Universal Anime Head
It all started when I bought a book called "Poser 4 Handbook" back in 2001. I was coming from Poser 3, and this book was showing things I had no idea were possible to do with regular figures without using any other tools. I thought it was cool, but by then I had no use for it.
Much later in 2005, I was fed up with Aiko3's "fake" Anime style, and needed a figure that could wear her clothes, but replace her head with one that was more suitable for the style. AnimeDoll had the perfect head for the job, but her body was outdated and basically had no morphs. Her wardrobe was also limited. Aiko3 had a modern body and decent wardrobe, but I resented her head.
That motivated me to create the very first "hybrid" Anime figure for Poser, called "Madoka". It had Aiko3's body with the head of AnimeDoll, where I modeled a new neck and merged everything into a single mesh with body and head morphs preserved and fully functioning. A3/AD Madoka had the best of both worlds. That solved my problem, and I made her a freebie at Renderosity.
Later on, I was considering using AnimeDoll's head with other bodies, but making a "hybrid" figure was complicated. There must be an easier way. The answer was in that "Poser 4 Handbook" I have mentioned in the beginning. It shows that any body part from any figure can be replaced with a prop, which gave me some ideas.
The AnimeDoll head, or any other head for this matter are not props, but figures. So that body part replacement wouldn't work for this - or so I thought. The truth is, Poser is much more flexible than I thought. At a first glance, if we select a figure in Poser and look at the properties, we can only parent a figure to a prop, but not to another figure. But instead, what if we open the Hierarchy Editor, and just drag and drop it over the figure? Voila! We have created a "composite" figure without leaving Poser or using any external tools!
So "hybrid" is good, but "composite" is better! Or at least, it's easy to make. We can mix and match bodies and heads from any figures we like on the spot. Imagine the possibilities. So now I had a new Madoka, this time using Vicky4's body with AnimeDoll's head. Whenever I found an outfit I wanted Madoka to wear, I just swapped the body instead of converting the clothings.
But here's the thing - AnimeDoll was never updated in years, so her head was showing signs of obsolescence. It wasn't until much later in 2014 that I realized nobody was making the head I was wishing for, so I decided to make it myself. The objective was to make something that could be flexible enough to build different characters with it, and also provide the much needed wider range of Anime expressions I couldn't get from any Aiko.
The head should make male, female, child, adult and chibi characters, and fit the bodies from any figure - hence the "universal" head. The mesh ended up with only 1660 faces, which was 10 times less polys than Dawn's head. It may look rather jagged but that's where Poser (or DS) subdivision surfaces come in. It was built and designed to benefit from subdivision surfaces. If we need more polys, Poser can subdivide it. The best setting was to leave it low poly in previews, and set it to subdivide only in renders.
But if the head and body are from different figures, can I use textures? There are ways to use, or not to use textures in this case. We can use textures and try to match the skin tone, and that might take some practice. Another way is to use simple color skin tones, which will always be a perfect match in renders. Anime characters are all about flat colors anyway. But the head has a UV template if textures are needed.
What about neck seams? "Hybrid" figures are seamless, while "composite" are not. There will be a seam, but we shouldn't be able to see it unless in very specific poses and camera angles. It should not be visible with the typical poses and framing we use in Poser/DS. In cases where the seam does show up, we can remove it in postwork, just like we do with clothing pokethrus and bad joint bendings. In my experience, it rarely ever happens.
Once I had the head, I started experimenting with composite figures using a variety of bodies: Posette, Aiko3, Aiko4, Vicky4, Dawn, Nearme, Cookie, Genesis, Genesis 2 Female, and Micheal 4.
The package has native versions for Poser or DS4, and includes about 100 items:
The morphs are divided into head shaping and individual features (eyes, mouth, nose, ears, etc). The flat Anime eyes are poseable with regular Side-side and Up-down dials. For that to be possible, I had to rig the eyes with magnets in rather unorthodox ways, or else the eyeballs might poke out of the head when posed. The result was that the eyes are squashed flat, but can be posed the same way as if they were spherical. Works like a charm!
It all started when I bought a book called "Poser 4 Handbook" back in 2001. I was coming from Poser 3, and this book was showing things I had no idea were possible to do with regular figures without using any other tools. I thought it was cool, but by then I had no use for it.
