Thanks, Diomede the Venerable, for your comments.  I was happy to change the aspect ratio and I moved the figure around a few times as well as the bulb.  The pitfall of shining the bulb on the figure only is that it can look as though it is a different image pasted over the background.  I thought of covering her feet to diminish this effect.

UnifiedBrain, I'm happy that you have your preference.  I made so many adjustments along the way that I've lost any feeling of seeing an image that might evoke a story or sense atmosphere (which it may or may not be capable of doing - that's the elusive magic I think I'm striving to achieve).

I'm attaching an image of one change of composition.

Your hints about the forthcoming challenge make me hesitate to show what became of the image when passed through Fotosketcher (!) but maybe it makes the figure prominent again.

I agree that the hair (and skin) are plastic-looking.  That's something I need to address in my general knowledge.

I case it is of interest, the figure and clothing are called Thistledown.  The short skirt shown in the store image has a morph to make it longer.

The rest of the scene is called Celestial Fountain.  I'll follow up in a new post with far-off views of the scene showing the lights.

EDIT: I should have said Celestial POOL https://www.daz3d.com/celestial-pool

The waterlilys weren't included.

I have been playing with attaching Look at my Hair to figures using the DAZ Studio Transfer Utility so that I can render Iray animations with hair.  It's worked good for my first two experiments, but when I try it on Millennium Cat it doesn't work like it did on the others.  When I go to "Edit>Figure>Transfer Utility..." I don't see the scene item: Millennium Cat (see attached screen shot)

I was wondering if anyone has ran across this problem?

It worked in my experiments with  "Rodents by AM: Squirrels of Eastern Hemisphere" and "White Tiger for DAZ Big Cat 2"

Hello folks, about the "missing open mouth morph", I decided not to use morphs this time to simulate jaw movements but rather having a bone that you can use to Bend/Side-side/Twist it. For me it works much better like this than having a morph interpolation between open and close status that produces odd outputs at intermediate values, often deforming the mesh very bad. I'm sorry if some feels it's a bugger but in my opinion it's an improvement.

Perhaps an ERCed pose control on the figure to control the bend would be a compromise?

Yes, I used Create New Property to create a Mouth Open ERC control for the Jaw bone, and it works great.

Is there any way that could be added to the product itself? I have no idea how to this. And it would be great to have one for the tail.

Here, I'll attach the Mouth Open control I made. You (or anyone else who wants to use it) can manually install it and it "should" work for you. I offer it free with no strings attached. I am not a professional morph maker, so I can't guarantee that it will work for you or won't cause some other problem. If the product gets updated to add a control like this, mine may conflict. You can always just drag mine from the data folder to the trash if that happens.

You can apply it on G3M if you don't mind female nipples and anatomy details on the skin lol.

I thought we were gonna have a male version this time? I swear I remember you promising!

SkinBuilder 3 took around 6 months to create, a lot longer than expected. If I do a male version which will take around another +-3 months that is nearly a year gone on only two product releases. It is not financially viable to do a male version at this stage which will bring in much less revenue anyways. If I spend more time on this, that means my morph packages will never come out, and that is my primary business. Unfortunately I do not have a huge team at my disposal. That costs a hell of a lot of money. If I did have a team, and revenue streams catered for that maintenance then a male version would be a possibility. Unfortunately that is not the case. There is a lot of things I would like to do, but time and money dictates what is viable in order to survive.

Realistically, if you have the G3 UV swap add-on, the skins made for G3F should work fine on G3M, so what's really needed is just 1.) a overlay set to add more mascuiline body hair, which we already have in several forms such as RedStudio's G3M body hair add on at Rendo and the various Brow products now available, and 2.) support for the gens if required... and for that, there are the TAB and similar add-ons sold at that other Rendo site.  It's a bit of a sideways way of going at it, but I think it makes this new skinbuilder more than capable of creating male bases, especially for teens and kids.     

I just this morning bought that G3M Body Hair you mention as it is on sale. Very impressive as are the RedzStudio head hair products. I don't use the G3M male gens mainly because they are only available in Pro bundles so I'm still using the Jepe/M4 prop which is still pretty good and the skin (with a SickleYield freebie to convert to Iray) can be tweaked to a pretty close match (especially if there is hair to hide the join).

This is another quick experiment with animating "Look at my Hair" fur in DAZ Studio using Iray.  I was able to animate the hair by converting the "Look at my Hair" fur for White Tiger for DAZ Big Cat 2 to an obj and then used the DAZ Studio's Transfer  Utility to make that object a conforming figure.  I applied an old rough walk cycle to see if the fur worked on a moving figure. I also added a rider and some armor to to see how the layering was effected. 

I discovered that I need to use the basic unmorphed version on the figure to get the hair to attach correctly. After the hair was a conforming object I could apply the morphs and posing to the figure.

It is rendered at 1920x1080 @ 30fps using 50 iterations with Iray in "Photoreal" mode and averaged 20 sec per frame to render.

Hold it.  Phil, you do individual instruction?  Gotta get me some more Phil. 

