Black characters for M8??

vwrangler

AllenArt said:

Honestly, these two images are just 15 minutes work starting with Michael 8 and just the base head morphs. The first is Darius 7's map and the second is Kimo 7's map. You can see little white areas where it didn't quite line  up because I haven't baked them out to Base G3M uvs yet, but they mostly fit ;). I think it makes for a very handsome guy! I tried other skins (I have about 5 total black male skins), but the others looked painted, flat and fake. Kimo and Darius were much better maps by far (Darius' unfortunate baked in facial hair notwithstanding) :).

Laurie

(BTW,  he looks good without Michael too)

Hellboy Soto did an LIE preset that hides the facial hair. Once the preset is applied, you can pull the combined image file from wherever your temp directory is to make a usable actual texture. (I have no objection to LIE, generally, but it can make for epic launch times for scenes with any number of LIE presets, since Studio has to rebuild them from scratch every time the scene opens.)

Unfortunately, it's buried somewhere in the forum here ... ah-ha! It's in the freebies section.

 

nonesuch00

AllenArt said:

Here is the shaping preset for the African Head for M8....for whatever reason - even tho I checked it off - it's not loading M8's head with the morph, so, you will either have to load a clean M8 into your scene first and then apply the shaping preset or apply the shaping preset to G8M and then dial in Michael 8's head or head and body.

As I said before you will need the base morphs for this. You don't HAVE to have Michael 8 but if you don't, the settings will look like the third head on the right above.

Laurie

 

Thanks.

I use Ayala & Jax texture sets idealized as they are but they are sufficient for all but my attempts to do 'realism' for 'realism's' sake and to see what iRay DS can do.

3Diva

AllenArt said:

Here is the shaping preset for the African Head for M8....for whatever reason - even tho I checked it off - it's not loading M8's head with the morph, so, you will either have to load a clean M8 into your scene first and then apply the shaping preset or apply the shaping preset to G8M and then dial in Michael 8's head or head and body.

As I said before you will need the base morphs for this. You don't HAVE to have Michael 8 but if you don't, the settings will look like the third head on the right above.

Laurie

 

Awesome work! Looks great! Thank you for sharing the shaping preset! :)

AllenArt

divamakeup said:

AllenArt said:

Here is the shaping preset for the African Head for M8....for whatever reason - even tho I checked it off - it's not loading M8's head with the morph, so, you will either have to load a clean M8 into your scene first and then apply the shaping preset or apply the shaping preset to G8M and then dial in Michael 8's head or head and body.

As I said before you will need the base morphs for this. You don't HAVE to have Michael 8 but if you don't, the settings will look like the third head on the right above.

Laurie

 

Awesome work! Looks great! Thank you for sharing the shaping preset! :)

You're welcome, but really....I didn't fool around with it for all that long. LOL I just started at the eyebrows and worked my way down ;)

Oh, and even tho I didn't in this case, I DO normally turn parameters off and make sliders go in the negative direction very often. Just passing that along cause you can get some great effects that way. I like making my own heads. It's a zen thing for me, but I guess not everyone likes doing it ;)

Laurie

sapat

AllenArt said:

Honestly, these two images are just 15 minutes work starting with Michael 8 and just the base head morphs. The first is Darius 7's map and the second is Kimo 7's map. You can see little white areas where it didn't quite line  up because I haven't baked them out to Base G3M uvs yet, but they mostly fit ;). I think it makes for a very handsome guy! I tried other skins (I have about 5 total black male skins), but the others looked painted, flat and fake. Kimo and Darius were much better maps by far (Darius' unfortunate baked in facial hair notwithstanding) :).

Laurie

(BTW,  he looks good without Michael too)

These are all very nice and look good on him.

sapat

AllenArt said:

Here is the shaping preset for the African Head for M8....for whatever reason - even tho I checked it off - it's not loading M8's head with the morph, so, you will either have to load a clean M8 into your scene first and then apply the shaping preset or apply the shaping preset to G8M and then dial in Michael 8's head or head and body.

As I said before you will need the base morphs for this. You don't HAVE to have Michael 8 but if you don't, the settings will look like the third head on the right above.

Laurie

Super generous, thank you so much!! 

sapat

AllenArt said:

Here is the shaping preset for the African Head for M8....for whatever reason - even tho I checked it off - it's not loading M8's head with the morph, so, you will either have to load a clean M8 into your scene first and then apply the shaping preset or apply the shaping preset to G8M and then dial in Michael 8's head or head and body.

As I said before you will need the base morphs for this. You don't HAVE to have Michael 8 but if you don't, the settings will look like the third head on the right above.

