New Characters and then Nothing

[drafter69]

I purchased Axel quite a while ago thinking there would be additional material for him but I was wrong....... so far NOTHING

Now we have Rodrigo as a new character.......

I will not buy Rodrego unless I see that additional material will be available.

If developers are going to create new characters and then abandon then they should let folks know before they spend money on an abandoned character.

 

[Miss B]

Hi drafter69, welcome to the Hive.

As far as your issue with vendors who "abandon" their characters, I have found that new character skins (and morphs) are usually done by more than one vendor, and not necessarily by the original creator of the character.

More often than not, I'll find multiple textures for a product from the same vendor if the product is a piece of clothing, rather than the character wearing the clothing. Unfortunately, a good many vendors at this store and others, prefer to create more characters for Dawn than Dusk, but then the female 3D characters have always gotten more love than the male 3D characters.

Also bear in mind, Laurie (CWRW) has included 4 separate characters, both skins and morphs, in the Rodrigo package.

 

[drafter69]

Thanks for your quick response but since there has been nothing new for Axel I will still consider him abandoned.... Now with the new character UNTIL I see additional material being produced for him I will hold off any purchase to see if he too is a one-shot wonder.

 

[Miss B]

I'm not sure I was clear enough in my initial response, but the "character" in this case is HiveWire's Dusk. Rodrigo is an addon character pack that would need Dusk to work (just as Axel does), so Laurie may do other sets for Dusk, and hopefully other vendors will too, but new "materials" will be for Dusk not Rodrigo.

Also, the beauty of working in 3D is, most often you can "mix and match", so you can use the morphs from the Rodrigo pack with another vendor's character skins, which will broaden your options.

 

[Sunfire]

I think Miss B has said it quite well.

Axel and Rodrigo are morphs for the Dusk Figure. They are not separate Characters of their own. They can both wear Dusk's clothing, and really do not need further morphing or new textures, as they come with the textures they are meant to for the character the artist envisioned when creating the morph for Dusk.

Perhaps you could explain more what you mean by creating and abandoning characters with nothing new coming out for them, as your complaint rather has me confused.

In the case of Axel and Rodrigo. Character means a morph to apply to a base figure. In this case Dusk, and as a result can wear Dusk's clothing, use Dusk's morphs, etc.

 

[Alisa]

What they said

You are clearly completely misunderstanding what both Axel and Rodrigo ARE.

They are only textures and/or morphs (Rodrigo is a texture and the Character set is a set of morphs, in his case) for DUSK. THEY ARE NOT SEPARATE FIGURES!!

Just like Lanval, or Brothers, or Takeo in our store.

Maybe this will help clarify

Look at this character for Victoria 4

ML Saskia for V4

Saskia is a Morph and Texture set for Victoria 4. . She is NOT a separate figure.

Would you say that "I'm not buying Saskia unless you make things to support her"? Of course not! She can use any clothing (yes, you MAY have to add her morphs to the clothing in Poser , which is a normal thing) and things should fit through autofit in DAZ Studio.

This is NO DIFFERENT with Axel and Rodrigo. There is nothing TO support because they are not separate figures.

Does that help clarify things?

 

[CWRW]

Rodrigo is totally a morph of Dusk and a texture set for him- I don't have the modeling talent or the faintest idea how to model or make a whole new figure

 

[Doug Rogers]

Speaking of Axel...

I initially bought him, then returned him after several months of waiting for the Poser version.

I would buy him again... at full price... *IF* the Poser version were to come to be. Has any progress been made on this? Is there anything we can do to encourage this to occur? I'll help any way I can as I've got REAL interest in this character!

 

[Miss B]

Welcome to the HiveWire forums Doug.

I'm not sure what, if anything, is being done about a Poser version of Axel, and I see 3D Universe is not a registered member here on the forum, so we can't PM him to find out. Perhaps I can ask someone on the staff to see if they have a way to get in touch with him to ask.

 

[Lissa_xyz]

I hope I'm not overstepping anything here, but I just want to add my .02 with regards to content creation and porting items.

Axel was just released September of last year. Reading the description he seems to include custom rigging adjustments and morph corrections for facial morphs belonging to Dusk, both Iray and 3Delight shaders, as well as the clothing and hair.

Poser isn't directly interchangable with Daz Studio weights and rigging, and surely not with Daz Studio shaders. Axel would be quite an undertaking to port over to Poser, and being that 3DUniverse creates products for multiple figures at multiple stores in addition to whatever they may have going on in their personal lives, it would most likely take more than 4 months to get a Poser version of Axel out to users. In addition to the figure morph and all of the corrections and materials for it, the clothing and hair as well as any morphs and materials for those also need to be redone.

Also, now with the newest version of Poser out, there's now Superfly (ie Cycles), which means that 3DU now needs to create another set of materials in addition to the regular Firefly materials.

I've seen plenty of vendors push an item back because they refused to release something half-done. For all we know it's done and they were waiting on the Poser update so they could release Superfly materials with it at release rather than later.

 

[Miss B]

Good points Vask. Thanks for stepping in with more clarifications.

 

[Pendraia]

Hi and welcome Drafter69 and Doug!

I think the confusion here may be due to one of the differences between Daz3D and Hivewire. Daz will often release characters with a starter and pro pack and there is an expectation that these will have further morphs/characters created for them. Alel was created as a once off character by 3DUniverse not as a package by the Hive. They have however said that as they get chance they will convert him to Poser also with the permission of 3DUniverse....IIRC they did the conversions for Willow and Alexis also this was mentioned at Axels release.

