New all-star Poser-only figure released!

[Mythocentric]

I use drape frames most of the time Miss B, especially when fitting dynamic clothing between figures for the same reason I try to avoid the morphing brush until after the simulation (if needed). I work on the K.I.S.S. principle and prefer not to go the long way round when the Poser Cloth Room is quite capable of simulating the translation between figure morphs in addition to handling dynamic clothing. It's a pretty powerful tool despite it's occasional faults so why not sit back, let it do its job and keep any extra effort to a minimum! OK! That probably makes me a skiver but even a skiver has to put the effort in, even if its only finding ways to reduce the workload!

 

[unreal]

I'm super happy with the figure. Two reasons:

• Was quickly and easily able to get her to be very close to the V4 character I developed over the years (err... decade?). This makes her viable for me. And I could do it quickly and with a fraction of the morphs V4 needed. Because...
• OMG, she makes Poser seem like a new version. Previously untapped features are fully tapped.

PS: thanks everyone in this thread. I read all of this, watched the mentioned webinars, researched everything I didn't understand (plenty). My brain is full. I superficially know an order of magnitude more than I did before (and realisically, maybe 50% with much to go). Time well spent.

PPS: I'm looking forward to supporting anyone and everyone who creates stuff for her. With cold hard cash. The folding kind. And I don't care if it's even just ports of existing (<cough> v4) figure's wears. This figure works for me. I'm prepared to invest V4 money.

PPPS: I feel happy about Poser for the first time in a while. Cause I can finally cast *my* character into shiny new tech; no sweat no compromises. (happy) sighs...

 

[Ken1171]

Hey Unreal, welcome to the HW forums! ^____^

 

[Miss B]

Welcome to the HiveWire forums from me as well unreal, and sounds like you're having a great time playing with LaFemme.

 

[unreal]

Thanks! Indeed, I am.

I'm still playing with re-creating my various characters. One thing I've found is even with the base morphs and the few morph packs, I can really tune her. Still getting used to the different workflow, though. The part that takes the most getting used to is the fact that there are multiple ways to achieve the same effects. And stuff that just didn't work before now works. Of course, the different ways (probably) have implications in saving things. Along with full "poser 11 features" power enabled, that DS compatible figures aren't able to use. Oh nooooo.... new workflow!

I think nerd3d alluded to that.

Once my dogs are out of quarantine (this arvo, yay!) and they're properly pooped from some epic walkies, I plan to spend a few days porting some poses, hair, and conforming clothing (v4). And drink coffee. Buckets of it. If the vendors do their own ports/upgrades of existing stuff, I plan to just buy them. 1) saves me time and 2) supports the vendors in their craft. Honestly, I'd rather that. I'm tactically lazy (an engineer)

Actually, this inspired me to dust off Dawn. She's been on the shelf since shortly after she was first released because (obviously) I couldn't get her to match my v4 based characters at the time. I find now, I can get a lot closer. In some ways, she's easier to use than La Femme, in some, harder. Which is expected. Different underlying use cases. But I was surprised at how she's come along. And wow, she's easy on the computer. La Femme requires a bit more "oomph". I just got my BFM (big friggin' machine) from customs, and really looking forward to "way more power than any mortal can handle". Right now, it's all on my 2015 MBPr. Until I find a permanent place to live.

If I was designing a character for a game engine, I'd go Dawn. She's easy to animate. But I think La Femme may be able to replace everything I was doing with V4 for stills. And V4 took about a bazillion morph packs and several different WM versions to do it. I'm very picky about my characters. Plus, v4 was never able to do good (as in "holds up in close ups") dancing poses. Animation was completely out.

I really hope the Poser community is willing to support the character with demand for *stuff*, along with a willingness to PAY for that stuff. Vendors aren't stupid (or that's what I've heard ). Content is supplied upon sufficient payment. Hope this breathes a bit of freshness into Dawn as well. She's not the same girl I put aside years ago.

 

[Miss B]

Well, I for one, and looking forward to seeing some renders you come up with in the near future.

