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Cthog Poser Figure test request

EldritchCellarEldritchCellar Posts: 96
in Freebies
Hi, I've created a figure for Poser and am wondering if any experienced Daz Studio users out there in the Daz community would give it a test spin in DS and provide me with some accurate feedback.The figure relies heavily on EasyPose and legacy Poser ERC functions. There seems to be some confusion on the part of a DS user who downloaded the figure and stated that he's not sure if the EasyPose functions work or not but he's suggesting that otherwise the figure's ok in DS. I'm a little concerned that people will be downloading this figure and getting a crippled version in DS. I can't provide support or conversion to DS as the program won't run reliably on my ancient Mac computer. Any accurate feedback would be greatly appreciated. The figure can be downloaded from ShareCG_ http://www.sharecg.com/v/82589/browse/11/Poser/Cthog
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Comments

  • SixDsSixDs Posts: 2,384

    "some accurate feedback"

    I'm not certain what sort of accurate feedback you're looking for, but I loaded it up in DS 4.6 on this PC and it seemed to be working correctly. I ran through the various ERCs for the tentacles, the eyes, brows, mouth, etc. and they all behaved in the expected way, with the possible exception of Cornea Bulge - I couldn't seem to get any noticeable reaction in the model using that. Or maybe I was just expecting something else. The tentacles move smoothly in response to the controls. I think it works fine in DAZ Studio (although I didn't try it in v. 4.8 - that's on another machine). I think you did a great job.

  • Faeryl WomynFaeryl Womyn Posts: 3,628
    edited October 2015

    I downloaded it when it first came out a few days ago and had a problem posing the tentacles and posted to him about it at Renderosity. I also said it my be just me and I think that even more as I might not be understanding easy pose correctly.  I thought it meant I could grab a section of a tentacle and move it, but that didn't havppen, it distorted part of it.  I never tried to pose them with the dials.

    I still have it installed cause I think it great, so will give it another go when I am done with my 2 renders.

    Post edited by Faeryl Womyn on
  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    Faeryl Womyn/CalieVee said:

    I downloaded it when it first came out a few days ago and had a problem posing the tentacles and posted to him about it at Renderosity. I also said it my be just me and I think that even more as I might not be understanding easy pose correctly.  I thought it meant I could grab a section of a tentacle and move it, but that didn't havppen, it distorted part of it.  I never tried to pose them with the dials.

    I still have it installed cause I think it great, so will give it another go when I am done with my 2 renders.

    It should work that way, but Studio will often go overboard doing it by grabbing and moving....using the sliders has much finer control.

  • EldritchCellarEldritchCellar Posts: 96
    edited October 2015
    Thanks for the information, the Cornea Bulge morph is on the EyeCover part/material. This part is transparent in the material and can only be detected on cornea style specular/reflections. If you make the eyecover opaque you will see the morph on the visible mesh itself. Note, EasyPose is a dial ERC control. It cannot be utilized via physical translation/rotation of the tentacles. Use the global dials in each tentacle base or use the 'after' dials in specific tentacle sections. This is mentioned in the readme. Thanks.
    Post edited by EldritchCellar on
  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited October 2015
    EldritchCellar said:
    Thanks for the information, the Cornea Bulge morph is on the EyeCover part/material. This part is transparent in the material and can only be detected on cornea style specular/reflections. If you make the eyecover opaque you will see the morph on the visible mesh itself. Note, EasyPose is a dial ERC control. It cannot be utilized via physical translation/rotation of the tentacles. Use the global dials in each tentacle base or use the 'after' dials in specific tentacle sections. This is mentioned in the readme. Thanks.

    I made an ammo belt that's EasyPose...and if done very slowly/carefully you can grab and pose, but don't count on it (and if you do grab, it needs to be the end of the chain)...the dials will always work, that's pretty much why it's done that way.

    Yeah, the cornea bulge works.  Nice to include one, EldritchCellar.  It's a key element in getting the eyes to look right, without resorting to baked in/painted on reflections.

    Post edited by mjc1016 on
  • EldritchCellarEldritchCellar Posts: 96
    edited October 2015
    Thanks for the feedback mjc1016. :)
    Post edited by EldritchCellar on
  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited November 2015

    Here's a Studio 3Delight render...

