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Sparky's items for HiveWire Dog

Sparky mentioned doing a deerhead Chihuahua. Please do Sparky! They look quite different & I have a deerhead Chihuahua right now.

I've been waiting for a Chi morph for the HW Dog for ages! But I kinda thought maybe they were going to make a HW Small Dog as the base, like they did with the House Cat vs. Big Cat -- considering that dogs have many more body-type variations than cats, across all sizes!

Then again, Sparky does some amazing work with the Big Dog. The Chug morph is my absolute favorite, and I'd actually like to suggest making more mixed breeds, both b/c they're more common and popular than purebreds and b/c they'd give a bit more flexibility in shape (not needing to meet the standards of the purebred purists). I suppose we could try dialing in a bit of this and a bit of that breed, but I have a feeling that might not work as expected.

I did Chi-mix rescue for many years and currently have three, and I've wanted to represent them in 3D the longest time. I've even messed around with modifying and rigging some freebie Chihuahua models. But to get the look of a mix, I'd really need to be able to sculpt, and I have no training or talent in that area (my modeling all starts with a box!) So I'm thrilled to have the Chug, but I'd also love to have a mix that looks more like a Chihuahua, particularly with the ears. And most Chi-mixes I've encountered have deer heads rather than apple heads.

Here are my three Chi-mixes, saying "pleeeeeze" :)

AmberHollyDulcie-IMG_4549 copy.JPG
 

Sparky

Monster Maker
Contributing Artist
Your pups are SO cute, @PerpetualRevision! I wouldn't mind doing a few more mixed breed dogs, I went with purebreds for the most part because they have more "brand recognition" lol. They would be more likely to match search terms, in other words. ^.^ Really, what would help in making a wider variety of mixed breeds would be more body shaping morphs. I might knock together a pack of morphs similar to my mini morph pack that focuses more on the body than on the face. Also, update the mini morph pack, that's a long time coming LOL.

I've gotten a lot of work done on the black and white wolf textures I promised to add. They will be a free update to the wolf.

WolvesBW.jpg
 

Sparky

Monster Maker
Contributing Artist
I've been waiting for a Chi morph for the HW Dog for ages! But I kinda thought maybe they were going to make a HW Small Dog as the base, like they did with the House Cat vs. Big Cat -- considering that dogs have many more body-type variations than cats, across all sizes!

Then again, Sparky does some amazing work with the Big Dog. The Chug morph is my absolute favorite, and I'd actually like to suggest making more mixed breeds, both b/c they're more common and popular than purebreds and b/c they'd give a bit more flexibility in shape (not needing to meet the standards of the purebred purists). I suppose we could try dialing in a bit of this and a bit of that breed, but I have a feeling that might not work as expected.

I did Chi-mix rescue for many years and currently have three, and I've wanted to represent them in 3D the longest time. I've even messed around with modifying and rigging some freebie Chihuahua models. But to get the look of a mix, I'd really need to be able to sculpt, and I have no training or talent in that area (my modeling all starts with a box!) So I'm thrilled to have the Chug, but I'd also love to have a mix that looks more like a Chihuahua, particularly with the ears. And most Chi-mixes I've encountered have deer heads rather than apple heads.

Here are my three Chi-mixes, saying "pleeeeeze" :)

View attachment 60970

Oh, also, Chihuahuas are definitely on the way, the WIPS are on the page before this one. I don't really see the advantage to having a separate "small dog base," that just splits your content and limits your options. The whole point of animated joint centers and whatnot is to accommodate different shapes on the same rig. Size differences are a tiny bit of a sticky wicket, but they can be achieved in one of two ways, both have pros and cons, but are both preferable to splitting your content between different figures in my opinion.

First, the way they did the cub, kitten, and redid the puppy. You can scale your morph target down, and have the size baked into the shape. This presents a few different problems. Mixing morphs yields less desirable results since the distance between vertices is exaggerated by the size difference. That includes JCMs, so you have to create many modified jcms and mcms for the figure to work as expected. Conformers also do not auto-follow morphs with baked-in scale as cleanly, but they do still work. The last disadvantage is that every bone in the rig has to be modified to fit a morph with baked-in scale. That means a lot more work, and less reliable consistency in posing.