Laurie

Super generous, thank you so much!! 

sapat

Stormlyght said:

Hi,

I really like some of Virtual Worlds darker skinned characters. I had planned to transfer their skins onto G8--just haven't had a chance to do so yet. Their store is on sale right now:

https://www.daz3d.com/deshawn-for-genesis-3-male-and-darius-7

https://www.daz3d.com/hahana-for-kalea-7

Trish

I have both of those and they are great.  Deshawn's skin and morphs are really nice.  In the Hahana promos, I like her skin in the promo where they show her from the back.  It's more the skin color I'd like to see for the rest of her.  I imagine it's darker because maybe they just spun the scene around which made her look darker.

xyer0

Stormlyght said:

Stormlyght said:

Hi,

I really like some of Virtual Worlds darker skinned characters. I had planned to transfer their skins onto G8--just haven't had a chance to do so yet. Their store is on sale right now:

https://www.daz3d.com/deshawn-for-genesis-3-male-and-darius-7

https://www.daz3d.com/hahana-for-kalea-7

Trish

I concur, and The Many Faces of Nelly has a skin setting that is quite suitable for a lighter-skinned black woman. Deshawn has some eye bags that make him problematic for me, but Hahana has an excellent skin, albeit for a tad more mature character, the color of golden fried chicken!

Here's a character based on Nelly.

And don't forget Kalea 7's skin.

Hey @Karuki, my friend here would like to meet your G3F character. ;)

sapat

Love your male character.Whose skin is he wearing?  I like Kalea's skin too. the first female has very light skin.  My husband and I would probably say she's mixed or bi-racial.   She's pretty though.  Wonder what she'd look like with more ethnic features?

3Diva

AllenArt said:

divamakeup said:

AllenArt said:

Here is the shaping preset for the African Head for M8....for whatever reason - even tho I checked it off - it's not loading M8's head with the morph, so, you will either have to load a clean M8 into your scene first and then apply the shaping preset or apply the shaping preset to G8M and then dial in Michael 8's head or head and body.

As I said before you will need the base morphs for this. You don't HAVE to have Michael 8 but if you don't, the settings will look like the third head on the right above.

Laurie

 

Awesome work! Looks great! Thank you for sharing the shaping preset! :)

You're welcome, but really....I didn't fool around with it for all that long. LOL I just started at the eyebrows and worked my way down ;)

Oh, and even tho I didn't in this case, I DO normally turn parameters off and make sliders go in the negative direction very often. Just passing that along cause you can get some great effects that way. I like making my own heads. It's a zen thing for me, but I guess not everyone likes doing it ;)

Laurie

Yeah, I agree - the parameters trick is great. Sometimes dialing morphs to the Negative Values can give some nice looks. :)

The Diigitals

Oh wow they are such great jobs!! Now you're inspiring me to be more creative!!!

sapat

divamakeup said:

AllenArt said:

divamakeup said:

AllenArt said:

Here is the shaping preset for the African Head for M8....for whatever reason - even tho I checked it off - it's not loading M8's head with the morph, so, you will either have to load a clean M8 into your scene first and then apply the shaping preset or apply the shaping preset to G8M and then dial in Michael 8's head or head and body.

As I said before you will need the base morphs for this. You don't HAVE to have Michael 8 but if you don't, the settings will look like the third head on the right above.

Laurie

 

Awesome work! Looks great! Thank you for sharing the shaping preset! :)

You're welcome, but really....I didn't fool around with it for all that long. LOL I just started at the eyebrows and worked my way down ;)

Oh, and even tho I didn't in this case, I DO normally turn parameters off and make sliders go in the negative direction very often. Just passing that along cause you can get some great effects that way. I like making my own heads. It's a zen thing for me, but I guess not everyone likes doing it ;)

Laurie

Yeah, I agree - the parameters trick is great. Sometimes dialing morphs to the Negative Values can give some nice looks. :)

I do that for clothing when I'm trying to get a better fit or help with poke after posing, but hadn't tried it with characters.  Good tip. Thx.

L'Adair

I'm going to use this guy in a scene I'm hoping to enter in Novica's contest. As he is inspired by this thread, I thought I'd share this WIP image. This is just G8M base male using morphs from the G8M Head Morphs with a bit of Power Pose used, mostly on his ears. Hair is from Carson HD for Michael 7, brows are OhMyBrows for G3M, (Renderosity,) beard is Unshaven 3 for G3M, (Mec4d.com,) materials are from FWSA Kheiron HD for G3M.

---

 

3Diva

L'Adair said:

I'm going to use this guy in a scene I'm hoping to enter in Novica's contest. As he is inspired by this thread, I thought I'd share this WIP image. This is just G8M base male using morphs from the G8M Head Morphs with a bit of Power Pose used, mostly on his ears. Hair is from Carson HD for Michael 7, brows are OhMyBrows for G3M, (Renderosity,) beard is Unshaven 3 for G3M, (Mec4d.com,) materials are from FWSA Kheiron HD for G3M.