     

    cthog_1.png
    800 x 800 - 391K
    Post edited by mjc1016 on
  • EldritchCellarEldritchCellar Posts: 96
    Cool! Not crazy over the tentacle kinking in the pose you did and I notice that you didn't use displacement but nice to see it rendered by someone else. You dialed in the upper beak morph, lol. You can get some pretty goofy looking variations with the morphs, I think the figure would be useful in toon stuff too. Thanks mjc1016!
  • EldritchCellarEldritchCellar Posts: 96
    Crappy old Poser 8...
    CthogPromo.jpg
    1024 x 1024 - 430K
  • EldritchCellarEldritchCellar Posts: 96
    With the maps you used and included displacements...
    dagon small.jpg
    1500 x 1223 - 679K
  • EldritchCellarEldritchCellar Posts: 96
    I'm still not 100% convinced that the figure translates to DS well, but I can't very well do anything about what or how people choose to use my creation once I've set it free. My next figure, which is much simpler and probably of more conventional appeal, I'll be uploading shortly. It should work good in DS as it has very simple materials which should be less troublesome or labor intensive to translate and only 52 bones and a single EasyPose chain. Thanks.
  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    EldritchCellar said:
    I'm still not 100% convinced that the figure translates to DS well, but I can't very well do anything about what or how people choose to use my creation once I've set it free. My next figure, which is much simpler and probably of more conventional appeal, I'll be uploading shortly. It should work good in DS as it has very simple materials which should be less troublesome or labor intensive to translate and only 52 bones and a single EasyPose chain. Thanks.

    I know about the maps...realized it AFTER the render was done.

    The tenticles were more to not have them straight out than really posing them.  I was playing around with it a bit after that render and I think I can get a couple of nice presets for the AoA SSS shader and/or the Omnifreaker UberSurface.  If you don't mind I could post them on my ShareCG (it would just be presets the maps would be in your package, so they won't be redistributed).

  • EldritchCellarEldritchCellar Posts: 96
    You know what dude, that would be killer! I would be very grateful to anyone who dabbles with my humble creation and breathes more life into it. It'll take me a while to release my own expansions. Awesome!
  • Faeryl WomynFaeryl Womyn Posts: 3,628

    Let me see what more I can do with textures.

  • EldritchCellarEldritchCellar Posts: 96
    Thanks Calie. I've been caught up the last couple of days with rendering a plant figure... have to admit rendering is my least favorite part of this stuff, much prefer the modeling part. Look forward to seeing anything anyone might come up with.
  • XaatXuunXaatXuun Posts: 873

    seemed everything worked fr me. tried some shaders, didn't want  to look like the other Cthogs cheeky

     

    Cthiog 002.jpg
    1000 x 998 - 225K
  • EldritchCellarEldritchCellar Posts: 96
    Looks like a humorous alien sci fi overlord, cool. Just a note, using the displacements (not sure how DS handles middle gray Zbrush displacement maps) and a procedural bump (types of noise) will help to break up the specular and give a less plastic look to the surfaces. :)
  • EldritchCellarEldritchCellar Posts: 96
    I'm also curious if the tentacle pose preset dials work in DS... I included 5 dials under controls that allow for quick posing of the tentacles. So far it's looking like his tentacles have undergone some youtube skateboarding fiascos in terms of smooth posing. He he.
  • EldritchCellarEldritchCellar Posts: 96
    The global easypose controls are located in each tentacle at the parts titled 'base'. Selecting parts higher in the chain will reveal dials that apply cascading erc 'after' the selected part.
  • SixDsSixDs Posts: 2,384

    "I included 5 dials under controls that allow for quick posing of the tentacles"

    Im not certain which 5 dials you are referring to (they're sliders in DAZ Studio, BTW), since there are only 3 that are labelled as tentacle presets amongst the controls. All three of those work smoothly. Insofar as the kinking or sharp bending that occurs using any of the sliders, I only found that occurs a) if the sliders are moved to the extreme, and/or b) if the lower sections are selected and once again the sliders are moved to the extreme.With either scenario sharp bending is to be expected, after all we are talking about rigid segments that themselves do not bend. I found that tweaking the bending of before and after controls can eleviate the severity of the bending and smooth things out somewhat if that is desireable. I haven't tried in in Poser (yet), but I would expect similar behaviour there. Bottom line for me is that everything seems to work as expected in DAZ Studio insofar as the controls are concerned. With so many morphs and controls built into this thing, I believe that you have done a wonderful job, especially considering how well they work when mixed and matched.

