Dreamer
Dream Weaver Designs
Oh no arguments there, a much smaller delicate foot for sure and I guess some folks do have long toes. Guess I am just use to seeing my own short stumpy ones lol
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Dawn 2.0 Underway
- Thread starter Chris
- Start date
eclark1894
Visionary
I like it. Just remember to give her fangs when you redo her teeth.
Oh yes, fangs for sure.
Yay, we're getting closer and closer! 
Since we're talking about teeth, one thing I'd like in Dawn 2.0 is a wider range of gums up/down/forwards positioning to help with cartoonish character morphs. Even in normal realistic expressions, I find it hard to lower the lower teeth far enough so it doesn't show in regular smiles. I find myself hitting the dial limits in those cases, not being able to position the teeth where they need to be with some morphs and expressions. It would also be nice to have different teeth shapes for normal people (not creatures) included in the base pack. I think that's something the original Dawn lacked. The only options are regular, crooked, and fangs. For example, some people have longer central incisors, which is a rather common feature.
Since we're talking about teeth, one thing I'd like in Dawn 2.0 is a wider range of gums up/down/forwards positioning to help with cartoonish character morphs. Even in normal realistic expressions, I find it hard to lower the lower teeth far enough so it doesn't show in regular smiles. I find myself hitting the dial limits in those cases, not being able to position the teeth where they need to be with some morphs and expressions. It would also be nice to have different teeth shapes for normal people (not creatures) included in the base pack. I think that's something the original Dawn lacked. The only options are regular, crooked, and fangs. For example, some people have longer central incisors, which is a rather common feature.
Since we are getting to the rigging part now, I would like to bring back some of my body grouping suggestions - just the differences from the current Dawn. Now it's the time since grouping has to proceed rigging. My suggestions are:
* 1 chest group (instead of 2). This would give more buffer geometry for the 2 abdomen groups, while the rib cage cannot bend much over itself anyway.
* 1 neck group (instead of 2). Having 2 neck bones make it hard to rig clothing, because it's 2 joints over a very small part of the geometry. It does more damage than benefits.
* Add metatarsal bone to the feet (more realistic posing).
* Add metacarpal bone to the base of the thumbs to allow more realistic bending between thumb base and hand palm. This can be a ghost bone that doesn't require another group at such a crowded area.
* Add pectoral bones to provide more flexible breast posing. Most modern figures have those nowadays, to include the Reallusion CC3 base figure.
* Replace the jaw bone with a ghost bone, so a dedicated group is not required. This would provide the same posing capabilities, while keeping the head as a single group.
On the materials groups:
* Unify all skin groups that share the same textures into a single one. This would result into only 4 skin groups instead of the existing 9.
There is also the question if the lashes should be part of the head, or a separate conforming figure. There are pros and cons to this approach. I would love to hear feedback from the community about this, especially from those who have created character morphs for figures that have lashes as separate conforming figures. The basic idea would be that the lashes would be kept out of the way when sculpting the head, and yet provide a better starting point afterwards by conforming them back and copying the new morphs to them. This way, the lashes adjustments would never start from scratch like it is when they are part of the head. Perhaps this only affects content creators who make character morphs. I believe this would be rather inconsequential to the regular Poser/DS user.
One bummer I remember about conforming lashes is when we forget to remove them when exporting the figure for sculpting in external programs like zBrush. That has the potential of invalidating the morph we sculpt, but we will only notice when we GoZ it back. I remember doing this many times when sculpting G8. It's not exactly a con, but I remember doing it many times! Silly me! LOL
* 1 chest group (instead of 2). This would give more buffer geometry for the 2 abdomen groups, while the rib cage cannot bend much over itself anyway.
* 1 neck group (instead of 2). Having 2 neck bones make it hard to rig clothing, because it's 2 joints over a very small part of the geometry. It does more damage than benefits.
* Add metatarsal bone to the feet (more realistic posing).
* Add metacarpal bone to the base of the thumbs to allow more realistic bending between thumb base and hand palm. This can be a ghost bone that doesn't require another group at such a crowded area.
* Add pectoral bones to provide more flexible breast posing. Most modern figures have those nowadays, to include the Reallusion CC3 base figure.
* Replace the jaw bone with a ghost bone, so a dedicated group is not required. This would provide the same posing capabilities, while keeping the head as a single group.
On the materials groups:
* Unify all skin groups that share the same textures into a single one. This would result into only 4 skin groups instead of the existing 9.
There is also the question if the lashes should be part of the head, or a separate conforming figure. There are pros and cons to this approach. I would love to hear feedback from the community about this, especially from those who have created character morphs for figures that have lashes as separate conforming figures. The basic idea would be that the lashes would be kept out of the way when sculpting the head, and yet provide a better starting point afterwards by conforming them back and copying the new morphs to them. This way, the lashes adjustments would never start from scratch like it is when they are part of the head. Perhaps this only affects content creators who make character morphs. I believe this would be rather inconsequential to the regular Poser/DS user.
One bummer I remember about conforming lashes is when we forget to remove them when exporting the figure for sculpting in external programs like zBrush. That has the potential of invalidating the morph we sculpt, but we will only notice when we GoZ it back. I remember doing this many times when sculpting G8. It's not exactly a con, but I remember doing it many times! Silly me! LOL
Yay, we're getting closer and closer!
