RELEASED Body Type-12 for Dawn

[Ken1171]

Like I was saying at my products thread, 12 is a beautiful number, and I wanted my body type series to end with number 12. I have been working on it for a while, and just now I have something to show. It will be one of my most detailed body sculpts for Dawn. The entire body has been redefined.

Main features are:

* Narrow upper torso
* Smaller shoulders
* Thinner and shapely arms
* Voluptuous lower torso
* Voluptuous, shapely legs
* Voluptuous buttocks
* New and unique breast shape
* Generous volumes, neither fat nor thin
* Longer legs
* Shorter arms
* Shorter torso
* Sculpted, toned, feminine abdomen
* Redefined rib cage shape
* Slender back and waist
* Slightly smaller head, hands and feet.

Nothing like a side-by-side comparison to see how much change Type-12 does to default DawnSE in terms of shape and proportions.

In spite of the radical change in shape and proportions, she is exactly the same height as DawnSE. I am still working on it, and some things may change, but this is how it looks in the current stage. I am doing the DS version in parallel, taking advantage of things that work particularly better in Poser or in DS on the creative process. The sculpting is all done in Poser with the Morphing Tool, as well as creating the JCMs. I am using my custom tool to convert these morph targets so they can be used in DS, so, for the first time, both versions will share exactly the same morphs.

I have sculpted as much detail as the mesh density allows, so the morph looks its best when the figure is subdivided, which is always the case in DS. In Poser, I set it to only subdivide in renders. The above was rendered in Poser SF with 1-level subdivision.

I am currently working on the JCMs for pose correction, and one that bothers me on Dawn is the leg bend, so I have decided to correct some of it on Type-12. I think I did some of this on Type-11 as well.

The most challenging part has been, as usual, the shoulders. I have radically changed the entire upper torso to a much smaller size, with much thinner arms. This typically fights Dawn's weight maps, which was designed for a much thicker and longer version. With some JCM surgery, this is how it bends now (looked horrible before the JCM).

Thanks to accumulated experience from all previous 11 body sculpts, this one was more optimized, requiring only 3 JCMs to pose properly. As a matter of fact, Dawn poses exceptionally well (except for the thighs) considering she has only 3 JCMs - all on the thighs. Type-12 took 2 on the thighs and 1 on the shoulders, which is pretty good comparing to how much the body shape and proportions have been changed.

Now, back to work...

 

[Miss B]

Now THAT's a shapely lady, without winding up with a lot of extreme shaping. I'm liking her a lot!

Oh and very nice job on the shoulders/underarms.

 

[Ken1171]

Now THAT's a shapely lady, without winding up with a lot of extreme shaping. I'm liking her a lot!

Oh and very nice job on the shoulders/underarms.

Thanks, Miss B. The difference from Dawn is rather extreme, but to design this body shape, I took from one part and added to another, trying to keep a balance. She has a smaller upper torso, but bigger hips. Thinner arms, but thicker legs. A shorter torso, but longer legs. The breasts are full, but not large. It's a contrast of big and small that I think works to her favor. All in all, I think she has a balanced body with emphasis on femininity and aesthetics.

Definitely not a supermodel, for then she would have to be anorexic thin with zero breasts. On the contrary, Type-12 has a quite voluptuous body with a rather thick torso, hips, and legs. I want the 12th entry (last one) to be special, so I've put more effort of her design to make it balanced. ^^

Oh yes, I am still on the shoulders and underams. More extreme poses, in combination with other axes can be troublesome. I will need more time on these.

 

[Ken1171]

A quick test with Type-12 in iClone with CatsEyes face. The hair and formal attire are from iClone, except for my Diamond Dress boots. I didn't spend much time rigging the shoulders here - this was more like a 20 seconds job LOL.

I know I am biased on this, but I think CatsEyes face on Type-12 body looks super cute. ^_____^

Rendered in iClone with the default real-time PBR mode. Look how the hair naturally sways with the movement - I love that in iClone.

 

[Miss B]

Very nice indeed, and I do like that about the hair. I don't do animations in Poser, but isn't there some way to do that in Poser as well?

 

[RobZhena]

Fantastic! I hope conversions to Dawn 2.0 will happen.

 

[Miss B]

Knowing Ken, I'm sure all his Body Types will be usable with Dawn 2.0.

 

[Ken1171]

Very nice indeed, and I do like that about the hair. I don't do animations in Poser, but isn't there some way to do that in Poser as well?

Well, iClone does it with the PhysX real-time engine, and Poser has the built-in Bullet engine, but many features were not implemented. I have done some testing in Poser with soft body dynamics to animate hair, and it kind of works, but results are rather unpredictable. There are too many parameters, where small changes can have a huge effect on the results. It would be the same in iClone, but Reallusion has simplified the process considerably. Instead of painting weight maps like we do in Poser, in iClone we instead paint a greyscale gradient over the UV template.

This will work with cloth and hair, and it takes a few rounds to get it right. At least in iClone the params are already set up for you, while in Poser we have to do it all manually. It is feasible, and I have done it already, but in iClone they made it easier.

Another difference is that iClone animates hair with spring physics, while Poser does it with soft body dynamics, which is way more complex and difficult to control. Sorry this didn't have a short answer.

Fantastic! I hope conversions to Dawn 2.0 will happen.

It seems like Paul has a method to transfer morphs between the old and the new Dawn, but I don't know what that is. I do know, however, that this will only work in DS, so Poser guys are out of luck. My guess is that it uses the Transfer Utility from DS, and the trick is how to set the many controls and parameters. I believe Paul will make this information available when the time comes.

