Updates to Minotaur 6 HD, or a new G3 Minotaur
Inkubo
Posts: 745
When I got into this hobby, I thought I'd most enjoy creating scenes with photorealistic human characters, but the characters I'm having the most fun with are the Lekkulions, robots, and Minotaur 6 HD.
I wonder if a PA would be willing to work with DAZ to update the Minotaur to add:
- Iray materials
- Morphs that will make him larger than man-sized
- Any fixes to his mesh that might be necessary because of the way he was originally generated
DAZ will sell you the minotaur today, but without add-on products, they can't offer support for Iray rendering or scaled-up animation. So I'm hoping for those add-ons!
Does the minotaur have any other fans who'd like to see him updated?
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Comments
For what it's worth, you can use NGS Anagenessis to convert most stuff to Iray nicely.
(Also most bulk up morphs work fine)
Thanks, William. But I'm hoping a PA will provide a more official solution. DAZ won't support the use of Iray for a character that doesn't come with Iray textures, so any conversion by hand or utility would still not be supported.
What do you mean by 'supported'?
Simply the ability to get help from DAZ support when problems arise.
Products are already in the store to convert skin to iray.
For skins: (and it's currently on sale)
As far as making the figure larger, simply use the dials already provided in the G2M body morphs to bulk him up or increase his height.
With the move to Genesis 8, I doubt there would be a product specifically for a niche character like the Minotaur.
Well, I'm not holding my breath, but no harm in asking for a supported update
As a PA, I'm not understanding the "supported update", the product is already available in the store so I would be focusing on something that would net money if I decide to make it. The product I linked had the minotaur included as a promo because a product by itself wouldn't sell, and dials in G2M exist to make a character larger than a human. I'm suggesting that you have what you need now rather than wait, as PAs are focusing on Genesis 3 and Genesis 8, not Genesis 2. The product linked will do both the skin and the associated geograft; if you wait, you'll have to see when the next time the product goes on sale which could be months.
No disrespect, MM. I have some of your stuff and like it. But the things I mentioned are indeed things DAZ won't support. I know because I already tried to get support.
I posted my request out of optimism and hope, not a desire to gripe, so try to read what follows as positively as possible.
I reported this problem https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/175211/what-causes-this-weird-render-issue-with-minotaur-6-hd#latest and expected a non-committal but upbeat reply: "We don't know if this will get fixed, but we'll pass it along to the developers." What I got could be paraphrased as "That character comes with 3Delight textures. We can't support rendering in Iray." So it would be nice if the issue would be looked at one day, but it sounds as if it will go nowhere until and unless DAZ sells an Iray update specifically for the Minotaur in the store.
So I'm being optimistic and asking for such an update.
I also reported the issue that if you scale a character up 150% of man-sized and try to use a walking aniblock, DAZ or AniMate2 calculates its end position wrong after an iteration, and the character stutters backward to the wrong place each time the animation loops. The basics of 3D animation are translation, rotation, and scaling, so the fact DAZ can't handle scaling right is an actual bug that should be fixed. The answer from support was not "we'll pass this along to the developers," but (again paraphrased) "looks like you're right. Sorry for the inconvenience."
I get what you're saying, however from a support standpoint they are correct as it was made before iray was presented so an update is probably not possible. I know i had a textrue that looks great in 3delight, however it looks bad when in iray due to how they were made, so other than a full retexturing of the product (which is a redo of the product) the texture can't be used in iray. As the texture was made before iray support cannont be future-proof. Also you may want to look at if that product has normal maps; if it does, turn down the amount of the normal from 1.0 to something like .75 and re-render again as there may be issues with using HD and a Normal map at the same time in iray.
As far as scale, a PA won't be able to resove that. You may want to try to scale up your character to 150%, remove all the geografts, zero the figure and save that as a morph. Then set the minotaur back to 100%, reimport the obj as a morph, adjust rigging to shape for that morph and try to do the animation again as that's using rigging rather than scaling. I also mentioned trying to increase the size and the height using dials rather than scaling itself.
Those are some things that you can try to see if you can resolve it. But to be honest, I doubt DAZ is going to go back 2 generations to address an issue; I have a Scott G2M issue that I had to fix myself and that ticket was closed without work.. and that was right when Genesis 3 was released.
I'll try those things you suggested. Meanwhile, if you're into sculpting monsters at all, an awesome new Genesis 8 minotaur with skins similar to the original one and the Asterion one would be cool, if you think a new minotaur might sell. I haven't switch to Gen 8 yet, but I'm not averse.
The problem looks like it has nothing to do with shaders and materials, but rather how Iray is handling the HD details.
Why it's having that problem baffles me.
Is there any chance it's related to Iray's known crankiness in converting 3Delight-style Displacement? That caught me out several times when I was beginning to convert things, until I finally realised what was happening.
Basically, yes.
It confused me because the skin doesn't use displacement, but I'm thinking the way 3dl handles subd and details must be similar, because that's how it's behaving with HD Detail
As I mentioned, the product has normal maps that are probably optimized for 3delight so it will behave differently in iray. Try turning the strength down or use a tool like zbrush to remake your own.
I'll try it!
The effect is there even without Normals and I don't think it has anything to do with Normals.
Yep, no normal maps, darn it. Removing them or recreating them would have been a relatively easy fix.