 

Looking good! Maybe a bit too red? But then again I've been told that my color calibration on my monitor might be off, so it might not look red to other people.

L'Adair

divamakeup said:

L'Adair said:

I'm going to use this guy in a scene I'm hoping to enter in Novica's contest. As he is inspired by this thread, I thought I'd share this WIP image. This is just G8M base male using morphs from the G8M Head Morphs with a bit of Power Pose used, mostly on his ears. Hair is from Carson HD for Michael 7, brows are OhMyBrows for G3M, (Renderosity,) beard is Unshaven 3 for G3M, (Mec4d.com,) materials are from FWSA Kheiron HD for G3M.

 

Looking good! Maybe a bit too red? But then again I've been told that my color calibration on my monitor might be off, so it might not look red to other people.

No, I agree. He's looking a bit red. But I'm pretty sure it's from the HDRI lighting I used. I'm just getting started on him. But I wanted to show it's possible to create your own black character with the Head Morphs.

3Diva

L'Adair said:

divamakeup said:

L'Adair said:

I'm going to use this guy in a scene I'm hoping to enter in Novica's contest. As he is inspired by this thread, I thought I'd share this WIP image. This is just G8M base male using morphs from the G8M Head Morphs with a bit of Power Pose used, mostly on his ears. Hair is from Carson HD for Michael 7, brows are OhMyBrows for G3M, (Renderosity,) beard is Unshaven 3 for G3M, (Mec4d.com,) materials are from FWSA Kheiron HD for G3M.

 

Looking good! Maybe a bit too red? But then again I've been told that my color calibration on my monitor might be off, so it might not look red to other people.

No, I agree. He's looking a bit red. But I'm pretty sure it's from the HDRI lighting I used. I'm just getting started on him. But I wanted to show it's possible to create your own black character with the Head Morphs.

Cool! I hope you post him when you're done. :) I'd love to see what you come up with. I always love seeing more hot men! heheh 

xyer0

Stormlyght said:

Love your male character.Whose skin is he wearing?  I like Kalea's skin too. the first female has very light skin.  My husband and I would probably say she's mixed or bi-racial.   She's pretty though.  Wonder what she'd look like with more ethnic features?

Thanks. Male character's skin is Kyle HD. Kalea's skin has green eyebrows out of the box; so, I had to do some adjusting/testing to get her color right, and it's still not there.

"Mixed/bi-racial" is a relatively new label. Back in the day, black (of whatever skintone with whatever grade of hair) was black. The children of American slavery are all mixed/bi-racial to some degree or another, and the distinctions are used more to divide than to identify. As you know, black folk come in all the shades of the spectrum, and if you can't pass for sub-Saharan African, then you're mixed. Here's an albino (black) character. She just considers herself black; none of that "mixed" stuff trying to feel special. ;)

AllenArt

Took a bit more time on this one. A bit stockier than the other one. Still used M8 as the base because he makes a great jumping off point.

He turned a little red. Might have to do a little color balancing ;)

Serene Night

I really like some of these. Can't wait for more lip morphs though. The Cupid's bow lip shape is cool but sometimes you want a different morph and there isn't as much variety in mouth shape as I'd like.

AllenArt

I agree that the lip base morphs are a teensy limited. But I just wanted to prove a point that one could make a convincing African morph with just those base morphs ;) I'm sure better custom ones will come out and one can create anything really, from different races to whatever :).

Laurie

Panzer Emerald

xyer0 said:

The lack of quality darker-skinned characters is at least partially due to the relative paucity (compared to Caucasian resources) of black photographic full nude models. Raiya (the Queen) seems to have a source that no one else uses, although she has re-used darker skins a few times on different characters—for example, Keira for Stephanie 5 / Sapphire for Victoria 7 and Nala and Nia / Olivia for V5 / Kelly for Victoria 7; (there's a male example as well, but I can't be bothered to find them). A couple of Saiyaness' (the Princess) skin sources betray that their owners may have lived harder lives (Imari's jaundiced eyes and eye bags, Nyarai's darkened lower eyelids and rough soles—are they from the same resource?) than their/her Caucasian counterparts, which could be their/her financial incentive for submission to having their/her entire body photographed. Finally, the primary sources for skin resources are reportedly located in Eastern Europe, which has historically had a lot less inhabitants of African descent.

When lesser character creators release people with non-photographic-looking skin textures, I pass on them (having a hard drive peppered with their previous attempts). Other customers are evidently passing on them as well. And this, I think, is the basis for the oft-repeated, "darker characters don't sell as well." If you peruse Raiya's and Saiyaness' stores, you will see that they apparently have no hesitation at releasing darker-skinned characters (Raiya Genesis 3: 25% dark-skinned, Saiyaness: 9/7 split light/dark); indeed, Raiya told me that she would like to make more, but there are so few skin resources. And she said that her darker-skinned characters sell as well or better than her Caucasian characters, Monique 6 being only one instance of this.

