Quote - By the way, I think I'll probably make a few expression poses to demonstrate how the morphs are meant to be used.

That sounds like a very good idea!

Good news: I'm now pretty sure I know what caused those inner mouth vertices to push in front of the teeth in the OpenMouth morph. It's not Poser's fault at all, but rather an artifact of incorrect processing by me, so it should be very easy to fix.

What's more, the problems I mentioned I had with the tongue were a result of my silly attempts to mix morphs and joints bends in ways that simply don't work in Poser. I should have known better than to even try this. The thing is, if I want to use joints to move the tongue tip up and down, I have to use a translation to push the tongue forward and out of the mouth. That translation will need a JCM, but that's a different story.

But now I'm also wondering if I shouldn't use three tongue actors instead of just two. Because my tongue bends at a different spot when I curl the tip up than when I bend it down. I know some people use more than three, but Antonia's tongue doesn't have all that many polygons, and I honestly don't think she needs to be able to tie a cherry stem into a knot with it.

Do we have any tongue morphs for Antonia yet? Those deltas would have to be recomputed when I change the grouping for the tongue.

Maybe one could make a morph recomputing automaton, that takes a vertex map to find out which vertex moves where. But that might be overkill for tongue morphs :).

I have the feeling that the simple one-dial-smile looks pretty morononic with every figure I tried out so far, regardless of brand and price. I always use it (if I use it at all) under a value of 1.0 and mix it with morphs that narrow the lips and, if desired, open the mouth a bit or lift the upper lip. Far better works the splitted morph: Add a smile to the left side and a smile to the right but give them more or less different values and you can go from an impish smile over a sultry one to pure joy.

Quote - But now I'm also wondering if I shouldn't use three tongue actors instead of just two. Because my tongue bends at a different spot when I curl the tip up than when I bend it down. I know some people use more than three, but Antonia's tongue doesn't have all that many polygons, and I honestly don't think she needs to be able to tie a cherry stem into a knot with it.

I agree it is not necessary to tie a cherry stem. On the other hand it would be nice if she could run the tip of her tongue round the inside of her lips, or touch the tip of her tongue to the tip of her nose. Nice, but not essential. I have tried to get good bending of the tongue in a number of different ways, playing with the joint parameters, using morphs, and using magnets.

Morphs have the problem that they can not accurately describe an arc. A morph that looks right with the tongue tip bent up at 90° will look wrong at 45°. The most promising approach I tried was to use 3 or 4 ERC controlled magnets. Whilst this provided a high degree of flexibility, it was not without its problems, it was complicated to set up, and required some practice to use well. I never got past the prototype stage and moved on to other things.

If you are going to keep the current tongue groups, I'm sure you are aware that the tongue JPs could use some improvement. If it were me I would try moving the tongue2 origin forwards, increase the inclusion angle for jointx and jointy to about 90°, and decrease the exclusion angle of both. Perhaps the tongue bending would benefit from jointx and jointy channels in tongue1, but I'm not sure on that. The smooth scale channels also deserve attention.

Finally the idea of adding another tongue actor, I suspect this is the best way to go, perhaps even two new actors! And dare I say it  at this stage of development? Perhaps even a new tongue geometry. Whilst the current geometry looks very anatomically accurate, the way it attaches to the floor of the mouth does not give much scope for scaling tongue1 lengthwise. Yes it would be a major step to change the geometry at this stage, but if the UV mapping did not change too radically, it might have minimal impact on textures. Perhaps a whole new tongue geometry is a step too far, but I definitely like the idea of an extra tongue actor.

I have not seen any tongue morphs yet.

Here is a little animation I made when I was experimenting with ERC controlled magnets for the tongue.

@lesbentley: That animation looks impressive. I'll think about your suggestions a little. I  agree that adding a tongue actor or even changing the tongue geometry should not be too problematic at this point. But maybe this also means that it would be okay to just do the bare minimum for now and introduce an improved tongue in a future version. Or leave the fancy tongue flexing entirely up to more ingenious people such as yourself. I guess if all else fails, one could even make the existing tongue invisible and use a separate tongue figure.