 

[Ken1171]

I really hope the Poser community is willing to support the character with demand for *stuff*, along with a willingness to PAY for that stuff.

There is a bit of "the chicken and the egg" paradox when it comes to vendor support. Customers wait to see if the figure will be supported by vendors, and vendors first want to know if the people will support the figure. It was different with V4 because (at the time) she was the only mainstream figure in the market, while LaFemme has some competition.

I agree with your assessment about Dawn and LaFemme. Dawn is much lighter to use and animate, while LaFemme might be better for more challenging poses. But in general. both are good for rendering stills. When it comes to clothing conversions, it should be easier in general to convert to Dawn than to LaFemme because of the large number of JCMs, but in my experience it depends on the kind of clothing. LaFemme's "Developer rig" version has worked great for clothing conversions when I tried. Better than any other JCM-heavy figures I had tried before. You can see my test analysis earlier in this thread, where I have converted a V4 outfit, including gloves and shoes, to LF with great success.

 

[unreal]

Saw it. I was stunned by how well the gloves converted. I've never had gloves convert that well.

Chicken and egg, for sure. Best tactic I can think of is to do some conversions to get her some clothed, then post some good renders. Nothing sells a figure better than good images. Frankly, I think that's one thing that Daz has done well. The product images in the store are very good. (Actually, I like their HTML/JS/CSS as well. Very easy to automate from.)

ps: yay! we found a place to live. Move on Monday. Über machine has a place to live! And pups are out of the joint. Big walkies happened. Ozzie (the elder) has a smile that actually extends beyond the confines of his face. We call him the Disney-Dog since his expressions are right out of lady and the tramp. Kiwi (the peewee) is curled up next to me, asleep. Place to live, sunny day, happy pups, happy peeps, and dinner cooking in the kitchen. Glad to be back in the land of Oz

 

[Hornet3d]

Speaking of LaFemme, here's the render I just finished, this time using the SSS w/Refracted Eyes materials.

Soooo, How Do I Look?

View attachment 44983

That looks great and is a really good advert for a figure so new to the community.

 

[Hornet3d]

Notes based on my experience as I can appreciate that there will be some unfamiliarity with Poser’s multi-resolution morphs, so this is for info in case anyone finds it useful.

The topology most suited to sculpt a mesh across multiple levels of subdivision is laid out in a square grid-like arrangement (as far as possible), with all faces as equal in area as possible, and an absolute minimum of poles*. This offers the greatest flexibility for sculpting by avoiding localised density changes which can make a mesh incredibly hard to work with after one or two levels of subD. So the less defined the starting topology, the better.

However, the topology most suited to a mesh built for articulation is one where the edge flow supports the required bending (and then bony landmarks followed by muscle detail) - so highly specific topology is better.

Poser supports multi-resolution morphing (I have a strong dislike of the term HD morphs for Poser, it seems meaningless to me). Given the way that Poser handles skinning (using polygon grouping to break a mesh internally for articulation) the best way that I know of is to use Zbrush and the GoZ link when creating multi-res morphs. Obviously this is not going to be something all creators or users will be able or willing to do, but choosing a strongly grid-like quad topology over a mesh with more specific cuts is the best option for this workflow - and from his posts, that’s the workflow that blackhearted uses.

I like both Dawn and La Femme, there are advantages and disadvantages to both - and both figures have a solid technical rationale for their topology. Whichever is ‘better’ though is going to depend on the user, their workflow and end use.

*Poles are used to change the direction or flow of edges within a mesh which is unavoidable (unless the mesh is a flat plane) but should be controlled as in a subD workflow any vertex with a valence (number of edges running into it) higher than 5 will cause serious problems at higher subD levels - including noticeable shading errors - due to localised pinching of the mesh.

--------

Actually, the ability to create morphs on higher subD levels combined with relatively non-specific topology could make it possible to create detailed skin tight clothing with the depth of actual geometry out of morphs and map overlays. No poke through, ever. Shoes would be even better, but that could be a little ambitious - one day I may even get round to trying it out


Quickie render - love OOT's Ammy hair too ...

