand, the bends at the fingers,the knuckles. But some of this could also be the resolution of the posted images.

More suggestions:

1. Try to paint in 3D if you arent already doing so. If that means using Carrara's 3D Paint feautre or some other appliction like Blacksmith, it really helps to work in 3D if you arent already.

2.  Create for yourself a set of stock "brushes" you can use to paint skin details as needed rather than trying to derive them all from a photo based skin. These sample brushes should be roughly 512x512 in resolution and fully seamless. The example I have uploaded are samples I drew quickly on regular paper. But ideally you will want these same types of patterns on a transparent .PNG background.

A. Pores- You need at least one brush for tight standard pores. Youll need another where the pores are a little bit further apart for areas like the cheeks to the left and right of the nose where pores seem to be a bit bigger on most people. Often due to stretchin gthe bigger pores on the cheek are not round but elongated and oval.

B. Fine Lines- You'll need brushes that can provide lines over an area. The lines must appear to be somewhat random in distance from one another , length and other details.

C. Cellular patterns- Cellular patterns are key. I created my own by starting with a blank page and just drawing random triangles of roughly the same size and connecting them all until the 512x512 page was filled in. the black lines were the depressions and the white were the flat tops of the cells. I eventually add other features to break up the uniformity fo the white cells to appear more lumpy as human flesh would. You can also derive cellular patterns from vornoi noise generators but you do not want to capture shadows or any direction biases in the cells. More on that in days.

D.- Leather Grain- This is not so dissimilar to the lines, however instead of these lines being parallel they are instead perpendicular to one another, creating the appearance of crosshatches. Often you can create these brushes by simply using your Lines brushes and stacking them at varying angles to become perpendicular creating the final look of a grid. This is for the rougher skin at the elbows and knees. So long as the lines have the correct amount of randomness the resulting crosshatches should look like a grid with imperfect shaped cells.

E. You need to analyze the skin of everyday human beings, to see which areas are driven mostly by pores, or by leather grain effects, and combine and stack the various brushes as needed to create the desired effect within a particular area of the skin. IT IS NOT EASY TO PULL THIS OFF!!!!

F- All of these brushes are considered types of "noise." This is different than the type of noise I an suggesting you add to the overall maps by means of a Noise Filter.

All the best Gregorius!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

7 hours?! How? There is no way anything that simple should take that long.

You'd be surprised.  Most of it is due to the trans-mapped hair, which tends to really slow down rendering. If the character was bald, I suspect I could've rendered her portrait in about half the time.  The quality settings are also rather high overall, too, with 64 pixel samples generally, which of course gets multiplied by Branched Path Tracing values.  It may seem like alot, but I've found that anything less fails to reliably produce smooth enough renders.  I also activated caustics for an extra touch of realism (particularly on the eyes), though my comparative experiments show that that only adds about 10%-15% to the render times, if even that.

I can't be sure, but it's also possible that all the extra stuff going on in my skin and eye shaders may contribute to the render time.  You see, I've rigged the figure so that features like skin color, eye color, and facial/body hair color can all be controlled via parameter dials.  For example, setting the Eye Color dial to 2 gives me green eyes, while setting it to 3 gives me blue eyes, and correspondingly, setting it to 2.5 gives me aquamarine eyes.  Similarly, a Skin Color dial can go from 0 (dark African) to 3 (light European).  This seems like such an obvious convenience that I don't know why more people aren't asking for it, but anyway, this utility requires several more nodes than just a simple material preset.  Plus, even without the extra parameters that make the material dials work, I also have three layers of SSS.

Again, I can't be sure how much it adds to render time, though in my experience, complex shaders have rarely seemed to wield much of a noticeable effect (with the exception of some of the more advanced hair shaders).  I've certainly been using my elaborate material setup for much longer than what seems like a recent increase in my render times, so the most likely main culprit is still my tinkering with sophisticated hair shaders and more high-quality settings.
Honestly, as long as I'm at least getting closer to something that could pass for a photo, I don't really care if she looks like she has goosebumps.  Looking like a real person with goosebumps is better than looking like a CGI model without goosebumps.  Of course, looking like a real person without goosebumps is usually better still, but until I've crossed the fake/real threshold (or at least come as close as I possibly can), that's not a major priority for me.