The thing is, I meant to be finished with Version 1 a week ago and have already added much more in terms of expressions than I thought I'd manage. Basically, I'll keep this up as long as it's fun, and declare it finished once I get bored. That better not happen in the middle of a big change. :laugh:

Anyway, I guess I'll leave the tongue for last and concentrate on jaw movements and such for now.

Will Antonia still be receiving support for Wardrobe Wizard?  I recall that being discussed a couple of months ago....

Quote - Will Antonia still be receiving support for Wardrobe Wizard?  I recall that being discussed a couple of months ago....

Only PhilC can decide that. I'll contact him, let him know that Antonia's body is now stable, and see if he's still interested.

Quote - I guess if all else fails, one could even make the existing tongue invisible and use a separate tongue figure.

Yes that's very true. pjz99 has an impressive tongue, I think it is for V4, but could probably also be used on Antonia with a bit of repositioning. I might even take another crack at my tongue magnets some day (big "perhaps"). However if you do get the time and inclination, I think an extra actor in the tongue would be good.

Quote - Basically, I'll keep this up as long as it's fun, and declare it finished once I get bored.

That's a good plan, and also the reason my tongue magnets, and a few dozzen other projects,  never got finished. :biggrin:

oh my...that gives me goose bumps!

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@odf,

I'm still thinking about the problem of having the lids track the up-down rotation of the eyes, yet not tracking the motion when the eyes are closed. I have some ideas on how to do it, but have not put them into practice yet, I have spent this evening getting the current lid morphs to track the eyes, as a necessary first step.

The simplest approach is to skirt the problem by providing a dial to turn the tracking off, and to use this dial when the eyes are closed. However I feel it is possible to have the tracking turn off automatically when the eyes are closed, and I shall investigate this. If I'm going to do that, I might as well make it on an eye by eye basis, so that if one eye is open its lids track, and if the other eye is closed its lids don't track. It may take me some time, and I don't know if I will have it ready in time for your final release.

That brings me to another point. I feel that the EyesClosed morph should be split into UprLipDnRight and  UprLipDnLeft, and that these two morphs should be slaved  to a CTRLEyesClosed  targetGeom. I suspect that you were already planing this, but mention it just in case. Similarly I think LwrLidUp should have the deltas removed, and be converted into a CTRL channel with the two separate morphs slaved to it, or just be left out.

The mouth opening is now fixed in the github version. I've removed the ugly artifact and added a control parameter MouthOpen in the head actor.

@lesbentley: I have three versions of most expression morphs right now. You are right, it's probably best to just slave the symmetric version to both the left and right one in each of those cases and remove its deltas. The EyesClosed morph doesn't have left and right versions as yet because I made it before I could split morphs and haven't gotten around to adding them. I think there will simply be UprLidDn, UprLidDnLeft and UprLidDnRight instead of EyesClosed. Those names are a bit more cryptic at first sight, but they fit in with the naming scheme for the other lid and lip morphs.

@odf,

That all sounds like good news!

I still have one Antonia package that I need to finish, it has several skin tones in it but right now I need time off.

My brother (the one down here) has to go back into the hospital for surgery again.

The doctor thinks a wire broke loose and is causing an infection in his chest from the by-pass surgery.

My retail pack is ready to go as soon as the official Antonia release is ready. :)

Please pass my best wishes to your brother BE, I hope that all goes well for him and he'll be back home soon!

Re the lid synch stuff.

Quote - The thing is that if you close the eyes completely, then the movements of the eyes should no longer influence the lids.

I have got the lid synch working reasonably well with the morphs from the v0.9.126-10-g958e747.zip. I had to split the EyesClosed morph into left and right, and increase the limits on the LwrLidUp morphs to min -1, and max 2, this may be pushing it a bit, but it looked silly otherwise. The the lids do not move when the eyes are closed via the EyeClosed dials, if the eyes are partially closed the lids move to a lesser degree. the right and left sides work independently.

It's late now, and I must go to bed. I will try to post details, and perhaps an example file tomorrow.

@BluEcho,

Hope all goes well for your brother. My best wishes to him.

