What I like about Young Lyra
Bravo again to Bluejaunte for Young Lyra. Lyra was already on my WL because of the super expressive and unique face. But, when BJ released Faye & Young Lyra, I liked her even more. Why? Because not only does YL have L's awesome texture and face, but she has a more extreme body morph that allows me to use her as an aging morph. I can use YL face and head and add in varying amounts of her body to get a Tween up to an adult. I mixed her with Rebecca and got a very nice looking 16ish girl.
I still plan to get the adult version of Lyra, because I do like the adult version body, nicely realistic instead of super model. But for the moment, I was glad to get the Faye and YL package so I could have two excellent characters. Keep up the great work!
Comments
Bluejaunte does an incredible job on their characters. Such great textures and realism in both the textures and the morphs. I really love the Lyra character except for the young version's brows. They look overly plucked - something that looks ok in an adult version but, imo, doesn't look quite right on a child/young version. Is there an alternate brow or at least a no-brow option for her?
Good question...I'll check. I was thinking similar about the plucked brows. Maybe I could put V8's brows on her.
Lyra doesn't have a no brow option included. However, it was no problem to remove them with Brow Remover. It works just fine with G8F. Okay, here she is with V8 eyebrows. They do look a bit more accurate, but still not exactly right. As much as I like the idea of fibermesh eyebrows, most of them just don't look very realistic to me. The fibers are too dense and regular, not shaped the way that natural eyebrows grow, with hair in kind of a fan, rather than a fur.
Same setup, but this time with probably the best option - Teen Princess Leila eyebrows. These are the best looking of the fibermesh eyebrows that I've seen. Voila' instant Aria Stark...LOL
Hey thanks guys Yeah I feel the Faye morph plays pretty well with others. It's a nice additional option to the excellent Growing Up morphs. Doesn't give all those options of course but provides a bit of a different result so it's worth treating it as an additional youngify morph.
Sorry about the eyebrows. They're not really plucked, as far photo references used to make the skin, but I guess it's a combination of rather thin line plus the painted aspect. I'm never really fully happy with painted eyebrows, admittedly. Fibremesh may be the way to go for me. Sadly I have to say I was unhappy with experiments I've done so far.
Hey thanks guys Yeah I feel the Faye morph plays pretty well with others. It's a nice additional option to the excellent Growing Up morphs. Doesn't give all those options of course but provides a bit of a different result so it's worth treating it as an additional youngify morph.
No worries...I think the Lyra brows work just fine with her for the most part. My only thought was that as a younger tween...say 11-14, she might have a more natural look brow option, as opposed to the more grown up, plucked look. That said, it's not entirely unreasonable to think that a young girl would have styled eyebrows. I'm pretty sure that many girls that age are already using makeup and plucking brows...etc.
The Philosopher's Princess Leila Brows are some of the best I've seen in fibermesh. Most of the others look like caterpillars to me. But, to be fair, I don't have much experience with any of the fiber hair products or eyebrow packs. So, I'm sure there must be a lot more adjustment and such that can be done. I have been meaning to try Real Brows and the other newer fiber brow packs. Some better render examples would really help to sell them.
Anyway BJ, I really like your work. Keep making these "real life" looking pretty people. I find them a lot more interesting than the super model look. I think a lot of Lyra's appeal has to do with her eyes. She has real looking lower eyelids, complete with the slight bags. I'm a photographer in real life. Many women and even some men want me to remove all the character from their faces by smoothing out every wrinkle and sag. I understand that everyone would like to look like a magazine model. But, I think a lot of these folks don't realize that they are requesting that I remove a lot of what gives them personality.
Am I the only person that thinks laugh lines are attractive? At least subconsciously, I doubt it....because, people might lust after SI supermodels, they fall in love with Emma Stone, Karen Allen, and other beautiful women with character.
Anyway...again, thanks for keeping it real!
I used the G8 male version (as I don't have the female version) of Super Natural Brows and about 50% Faye and her textures here.
Thank you for experimenting with this! :D I really appreciate it! To me, brows can really make a big impact on the overall face, so having an alternate or no brow option would be nice, but I could go into photoshop and remove them. :)
I have RedzStudio "Super Natural Brows" and I think they'd probably work well for an alternate brow for her. The brows she comes with are definitely too adult looking for my taste, but other than that she's pretty much perfect. So I wouldn't let that keep me from getting her! heheh
Thanks again for looking into this!
The brow hairs look good on that. You're helping to sell them to me. :)
Looking forward to your brow experiments as well. One thing I discovered is that the Teen Princess Leila eyebrows don't seem to move with the brow morphs....not sure why. The V8 brows morph along with the brow just fine. Any idea how to fix that? I tried matching the parenting setup from the V8 brow...but, no difference. The Leila brows just sit in the same spot while the skin slides underneath. They autofit just fine otherwise.