Yeah that is still an incredibly excessive render time. and I'm speaking as someone who uses Iray with very mesh heavy transmapped hairs and who also is familiar with with cycles (in blender anyhow where it is definitely faster than iray). Unless your rendering an 8k render or something theres no way a single figure with nothing other than hair and no scenery and no DOF should take that long.

also using 3 sss nodes in cycles is an absolute waste of resourses unless you have actual custom maps for each (and even then its probably not worth it) cycles can set scattering distance per RGB channel (chromatic sss) at least blender can, if the poser version of cycles can't something is deeply wrong.

I also am afraid I have to second the lowpoly comment although low poly may not be entirely the correct word, I would more go overly smoothed and undetailed in terms of geometry. You have before, I believe, mentioned getting your textures to focus on microdetails, however it seems like when you took out the *macrodetails* you never really put them back in anywhere (like the geometry or a normal map). The problem with detail like shadows baked into the diffuse was never that it added to much detail it was that the detail was baked into the wrong place simply removing it doesn't really solve the problem.

And as to the idea that since you're using the same base mesh your morph will have the same detail, that I strongly disagree with. Look at diva's recent render specifically look at the nose or the crease under the eye. Can you really not see the difference in the level of detail in the morph?

If you are truly going for photorealism you cannot say "well I am just focusing on the materials" the mesh is at least as important when it comes down to it.

Just one more day... ONE MORE day till payday.... and edie goes off sale.  There was wailing and tears that I am unashamed to admit were mine as I moved her bundle an her various add ons to my wishlist from my cart.... I knew th sale was going to end soon, i just had been desperately clinging to the hope that it'd somehow last til payday :'( I haven't loved characters aes much as Ollie and Edie in EONS. Seriously. I'm heartbroken.  I can try to convert Ollie's morph to Edie but it won't be the same... and I was so excited to Try out dorothea and Etta and the peasant clothes and a gramma in punk rock clothes knitting a cross skull hoodie for deathmetal teen. LOL.... seriously though. AUGH. Missed it by a freaking DAY.  :( 

Sorry just to had to let out the agony. Commiseration "I just missed out on...." is also welcome.... misery loves company right?

Some shape mixes (click to enlarge). 

All rendered with Mika 8 skin with Altern8 shader setting: "Lucas 8 A - No Maps". All rendered with Mika 8's ear morph at 0%.

Mika 8 100%:

Mika 8 50%:

Mika 8 50%, Edie 8 50%:

Mika 50%, Charlotte 50%:

Mika 8 50%, Monique 8 60%:

Mika 8 50%, Olympia 8 60%:

Mika 50%, Victoria 8 50%:

I like Mika 8 and the eye make-up but they are labeling her elf and an elf is taller and more gangly looking with more mature facial features than Mika 8. Not Victoria 8 mature but more like gangly preteens without as much baby face. Fairies have the infantilized features of a baby face. Mika 8 looks like a fairy.

That said, I'll just transfer Mika 7 to G8 and aufofit various elf and fairy clothing from the past. I may buy her in the future but I have to watch my spending for possible future surprises in the vein of the Ollie, Edie, Alexandra, and Edward Pro Bundle themes.

It's good that DAZ 3D is going for characters that are good for story telling besides detectives, sci-fi, superheroes, and Conan the Bararian stuff (although I think technically Conan is a superhero).

I haven't made up my mind.

However, I do like both hair products in the pro bundle. And I found three Addons I like, the Zahara Hair and Expansion and the P3D Mika 8 Morph Package, (I figure I could substitute the Karyssa morph for Mika, if necessary.) So I put these five items in my cart and took a screenshot. Then I emptied the cart and put in the Pro bundle and these three addons. The difference is 51¢. So if buy my current cart, I'll get 10 items in the Pro bundle, including Mika 8, for 51¢. Plus another 10 older products for free. Five products vs 25 products, (counting all 12 items in the bundle separately,) for nearly the same price. YMMV.

ETA: Check your Messages Inbox. I received an additional discount for owning several G8 Pro bundles, which was applied automatically.