    Of course, textures are an entirely different matter, but that's inevitably an issue to some degree given the different way the various programs handle them. Having said that, even the basic textures come across reasonably well, and anyone wanting more certainly has the option of customizing or enhancing them.

    I find myself wanting to design a body for the thing, although that may be beyond my meagre skill set at this time. Still, I'm thinking about it, conceptually, at least.

    Great fun! :)

  • XaatXuunXaatXuun Posts: 873
    EldritchCellar said:
    The global easypose controls are located in each tentacle at the parts titled 'base'. Selecting parts higher in the chain will reveal dials that apply cascading erc 'after' the selected part.

    I was going to mention/ask something like that, seems I had forgotten all about it. Didn't take me long to figure  that out though. I've never played with tentacles until this Cthog

  • EldritchCellarEldritchCellar Posts: 96
    edited November 2015
    Thanks guys, all your comments are pretty much in line with how I intended the figure to work/expect it to work. It does need more textures. I definitely plan on addressing that as time goes on. I do all of my 3D painting in Carrara, and touching up/finalizing in Photoshop. As far as a body goes, that's also something that I've got some ideas for. The model could easily have several types of bodies as separate figures. Additionally, being that the head is built out of separate parts it will be easy for me to create new parts and conformers to expand it's possibilities. I plan on this being a project that I'll work on inbetween making other things. Hopefully life doesnt throw me any curve balls! Again, I really appreciate all of the comments/suggestions. This is a learning process for me. :)
    Post edited by EldritchCellar on
  • SixDsSixDs Posts: 2,384
    edited November 2015

    BTW, there is one question that perhaps you can answer for me. There seems to be a complete set of texture maps in the Textures folder in .jpg and .png formats, but there is also a set of 14 .jpgs and 4 .pngs in there with filenames like "._Cthog_EyesMask.jpg". They all have that odd "._" at the beginning, and any attempt to open either type in Photoshop, ImageReady or anything else I have fails with an error. What are these?

    Edit: Aha. Nevermind, found it. MAC OSX resource data files. Jess' blow dem away. :)

    Post edited by SixDs on
  • EldritchCellarEldritchCellar Posts: 96
    Yeah, they're similar to windows thumbs db. That Cthog_EyesMask.jpg is meant to be applied to Cthog's Sclera material masking a specular node in Poser in order to control specular and soften a hard highlight at the edge between Sclera and Iris. It's set up in the Poser materials but I'm not sure how that translates in DS.
  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001

    With a shader other than the DS default and a 'real' light it shouldn't be needed...

  • EldritchCellarEldritchCellar Posts: 96
    I found using the mask in Poser was helpful with controlling the glossy node (which I used on the sclera) effect at that edge, which was apparent even with IDL. That edge there was modeled a little hard, more like a toon figures eyes. I was going for a more realistic effect in my promo images. Lol.
  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001

    The other two common 3Delight shaders in Studio have more control over the specular...they can add blur, do fresnel with falloff and such.  So that kind of map isn't needed as much.

  • Faeryl WomynFaeryl Womyn Posts: 3,628

    Until a body is made I am trying to use him on Genesis and G2M and see if posing works well once parented to the neck.  Will let you know the results.

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,219
    Faeryl Womyn/CalieVee said:

    Until a body is made I am trying to use him on Genesis and G2M and see if posing works well once parented to the neck.  Will let you know the results.

    In Poser you can replace a head on any body and save it as a cr2

    they work in DS then too

    not perfect but an idea for use

  • Faeryl WomynFaeryl Womyn Posts: 3,628

    Well I know about that part, just never tried it, seems parenting worked with only some minor adjustments after a pose is applied.  I couldn't find information on image sizes so don't know if image is allowed.  I am sure a mod will fix it if I did make it too big...lol  Anyway, used Genesis and Creature Creator Morphs and just applied a green color to sorta make it match, I admit a slap job, but was testing parenting the head not textures...lol

     

    Cthog.png
    1572 x 1830 - 2M
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