Secondly, the method I use, is to create the morph target at the scale of the base geometry and leave it there, with the size of the shape being controlled with the scale parameter. This way, morphs, poses, and conformers all work as with any other shape, and far less time has to be spent on unnecessary jcms and mcms. Faster production, better performance. The only disadvantage to this approach is that the user might change the scale without meaning to and be unsure what to set it back to (this can only happen in DS, because Poser keeps the base scale at 100%, and adds any erc scale separately). That is easily fixed by just hitting the reset button on the scale parameter, though.
 

carmen indorato

Extraordinary
Okay, so, I've been dealing with some really heavy stuff recently, and I just got back to these breeds. I've completed the mastiff today. He required a lot of mcms as well, just like the greyhound, and I've just finished polishing them up. Once I've got the Chihuahua done I can start packaging them.

View attachment 60913
Love the white and black wolf textures but can you also make a brindle....the texture looks good on several dog breeds.

No offense please dear, I do like this Mastiff breed, I can see it with a rough fleebit fur and perhaps even with scars to give it a tough mutt look! ;)
but this one doesn't look like a mastiff I am more used to seeing. The brown one before, that didn't have the texture, looked more like the kind of mastiff I am more familiar with. Roman Mastiffs were war dogs used by infantry and armored with bronze and leather armor were huge and deadly.
Not sure...maybe the smaller jowels and longer/unclipped ears and longer tail throw me off. Would also love o see more massive musculature. These images are more of what I am familiar with.
 

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Sparky

Monster Maker
Contributing Artist
Those are (mostly) Molosser, or Neopolitan Mastiffs, who also have long tails and floppy ears when they're not cropped. ^.^ The one I've got here is an English Mastiff. The untextured and textured mastiffs are basically the same shape, I did refine the morph between WIPs, but they are still quite similar. The colours and friendly expression might be giving it a different look in the second one. I will add Molosser to my to-do list... Here's a quick study.

MolosserWIP.jpg
 

Rae134

Renowned
CV-BEE
Contributing Artist
....oh and newborn pup and older pup...........??
Sparky has a newborn pup, pretty much all pups look the same when newborn so will work for any breed (as you can see on my pic on page 5). So far only the HW Lab has an older puppy morph but it still works for some breeds with a texture change (like the Beagle pups on my entry in the challenge Stay Home - Spread Hope Render Challenge near the top of page 32, pretty sure I didn't change the pup shape, but I may have dialled the Beagle in a tiny bit, cant remember).
 

Freyfaxi

Adventurous
The Mastiff is looking great :) And those pics of the roman war dogs has given many idea's for a ?different? type of canine renders :)
 
I don't really see the advantage to having a separate "small dog base," that just splits your content and limits your options. The whole point of animated joint centers and whatnot is to accommodate different shapes on the same rig. Size differences are a tiny bit of a sticky wicket, but they can be achieved in one of two ways, both have pros and cons, but are both preferable to splitting your content between different figures in my opinion.

Thank you for explaining the two ways for creating morphs that account for size differences! I can rig a prop in Poser, but I've never rigged anything that needed animated joint centers or lots of JCMs, so the process is still a bit of a mystery to me.

What you explained helps me understand why some "breed" morphs seem to rely more on scaling than on changing proportions. I'm thinking in particular of the Shetland Pony morph for the HWHorse, which needs some additional body part morphs to be dialed in to get closer to the right proportions.

Speaking of which, I'd definitely be interested in more morph packs that allow users to adjust various body parts to their preference, sort of like a "Morphs++" for the dog (and the horse)! However, I can also see how such a variety of individual morphs might produce nightmares when it comes to making corrective morphs for the rigging to accommodate various poses.

One last comment about how shaping morphs are presented in parameter panels: it drives me absolutely NUTS when shaping morphs are mixed in with movement and posing dials. Shape morphs determine the figure's "character" and, once set, aren't changed. Movement and posing dials are used whenever the character is posed for a render. So I shouldn't have go to searching through a long list of shaping morphs just to find that one movement dial I need to turn the neck or whatever! I know that's not something you, Sparky, can do anything about, although I as the end user can reorganize the dials on my own figure (and I do). I just wanted to toss that out there :)
 

Sparky

Monster Maker
Contributing Artist
Thanks, guys!

nice. but do you mean: "avoiding poser"?
any hope of you adding muscle morphs to the first tan mastiff you posted earlier in the thread without the extreme wrinkles and jowels added?

