La Femme for Poser... Evolution?

As some of you know, there's a new Poser girl available at Renderosity. In the short time she's been out I've already received a fair number of emails and messages asking what I think of her, if I'm going to make gens for her, what this means for Evolution etc etc. Let me quickly get this off my chest.

Edit: Updated my FAQ

La Femme

So, what do I think of her? Honestly no idea and I'm probably gonna keep it that way. I haven't downloaded her and I am way too busy nursing my comic career back to life to care at the moment. But if you really insist, also then I think I'm not the right person to ask. I will probably be very biased, as I made Evolution for a reason. So am I going to make gens for her? nope (I heard she might already have them btw).

Evolution?

What does this mean for Evolution? Nnnnnnothing. I made Evolution for a myriad of reasons, and one of them is to provide a foundation of a female human Poser figure that looks and bends like the real thing, with the limited resources I have, to the best that I was able to. As far as I am concerned, I succeeded in that. I'm happy with the result, and I've often considered switching to Evolution myself (from my own comic figure). So Evolution still stands.

Edit: obviously plenty of room for improvement, but I'm happy with the foundation.

But?

Unfortunately I can say what I want about how successful I think PE is, that doesn't mean that she's taking over Poserland. This is because of content. If you use dynamic clothes, PE is fine, but traditional conforming clothing is an issue. At the risk of repeating myself, as most of you know, to achieve said bends, I utilized JCMs for that, next to traditional Weight Maps. We have many Poser figures that work with WM only, but their bends are very limited and don't look human when doing rather basic bends (lets not talk about yoga bends). PE can do the full range. 













We don't care for yoga

The common counterargument to such bending abilities is that very few people would need them. Ok, so here's the thing: by that argument, most features in software and software assets can be dropped since the vast majority of the PC using world never uses such features. 3DSMax could be stripped down to a 40Mb application in that way. Hardly anyone uses a piece of software to its fullest. The other more simpler argument is that we're not even talking about yoga poses mostly. Even a simple squat will need JCMs in the calfs and thighs. In other words, its just an excuse, laziness, unwillingness to go the extra mile for what the entire f*%#^g world of CGI is striving for: realism... and it might explain why Poser is not doing too well at the moment. 








Realism, yeaaaa... oh wait.

So in other words, since Poser's main selling point is 3D figures, it would be obvious that they would prioritize the realism of these figures, and support for the technology that makes it work. Now, as far as I can tell, the only thing that in Poser can achieve flesh squishing and modified behaviour of vertices between angle intervals, is JCMs. If they have an alternative rigging system coming in Poser 12, then great, I'll be the first in line, but somehow I don't see that happening yet. So I chose for JCMs, and hoped that SM would be so impressed that they'd stop everything to support this figure.

Nope. Or at least, not yet (PE has been out over a year now). Maybe PE utterly sucks and I'm actually living in an asylum talking to myself, which is very possible, but somehow I doubt that.

JAY SEE EMS!

Anyway, because of JCMs, its just not easy to rig clothing for her, as many people struggle with transferring the JCMs to their clothing items. Now, there are things that I have planned when I have the time, but I am afraid that they won't really help much unless Poser's vertex data transfer and editing is improved (morphs and weight maps). With Poser morphs (JCMs or not), it is imperative that the vertexes in the clothing follow the very same path as the neighboring vertex in the underlying figure, otherwise you get poke-throughs, especially with JCMs. Now, unless the morph is simple, to imitate these delta paths is impossible to get accurate manually. Poser needs to do it for you, or at least, the most of it. And here is where the problem lies:

Bumps everywhere!

As it stands now (and since 2016), Poser's vertex data transfer system can only successfully transfer the displacement to clothing if the clothing is equal or lower resolution than the host mesh. But when the clothing is higher resolution, spikes and irregularities form. You can test this yourself with Pauline and her Business Camisole that gets shipped with P11. Load the Camisole onto Pauline, dial in the pregnant morph, bend her abdomen, then compare the bending before and after transferring weight maps and morphs from Pauline to the Camisole.



Frills n stuff

Now, the big problem with this is that the large number of clothing items will have things like buttons, hems, frills, belt loops, especially for female fashion. In other words, the vast majority of content for ANY Poser figure will encounter this issue. Now, you can edit the morph to correct it, smoothing etc, but yeah, this brings other issues with it. Ever tried to smooth a button without it disappearing into oblivion? That's one issue, the other is editing morphs when the figure is posed, its pure hell. 

Append, biaatch!

There is such a thing as appended morphs and prepended morphs, and ALL POSER MORPHS only work properly appended. But the problem is that morphs designed to correct bends, are best edited in the angle they're meant to correct, and in Poser, this means you first need to convert it to prepend. And that makes everything even more confusing. And I am not making up excuses not to fix it myself, trust me, PE in itself is one big massive fix. Poser needs these two issues fixed urgently, or even figures like La Femme will simply not succeed either, even if they're more tailored for simple rigging.

Loyal rustbucket

But I do need to confess one thing, and that is that my confidence in Poser has pretty much hit rock bottom, which might also explain why I couldn't care less about La Femme. (edit: Chuck Taylor himself once said in an interview, something like: 'If you see the inside of a sausage factory, you'll never eat sausages anymore'. That's what it feels like for me. I also want to distance myself from this mess because it started to affect my comic work. Its hard to do something fun using a tool that you've grown to hate. I love my comic work too much to let that happen.) I still use Poser though, for now, it does the trick regarding comics. Poser is currently like a good old car that has brought me from A to B for years, and can still do that for now, but I feel a need to get a new car some time soon. I do hope it will be Poser 12, because it will mean less work for me. But I'm not holding out. I am not jealous of the Poser team, it must suck to be them with the shit they've been burdened with... but I hope they work miracles. Let's start by making priorities, eh?


Evolution's future

If you're into dynamic clothing, the Evolution will be a piece of cake for you. Go to the Smith Micro forums and check out the kick-ass renders of many of the artists there.

But if you depend on conforming clothing, a lot still needs to happen. There are some things I will try, but I wanna make comics, and they now take priority, I never wanted to get mixed up in this endless Poser figure drama. I genuinely wanted to help push Poser forward, to a place that actually has meaning in the world of CGI (hint: realism) and not constantly re-inventing the wheel.

So anyway, without promising anything, I will update the mannequins as soon as the Disco Dragon 3 is out (they're actually already done, they just need testing). The original beta mannequins are botched and needed fixing. I might also make a script available to help prepare PE for editing the JCMs in the right order. This might make things easier. But things will get much better the moment SM fixes those two issues I mentioned previously.... much much better, and then I might get a little more enthusiastic about Poser again (because my comic figures will also profit from this).




In Conclusion

So, in short, if La Femme brings the Poser community back together, then fantastic. If it brings us back to the good old days of V4 and everyone sinking their teeth into a figure, then brilliant. If it makes SM put its full weight behind a figure, and finally start tailoring the app towards better more advanced rigging that looks like human flesh, then awesome. I was hoping that would be PE, but it doesn't look like that happened (yet). If they managed to get La Femme to do what PE can do, then my hat is off to them... 

Guys, the whole reason I made PE is to help you with your art and your comics. If La Femme can do that for you, then I have no issue there. But my vision still stands, and that is a realistically moving Poser figure. Evolution is my result.

But in the meanwhile, I'm making comics!