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DAZ Productions, Inc.
224 S 200 W, Suite #250
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
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© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Introducing the AME Flex Couple Dolls! They flex when you pose them! Hours of Posing fun.
Had the day off, so decided to take this back burner project on. The Doll is G8F based, so lots of porting to get this to work.
Keeping the thread alive.
Well that is different. Good job! Very creative.
I took a little time to rework one of my earlier characters. I used a diffrerent base and took the time and used Measure Metrics to get all the proportions accurate. This is a wrestler (Meso-endomorph), so the muscles are toned but not too large to be agile. Please let me know what you think and if you would like to see any more.
Here is a quick one I dialed up using Cromwell as a base. He has a great body I just wished his head morph was separate.
Wonderful models, Sigurd.
I just purchased the Advanced Muscle Definition Morphs for Goliath. The JCMs, I'm told, will only work with Goliath as the base. What I'd like to know is if I slim down Goliath or change his proportions, will the JCMs still work, perhaps at a lesser definition level? Or, do I have to keep the Goliath character at full values in order for the JCMs to work? Does anyone know? People here seem to be pretty knowledgable about muscle definition and JCMs.
As another issue, how well might Goliath, with the Advanced Morphs, but slimed down, work with the Auto Muscle Enhancer HD?
Thanks Inquire. As fas as Goliath is concerned, I purchased his other two AMDMs but not Goliath as I was afraid he would be too extreme (especially in the hand, wrist and forearm dept.) for me to model into a normal sized character. I believe the JCMs work proportionally though judging by my experience with his first two. I will experiment with them later today with AME to see what I can do with them.
Let us see what you come up with.
Thanks, different is what I was going for. I mean we have seen Battle Frogs and cartoon characters also getting the AME treatment.
I really like the realism you bring to your characters, getting the textures right is so HARD!
Inquire, my experimenting with the Advanced Muscle Deformation led me to believe that it was also proportional to how much character was dialed in. I made a copy body that I applied to a separate Developer character, then overlayed them to determine the amount of Deformation. It is definitely there when you get to the extreme poses. Here is what I did, the figures (4 of them) are Fibo, the smaller ones at 35%. Nothing else dialed in. Hope that helps.
Thanks t_d ! I am pretty sure I have tried AME on his Advanced characters before I will check my library (I just picked up N.G.S. Anagenessis 2 on sale and it will give me an excuse to play with it).
Thanks for the character study, I always find them useful.
Well it seems I like a challenge, and I wanted to investigate that exact question also. So the left Characters (1 and 2)) have the settings shown in the screen capture 1. As you can see I used the G8M Emaciated slider with the limit turned off to achieve the 150% slimming. These two characters used more AME so I slimmed them more. The right Characters (3 and 4) have less AME, so less emaciated slimming at 50%. I did not use Measure Metrics, but they appear equivalent in size if not definition. The AME body brings in striations and muscle definition with it. Overall, my assessment is that the products are completely complimentary, and you can easily slim the models and not lose any of the JCM's.
Wow! You are bold. I would not have thought to slim them down that much but it looks pretty good. I will have to play with this some more.
Thanks for the tip!
Thank you all a great deal for the experimenting and for reporting these results.
Another attempt at using the G8M, AME, and ASE with some other character/morphs dialed in. I'm calling this guy "Ade Emilio". This one is inspired by Sigurd's examples shown in this forum discussion. Thank you, Sigurd!
This render was done with Iray (CPU render - no Nvidia card in my Mac) at SubD3 in about 18 minutes. I'm either going to get a new Mac with faster and more cores, or a cheap gaming PC with an Nvidia RTX 2060 11GB VRAM to speed things up a bit. Leaning towards the Mac right now since I love the platform (don't hate me! LOL!)
Also, I've included a screen cap of the character's parameter dials for those who might be interested in the recipe for his shape. From what I recall, the textures are: Emil for the skin, Aron's blue eyes for the eyes, and Dolb's teeth textures (the nice ones, not the rotted variant. LOL!)
Lee
Terrific job making this character, Lee. I, too, am a Mac user, and love the platform.
Thank you so much, inquire!
My first Mac was a PowerBook 100, followed by several later generations of PowerBooks, a couple of Color Classics, a PowerMac 6100/66, some iBooks, the "sunflower" iMac G4 (the one with the LCD on an articulated stainless steel arm), several flat panel iMacs, and a titanium PowerBook.