@lesbentley: Many thanks for this! I was suspecting that the LwrLidUp morphs didn't go high enough at 1. I think I'm seeing some bulging in the lower lids when her eyes go way up, so I guess I'll have to revise that morph.

But I'm slightly surprised you needed negative values, as well. Do you think it would be better to add separate LwrLidDn morphs instead?

Quote - I think I'm seeing some bulging in the lower lids when her eyes go way up, so I guess I'll have to revise that morph.

Yes I noticed that. For the lid synch to look reasonably good, the lower lids need to be able to move up and down more than the limits allow. There is also quite a bit of texture stretching when the lower lids go up as far as I have made them do, but I guess that can't be helped. I think it is probably acceptable for all but a close up.

Quote - There is also quite a bit of texture stretching when the lower lids go up as far as I have made them do, but I guess that can't be helped. I think it is probably acceptable for all but a close up.

I'll see what I can do about the texture stretching.

@lesbentley: I've doubled the strength of the LwrLidUp morphs, removed the bulges and set the limits as -0.5..1.0. You should be able to get the updated version from github now.

Obviously, you will need to divide your deltaAddDelta values by two for these new morphs.

Okay, one more: the EyesClosed morphs is now called UprLidDn, and left and right versions have been added.

@odf,

Re the lid synch. There is too much code to detail all settings here, so I have posted an example to  Antonia's Free Site as "LidTest-01.cr2".

In essence it works like this. I'll describe only the left side of the face, but the set-up is the same for the right side.

The morphs involved in the lid synchronisation are all slaved to a valueParm LidSynch_Left, with various deltaAddDelta values for the different morphs. So LidSynch_Left drives all the morphs on the left side. It is slaved to CTRLEyesUpDown, in order to provide the synchronisation, and to LidSynch_Off-On_Left, via valueOpTimes, in order to provide a means to turn the synchronisation off.

LidSynch_Off-On_Left is slaved to LidSynch_Off-On, which can be used to turn the synch off/on for both sides, and supplies a value of one to its child channels. It is also slaved to EyeCloseLeft_B. EyeCloseLeft_B is a CTRL channel and has no deltas. It is slaved to EyesClosed, to provide a way to cloes both eyes at once.

EyeCloseLeft_A is the morph to close the eye. It is slaved to EyeCloseLeft_B and LidSynch_Right. And that is the set-up!

The EyeCloseLeft_B channel is necessary in order avoid a feedback loop.

As usual with poser, there is a worm in the apple. As the user closes the eye with EyeCloseLeft_B (dial name "EyeCloseLeft"), it is desirable to hide the EyeCloseLeft_A dial to avoid confusion. However there is a problem here. When Poser (at least P6 and previous) loads a figure, it unhides any channel that contains deltas. This can be circumvented for a load of the original figure by placing a 'hidden 1' line after the deltas, but that line will be striped out upon a save and reload. The only workaround I can find is to place the dial for EyeCloseLeft_A  in a collapsed group named "Don't Touch!", and hope the user obeys the instruction (red rag to a bull). This is far from ideal, but it's a Poser feature/bug, that seems to have no better solution.

The lid synch is on by default, to turn it off, set the LidSynch_Off-On dial to zero. I will probably leave the LidTest-01.cr2 posted for about 7 days, then delete it. Of course this is only an example, there may be other, perhaps better ways to do it. Everything in the package is based on the v0.9.126-10-g958e747.zip, and the deltas themselves have not been changed, except for splitting the EyesClosed morph.

Les.

Here is an image I did of her  ... a couple actually.  You guys are doing great!

Boni

@odf,

When the eyes rotate down, I think the lid synch looks OK for static images. For animations it is less than ideal because the lower lid stops moving before the eye stops moving. Fixing this for the downwards movement would mess up the upward movement, as down and up really need diffrent deltaAddDelta ratios. This could be fixed by having seperate LwrLidUp and LwrlidDown morphs, but I don't know if that is worth doing.

@Boni,

Nice work!

@lesbentley: This behaviour of the eyes is something I know from many figures, V4 for instance shows this effect. On the other hand you hardly ever use this extreme level of looking down. Of course being able to use a LwrLidUp morph takes care for the "problem" - but maybe someone can find a photo-reference or some other information to find out where the natural limit is for eyes looking downwards.