Your figures are pretty much perfect, please don't let this thread get you down! I really love your characters and appreciate how much work you do to make them look so realistic.
I do have a suggestion, though - would it be possible to get a "no brow" option for your characters in the future? A lot more people are moving toward fibermesh options and it would be great to have a no-brow option so that we could use fibermesh brows with your lovely characters. :)
Dawww! She's so cute! :D This is pretty much perfect! I just wish her thumb wasn't disappearing into her hand. Other than that, this is absolutely perfect! Well done!
Absolutely, if that's of value to people. I figured these brow products have their own brow removal and I'd just be doing work for nothing?
I don't have Leila so I can't check that. What I would recommend is to look under V8's brows under the "Parameters" tab and take a screen shot of the settings, then change the Leila brows to match the parameter settings for V8. :)
Oh bu***er I totally missed that, thanks I planned on rerendering it for longer anyway at least now I can correct that, and thanks for the compliment.
No, as far as I know there is only one product that has a brow removal. Many PAs are now including a no-brow option.
No problem! She's one of the cutest kids I've seen rendered! :D So adorable!
Do you care to share her settings (what morphs you used) or are you keeping that secret? If you're keeping it to yourself and would rather not share her settings, I totally understand. :)
Still no luck getting the Leila brows to move with the G8F brow morphs. But, I have just about got the scale and surface settings where I want them. Dialing back the Cutout Opacity on just about every hair product improves the overall look. In the case of the brows, I scaled the size down by 7% and the Cutout Opacity down by 78%. This helps to lessen the thickness. For the most part, children even with larger brows, have much thinner brow hair (finer and fewer hairs) than adults. I can certainly say this from personal experience...LOL. Zev0 took account of this in their "Growing Up Skin" packages. Although those were texture brows and not fiber.
Here's the result of opacity and scaling changes- not fully rendered, but you get the idea. I also lowered the brows slightly to better match the original brow line.
BTW, BJ, I'm sure you could just buy Zev0 Brow Remover and use it to make your no brow textures if the brows are integral to the face textures. You can check with Zev0. But, I'm pretty sure that would be a perfectly allowable usage of the product.
Wow!
That looks really good! Much better, imo! :)
She looks a bit more child-like now, I think. That's a nice tip, the lowering of the cut-out capacity. :)
I went back and checked all the parameters between the V8 brows and TPL brows....all matched. Still, the eyebrows aren't following the brow morphs. Could there be an Autofollow, I'm missing? If so, where would it be located?
No problem
here are the dials it includes the expression dials as well.
Thanks. She is supposed to be 16ish in this render.
The Cutout Opacity lowering really helps a lot with the older hair meshes. Many of those have very hard edges. To soften the hair and give it more depth, try using duplicate meshes and color one lighter and one darker. Then, selecting "hip" under the darker mesh, pull the hair down in Y translation by just a small increment. Lower the opacity on the dark mesh to around 50% and the lighter upper mesh to around 35%. Experiment with all those settings until you get something you like. The effect ends up being of slightly sun highlighted hair with a darker shade underneath. This can also be effective by altering the morph shapes between the two meshes...giving the effect that some of the outer hair is moving independently from the under hair. Results vary a lot.
I like PhilW's luster shaders and IDG Iray hair essentials. But sometimes on older hair models, the texture makes up so much of the perceived shape, that you can't swap for a generic iray shader. Even so, the cutout opacity trick will make those textures blend better with your Iray scene.
Hmmm I really don't know. Perhaps try changing the "Fit to Mode" to "Auto Follow Transforms" and see if that helps.
OH nice! Thank you, scorpio! :)
That does look good. Are the original brows still underneath that?
No, I removed the original brows with Zev0's Brow Remover. This was my first time using it...works great!
Diva, Here's an example of the 2 color meshes. I overdid it on the opacity a bit to make sure it would show. So, this looks a little extreme to show off the variation in color, but should give you the idea. This is the Amarseda hair. I wish there were a really good updated similar hairdo. But, I just can't seem to find one that is quite right. The closest is probably the Mada Hair. But, it is still a center part. I've tried to morph the part to the side, but it hasn't quite worked. I still keep hoping one of these talented PAs will make the side part (not pulled back) curly, natural hair for G8F. I imagine it wouldn't be too difficult for Goldtassel since she already has the Mada hair to use as a start. :) The Karissa hair is another good one that is still parted in the middle. The Oleander hair isn't bad, but more of a straight wavy style than curly....Oh well, I'll keep messing with these and try to make something work. :)
That looks good - I like the color variation. I'm going to have to try that. :) Thanks, cdpro!
Here's another example...did a little more work on getting the balance between color meshes...still some odd red tones...but overall a bit better.
Here's another example...did a little more work on getting the balance between color meshes...still some odd red tones...but overall a bit better. I might have to bring the opacity back down. It's getting a bit "wiggy" looking.