View attachment 45000

I like the render, the eyes are a little too big for my liking but that is just me. It certainly goes a long way to show this has real potential to become a serious figure. Like you I love the hair.

 

[unreal]

Not quite my character (yet). Still learning the morphs and pro/cons to how she's built. And, although I went on a "La Femme shopping spree" she's still short on wears I could never pose v4 like this without extensive corrective morphs. Looking forward to native clothing and being able to do some action/dance/ballet images. Anyone know of good step-by-step workflows for porting (from v4 and/or dawn):

1. close fitting conforming clothing (shirts, leggings, pants, swim, leotard, etc.)
2. hair (prop and conforming)
3. shoes
4. skins

For all of that, I'm perfectly willing to buy good ports from the original vendors (or their agent). Already have with the fads

 

[Miss B]

Oh that's a lovely pose unreal, and I like her look.

 

[Ken1171]

Not quite my character (yet). Still learning the morphs and pro/cons to how she's built. And, although I went on a "La Femme shopping spree" she's still short on wears

Heey, I love how this is going! Lovely character! ^____^

 

[unreal]

Thanks! ^.^

Can't take credit for the pose, though. It's one of the pose packs.

Given the rigging, I think character devs (the shape part of dev) will have an easy(er) time. Seem to be able to achieve quite the variety of character shapes with just the merchant resource morphs. Kind of like V4 and morphs++. She poses and moves really well. There's some funkiness about the neck. In this pose, it's twisted, side to side, and bent. A lot. And there's some strangeness in the resulting mesh. Not nearly as much as v4 but more than Dawn (my impression, haven't done side by side). Might be because I'm using some of the HD morphs? The rest of the joints move nicely. Which makes the clothes a bit tricky. Dynamic clothing (like the image) makes things much easier. I wish I knew a good way to make the edges of dynamic cloth look real. Maybe some trick with displacement maps.

Really looking foward to getting her off this laptop and onto something with some "oomph". She's right at the edge of what this laptop can comfortably handle.

 

[unreal]

Same scene, La Femme (basic morphs) v. V4WM (buckets of morphs, incuding morphs++).

La Femme (default texture, only morphs in the face, the body shaped using only body part scales, dynamic top amd skirt)

v4 (weight mapped, morphs++, body texture from thorne-sarsa character, conforming top, dynamic skirt)

(V4 was rendered on more powerful machine, which is still packed from move)

One thing that's annoying me in La Femme: her eyes. I can't find a cornea material. There's that "eye surface" thing. This makes setting up for a render kind of clunky for me since I use luxrender because it's soooooo easy to get realitic images. Give the cornea a simple physical material (human cornea) and that's it. Call me lazy. Maybe I'll make a cornea "contact lens" object for her.

 

[DanaTA]

Her arms and legs are so skinny!

Dana

 

[Miss B]

Well, she is youthful, so if she were say a girl in grade school, she might just be that skinny.

 

[carmen indorato]

Little confused. I read your post and analysis as the top is LaFemme and the bottom render is V4?

 

[eclark1894]

Little confused. I read your post and analysis as the top is LaFemme and the bottom render is V4?

Appears to be a comparison.

 

[Rae134]

I thought I might as well put these LaFemme renders here
The first was to show off a new lingerie set, the body is default LaFemme but the skin and face Is Layana.

Lacy Lingerie For LaFemme

• Rae134
• Apr 2, 2019
• afrodite-ohki fairy la femme lafemme lingerie

Lacy Lingerie for La Femme by Afrodite-Ohki

This one was to show off the Bodysuit by Kath (on default LaFemme)

Dyn LaFemme Sexy Body

• Rae134
• Apr 2, 2019
• karth la femme lafemme sexy

Dyn Sexy Body for La Femme by Karth

And this one was a texture add-on for the Bodysuit

Secrets LaFemme Sexy Body By Rae134

• Rae134
• Mar 25, 2019
• artofdreams dance karth la femme lafemme portrait poser sympatico

Poser render of Secrets LaFemme Sexy Body, a Texture Expansion by ArtOfDreams for Dyn Sexy Body...