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WIP HiveWire Dragon Begins

Pendraia

Sage
Contributing Artist
That set of wings and the morph look awesome Sparky, I can't wait to see them textured.

@NapalmArsenal, it is possible with DS at least to do alternate uv's if there is stretching using the morph. IIRC and I'm just waking up so may be confused, morphs can have their own rigging and uv's.
 

Sparky

Monster Maker
Contributing Artist
I think I like yours better!! He looks awesome!!
Really LOVE the tail!!
The thing I have found with the scale mat on the dragon is that it stretches way too much ont he tail and face areas for the details to be all that good. You can solve it with a seamless tile, but again you lose the detail there. Alt UV map for the tail might be an option, but still fiddling around a bit.

I didn't notice this part of your message before. The only kind of morphs I seem to do are super extreme morphs. I always use the default uvs, because Poser doesn't yet support alt uvs, and I like to supply Studio and Poser versions of my products. The way I overcome texel stretching is to texture in a 3d painter, or to make alt uvs, texture on them, then bake the texture back out onto the original uv.

I worked on my griffin a little bit waiting for a promo to render...

One thing I've noticed about putting the dragon on the big cat mesh that will almost certainly garner criticism is this:

ZGrab02.jpg


It's rather difficult to get long, slender toes on it, and I'm fairly certain they won't bend satisfactorily without some fierce JCMs and some posing morphs. Some webbing between the toes will be unavoidable.

Perhaps the dragon should have some conforming/geografted feet that come with it as an option?
 

Pendraia

Sage
Contributing Artist
It may be that Chris will end up changing the dragon into a separate entity like he did with the horse and the cat Sparky. I'm not sure what their plans are but it would make sense if there are issues with leaving it as a morph.
 

Rae134

Renowned
CV-BEE
Contributing Artist
I'm a dragon person so of course want this one but I've been looking for a decent Griffin even more!
I can't see anything wrong with the slight webbing on the feet, being a mythological creature who's to say what the should look like :D
 

Pendraia

Sage
Contributing Artist
I think Sparky's point was that it is very difficult to make the claws longer...but I may be wrong.
 

NapalmArsenal

Distinguished
Contributing Artist
I didn't notice this part of your message before. The only kind of morphs I seem to do are super extreme morphs. I always use the default uvs, because Poser doesn't yet support alt uvs, and I like to supply Studio and Poser versions of my products. The way I overcome texel stretching is to texture in a 3d painter, or to make alt uvs, texture on them, then bake the texture back out onto the original uv.

I worked on my griffin a little bit waiting for a promo to render...

One thing I've noticed about putting the dragon on the big cat mesh that will almost certainly garner criticism is this:


It's rather difficult to get long, slender toes on it, and I'm fairly certain they won't bend satisfactorily without some fierce JCMs and some posing morphs. Some webbing between the toes will be unavoidable.

Perhaps the dragon should have some conforming/geografted feet that come with it as an option?


I have Blacksmith Pro so ........ hmm...... got me thinking some now about how to possibly go about this, but honestly spots and scales are some of the hardest materials to match up along seam lines. @Pendraia I might send you a PM on how to go about doing it in Daz.

Around the mouth here it's rather wonky and stretched, and then the tail portions Bottom is seamless tile top part is template mat using base UVs and that would really push your details over the top if you can get it to flow right. P.S.: Don't everyone go and get all crazy excited this is just to get the scaling as it should look.
Dragon Tail2 copy.jpg
Untitled-1 copy.jpg

Dragon Feet

Untitled-2 copy.jpg



Yeah, I figured that might be an issue with the webbing on the feet and the toes. Personally I agree a little longer toe would be nice. The dragon feet are very cat-like and have that webbing between the toes, but some dragon feet look rather similar. I'm thinking of the Larry Elmore style dragons. McFarlane dragons not so much they are more reptilian and bird like as in your griffon image. It might be offered as an add on possibly or alt foot set, but if we are going that far with it some nice talons and variation would be nice.

Ahh isn't there some model that has the bird feet you can conform to the model?
Thought I remembered seeing one over at RDNA at some point.
 
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Sparky

Monster Maker
Contributing Artist
For that use case, I would use ZBrush to reunwrap the uvs, so that they are flat for the dragon shape. If you don't have ZBrush, you can use Blender. Blender's live unwrap function doesn't get uvs as flat as ZBrush, and it's not as automatic, but pretty good for free!

Check it for fidelity by applying to the figure as an alt uv in DAZ Studio. Sometimes alt uvs will fail if the model export altered the vertex order. If it didn't work properly, the texture on the model will look like patches of the texture are being tiled at random. Obviously, the texture won't look *right*, because it doesn't fit the new uvs. Apply your working texture and bake from the default uv to your new alt uv.

Then texture it at a very high resolution, something above the target resolution of 4096.

As a final step, bake the texture back to the original uvs using DAZ Studio.

If that workflow looks good to you, I can elaborate. ^.^
 

NapalmArsenal

Distinguished
Contributing Artist
Thanks for the tip I will for sure have to give it a try LOL, but I am for sure not a modeler and don't have all that much experience with UVs, but I do have blender so I guess that's a start LOL!

I may be a bit out of my depth when trying what you are suggesting, but willing to give it a try.
 
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Pendraia

Sage
Contributing Artist
I would like to have some elaboration on that technique Sparky as I haven't done anything like that previously.

@NapalmArsenal , I'm happy to help but much of this I've never done either so still trying to work it out. I did at one point want to try and create alternate uv's for Dawn that would use V4's textures but I had to stop as I was finding it too difficult. One day maybe I'll work it out...
 

Sparky

Monster Maker
Contributing Artist
It's easier than it sounds, and definitely takes less time than trying to deform texture resources manually to compensate for a wildly stretched uv map. Once I've finished my big cat skeleton promos, I will make a tutorial for you. Perhaps even a video. ^.^
 

Sparky

Monster Maker
Contributing Artist
Here's my very first video tutorial...man, I never realised I sound like a 13 year old boy before... :-S

It apparently takes six minutes to do, and that's without editing out any of the tedious edge selection or export wait times, lol.

I'm sure I completely forgot to cover something, just let me know if it's coherent! lol

 

Pendraia

Sage
Contributing Artist
Just watched it...you're really clear and concise. Great job! Is there any way blender can be used to create alternate uv's from say v4 to Dawn for personal use? I know I can't do it for distribution...
 
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