Show Us Your Dawn Renders!

[unreal]

Another One. Not much different. Mostly the same pose. I was working on porting FK Ballet for Dawn. I needed a modified workflow. This clothing mesh is actually NOT welded in the original OBJ. And Dawn has a different torso skeleton that adds a little drama. Plays heck with skirts that have handles (the tutu). What I need is a script that doesn't replace the skeleton (a'la setup room) but rather changes the existing skeleton to the figure. This way the posing bones and morphs aren't lost. Or is there another way?

I've found that Dawn's different zero pose takes a different tactic as well. Essentially, I pose the clothing in Poser to closely Dawn. Export that (and zero plus base) and then reform the base into the posed version using my add-on. I sculpt a perfect fit, then import it back into Poser, setup, then copy morphs from original. That's what I did to get the jeans to fit so well. Same for the ballet slippers. It's actually a pretty fast workflow. In Blender I can fit while keeping details and features. The sculpting tools really are flexible.

Are there better ways to do this?

 

[RAMWolff]

She's really cute.

Yea on the lines thing my beta testers for a couple of my in store products at 'Rosity, kept reporting that and I had to tell them to make sure the figures were not set to Unimesh as the Traditional wouldn't do that. It's a nasty bug in Poser 11 that never get resolved and now it never will with Poser 12 out.

 

[unreal]

She's really cute.

Yea on the lines thing my beta testers for a couple of my in store products at 'Rosity, kept reporting that and I had to tell them to make sure the figures were not set to Unimesh as the Traditional wouldn't do that. It's a nasty bug in Poser 11 that never get resolved and now it never will with Poser 12 out.

Perhaps when Cycles is updated or when Poser moves to unimesh?

After all, It's doing it at the splits and I've not seen the effect in Blender.

 

[parkdalegardener]

It does happen in Blender with meshes exported from Poser though it is really subsurface scatter interferance. You probably use unimesh figures in Blender and as such may not see it. I've had it appear around the eyes and mouth for the most part. Interferance between skin and teeth or eyeballs. Neither of which need SSS but a lot of vendors seem to use it none the less. I've been rendering Poser figures in Blender for a while.

 

[Doug Hunter]

I agree with the "she is cute" comments

If any of this helps:
When DawnSE was made she used Traditional not Unimesh. You have to set her to Unimesh, subdivide her, and save her.
It's a good idea to do this for Dusk, Baby Luna, Harry (HivewireHorse) etc.

But don't sub-divide them, and export them to Blender with the sub-division set. It will mess with any body morphs.

I am assuming that Dawn 2.0 will come Unimeshed and sub-divided.

 

[unreal]

It does happen in Blender with meshes exported from Poser though it is really subsurface scatter interferance. You probably use unimesh figures in Blender and as such may not see it. I've had it appear around the eyes and mouth for the most part. Interferance between skin and teeth or eyeballs. Neither of which need SSS but a lot of vendors seem to use it none the less. I've been rendering Poser figures in Blender for a while.

On a split mesh exported to Blender? That is, one where the mesh is not "welded" at the vertex group edges?

I do work with those in Blender but I tend to not render there. Not yet. But I will. I have a bunch of architectural stuff that needs a photo-realistic treatment (long home renovation project)

 

[unreal]

<Smacks forehead with palm>. duh. Of course, setting it to unimesh and saving it. Shiva H. Vishnu, I can be dense.

The weird thing is I can set the figure to unimesh. But when I load a prop that I take to the setup room, it switches the figure back to traditional. A bug, I would thing.

I usually only subdivide render so export is still at non subd

Too often I've screwed up. It would be nice if (no-sub d) was an option on export.

 

[unreal]

Now I'm being silly. Still the same pose (essentially). Today, I set myself the challenge to port red-viper's super cute j-pop outfit. Just because it's complicated but has a bunch of great learning opportunities.

I'm tuning my workflow. Once I figured it out, it went fast. The challenge is that the mesh has a lot of non-manifold aspects.

I've really got it nailed with the add-on . This allow me to "fit" the clothing to dawn who has a different zero pose. I just position legs (stocking shoes) as needed. Then, for the stockings (socks, tights) I can use the fit morph brush, selecting just the material. Give it a tight fit (.0005) then go. export that pose, import to blender and cast to unimesh (keeping vert order and mats). Final fit and smooth in blender using to better sculpting and editing tools. Pop it back to poser and rig it. Perfect fit. For non manifold, weld it. I usually fix the groups using the vert group editor in blender. Faster.

Plugged the textures into better shader setup (velvets, leather, metal). Scrounged a simple mic.

Threw a rainbow and sparkles in post because why not superfly ultra: 10 minutes (it's actually about double the resolution as seen here)

I need to finish my script to copy extra bones. After replacing the rig with Dawn dev, I need to add the extra posing bones. Or has someone done this?

Now I need to dredge up the procedure to package up the character morph and shader setup. It's been a while since I did this.

 

[Ken1171]

need to finish my script to copy extra bones. After replacing the rig with Dawn dev, I need to add the extra posing bones. Or has someone done this?

This looks like something that could benefit from body handles. Maybe front, back, and one at each side?

 

[Miss B]

This looks like something that could benefit from body handles. Maybe front, back, and one at each side?

For the skirt(s), I agree. I don't usually use them, but with full ruffled skirts like this, they do come in handy.

 

[unreal]

This looks like something that could benefit from body handles. Maybe front, back, and one at each side?

