Universal Anime Head

[RAMWolff]

OK. Understood Ken. Kinda! lol I'm not a very techy guy so yea,,,, understood! Kinda!

 

[Miss B]

I love Dawn as the cop. That's a great render.

 

[Ken1171]

That cop one is an example of an adult character made with the Anime head. The default shape looks younger. ^^

 

[Miss B]

I like the poses and expressions you come up with.

 

[Ken1171]

Thanks! I have included 30 expression presets, the ones shown at the first page. They are just dial combinations, so many more possible. The readme file contains hints on how to change the character age by manipulating the facial features. I have also included 5 character style presets that illustrate the idea.

 

[Miss B]

Now that's what I call being thorough.

 

[Gadget Girl]

So I saw you're post in another thread where you didn't thing anyone was interested because no one had ever commented on your renders using this. For myself, I'll say that I always thought you had done a lot in postwar, especially the eyes which are pretty spot on anime. I know I'd love to have this, and it looks like you are going ahead with this. So I look forward to seeing more.

 

[Ken1171]

@Gadget Girl I think the very concept of "composite" figures is still cloudy for most people, even if it has been available for over a decade. The key concept is very simple - a figure patented to a figure. That's not supported by default, but can be done with a single drag and drop in either Poser or DS. In Poser with the Hierarchy Editor, and in DS with the Scene tab.

With this package, I want to clear this out for the community that it is actually very easy to create composite figures, for it can be done locally without any special tools. Once people master this simple trick, it opens doors for a lot of exploration of old contents that can be brought back to life with another body or head. It's about rediscovering what you can do with what you already have.

So this product is not just a head, bur a learning experience to unlock a feature that has always been there, but was never used.

 

[Miss B]

I did that recently with a "character" hair (rather than a prop hair) I had converted to Dawn, but wanted to fit to Pen's Diva character. I had to place it how I wanted it to fit her, and then dragged it in the Hierarchy Editor to her Head.

So you're saying that's basically how you do it with your anime head.

 

[Ken1171]

Exactly - it's as simple as that! I am not kidding when I say it is THAT simple. But when we replace a character's head, there are additional steps that hair will not require - matching the materials, posing considerations, and so on. My tutorial is covering all the little things that can happen with composite figures, and also what NOT to do. The good news is that all of this can be done without any extra tools, and without ever leaving the program. The tutorial will also teach you how to do the same with entire figures you have in your library that already have a body.

 

[quietrob]

So you are saying you don't have to hide the donor character body (leaving just the head) and then parent that head to target's neck? You can use the hierarchy editor and just drag it to the figure and it will replace the head? Textures not withstanding.

Sorry I'm so slow!

 

[Ken1171]

@quietrob I always parent to the head, not the neck. This has to do with the posing part, since the head will not be conformed. Just drag the figure to the head of the other figure. If you want to use textures, you will have to try to match the skin tone the best you can in the material room, or just use one of the provided skin tones on both the body and head, which is what I have done in all these renders. ^^

 

[quietrob]

SO you parent the head to the head rather than the neck? Thanks Ken!

 

[Ken1171]

Yes, parent the entire figure (Body) to the other figure's head. That does the trick.

 

[Ken1171]

Uh-oh, bumped into a showstopping bug in Poser Pro 11. Whenever I subdivide the head in PP11, the UVs get all distorted. Works fine in Poser Pro 2014 and DS4, but just not in PP11. SMS wants to push the issue to 11.0.6, but I am trying to talk them over to solve it still in 11.0.5. ^^;;;

 

[Miss B]

Uh oh. I hope you win the update version war.

 

[Ken1171]

Me too, otherwise it's a showstopper again. I have checked Dawn and observed the SAME issue with subdivision in her pupils. This is because all eye geometries are generally built out of spheres with the poles facing forwards, and the sphere's poles are made of several triangles sharing a single vertex at the center. Subdivisions don't like triangles, so the area around that center point (surrounded by triangles) gets heavy mesh distortion. This doesn't seem to affect texture mapping in PP2014 and DS4, but it does affect Poser Pro 11.

Below is Dawn's pupils with a checkers texture with, and then without subdivision. Look at what happens at the center. The effects are not very visible on the textures because the center of the pupil is filled with pure black, the mesh is high-poly, and the pupil itself is very small. But in the Anime head, the pupil is very large, low-poly, and not always filled with black, so the distortions are much more visible. Like I said, a new showstopping bug.

 

[Miss B]

OUCH! That's definitely distorted. I hope they fix that soon.

In Poser 9, I didn't have the SubD option, but now that I have PP11, I like using it.

 

[Ken1171]

Funny thing is that this doesn't happen in 3DSMAX, Poser Pro 2014 or in DAZ Studio. Whatever is causing the UV distortions, it only happens in PP11. I suspect PP11 is subdividing the UV mapping as well, which serves no practical purpose at all besides causing this issue.

 

[RAMWolff]

Yikes, that's not good. It's too bad you can convert the tri to quads without messing up the UV's..... Just one more hurdle to get figured out...