Slippers look great.  Why, they almost look like...

.

Aren't you forgetting the ruby slippers?

.

No Place like home

.

.

The shoes in the children's book were silver, not ruby.  But, you know, Hollywood and special effects, made them ruby for a color movie. 
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-11-15/lewis-lapham-dorothy-s-shoes-morph-from-silver-to-ruby

Do you need the free LAMH plugin if you install the full version?

BTW, it's confusing that LAMH is called LAMH in DIM but Look at My Hair in DS, the store and the Product Library. Please, more consistency.

No, the free plugin will not allow the full product to work, make sure it is not installed.

Regarding the mouth open morph, I have not the slightest idea about how to even get started on it. Luckily for me, selecting the jaw bone with the universal tool and opening it with the "bend" slider is simplicity itself, and having said part be a bone is quite a bit more flexible, allowing a wider range of motion and customization. I think Alessandro made the right call on this one.

You can apply it on G3M if you don't mind female nipples and anatomy details on the skin lol.

I thought we were gonna have a male version this time? I swear I remember you promising!

SkinBuilder 3 took around 6 months to create, a lot longer than expected. If I do a male version which will take around another +-3 months that is nearly a year gone on only two product releases. It is not financially viable to do a male version at this stage which will bring in much less revenue anyways. If I spend more time on this, that means my morph packages will never come out, and that is my primary business. Unfortunately I do not have a huge team at my disposal. That costs a hell of a lot of money. If I did have a team, and revenue streams catered for that maintenance then a male version would be a possibility. Unfortunately that is not the case. There is a lot of things I would like to do, but time and money dictates what is viable in order to survive.

Realistically, if you have the G3 UV swap add-on, the skins made for G3F should work fine on G3M, so what's really needed is just 1.) a overlay set to add more mascuiline body hair, which we already have in several forms such as RedStudio's G3M body hair add on at Rendo and the various Brow products now available, and 2.) support for the gens if required... and for that, there are the TAB and similar add-ons sold at that other Rendo site.  It's a bit of a sideways way of going at it, but I think it makes this new skinbuilder more than capable of creating male bases, especially for teens and kids.     

Wendy has some Roman style clothing at her freebie site. It's for Genesis, and I don't know if it's exactly what you're looking for. Should be able to use Transfer Utility to bring them foward.

https://www.wilmapsdigitalcreations.co.uk/view_product.php?id=66

As a challenge I tried to make one, got a reasonable looking thing in T-pose but it gets all kinds of jacked up when you use the transfer function to fit it and then pose the figure. Also tried dynamic drapes but it falls apart. I guess if you want to render cicero standing stoicly giving a speech, it's cool. If you want a more dynamic pose, it isn't so good.  I can see this would be a challenging thing to get right. 

I believe that the Romans did not find togas all that easy to manage - which was part of the point, "I have people to do my running for me".

I could see that. "I'm so important that I don't have to care about practical things like getting dressed by myself going to the bathroom on my own. That's for barbarians!"

This definitely needs a Scrat morph!

As a challenge I tried to make one, got a reasonable looking thing in T-pose but it gets all kinds of jacked up when you use the transfer function to fit it and then pose the figure. Also tried dynamic drapes but it falls apart. I guess if you want to render cicero standing stoicly giving a speech, it's cool. If you want a more dynamic pose, it isn't so good.  I can see this would be a challenging thing to get right. 

I believe that the Romans did not find togas all that easy to manage - which was part of the point, "I have people to do my running for me".

Hello folks, about the "missing open mouth morph", I decided not to use morphs this time to simulate jaw movements but rather having a bone that you can use to Bend/Side-side/Twist it. For me it works much better like this than having a morph interpolation between open and close status that produces odd outputs at intermediate values, often deforming the mesh very bad. I'm sorry if some feels it's a bugger but in my opinion it's an improvement.

Perhaps an ERCed pose control on the figure to control the bend would be a compromise?

Yes, I used Create New Property to create a Mouth Open ERC control for the Jaw bone, and it works great.

Is there any way that could be added to the product itself? I have no idea how to this. And it would be great to have one for the tail.

I'm not saying AM should stop making animals, by any means, they all look amazing, just please make them more user friendly.

And it would be great if there was a link on the product page to a tutorial about how to use and save it in IRay or even better, a PDF with screenshots... I'm sorry, but it gets really annoying to have to search the forums, Google and YouTube when I want to simply use a product I purchased just to be able to use it...

 

Anyone know who FoRender's latest  celebrity morph is? Koko? http://forender.com/component/mijoshop/product/1539-koko-for-g2-g3.html

Kaley Cuoco

wow.. guess I see it with thinking about it, but I don't think I'd ever have gotten it without you naming.