I'm currently running DAZ Studio on a Mac mini (i5, 8 GB RAM, 1 TB HDD) with a Samsung 4K monitor with the resolution set down to QHD instead of full 4K. I also have a Retina 12" MacBook that can run DAZ Studio rather well in a pinch or when I'm away from home. My venerable 10 year old 27" iMac is going into retirement very soon. That's the Mac that I'm going to replace with some new hardware. The newest iMac is looking really good to me right now. I've been window shopping one with the 10-core i9, 4TB SSD, whatever the top spec graphics card is, and 32GB RAM. Will likely pull the trigger on it around Thanksgiving. Unless there's some super exciting news that makes the upcoming Apple Silicon system(s) more desirable. :)
Lee
Wow, all very interesting, Lee. Well, please stay in touch. If you do get the latest iMac, I'd like to know what you think of it. I'm wondering about the same thing: new iMac or wait for the Apple Silicon system? If you do get the Silicon, I'd really want to know about that. I'm on a 2013 Mac model now.
I'll definitely start a new discussion when I update my Mac. And will be happy to run some render timings compared to the Mac mini. I know the Mac won't be as fast at Iray rendering as an Nvidia RTX equipped PC, but it should be faster than what I've got now. Unless I could go for an Nvidia GPU with lots of VRAM, at some point, I'd have a scene(s) that gobble up all the VRAM and fall back to CPU rendering regardless of Mac or PC.
I'm sure I'll be happy with a new Mac, but may also get a cheap gaming PC with Nvidia GPU later if needed.
The Mac Force is strong! :)
Lee
And staying on topic, here's another test render of Ade Emilio. :)
Wow! Great work leemoon! Thanks for including all the details. I cannot say enough how I think the genius of this product is how different all of our characters look. It accentuates our characters without overpowering them. Your character looks awesome but totally different from my character.
Thank you, Sigurd!
I 100% agree with your thoughts on Auto Muscle Enhancer. It is a brilliant product. I use it on all my characters and have created a preset that applies AME and ASE with starter settings that I can then tune to suit a particular figure and other morphs.
Lee
I agree, Lee. Your new test render of Ade Emilio is terrific.
Thank you, inquire!! I continue to enjoy using DAZ Studio, Genesis 8 characters/morphs, and Auto Muscle Enhancer. I'm still learning DAZ Studio and continue to tinker with lighting. While I had a certain render style in my Poser days, I want to see if I can come up with a different style in DAZ Studio. Still exploring some lighting and/or render techniques that will really show off the figure's form in a way that suits me. I want to do justice to the body shapes that I get while using AME and ASE. :)
Lee
If you have thoughts to pass on sometime about lighting and render techniques, please do.
I sure will. The past few renders I've been showing in this thread use the Fast Production Lights set. I've set the Environment Dome to use FPL004EnvMono.hdr as the environment. I also have 2 ghost lights in the scene, though I often don't turn them on. The last 2 Ade Emilio renders shown in this thread have them turned on. They give a little extra pop for highlights and overall illumination when placed right. So the only light sources are the environment dome and (sometimes) the 2 ghost lights. I don't recall which presets I started out with for tone mapping and intensity, but the FPL set has some wonderful presets to start with.
Here's the store link for the Fast Production Lights: https://www.daz3d.com/fast-production-lights-for-iray
I'm a fan of this lighting solution and it is the basis for my tinkering around to see what I can achieve in DAZ Studio. The ghost lights that I'm using are simple flat planes which I made into ghost lights based on info here in the forums. They work really well and can give different effects by scaling them on different axes, moving them, and changing their intensity. One last ghost lights item of note: I have 1 ghost light plane and the other ghost light is an instance of the first.
I'm by far not the expert here, there are MANY more talented artists that can give better lighting advice than I can. LOL! Still, I enjoy seeing what I can do as I seek out a unique render style in DAZ Studio.
I hope some of this helps inspire you, inquire. When I get a few minutes, I'll see if I can do a screen cap of my render settings and post them here. :)
Lee
First time playing with the product. I decided Asher needed some musculature. I used some of Maxx's skin presets and bottoms then used Tenebroso Lighting to add the colors. Edited in Photoshop and ended up with a painterly effect on the image.
Excellent render and character, Daventaki! Please show more when you can.
Lee
leemoon, your characters look great and so FUN!