Most of this work is done by one person in the form of Paul. We need a clone of him...; )

Hivewire has created the base platform of Dawn, Dusk and Baby Luna but due to the fact that they are small business they do not have the resources or the community of vendors already set up to do something like this. They rely on Contributing artists to develop morphs and characters for them and are gradually building up a community of artists that are releasing things for their models. They did set up a basic clothing, hair and shoes sets with there characters on release...there are a number of characters that have been released for Poser not as many for DS I know...but none of the base models have been abandoned.

Axel was just released September of last year. Reading the description he seems to include custom rigging adjustments and morph corrections for facial morphs belonging to Dusk, both Iray and 3Delight shaders, as well as the clothing and hair.

Poser isn't directly interchangable with Daz Studio weights and rigging, and surely not with Daz Studio shaders. Axel would be quite an undertaking to port over to Poser, and being that 3DUniverse creates products for multiple figures at multiple stores in addition to whatever they may have going on in their personal lives, it would most likely take more than 4 months to get a Poser version of Axel out to users. In addition to the figure morph and all of the corrections and materials for it, the clothing and hair as well as any morphs and materials for those also need to be redone.

Also, now with the newest version of Poser out, there's now Superfly (ie Cycles), which means that 3DU now needs to create another set of materials in addition to the regular Firefly materials.

I've seen plenty of vendors push an item back because they refused to release something half-done. For all we know it's done and they were waiting on the Poser update so they could release Superfly materials with it at release rather than later.

I can vouch for how true this is. My Diva morph which I have been working on for Dawn required me to hand edit the cr2 file to get it to work in Poser. This is editing over 70000 lines of code. Programs like Netherworks Toy Box unfortunately don't transfer the rigging adjustments across so hand editing is necessary. I'm still working on doing the mats. I don't have the latest version of Poser so it will only be Firefly mats that I do but that is still 3 lots of mats, two of which are using shader systems that I'm not familiar with. This all takes time.

 

[Alisa]

Yes, Pen's correct - the Poser conversion of Axel will be done in-house by Paul. It's definitely on the list of projects, though we can't give a definitive answer as to when. And, when it is done, it will simply be added as a free update to the DS version.

 

[Miss B]

Ohhh, so Paul is doing the Poser conversion. That's good news, but knowing the amount of items on his "plate" to be done, I'm not surprised if it will take a while longer.

 

[Alisa]

Exactly. We're all wearing a lot of hats and there are a bunch of amazing things Paul's working on!

I know folks are looking forward to the Poser version of Axel

 

[AetherDream]

I would also be interested in the Poser version, however, I completely understand why the creator of Axel did not do the conversion as that kind of work is so difficult and way beyond the skill set of many of us character creators. I am just grateful for any support I see for our beloved HW figures.

 

[Hornet3d]

A personal view, but I think because Daz Studio and Poser do basically the same thing, at the basic level at least, it is easy to forget the differences that exist. I am not skilled enough to create my own content but I have researched the subject enough to know just how much effort it would take to get skill in either Poser or DS to create the likes of Axel. (let alone to be skilled in both). Considering the work involved I also think it is very generous to offer the Poser version as a free update when the time comes, if that is indeed the case.

On the subject of characters, I think there is often this conflict between what is a figure and what is a character. Both my main V4 and Dawn characters are actually a mix of more than one 'character pack' and as long as the character is not too far away from the base figure there is no need for support. Although this is not the case with Axel, many characters are no more than the result of dial spinning anyway and even those with unique morphs tend to concentrate on the head, so once again the support would be for the base figure, not the character in question.

 

[Miss B]

On the subject of characters, I think there is often this conflict between what is a figure and what is a character. Both my main V4 and Dawn characters are actually a mix of more than one 'character pack' and as long as the character is not too far away from the base figure there is no need for support. Although this is not the case with Axel, many characters are no more than the result of dial spinning anyway and even those with unique morphs tend to concentrate on the head, so once again the support would be for the base figure, not the character in question.

Well said Hornet.

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

On the subject of characters, I think there is often this conflict between what is a figure and what is a character. Both my main V4 and Dawn characters are actually a mix of more than one 'character pack' and as long as the character is not too far away from the base figure there is no need for support. Although this is not the case with Axel, many characters are no more than the result of dial spinning anyway and even those with unique morphs tend to concentrate on the head, so once again the support would be for the base figure, not the character in question.

I think you're absolutely right, Hornet. And I think that is the basic, underlying problem that leads to threads like this. I think a lot of people don't understand the difference between a "character" and a "base figure" anymore, because Daz delivers it's Iconics in such a way that if they click on it, it loads the whole figure.

Therefore, many people think that a "character" is a figure all to it's own, when in fact it is not. It is simply a morphed shape that is supporting the underlying base figure.

I think a lot of people have this confusion between "character" and "figure" - I have seen similar threads many, many times, ever since Daz started doing their Iconics the way they currently do.

Very well said, Hornet.

 

[Miss B]

Yes Seliah, I discovered that when I started playing with my first set of V5 and M5 characters for the original Genesis.

I loaded the base Genesis to a scene, and then checked out the 2 or 3 V5 characters I had, and when I went to apply one to the base Genesis figure, I wound up with 2 characters in the scene! I was totally shocked, and originally thought I did something wrong, until I tried the other V5 and M5 characters I had, and found they all did the same thing. I had never scene that done before, and was totally amazed.