However, HW is currently setting Dawn 2 apart to concentrate on the tiger (or was it the wolf?), so I wouldn't worry too much about it. Like Chris said, Paul will come back to work on Dawn 2 after that, and the whole thing will still take long to complete. In the meanwhile, there is still a lot of fun to be had with DawnSE.

Knowing Ken, I'm sure all his Body Types will be usable with Dawn 2.0.

I know there is a way (DS-only), but I don't know what it is. I suspect it involves the Transfer Utility projecting morphs from one figure to the other. This has been done between different versions of Genesis for years using external tools, but maybe the Transfer Utility could do it too. Differences in shape and mesh topology might affect the results, but I know for a fact that people have been converting morphs between different versions of Genesis, so I know it is possible. Paul has a method he claims does the job, but again, it's DS-only as far as I know.

 

[Miss B]

Well, iClone does it with the PhysX real-time engine, and Poser has the built-in Bullet engine, but many features were not implemented. I have done some testing in Poser with soft body dynamics to animate hair, and it kind of works, but results are rather unpredictable. There are too many parameters, where small changes can have a huge effect on the results. It would be the same in iClone, but Reallusion has simplified the process considerably. Instead of painting weight maps like we do in Poser, in iClone we instead paint a greyscale gradient over the UV template.

This will work with cloth and hair, and it takes a few rounds to get it right. At least in iClone the params are already set up for you, while in Poser we have to do it all manually. It is feasible, and I have done it already, but in iClone they made it easier.

Another difference is that iClone animates hair with spring physics, while Poser does it with soft body dynamics, which is way more complex and difficult to control. Sorry this didn't have a short answer.

Actually I prefer the longer answer, as it gives me more info about it.

I know there is a way (DS-only), but I don't know what it is. I suspect it involves the Transfer Utility projecting morphs from one figure to the other. This has been done between different versions of Genesis for years using external tools, but maybe the Transfer Utility could do it too. Differences in shape and mesh topology might affect the results, but I know for a fact that people have been converting morphs between different versions of Genesis, so I know it is possible. Paul has a method he claims does the job, but again, it's DS-only as far as I know.

Oh well, I'm not into the Hair Room, so it was pretty much a general question. One of these days I'll have to play with fiber hair, especially now that I have a system that can handle it easily.

 

[Ken1171]

@Miss B Yeah, the Hair Room can be frustrating at times, but it can also produce good results. The frustrating part are the styling tools, which have basically never been updated, the slow performance, and the flaky collision detection. Short hair is feasible, but longer ones are an exercise on patience. Shading dynamic hair is also hard in Poser, mostly because the provided materials look like metal wires in renders.

However, dynamic hair and cloth in iClone are a whole different thing, more like how things work in game engines - all in real-time. Now that Poser 11 has the Bullet engine, I am convinced we can do something similar there. The only bummer is that SMS didn't implement spring physics in Poser, so the Bullet engine is not as useful as it could be for this.

 

[Miss B]

I don't recall who, but I think one of the vendors at Renderosity has shaders for fiber hair. I know I've seen it somewhere, but can't remember in whose store..

 

[Ken1171]

I had better luck making my own shaders. Sometimes it's as simple as cutting down on the specular.

 

[Ken1171]

Testing the shoulder adjustments. As long as the joints are at the right place, the JCM doesn't need to do much. Type-12 features considerable upper torso and shoulder reductions, so I don't think it would need "Narrow Shoulders" on top of it.

 

[Miss B]

I had better luck making my own shaders. Sometimes it's as simple as cutting down on the specular.

Oh I've found it's sometimes as simple as shutting the specular off entirely, though I find that more with character skins, than items like hair.

 

[Ken1171]

Oh I've found it's sometimes as simple as shutting the specular off entirely, though I find that more with character skins, than items like hair.

I would rather keep some specular for the sake of the bump/normal maps. Some basically have no effect without specular, so cutting it down completely can have the side-effect of making the materials look flat - especially hair and skin. There is a lot of hair materials without any bump, and they tend to look horrible in my PBR renders. My solution is to use shader nodes to create the missing maps, and I find it important to have specular for things to go well together.

 

[Miss B]

I'll have to keep that in mind, as I never considered specular would affect bump and normal maps.

 

[Ken1171]

I'll have to keep that in mind, as I never considered specular would affect bump and normal maps.

If you think about it, it is both shadows and highlights that give our eyes the notion of depth and volume. The very early days of computer graphics have concentrated efforts on these 2 things (shadows and highlights) alone for a long time. Bump generates the shadows for the small surface details, while specular generates the highlights. When we combine these 2 together, we give our renders the visual notions of depth and volume. Therefore there is a lot to loose when we cut down on either ones in our materials.

 

[Miss B]

What usually bothers me is when the character skin looks like the character just got out of a pool, or shower. I find that "wet" look annoying, unless I happen to be doing a render at the beach.

Granted not all character skins render that way, but when they do, I want to be rid of it.

 

[Ken1171]

I have the impression that much of this comes from poorly made, or even missing bump maps. Even procedural noise can make skin more realistic, and avoid plastic-like skin. But again, even if we do so, if there is no specular, it may also end up flat.

 

[Miss B]

Yes, I'm liking La Femme's Simple PBR textures, and I don't really have to play with the shine with those. I even use them when I'm playing with the L'Homme morph. I tried out the other two sets, though I do more renders when beta testing, so don't regularly use the other two.

That said, I can't off-hand remember if I have any PBR textures for Dawn, though CatsEyes has "normal" and "dry" choices. I haven't played with her in a while, so maybe I should just to see the difference.