Much later in 2005, I was fed up with Aiko3's "fake" Anime style, and needed a figure that could wear her clothes, but replace her head with one that was more suitable for the style. AnimeDoll had the perfect head for the job, but her body was outdated and basically had no morphs. Her wardrobe was also limited. Aiko3 had a modern body and decent wardrobe, but I resented her head.
That motivated me to create the very first "hybrid" Anime figure for Poser, called "Madoka". It had Aiko3's body with the head of AnimeDoll, where I modeled a new neck and merged everything into a single mesh with body and head morphs preserved and fully functioning. A3/AD Madoka had the best of both worlds. That solved my problem, and I made her a freebie at Renderosity.
Later on, I was considering using AnimeDoll's head with other bodies, but making a "hybrid" figure was complicated. There must be an easier way. The answer was in that "Poser 4 Handbook" I have mentioned in the beginning. It shows that any body part from any figure can be replaced with a prop, which gave me some ideas.
The AnimeDoll head, or any other head for this matter are not props, but figures. So that body part replacement wouldn't work for this - or so I thought. The truth is, Poser is much more flexible than I thought. At a first glance, if we select a figure in Poser and look at the properties, we can only parent a figure to a prop, but not to another figure. But instead, what if we open the Hierarchy Editor, and just drag and drop it over the figure? Voila! We have created a "composite" figure without leaving Poser or using any external tools!
So "hybrid" is good, but "composite" is better! Or at least, it's easy to make. We can mix and match bodies and heads from any figures we like on the spot. Imagine the possibilities. So now I had a new Madoka, this time using Vicky4's body with AnimeDoll's head. Whenever I found an outfit I wanted Madoka to wear, I just swapped the body instead of converting the clothings.
But here's the thing - AnimeDoll was never updated in years, so her head was showing signs of obsolescence. It wasn't until much later in 2014 that I realized nobody was making the head I was wishing for, so I decided to make it myself. The objective was to make something that could be flexible enough to build different characters with it, and also provide the much needed wider range of Anime expressions I couldn't get from any Aiko.
The head should make male, female, child, adult and chibi characters, and fit the bodies from any figure - hence the "universal" head. The mesh ended up with only 1660 faces, which was 10 times less polys than Dawn's head. It may look rather jagged but that's where Poser (or DS) subdivision surfaces come in. It was built and designed to benefit from subdivision surfaces. If we need more polys, Poser can subdivide it. The best setting was to leave it low poly in previews, and set it to subdivide only in renders.
But if the head and body are from different figures, can I use textures? There are ways to use, or not to use textures in this case. We can use textures and try to match the skin tone, and that might take some practice. Another way is to use simple color skin tones, which will always be a perfect match in renders. Anime characters are all about flat colors anyway. But the head has a UV template if textures are needed.
What about neck seams? "Hybrid" figures are seamless, while "composite" are not. There will be a seam, but we shouldn't be able to see it unless in very specific poses and camera angles. It should not be visible with the typical poses and framing we use in Poser/DS. In cases where the seam does show up, we can remove it in postwork, just like we do with clothing pokethrus and bad joint bendings. In my experience, it rarely ever happens.
Once I had the head, I started experimenting with composite figures using a variety of bodies: Posette, Aiko3, Aiko4, Vicky4, Dawn, Nearme, Cookie, Genesis, Genesis 2 Female, and Micheal 4.
The package has native versions for Poser or DS4, and includes about 100 items:
- Universal Anime Head with 110+ morph dials (low poly: 1660 faces)
- 10 pages Composite Figure Creation PDF tutorial
- 25 eye texture presets
- 30 skin tones presets (colors)
- 30 expression presets (head poses)
- 5 additional Anime style presets (70s, adult, child, chibi and monkey)
- 3 texture templates for you to create your own textures
- Upper and lower teeth (SmartProps)
- ReadMe file with tips & hints for best use
The morphs are divided into head shaping and individual features (eyes, mouth, nose, ears, etc). The flat Anime eyes are poseable with regular Side-side and Up-down dials. For that to be possible, I had to rig the eyes with magnets in rather unorthodox ways, or else the eyeballs might poke out of the head when posed. The result was that the eyes are squashed flat, but can be posed the same way as if they were spherical. Works like a charm!