ALL those extra items for 51 cents? Sounds like a no brainer to me. heheh :)

Yes, in theory. But the cart is sitting at $67.45 at the moment. So the real question for me is, do I want those hair products right now, or can I wait a few months until they're on sale. After all, I don't actually need any of the 10 free items. I'll get them, if I decide to buy the Pro bundle. But I won't be kicking myself later if I decide to pass on Mika 8.

Edited: @Ati's post wasn't there when I started this one. As he already answered Novica's concerns, I've removed what would only be duplicate information.

I think shes cute and I'm definetly buying her.

I also really like the look of the PD3 Mika 8 morph package

Karysa 8 has the "special ability" of being able to make other characters cuter when you added a touch of her to them, and it would be interesting to see if Mika 8 or those PD3 Mika 8 morphs can do something similar.

For the free stuff - I would prefer picking a couple of previous pro bundles.

I haven't made up my mind.

However, I do like both hair products in the pro bundle. And I found three Addons I like, the Zahara Hair and Expansion and the P3D Mika 8 Morph Package, (I figure I could substitute the Karyssa morph for Mika, if necessary.) So I put these five items in my cart and took a screenshot. Then I emptied the cart and put in the Pro bundle and these three addons. The difference is 51¢. So if buy my current cart, I'll get 10 items in the Pro bundle, including Mika 8, for 51¢. Plus another 10 older products for free. Five products vs 25 products, (counting all 12 items in the bundle separately,) for nearly the same price. YMMV.

ETA: Check your Messages Inbox. I received an additional discount for owning several G8 Pro bundles, which was applied automatically.

ALL those extra items for 51 cents? Sounds like a no brainer to me. heheh :)

I haven't made up my mind.

However, I do like both hair products in the pro bundle. And I found three Addons I like, the Zahara Hair and Expansion and the P3D Mika 8 Morph Package, (I figure I could substitute the Karyssa morph for Mika, if necessary.) So I put these five items in my cart and took a screenshot. Then I emptied the cart and put in the Pro bundle and these three addons. The difference is 51¢. So if buy my current cart, I'll get 10 items in the Pro bundle, including Mika 8, for 51¢. Plus another 10 older products for free. Five products vs 25 products, (counting all 12 items in the bundle separately,) for nearly the same price. YMMV.

ETA: Check your Messages Inbox. I received an additional discount for owning several G8 Pro bundles, which was applied automatically.

Mika 8 is pretty solidly in the "not for me" club -- not a statement about her quality or anything else like that; I'm not sure I've ever rendered a single fairy -- but I do like both of the hairs that she comes with. That said, judging from the morph list, Shaved Side hair was pretty clearly made for G3F and then a very simple edit done to make it work with G8F.

Not gonna lie: we need more hedgehog and critter-fit material, for great whimsical success.

I'll tell you what I do.  I tend to fit the outfit to the morphed figure, set smoothing iterations to fifty, and then bake the morph and save the morph out.

Depending on how the clothing was made, this either works amazing or terribly.

So, this is a character morph and texture from Michael 3, Levi who was previously sold at ArtCollab years ago, applied aging maps from ZeV0’s overlays, saved and converted for Genesis 8 Male.  I used N.G.S Anagenessis 2 and Altern8

That was originally a Michael 3 character!? Wow! 

The combination of Anagenessis and Altern8 looks like it gives a nice look. I saw a couple other renders with that combo too and they all look pretty good. Very cool! Thank you for sharing your render with us!  (Your character made me laugh - something about his expression there that tickled my funnybone! lol)

Thank You

  This looks promising except for the extra experimenting. I just want to get to work. Sorry, I hate experimenting. I have assets going back a long way. I mean if I want to place my Old Sailing Ship DL in Animated Water for iRay. I'm crap out of luck or in for days of experimating.  I don't think there even is an old sailing ship for iRay. This wasn't very well thought out.

   Maybe too, though,,,, I bought Reality when it was on sale and never had time to even use it. I think, I remember it had an automated way to replace materials for DL with ones that work in reality.  I believe, I even remember that I saw a solution for iRay materials, some where, might that be right? Is Paolo Ciccone out there?

I still think some one should create some king of solid transfer program to switch between all these outputs. I know, I would buy it. I'm just not good enough to navigate all these ins and outs. I'm still trying to figure out bones and rigging. I wish, I had more time. I will try some of these suggestions. Thanks again. 

Steve