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Hornet3d
Wise
Only fair I should show this render with the merchant resource as it came out of the box so without my tweaks.
CGI Subtle Skin Merchant Resource by ColorGaleria from the box, Dawn 2 default with a Hivewire3D pose Dawn II bikini (shaders from RPublishing - Ghostship) and hair HR-243 from Ali (shaders from RPublishing - Ghostship).
CGI Subtle Skin Merchant Resource by ColorGaleria from the box, Dawn 2 default with a Hivewire3D pose Dawn II bikini (shaders from RPublishing - Ghostship) and hair HR-243 from Ali (shaders from RPublishing - Ghostship).
I like how the face looks like here , lovely .
unreal
Noteworthy
Ahhhh, a new figure. It always takes me a bit of hacking to become comfortable enough with a figure such that I can easily get it to do what I want. I'm nowhere near that with Dawn 2 (or original Dawn, really).
Poser 13 is also somewhat new. And the laptop it's running on (MBP M3 Max, 128GB 16cpu cores, 40gpu cores). And CyclesX running Metal (which profoundly changes things on a mac). Essentially, everything is new!
Dead simple image. Dawn 2 (my character morph and body part scales). "10 minute Leotard", via blender and poser. A single HDRI as background and light (via Ken's script). Everyone recognizes Paradise hair (superfly shaders). Then I added Ghostship's spandex shader to the leotard. 2 figures, one prop, a single 4k HDRI.
First things I need to know:
Anyway...
Conclusions.
Poser 13 is also somewhat new. And the laptop it's running on (MBP M3 Max, 128GB 16cpu cores, 40gpu cores). And CyclesX running Metal (which profoundly changes things on a mac). Essentially, everything is new!
Dead simple image. Dawn 2 (my character morph and body part scales). "10 minute Leotard", via blender and poser. A single HDRI as background and light (via Ken's script). Everyone recognizes Paradise hair (superfly shaders). Then I added Ghostship's spandex shader to the leotard. 2 figures, one prop, a single 4k HDRI.
First things I need to know:
- does my Blender add-on still work? (I use it to take morphed OBJs back and forth between Poser and Blender). It does. So I can create morphs using a combination of the two (morph brush is good for some stuff, Blender sculpting for others). I used it to make this youthful character. (I'll probably go more anime-stylized, once I have things sorted)
- How easy is it to make a simple conforming clothing item? The leotard I always use to test each figure since it covers the two complex joints: shoulders and hips. This took about 10 minutes to make. I went back and forth 4 times. I roughed the shape in blender, took it to poser to use the fit morph brush. Back to Blender to clean the edges, symmetrize it, then quad-remeshed it. Back to Poser to fine tune the fit. Back to blender to add the solid edges. Back to Poser and 1 click rig. Copied my character morph. Fit and it was perfect. Considering the shape (and scalers used), the leotard moves very well, in large part due to the superior mesh and rig of Dawn 2. I've never had this test work so well; so fast and effortless. I'm impressed with Dawn 2.
- Next HDRIs... Could I stop using the EZDome (which never worked for me with superfly shadowcatching)? I used Ken's script. And found a bug in Poser on mac. One node is missing a value (only on mac), which prevents the rotation from working (no "radians"). The script is super useful. I also set things up by hand. The script saves about 5 minutes with each setup. And a minute with each subsequent tweak. I think it pays for itself in only a few uses (depending on how you value your time. I value mine quite high
) script is nice I'm still having trouble getting sharp images in my renders. Could just be my setup. Render settings are arcane art. I had Poser 12 nailed. 13, not so much. Yet. GPU is about 5x-10x faster than CPU. Both look the same on a mac.
Also, a weird bug re: shadow catcher. For it to work, I absolutely must start with the factory scene. If I add ground later, and set it for shadow catching, it never does (in superfly) but always does in firefly. This makes me wonder if the ground is different. I haven't pulled the files apart to see.
- How about expressions? The facial rig. 1st, still need morphs when using the face rig. Second, hard to use the rig via poser's native GUI. Again, Ken script to the rescue. And I found a second mac poser bug. The PIL module is missing on mac poser. So I couldn't use the script (yet). But, again, i can see where it would save HEAPS of time.
Anyway...
Conclusions.
- Dawn bends very well. Maybe second best figure (compared to out of the box figures, and figures with heaps of added corrections). And Dawn 2 does it with so much less drama.
- Developing for: amazing. Due to her rigging and mesh, skin tight conforming works really well and is very easy to make. I'm going to re-rig some V4 stuff and see how it goes.
- Morphing: again, due to mesh and rig, really easy.
- Posing: Dawn and V4 poses work quite well, with only tweaks necessary. For people with an embarrassment of V4 content (guilty), this is super useful I find that a V4 pose (one click), with a Dawn hand pose (also one click) is 95% of the way there. The time saving is huuuge!