Frankly I'd never heard of her, or knowingly seen her, or have any opinion on how good a likeness it is or isn't.. But I do drop by the FoRender forums from time to time, keep an eye on the vote there for which celebrity to be done next (and made 3 suggestions of my own for the 3 votes everyone is allowed), and in the forum votes and discussions and new product notifications the celebrities are referred to be real name, not the tagged on product names like 'Koko'. So I'm not saying I think that's supposed to be Kaley Cuoco; I'm saying that FoRender and Extra Clones explicitly say that's their attempt at Kaley Cuoco after she bubbled to the top of the 'next celebrity to do' vote (but not with any of  my votes). If you go to the forums and vote threads there, there is absolutely no secret or doubt about who all their look-a-likes are (or are supposed to be, anyway) - it's explicitly stated by creator and store owner (and at the top of the current and previous votes for which celebrities to do there are neat lists of celeb, product name and release dates for all the ones donw so far).

Actually, as I do my own characters and don't want celeb look-a-likes (except for 4, none of which have ever been done to my knowledge), and have my own SF worlds and don't want weapons, vehicles, armour etc readily identifiable as coming from a well known SF film, TV or game franchise (which would detract from the 'reality' of the SF  universes I create for my SF stories), the only things I actually ever buy there are the real 20th century and current firearms I want for modern day set 'realistic' (within the grittier end of the genre tropes) action/adventure/thriller stories. (Although i would buy any of those 4 celebrities if they were ever done.)

You can apply it on G3M if you don't mind female nipples and anatomy details on the skin lol.

I thought we were gonna have a male version this time? I swear I remember you promising!

SkinBuilder 3 took around 6 months to create, a lot longer than expected. If I do a male version which will take around another +-3 months that is nearly a year gone on only two product releases. It is not financially viable to do a male version at this stage which will bring in much less revenue anyways. If I spend more time on this, that means my morph packages will never come out, and that is my primary business. Unfortunately I do not have a huge team at my disposal. That costs a hell of a lot of money. If I did have a team, and revenue streams catered for that maintenance then a male version would be a possibility. Unfortunately that is not the case. There is a lot of things I would like to do, but time and money dictates what is viable in order to survive.

I purchased Genesis 3 Female Head Morph Resource Kit 3 to make custom faces and once I have finished making the face and go to give them expressions they always come out looking wonky. Is there something I am doing wrong. liike with the photo i have attached, his lips are all weird with the bottom lip being flat and his cheek creasing too much at the end.

Artistic Style Transfer For Videos — could be really interesting to try on animations rendered from Daz Studio...

Hello folks, about the "missing open mouth morph", I decided not to use morphs this time to simulate jaw movements but rather having a bone that you can use to Bend/Side-side/Twist it. For me it works much better like this than having a morph interpolation between open and close status that produces odd outputs at intermediate values, often deforming the mesh very bad. I'm sorry if some feels it's a bugger but in my opinion it's an improvement.

Perhaps an ERCed pose control on the figure to control the bend would be a compromise?

Yes, I used Create New Property to create a Mouth Open ERC control for the Jaw bone, and it works great.

Hello folks, about the "missing open mouth morph", I decided not to use morphs this time to simulate jaw movements but rather having a bone that you can use to Bend/Side-side/Twist it. For me it works much better like this than having a morph interpolation between open and close status that produces odd outputs at intermediate values, often deforming the mesh very bad. I'm sorry if some feels it's a bugger but in my opinion it's an improvement.

About the tail missing poses or controls, probably it wouldn't have hurt to make some extra poses; besides that, you can still multi-select multiple tail bones and apply the transformation sliders right? Shouldn't be too much work.

Iray materials provided are there only for the base model surfaces; they do not load or produce any furred squirrel model for Iray. Unfortunately Iray is a work in progress render engine, lacking several features like a hair primitive; reason why there is need to convert LAMH fur to OBJ before being able to render with Iray.

I already had this grudge that doing furred models to be used this way on an incomplete render engine is not viable, and given that most users do use Iray today, I believe this will be one of my last animal models until there is a Iray fur solution working out of the box for it (that nvidia or I can provide somehow).

The current Iray fur problems are mostly an issue of user expectations and lack of readily available, up to date, documentation. The product page says it has Iray presets, but it doesn't explain what is involved in using the product in Iray. The product page has no link to your video about Iray. The video does not even explain Kendall's crucial tip about how to save and reload the Fiberhair. The latest LAMH manual I have is for version 1.5, with no mention of Iray. The LAMH blog at furrythings.com (linked in your signature) appears to have been abandoned, with only one update since 2014; it has no current information about the plug in at all.

I agree with your observation that most Daz Studio users are using Iray now. In the forum you mentioned an effort to make the current fur easier to use in Iray. I think that is a good place to concentrate your effort in the immediate future, before making more animals. I understand your frustration with Iray not having all the features you need to implement a robust fur solution. I think you can ease users' frustration with the current solution by making sure accurate and complete Iray usage information is available and linked from the product page.

As a challenge I tried to make one, got a reasonable looking thing in T-pose but it gets all kinds of jacked up when you use the transfer function to fit it and then pose the figure. Also tried dynamic drapes but it falls apart. I guess if you want to render cicero standing stoicly giving a speech, it's cool. If you want a more dynamic pose, it isn't so good.  I can see this would be a challenging thing to get right.