Oh, totally!

And, it had them. This was "first stab", and I just dumped those bones because the pose didn't need them. It was more about mesh

I'm exploring a way to copy the extra bones (aka: handles) into the new dawn-based rig, attached at the appropriate place(s), with the correct position and orientation. Seems like just geometric calculations

Scripting it will help. I would like the script to take a v4 (or whatever) skeleton and intelligently convert it to Dawn. The mesh would be handled differently. Then I could leave in the handle groups, and weights. Change the mesh poly-groups manually (more intelligently) in blender. Substitute the old OBJ for the new OBJ and the rig would be happy.

The ribbons on the stockings also have a handle.

I really like my Poser-Blender workflow. It's so back and forth that a bridge is starting to be possible. At least for mesh editing work. As it is, I go back and forth using OBJs and it's pretty easy. Sometimes I need to weld and un-weld; it depends on the mesh. But that's super fast in Blender. It can do it on import and export without adding any noticeable time.

ps: I got word that the Blender 3.x OBJ bug is 99% fixed. I'm going to test.

dry, geeky, and possibly obtuse explanation: There is ambiguity in the OBJ format that is handled during OBJ import, which is still the older and working python code. The python OBJ exporter was replaced with C++ in 3.x. The additional 1% fix will depend on the import code being updated as well. Blender's vert order depends on the import building the native Object in the OBJ vert order (and making vert groups represent OBJ face groups). Ambiguity is handled on import, so the exporter could assume things about it before. The initial 3.x code made different assumptions, which broke the vert order.

The new exporter has been changed to assume the import ambiguity is handled the same way. Thus 99%. Props to the dev team for nailing that one quickly

 

[Ken1171]

I recently (last year) bought Biscuit's Vela hair, and wanted to render something with it. This is DawnSE, outfit by me.

 

[Miss B]

I have several of Biscuits hairs, and I think I have the Vela one, but haven't used it much. I usually use her Aloe and Echo hairs because she includes so many morphs, it's easy to come up with something totally different than the base.

 

[Ken1171]

I bought a number of hair pieces, so I have this backlog of renders to use them. Those are from Biscuits, AfroditeOhki, Swam, P3DArt, and Prae. I used to do a hundred+ renders a year, but now I am lucky if I make 1 a month.

 

[Miss B]

I know exactly what you mean. Now-a-days the only renders I do are test renders when I'm beta testing something. ~shakes head~

 

[unreal]

I know exactly what you mean. Now-a-days the only renders I do are test renders when I'm beta testing something. ~shakes head~

No kidding!
I keep getting distracted, too. I need to spend more time being artistic and less being geeky

 

[unreal]

This was one distraction after another. I started off just working my way through porting Gen4 outfits to Dawn. For the practical reason of teaching myself the most efficient workflow. I always learn better with a task. A side reason was to exercise my Blender Add-On. Testing in the trenches is always the best. Try it on different meshes and you can see what breaks. In the process I learned a lot more about morphing figure meshes in such a way that the clothes fitting in poser works better, along with textures working better (hint: moving verts perpendicular to their normals is best) Also, using Blender to fit (sculpt) and the types of ways that Blender can and can't import OBJs.

Tired of just rendering against ground plane, I dusted off some STZ rooms. They are superb! Also played with snarly's updated EZDome. Re-sculpted my character having learned what I did. Blender 3.1 actually includes the older python OBJ exporter, which should work for Poser. And, for Poser, it's actually quite fast. Poser is not rocking 100's of thousands of faces. But is fixed (according to devs, I'm going to test).

Once I got this room out, I started to realize that I know JACK about rendering in Superfly. How Superfly lights work (I can't seem to get extreme intensities or colors). I was very used to Lux which is dead simple since lights are lights, lenses are lenses, and materials are materials. To get good renders from Lux, photography knowledge is most import. For good Superfly renders, I have to search through threads where people like ramwolf and BB and AO are engaged in serious node-fu. I am like grasshopper when it comes to node-fu. I just read through the threats, gaping like a kid in a candy shop and try to throw something together that's not entirely lame. That's my goal!

Anyway, short story long, I then started to read about render algorithms, engines, which leads to nodes and math. Math?? Math!!!! Then I got sidetracked into openGL openCL, CUDA, and Metal. Which sidetracked me into Machine Learning then TensorFlow (and TPUs, omg!) Sidenote in the sidetrack, I did start the tutorial in tensorflow. I figured I could probably stand to know more than I do.

Meanwhile, my Erin character got bored, poured some tea and couldn't keep from yawning. So I made a quick (not) render of her.

Now, back to Bubblegum Crisis, already in progress.

At ease. Smoke 'em if ya got 'em.

(This one took a friggin' hour - Superfly Ultra SSS)

 

[Miss B]

Meanwhile, my Erin character got bored, poured some tea and couldn't keep from yawning.

Ohhh, I didn't realize she was yawning because she was bored. I thought she was yawning because she had just woken up, and was still tired.

 

[Ken1171]

Found the time to make a personal render this week.

This is DawnSE, custom face morph, "Body Type-12", and "Laced Sundress" outfit. Hair is Luana by Afrodite Ohki. Rendered in Poser with Superfly.

 

[unreal]

Tried and not working for superfly. Regardless of how I try. And yet, I'm pretty sure in Poser 11 days, I did this.

I found a bug in EZDome 17, wrt the shader nodes on the EZCatcher. If you set the material up the same as previous versions, it still works.