Show Us Your Dawn Renders!

[quietrob]

I pulled an all-nighter on this Thursday into Friday morning and uploaded it which went well right up until I hit the Post Reply button at which point my broadband connection went kabloooie until an hour ago. So....second attempt. THE CONSERVATORY. Dawn, mini-Dawn, statues and a couple of pesky parrots!

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Wench Dress, Princess Dress for Diva, Conservatory Set and TheDomePropSet by Lully, Porcelain for Dawn by Varnayrah, Diva for Dawn by Pendraia Fae, Itarille E’enwear Pumps by Satira Capriccio, Plants from Hanging Plants by Lisa B, Birds (Sun Conure) by Ken Gilliland. All at Hivewire3D.

Twin Tails and Divine Hair by Fabiana, Vase by DM, Nymph and Greek Sculpture by Applejack, Gramophone by Mesh Manglers.

And I thought I had crazy dreams! This is just wickedly good fun.

 

[Hornet3d]

And I thought I had crazy dreams! This is just wickedly good fun.

I love this. Glad to hear your broadband is back.

 

[Ken1171]

And now for something different, I have heard a LOT of people mentioning Dawn's "quarterback shoulders". This is a side-by-side comparison with the default Dawn shoulders on the left, and my reduced shape on the right. I have been experimenting with this in several of my recent renders. This morph changes the shoulders, arms, hands and fingers bones, so it uses ERCs to re-center the joints when the morph is applied (Animated Origins). We can only do this with Poser 11+ (it was only partially implemented in P10), but the resulting ERCs are backwards compatible with older versions.

In the render below I have applied the morph at 70%, so it can reduce shoulders size even more if needed. I would like to hear some feedback from the HW3D community on this. Do you agree with the comments that Dawn's shoulders are too large? Do you think she looks better on the right? Personally, I think she does, and looks more natural. What do you think?

 

[mininessie]

There are real people with both shapes..i prefer the smaller shoulders... But i know some girls have them wider...so both options are ok

 

[Glitterati3D]

We've had a morph to narrow Dawn's shoulders since SR2. I use it all the time.

And, frankly, those who still talk about Dawn's quarterback shoulders have no intention of leaving their nasty little dig behind no matter what. It's their go to "Dawn isn't perfect" comparison.

Your shoulders look very nice, but I really don't want to mess with Animated Origins in clothing rigging just to satisfy a few competitors who have no intention of using Dawn anyway.

 

[Ken1171]

both options are ok

It's good to have options when we make our own characters.

We've had a morph to narrow Dawn's shoulders since SR2. I use it all the time.

Oh yes, but it doesn't get even close to where I need it to be, mostly because Dawn's wide shoulders come in good part from the collar's joint position. Plain morphs will be limited by that, unless we move and reposition the skeleton. That's why I started to experiment with my own version. I had already used Animatable Origins in all my store characters for Dawn. This has always existed in DS, but in Poser only after P10, where end points still couldn't be animated, and resulted into odd side-effects. Starting with PP11, SMS finally introduced fully animatable joints (origins and end points), and that's when things started to work as expected. Toon Hikari and CatsEyes couldn't exist without that. ^___^

And, frankly, those who still talk about Dawn's quarterback shoulders have no intention of leaving their nasty little dig behind no matter what. It's their go to "Dawn isn't perfect" comparison.

Agreed on that.

Your shoulders look very nice, but I really don't want to mess with Animated Origins in clothing rigging just to satisfy a few competitors who have no intention of using Dawn anyway.

No worries there - the morph and Animatable Origins ERCs are automatically transferred to the clothing when we copy the morphs from Dawn. The ERCs become part of the morph, and require no action from you. Just like it is with DS, when you dial the morph, the skeleton automatically moves with it. Only PP11 can create this hook-up, but the results are backwards with older Poser versions. It won't break anything. As an example, CatsEyes uses Animatable Origins, and she can wear anything, assuming you copy her morphs first.

 

[Miss B]

It's interesting that you bring this up Ken, as I've never thought Dawn's shoulders were that oversized. Now V3, V4, M3, and M4, definitely, and I have Corvas' fix morphs for them, which he sells at Renderosity.

Now if you really want to go with smaller shoulders I, personally, would not go for 70%. I think the one on the right is a bit too small. Maybe 75-80% might be, to me anyway, more natural.

Here's a render I did back in 2013 with facial character morph for Dawn from Cybrea, which she had posted about on our old forum. Since she had already done the same character for V3 years ago, I decided to do a "sisters" render. The gal on the left is Dawn, and the gal on the right is V3. Check out those shoulders by comparison. I think V3's shoulders are far worse. I don't know if I had Corvas' shoulder fix for her back then, but I always use it on V4 whenever I use her in a render.

Oh and yes, I have broad shoulders and never thought they looked like quarterback shoulders. Then again, my shoulders don't stand up like Vicky's do. Part of Carvas' fix is to lower them, not just make them smaller.

 

[Ken1171]

Me too, I used to have correcting morphs for V4 shoulders, but they were to fix the bad bending, not their size. But we are talking about V4, I also had to correction morphs to fix almost every joint in her body - she could not pose well without them, and that's how bad a figure she was - but people still love her, and vendors are still creating new products for her. In good part, that was because she had no competition to worry about, and DAZ didn't release anything to replace her to several solid years - enough time to consolidate V4 as the standard. Not to mention she had no JCMs, so rigging for her was a piece of cake.