Sorry, I can see how that comment was confusing, but it was 5:30 in the morning, LOL. I just meant that I should be working on the Poser settings for the other breeds, but instead, I made another breed. Poser settings are the most tedious and time consuming part of the process for me, so I often sort of drift off in other directions when it comes time to do them.

I can make a separate musculature morph when I do the aforementioned body morph pack, though I must admit that the above effect makes some use of textures for the muscle definition. The dog's geometry doesn't have the proper edge loops for really defined musculature, I will continue to tinker with it, though, see if I can get it to look better without help from normal maps and whatnot.

Thank you for explaining the two ways for creating morphs that account for size differences! I can rig a prop in Poser, but I've never rigged anything that needed animated joint centers or lots of JCMs, so the process is still a bit of a mystery to me.

What you explained helps me understand why some "breed" morphs seem to rely more on scaling than on changing proportions. I'm thinking in particular of the Shetland Pony morph for the HWHorse, which needs some additional body part morphs to be dialed in to get closer to the right proportions.

Speaking of which, I'd definitely be interested in more morph packs that allow users to adjust various body parts to their preference, sort of like a "Morphs++" for the dog (and the horse)! However, I can also see how such a variety of individual morphs might produce nightmares when it comes to making corrective morphs for the rigging to accommodate various poses.

One last comment about how shaping morphs are presented in parameter panels: it drives me absolutely NUTS when shaping morphs are mixed in with movement and posing dials. Shape morphs determine the figure's "character" and, once set, aren't changed. Movement and posing dials are used whenever the character is posed for a render. So I shouldn't have go to searching through a long list of shaping morphs just to find that one movement dial I need to turn the neck or whatever! I know that's not something you, Sparky, can do anything about, although I as the end user can reorganize the dials on my own figure (and I do). I just wanted to toss that out there :)

You're welcome. ^.^

I don't have the shetland pony, so I don't know what it's setup is, but it seems odd to me that it would rely on scaling for the proportions... Some of the newer Poser figures are set up for that sort of customization, such as La Femme which shipped with very few morphs, but was rigged with customization through scaling and translation in mind. I haven't really tried that sort of thing with these figures, though.

Most body shaping morphs won't require much in the way of corrective morphs for posing, a few will, but it should be quite manageable.

I've put all my breed morphs in a separate group named "0_Breeds" so you won't have to go hunting for them. The default parameters consist almost entirely of movement controls, since the dog shipped with so few shaping morphs, so I don't usually have a problem with that sort of thing with this figure, though I do agree that in general, shaping dials should not be in the same groups as movement control dials.
 

Sparky

Monster Maker
Contributing Artist
Alright, so, I remembered that old big cat musculature morph that I made ages ago, I spent a ton of time getting those muscles defined, and I just popped that morph on the dog and it works great! This is only dialed in at about 50%, full strength is van art levels of ridiculous. LOL

Mastiff+Muscular.jpg
 

Sparky

Monster Maker
Contributing Artist
Thanks, Dreamer! ^.^

Oh, about the mastiff puppies, @carmen indorato, it's as Rae said, you can make any breed into a puppy. You just have to play with the puppy, newborn puppy, and breed morphs to strike a balance for the age of puppy you want. 100% newborn puppy with no other morphs dialed in will work for almost all newborn puppies, because most newborn puppies look the same regardless of breed. For older puppies, dial in some of the breed morph, some of the HW puppy morph, and maybe some of the newborn puppy morph. Adding in my newborn puppy morph will help sort of round out your puppy, the HW puppy shape is rather angular, and might look a bit odd when mixed with other morphs sometimes. Different ratios will get you different ages of puppies.

Here's a mastiff puppy that I think looks about 5 weeks old, consisting of 60% Mastiff, 70% Puppy, and 20% Newborn Puppy.

MastiffPuppy.jpg


And a puppy that looks about 8 weeks, 60% Mastiff, 75% Puppy.

MastiffPuppy02.jpg
 
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