Since we're talking about teeth, one thing I'd like in Dawn 2.0 is a wider range of gums up/down/forwards positioning to help with cartoonish character morphs. Even in normal realistic expressions, I find it hard to lower the lower teeth far enough so it doesn't show in regular smiles. I find myself hitting the dial limits in those cases, not being able to position the teeth where they need to be with some morphs and expressions. It would also be nice to have different teeth shapes for normal people (not creatures) included in the base pack. I think that's something the original Dawn lacked. The only options are regular, crooked, and fangs. For example, some people have longer central incisors, which is a rather common feature.
Great input. Thanks.
Yeah, I am partial to a conforming eyelash, too, but I confess I haven't played much with G8 since I only worked with it in private commissions, making all character morphs for Dawn. If there is something terribly bad about it, I would like to hear it. The grouping has to be done before the rigging, so now is the time to come to a conclusion about it.
@Chris Will Paul use this thread for the rigging progress? If so, when will it start, if not already? I ask because all of these things about body groups have to be done before the rigging can start.
Yes, Paul has been reviewing this thread. I got him the new Dawn mesh last night. He plans to incorporate ideas here in this thread for sure. He's going to do some regrouping with less groups as you've mentioned here in this thread.
Wow, the rigging part is SO EXCITING! I have waited a long time for this - a chance to improve the thighs bending on Dawn!
There is also the thing about the upper arms intersecting with the torso when the arms are down. Most figures do intersect, but Dawn doesn't, and somehow that made her upper body look wider. When I made my "Narrow Shoulders" for the original Dawn, it ended up causing the upper arms to intersect with the torso, and somehow that makes the figure look better when posed. It's like a paradox - we know it shouldn't intersect, but it does look better when it does, probably because 3D skin doesn't compress and reshape when pushed against the body. It instead gives us the impression that the upper body became wider. This might be one of those things that the human eye automatically catches and detects as odd, but we can't explain why.
I have just checked the Reallusion CC3 base figure, and its arms intersect with the body when bent down. The same happens with basically all DAZ figures, to include Genesis. Based on my experience with Dawn, I think it is not a coincidence. At a first glance, it may sound like a bad thing, but when I applied Narrow Shoulders, it did look better - in part because of the intersection.
Then comes the question - should Dawn 2.0's upper arms intersect with the body when the arms are down?
Doesn't that cause a problem with dynamic clothing?
Seems it would be better if the body and upper arms compressed instead of intersecting.
Seems it would be better if the body and upper arms compressed instead of intersecting.
I think it may or may not be an issue with dynamic cloth. If you think of it, lowering the arms compresses the cloth at the armpits whether or not there is an intersection with the torso. I have used plenty of dynamic cloth, and it seems to work either ways. Did you have a specific case where it didn't work?
eclark1894
Visionary
There are a number of reasons why dynamic cloth is problematic in that regard. The size of the polygons in the mesh for one, how far away from the skin the dynamic cloth is supposed to be from the figure, and whether or not the user even has the mesh interacting with itself to name a few like polygons against vertices. That's quite a few things the computer can glitch on.
As long as there is a gap between the upper arm and the body, the dynamic clothing usually is able to sim properly, with the cloth sliding along the figure. But if the upper arms get too close to the body, the clothing catches, resulting in poke through. The poke through can be minimized by adjusting the pose at various steps in the simulation so that the arm doesn't get too close to the body until the last frame. The looser the clothing, the more likely the poke through isn't concealed by the arm.
In my personal experience, Poser dynamic cloth has always been a bit on the jumpy side. Any intersection before the sim starts is very likely to explode verts to the next galaxy. It actually used to crash Poser to the desktop in the earlier versions, but now it just explodes the mesh, or refuses to start the sim. My general approach to this is to only simulate parts of the clothing that need to be dynamic, keeping the rest as conforming or fully constrained. Gone are the days when I used to make the entire outfit dynamic - that is usually not necessary. Poser offers a comprehensive set of dynamic groups we can use to simplify and considerably speed up the process. In addition, we can always correct pokethrus with the Morphing Tool at any point, since the tool is there primarily for this purpose.
I believe Poser's cloth solver is the same that was used in the old Autodesk 3DS MAX's Reactor system a long time ago, before they switched to their own MassFX solver. I remember one of the main reasons Autodesk has dropped it was exactly because it was too unstable. Poser still uses that same old version, with the same stability issues. Therefore, maybe we shouldn't tie or condition Dawn 2.0 rigging to it. Poser offers many ways to work around the cloth solver issues.
I believe Poser's cloth solver is the same that was used in the old Autodesk 3DS MAX's Reactor system a long time ago, before they switched to their own MassFX solver. I remember one of the main reasons Autodesk has dropped it was exactly because it was too unstable. Poser still uses that same old version, with the same stability issues. Therefore, maybe we shouldn't tie or condition Dawn 2.0 rigging to it. Poser offers many ways to work around the cloth solver issues.
Mythocentric
Extraordinary
To paraphrase Stevie Winwood:
It's a new day,
It's a new Dawn,
An' she's lookin' good!
Can't hardly wait to say hello!
It's a new day,
It's a new Dawn,
An' she's lookin' good!
Can't hardly wait to say hello!