But this is about Dawn, so I made this corrective morph for her that goes deep enough to suit my needs. It can be used in any amount, where even 50% might be enough depending on the pose. It's at 70% in the render, so if you think the shoulders look too small there, you probably meant that maybe 25-40% might be enough. 80% would make the shoulders even smaller.

 

[Miss B]

Oh Duuuuh, of course!

OK, in that case, then 45%-50% would do the trick. I don't know why I was thinking 100% was the full size, when in fact, 100% would be more like no shoulders at all.

 

[Ken1171]

Indeed, I find it easier to create petite characters using this morph. There were several cases where I couldn't get the looks I wanted on a character because the shoulders were too wide, and there was nothing I could do about them. It's a matter of proportions, and it's quite visible in the character's silhouette. In many of my reference books, the female body proportions were measured as width relations between the shoulders, waist and hips. Now I can control all 3 of these measurements. ^^

 

[Hornet3d]

And now for something different, I have heard a LOT of people mentioning Dawn's "quarterback shoulders". This is a side-by-side comparison with the default Dawn shoulders on the left, and my reduced shape on the right. I have been experimenting with this in several of my recent renders. This morph changes the shoulders, arms, hands and fingers bones, so it uses ERCs to re-center the joints when the morph is applied (Animated Origins). We can only do this with Poser 11+ (it was only partially implemented in P10), but the resulting ERCs are backwards compatible with older versions.

In the render below I have applied the morph at 70%, so it can reduce shoulders size even more if needed. I would like to hear some feedback from the HW3D community on this. Do you agree with the comments that Dawn's shoulders are too large? Do you think she looks better on the right? Personally, I think she does, and looks more natural. What do you think?

View attachment 29235

I have never really regarded Dawn has having a problem with the shoulders. I can see that your reduced shape is quite different and I think I could happily use either, much would depend on the character I was trying to create. Choice is good in my book so I would see this as a nice development.

 

[Ken1171]

Exactly - some characters need smaller shoulders, while some others are fine with Dawn's default. It's a matter of being able to choose when there is a need for it. As a comparison, I think Genesis tends to have much thinner arms, which results into smaller shoulders. The shape of her shoulders are also more angular, while Dawn's is more rounded.

 

[Glitterati3D]

Ken, can we see a quick render with her arms over her head with your shoulder correction? That's where Dawn's shoulders tend to display more of a shoulder problem for me than other poses.

 

[Ken1171]

Ken, can we see a quick render with her arms over her head with your shoulder correction?

Fair enough. Here's Dawn with default body on the left, and narrow shoulders on the right. She seems more petite even if only the shoulders are narrower.

 

[Glitterati3D]

Fair enough. Here's Dawn with default body on the left, and narrow shoulders on the right. She seems more petite even if only the shoulders are narrower.

View attachment 29249

Oh yeah, that IS appreciably better. Are you going to make this morph available commercially for the rest of us?

Please?

 

[Ken1171]

Oh yeah, that IS appreciably better. Are you going to make this morph available commercially for the rest of us?
Please?

I plan to - since this has been a concern of many. Below is a diagram showing Dawn's shoulders-to-waist-to-hips ratio using a triangle, which is a method used for drawing female characters. The wider the triangle top, the more "masculine" the silhouette. It doesn't mean that Dawn is "masculine", but instead that it gives that perceptual impression. In the example below, I have applied the shoulder reduction to 70% on the right side, and the perceptual impression changes considerably. I think this is where the "quarterback shoulders" idea came from -> the shoulder-to-waist-to-hips ratio. Making the arms thinner could also help - perhaps even thinner than Dawn's morphs allow. I will experiment with that too.

I am not saying this should be used ALL the time, but instead that we should be able to do this when needed.

 

[Miss B]

Oh yeah, that IS appreciably better. Are you going to make this morph available commercially for the rest of us?

Please?

Thank you for asking Traci, as I was just about to, and thank you Ken for agreeing to make it available.

 

[Lyne]

I always use Dawn's dial @ 1.00 for her shoulders... and am VERY interested in this morph too, Ken!!!

 

[Ken1171]

I am happy to know it's not just me.

The existing "Shoulders Narrow" dial on Dawn changes the shoulder tops shape, but not the actual shoulders size. Mine actually moves the entire arms skeleton and affects all bones from collars to hands and fingers. The thing is that Dawn's arms are rather thick, so narrowing the shoulders alone can make the arms appear to be even thicker in comparison. It's an effect similar to when we make the waist narrower, it gives the [false] impression that the hips have become wider.

I am experimenting with thinner arms to see if I can balance this.

 

[Ken1171]

Here's another comparison, this time I did 3 changes on the right side:

1. Smaller shoulders adjustment (at 70%)
2. Thinner arms adjustment
3. Applied Dawn's existing "Shoulders Narrow" morph, which reshapes the top of the upper arms.

It's a dramatic change in shoulders shape, and it can be applied in different amounts. It becomes more evident with the thinner arms.