Daventaki, welcome to the party. Leemoon reporting that he is using Sub level 3, got me thinking about sub-surface veins. So I started experimenting with different products. So this is a variant/cross genre version of a DC character. I used what I had to build a Venom delivery system, all to facilitate showing off the deep vein coloration.
Similar to Leemoon, I have a Scene Preset built with a basic set of AME/ASE settings, along with a basic texture and my own ERC's, deforms, and other preferences. Makes starting from scratch WAY faster. The preferences are all saved in the favorites, so it is really easy to adjust without all the searching.
My take on this character is kind of a cross between the movie and comic versions, with of course a variant on the Venom delivery system. Look for a future post if a certain female Jokester decides to try the Venom out on her own! TD
terry_duquette, good job! Inspired me to try using ASV again, haven't in about 2 years, and try to play with textures to see if I can come up with something I am happy with. I would be interested to know how you set up your presets. It sounds like it would save me a lot of time.
Thank you, terry_duquette! I enjoy working with the G8M figures to see what I can come up with.
Yep, my preset activates AME/ASE, applies a slight amount of Cartoonized, makes iris adjustments to the eyes, and other minor adjustments scattered over the body like turning the navel on. It makes modifying a character shape much quicker if I've already started with the things that I generally do with my characters.
Your Bane character looks great with the veins! And I like your take on the Venom delivery system. Very cool!
Lee
Sigurd, those textures look great, not really understanding what the Anagenessis 2 is really doing. Anyway you wanted a look at my presets, well you asked for it! I have this character setup as a Scene Preset also because it includes 6 D-forms, and some ERC freezes that aren't captured in Properties or Shaping Presets.
Leemoon, glad you like my Bane. I am always experimenting. I seem to like finding ways to combine and mix products. Anyway, to the presets!
The first cap is the "Favorites" folder with my the basic setup already set. Easy to find, and modify once you start building a character. The 6 D-Forms are for the elbow, knee and ankle joints to shrink them if the added muscle starts increasing the joint size away from my preference. They are saved as a group, and I activate all of them with the DForm slider also saved in the Favorites. I use this primarily on the Female characters. Next I have a few small ERC freezes to enhance the biceps. the second cap shows the left hand Bend and the 3 properties I attached to that. Next, I have saved several Materials Presets for quick access. And now it gets complicated! Using the Musculature HD products, namely the upper arm, I preselected the "Biceps Short Head x-Alt" to 20%, then both the "Muscle Flex and Muscle Flex Alt" to 8%. Then I set a mirror image double bicep pose, and trim out the rest of the morphs from the upper arm, neck, chest and back properties. This in effect uses the 8% flex to give only the biceps the extra "pop" I am looking for. This seems to work well on most of the models and sizes that I use. If the larger models need more, just move the Flex properties to higher values to get the desired result. You can always untrim some Bicep head flex if it gets to be too much. Reset the base character to the start pose and save! Well that is the short version, I know I must be insane, but you have no idea how many iterations I have tried to date to get here. As I have stated in earlier posts, I throw poses at my characters and don't want to have to go fix any morphs afterward. Generally the ASE might need a little tuning depending on the size of the character, and of course if you want more of the AME products for even more effect. Sorry for the lengthy post, but you did ask! T-D
Almost forgot, you will see I have some "fix" properties, these are to tweak the AME body morphs. The baseline body drops the shoulders, and increases hand and foot size more than my preference, so these are custom morphs saved and set as favorites so I can easily trim back to my desired shape.
Totally simple :)
Thanks terry_duquette for the peek behind the curtain. Very informative. I spent/wasted many years powerlifting and studying kinesiology at the university so I thought I was pretty picky about individual muscle heads and such so it is good for me to see others who take interest in the finer details also. This may be a stupid question but, how do you go about saving your presets to apply to a character? I have a collection similar to yours and I just manually apply them everytime I start working on a character. I hadn't thought about being able to apply them all in a couple of clicks. That would be a real time saver. Take out the tedious and let me enjoy the creation/art a little more. Natural eyes (iris and cornea) and things that I always apply. I am currently working on a set of basic Somatotypes that I could use as a starting place for my characters. I have the three basic Ecto, Meso, and Endomorphs and all of their permutations (to show differentiation between a Meso - endomorph and an Endo - mesomorph for example). There is lots going on there with not just relative shoulder and waist widths but also length of arms and legs, size of wrists, finger lengths etc. It would be nice to be able to select this to start as opposed to building it from scratch each time.
Thank you again for your input.