@Boni: Nice one! How did you fit the hair? So far I am bound to resizing it so it would be interesting how you did it and (if you resized the hair) what values you've used.

I forgot to include the obj file in the LidTest-01.zip.  :blushing:
It's fixed now, try re-downloading.

@lesbentley: Many thanks, Les! Ah, I forgot about feedback loops. That definitely makes things more interesting.

Thanks for the nice comments.  She's a delight to work with.

Adjustments for hair for  SaintFox:

M3D's: Classic  Elegance  in Free Stuff

Scale: 101

Xscale:  84

Xtran: 0.009

Ytran: -0.292

Ztran:  -0.060

I'm not sure if that would change in the positioning if the pose were different or not. Another thing I did was add extra displacement in the hair, to me it seems to add realism.  I used some of the wonderful lighting that was on Antonia's site.  The pose is an adjusted pose from some freebies for the SM/G2  females.  I love  what you all are doing as I said before.  Thanks Les for working on the eye-lid adjustments, that is important to me for whatever reason.   The second hip is wonderful, I wished all models had that as well as the  instep, it eliminates the horrible round arch that Vicki has whenever you bend  her  foot down.    Having used various free and adjusted  models throughout the  last 12 years I've been obsessed with Poser this one is getting right up there with Apollo Maximus  ... although  the clothes variety isn't there  yet or the utility poses.  But that would be a good place to get ideas.  

Well, that's my 2 cents worth.

Boni 

P.S. Please excuse some typo's I am visually impaired and sometimes I don't catch them all. :)

@Boni,

What kinds of utility poses would you like to see for Antonia?

Les,

That's a very good question.  This should help. I'm looking at the Apollo files and here's what I've found that could help.

I've edited this  post as I've found the utility poses I listed already exist! Sorry about that.  I hope that the other suggestions below are  helpful.

:blushing:
I believe there is already hide/show poses for feet etc. but I only have Apollo up now for reference.  Also while I'm at it a larger range of character morphablility (is that even a word? Well, as Joss Wheden once said, it is now) would be greatly appreciated. If you doulc look at the structure of Apollo's morphs ... they are quite versatile and work equally in the negative numbers as the positives.  Anton said that he'd specifically made them be able to do that for a wider range of movement and form.

Another thing I would REALLY like to see is natural standing poses.  These model poses with arched backs and extended chests are a bit over the top.  Most Vicki sets do this. I'd like to see a variety of standing poses with shift in wieght, hand positions and "attitude".  I hope I'm not alone in this request. :)

Does that help?

Boni

@Boni,

If you get the "APUtilityPoses0.9.122" from the pose section of Antonia's Free Site, it contains a quite comprehensive set of lock/unlock poses for Antonia. It also contains a set of poses to make parts visible/invisible. Plus some more obscure stuff. Two or three  of the poses may not be fully compatible with the latest version of Antonia, eg "JCM Of-On" and "Rem Native".

There are also some utility poses by xuu4u, at the same site.

I just had this silly idea for a tag line for Antonia: "Not your average ultimate Poser figure".

Thoughts, comments, law suits?

:lol:

Or... "Average girl. Not your average Poser figure."

"Not your average ultimate Poser figure"

I like it!

Unfortunately, I don't think Anton would be amused. :unsure:

ETA: I came up with the phrase while thinking about disclaimers for Antonia 1.0. You know, I think she'll be reasonably complete as base figures go, but without many of the bells and whistles that people might be used to and/or expecting. So I thought I'd point out that she's pretty much a hobby project, born of my interest in 3d modeling and human anatomy and my frustration with existing female Poser figures in 2005. So she's neither intended as a sales generator (a.k.a. V4) nor a demonstration of all the awesome things one can build into a Poser figure if one is just cool enough (a.k.a. Apollo). That last part gave me the - as I said, very silly - tag line idea.

Are you always  this modest? Frankly after using models from all over the web ... I honestly think she's a contender. She may not have all the support products of Vicki  or the extensive work that went  into Apollo, but hea, she's pretty darn good.  The second hip thing and foot instep joint are marvolous! Don't sell yourself, or  Antonia short!