For authentic African-descended morphs, I suggest GenX-ing (the full monty) reciecup's Generation 4 products (which are being retired at an alarming rate) at the other store, and any other African characters that you like from previous generations. reciecup's head morphs alone capture so many previously nonexistent types in Daztopia. And samsil (at the other store) has two characters that provide excellent unseen-in-Daztopia types. I have found his skins to be unusable for my purposes, although his African hair more than atones for this (wish they had more morphs though). After over a decade of Poserverse/Daztopia, there are enough African morphs and skins to fill a big story, but the customer will have to fix their own plate.

Seconding Raiya, Saiyaness, and Reciecup. They are top shelf and then some.

Also worth looking into, insofar as face morphs go, are SickleYield's Faces of Africa sets for G2 and G3.

L'Adair

AllenArt said:

Took a bit more time on this one. A bit stockier than the other one. Still used M8 as the base because he makes a great jumping off point.

He turned a little red. Might have to do a little color balancing ;)

My guy was too red, also. I found changing the second color in the translucency, (Scatter & Transmit,) to something a bit bluish instead of a bit reddish helped a lot. YMMV.

sapat

I've seen these in the store: https://www.daz3d.com/luscious-lips-for-genesis-8-female  but there aren't any outright ethnic sizes.  They can probably be used as a jumping off point to modify them.  None for the guys though (shocker) cuz I guess that's another 'they don't sell well' thing.  Maybe SY will make some.

sapat

xyer0 said:

Stormlyght said:

Love your male character.Whose skin is he wearing?  I like Kalea's skin too. the first female has very light skin.  My husband and I would probably say she's mixed or bi-racial.   She's pretty though.  Wonder what she'd look like with more ethnic features?

Thanks. Male character's skin is Kyle HD. Kalea's skin has green eyebrows out of the box; so, I had to do some adjusting/testing to get her color right, and it's still not there.

 

I have the Kyle HD character but he never looked anywhere near as good as yours!!! 

3Diva

Wow! These are REALLY GOOD! I'm very impressed with some of these renders and looks - awesome work! Hopefully some of the vendors will come by and be inspired to create some beautiful black characters. :)

sapat

According to scientists we all came from a specific region of eastern Africa at least 100,000 +/- years ago, so basically none of us is all one thing or the other.  At least that's the science I agree with.  So I'm happy to have that same diversity in the characters I render too.  I enjoy having my 3d ppl look different just as we do in real life.

I was just hoping that we might see some more diversity for G8M sooner rather than later.  Not one of these thin malnourished hipsters with no body hair and sporting a bun.  I'd like a bulkier guy with some hair down the middle of his chest, an option for beard and scruff, hair and no hair options, and some good tattoos (not necessarily run of the mill tribal tats or angel wings and 'been there done that' stuff).  More hard core stuff but not out of TOS here.

Anyway, will sit and wait.....tick tick tick.....

sapat

vwrangler said:

AllenArt said:

Hellboy Soto did an LIE preset that hides the facial hair. Once the preset is applied, you can pull the combined image file from wherever your temp directory is to make a usable actual texture. (I have no objection to LIE, generally, but it can make for epic launch times for scenes with any number of LIE presets, since Studio has to rebuild them from scratch every time the scene opens.)

Unfortunately, it's buried somewhere in the forum here ... ah-ha! It's in the freebies section.

Found and downloaded, thanks so much for the link!! 

sapat

divamakeup said:

Wow! These are REALLY GOOD! I'm very impressed with some of these renders and looks - awesome work! Hopefully some of the vendors will come by and be inspired to create some beautiful black characters. :)

Agreed. 

syedady

divamakeup said:

sapat said:

There is no link.  He was the thumbnail you clicked on to go into the Fast Grab area.  I did save a screenshot of him though .  I'll attach it.

 

Whoa! He IS impressive! I can see why you saved the screen shot! lol :) VERY nice! 

The lower part of his face looks a tad exagerated/large giving him an almost "toon" look. But the realism in the skin and hair just throws any thought of "toon" out the window. lol He's very stylized and cool. 

Often times they get the fast grab images from the Galleries, so I'll keep an eye out for him. If we can find the original artist we can ask what character they used.

Hi This is Genesis 1 with M4 Rob Texture tweaked, color correction. The morph is mixture of freak 5, Darius 6, Ethinic African for Genesis and some other morphs I cant remember but majority of this you can get this by dialing in Freak 5 and Abominable morph for genesis. The rest is lighting and SSS shader. Hair is from rendo.... SAV Alpha hair of something like that. Beard is from MEC4D. I like characters to be heavy with bit big jaw just like freak. They never realesed freak after 5th version. Hope this helps