Vicki cannot do the above pose as well as Antonia.

Good model.

Boni 

The second hip and the instep are not my inventions. The artist formerly known as phantom3d did the rigging.

odf:

Well, be that as  it may, and kudos to formily phantom3d, you have a very nice model I will use often.

I think everyone  has done a great job here, from Lesbently to Saintfox to  ... well everyone! It takes me back to the cooperative efforts that created free stuff baci in the PFO days! (Not to disrespect the marketplace here, but the community of creative  minds that all the marketplaces and vendors/merchants came from is pretty amazing).

So ... I have a modeling challenge for y'all.  How about some generic clothes?  jeans, t-shirt, slacks, tunic, boots  (heeled and  flat) long skirt (dynamic), tank.  Things that can be textured/transparency mapped with veristile options.  Hair can be scaled and fixed fairly easily, but clothes ... need to be more fitted to the individual  models.  Anyone up for this?  The clothes already are great ... just looked to expand for our girl.

Boni

boni, that picture looks great.

I think there are a few here who are going to do some clothes, hopefully some free items, and some for retail. :)

If I could model stuff like that I'd give it a try myself.

Any calls for second skin clothes?  That is something I am going to try for her soon.

Sorry I'm not too active here but this move took a lot out of me and I still haven't unpacked much.  I need to get my scanner and other computer accessories unpacked and connected...sigh.

The brother is still in the hospital but doing well.

He is snowbound like the rest of us down here and if released today he is still stuck there.

@odf...the expression morphs look great and I'm waiting to get a copy.

I'm trying to convert a few DAZ classics for her: MFD and Nites in Madrid. Would capitalize on the large amount of textures there is around for that stuff. It rolls sloowly, but hopefully in the end will result in (RTE encoded) freebies.

I hace come to the phase where I need to add the JCM's. Had the idea to 'copy' Antonia's JCM's as a starting point using constrained vertices the cloth room. 

Question I have now is the body morphs. Is anything planned for Antonia in that direction? Breast morphs? Versatile clothing would need to support those. A 'canonic' set of morphs is a major factor for succes. Developers will be more inclined to implement those than they will want to put effort in morph sets floating around somewhere.  

Generic 'blank' clothes would be great, but would also welcome spandax morphs and a no gen morph/no gen hip so second skins will be easier.

Thanks a lot, Boni, I will try your values out soon. They already look better as my poor attempt. I am still hoping that Netherworks gets interest in Antonia and creates a tool for her... and of course that future hair products may contain an Antonia fit.

Bagoas: I am already undusting my RTE Encoder

And odf: I like this headline a lot!! If I understood right and you think that Anton won't like it (a collision with Apollo??) you can still replace the "figure" with a "female".

Anton wouldn't like it because it's making fun of Apollo, who is supposed to be the ultimate Poser figure. The word ultimate, when taken literally, implies that there can only be one. So 'average ultimate' is a contradiction in terms.

Forget about that line. I was just amusing myself.

Too bad... but I think if we ponder long enough we will find another sentence that will not make fun of another non-commercial figure but of a commercial figure (whatever it will be)

Not your avarage perfect Poser woman but your perfect avarage Poser woman

...or likewise (native speakers will find a more perfect headline).

I am intrigued by Believable3D's idea "Average girl. Not your average Poser figure". I'd like it a bit more condensed, but with the double meaning still discernible. Maybe "Not your Poser figure next door" or "Not your everyday Poser girl"? But the latter seems so obvious that I'd be surprised if it hadn't been already taken.

Obvious is good as obvious will stay in mind!

Hmm, how about "excitingly average"?

Exquisitely average.

Quote - Hmm, how about "excitingly average"?

Possibly a bit of an oxymoron, but that's not a bad thing if it captures the meaning or effect you're after.    I would do "Antonia Polygon: Simply the best".  But that's not a very good slogan.  :lol:  Apologies for lack of paragraphs here.  This recently revised post editor seriously bites in some areas....

Voluntary oxymorons - specifically crafted to stress a point - are acceptable, though.

...or so I'm told.

(by Wikipedia)