Xameva

Hi guys **WARNING NSFW PICTURES POSTED AT BOTTOM OF POST**

I'm new here. I am a content creator for the 3D software Poser/DAZ Studio, which allow hobbyists to make some pretty professional looking stuff (with practice) without too steep of a learning curve. I create erotic poses and animations that people buy and use on their own custom characters.

I had an idea.. that maybe there might be some interest from the SL community in this.. and I could do some advertising in SL.

People could recreate their characters from SL in Poser/DAZ and render it with improved graphics in a still art image or movie.

I'm not entirely sure how I'd get the word out. I was thinking buying adspace in locations in SL and posting alluring images with links to my products. Or even putting a lot of effort into making a page that is an introduction to people that are new to Poser/DAZ and want to create erotic art. I'd give them step by step easy instructions.. links to freebies.. etc. And of course throw in links to my products.

What do you guys think? Anyone have any suggestions?

I'll post a few samples of my artwork.. and I'm not even very good. The people who are better artists make images that look much better than mine. I spend most of my time working on the poses/animation.

I hope to receive some replies. Thanks!

infiniview Merit

I have done some facial character modeling in Daz and Poser and it is not what I would consider "easy" for most people. I am speaking about doing faces that actually resemble their real faces.

Doing a facial model of an avatar is much easier because there is only a fraction of the detail compared to a human face. If your going to do a tutorial for those interested in learning the process I am sure that if it is well done then you will have a certain size audience. I think I would check with DAZ if I were you to make sure there are no legal
barriers to doing so.

I would open up an inworld shop to put them up for display and also advertise. Offering free tutorials is also a method of engaging your potential market.

There are a number of people using DAZ to create erotic images and there are a few out there that also offer a replication of a person's face for an avatar if they want it.
But adapting the DAZ character face to the SL avatar is not exactly a trivial task either.

When I first started in SL I was attempting to sell my artwork, some sold, not very fast though. I concluded that many people grab stuff off the net for their artwork. And that textures would be a better market for me.

Your images look good.
You should join one of the DAZ groups inworld if you have not already.
There is also DAZ island inworld that you can check out.

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Ann Otoole

Make some HD quality videos and put them on youtube. Literally show people what you are talking about so they will understand. I guess a website would help with a gallery and details. Then it is a matter of securing ad space in SL and maybe some banner ads on SL related websites.

Xameva

Thanks for the replies.

I was actually thinking of doing both of those things infiniview. A really small website, maybe even just a page with an introduction to DAZ/Poser.. download links to the software/freebies, links to tutorials for beginners, a FAQ, etc. Also a beginner tutorial made by me to show taking a SL avatar and making a nice image from it in DAZ Studio.. step by step. With an ad for my own products of course.

I only have five products up at the store over at Renderotica though, so I think I'll get a few more before I start on this project.

It's good to hear that this idea is not a waste of time though. I definitely think there'd be some interest, especially if I advertise with alluring photos such as the Night Elf one.

I don't think youtube is an option due to their no pornography policy. I do plan to do that once I make a fantasy comic using Poser/DAZ though. Viral marketing rocks.

Ariane

Looks like the pictures got modded.

Having played extensively in both Poser and Second Life, I've done these experiments.



Me in Second Life



Me in Poser

There are actual tools to convert Poser textures to Second Life, but not the other way around.

It is also theoretically possible to create a spreadsheet to convert Second Life slider settings to Poser dial settings (or vice versa) but would take quite a bit of tedious work, which is why I have not bothered.

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Pussycat Catnap

I was a Poser artist long before I knew of second life. In fact the launch party of Poser 7 that happened inside of SL is what got me to first log in back in 2006.

I don't see much Poser content in SL, and there is oddly little crossover.

Of late though, I have been seeing a lot of 'statutes' of women around the Second Life world that are very clearly imports of Daz models - despite the claims to the counter by many of their fans.

There is also an often heard claim in Second Life that many 'SL merchants' are selling 3D good stolen from Daz and Renderosity merchants. I don't know if this is true or not. I've not looked to find out. But I hear it stated regularly.

Didn't know there was a Daz group inworld. I'll have to join it.

Xameva

Here are the links to the images as I'm not allowed to attach them, my apologies! One of my next projects is to make a comic with similar types of fantasy characters. That's when I'm going to start advertising in SL I think.

http://www.renderotica.com/xcart/ima...lavepromo1.jpg (You may like this one Pussycat )
http://www.renderotica.com/xcart/ima...?1264301985765

http://www.renderotica.com/xcart/ima...reamPromo1.jpg

http://www.renderotica.com/xcart/ima...?1264302166573

Pussycat Catnap

Eh. I'm -not- a BDSM fan at all. I may be a sex kitten, but I'm also a hippy. Ann would call me a Maoist, or at least a Meowist. (though as a part Chinese, I find that term very offensive, if you'd seen the effects of the cultural revolution you wouldn't brand even your worst enemy with such a label).

Even fictional power dynamics 'squick' me. (Which makes it kind of hard to explain how one of my closest SL friends is a dominatrix. But I guess everybody needs a feral kitty. )

Good work though.

There -is- an easy market in SL for you if what you plan to sell is custom made poses and animations. Especially the animations. Especially sex animations.
- You will have a LOT of competitors, but if you smartly price down a bit, you can get established. Be warned that many of your competitors advertise their sex animations as based on motion capture.

I suggest checking Henmations and Sensations to see two of your potential largest competitors so you define for yourself a niche that keeps you from taking them on head on (they're pretty established SL brands, so a direct head on challenge is not advised - but there is plenty of room to get the things they are not covering).

infiniview Merit

The statues are most likely sculpted parts with daz or poser skins adapted to them. As there is no way you could currently import a daz or poser mesh inworld.

Regarding the stolen stuff those are probably mostly texture rips applied to a prim based or sculptie based replication. Once we get the ability to import meshes then the fun will start. If LL does it the smart way then there should be some hurdles to jump through before uploading meshes. Or the SL
Landscape really will be littered with stolen meshes.

Yeah check out Daz Island it is pretty cool.

Here is a RL Celebrity Character I attempted to get a pretty close approximation of.
See if you can guess who I was going for.


One of the challenges with doing real people you know for a fee is that there are soooo many nuances to the real human face then combine that with all the variances with the way people see themselves.
I got a few where the client was happy with them. But then there were also a couple that just sort of
looked at them funny and didnt seem to be able to tell me what changes I should make.

Toxic Menges

Pussycat, which part of Amael's description of the origin of his meshes did you not understand?

Or do you merely not like to believe people?

Tiresome, in extremis.

Amael Juran

My sincerest apologies to Xameva for interrupting her thread (fantastic work by the way- well done, your Poser skills are indeed leet!)- I just have to set the following straight:

This is the second time that I have had to correct you about this- please don't make it a third or I might get angry... and you wouldn't like me when I'm angry

The last time I tried explaining this to you I used words, this time I'm going go to use pictures- I hope that they manage to get through.

On the left in the following images is the mesh that I started out with- the open source female mesh from Zygote which can be downloaded from here (I loathe having to give this link away but I'm sick of having to correct people about this). On the right is the same mesh after much editing/modifying:





Note the topology for two reasons:

1) It is exactly the same topology as the original open source mesh
2) It will be nothing like the topology of Daz/Poser meshes (you'll have to verify this as you're supposed to be the Daz/Poser expert)

Finally, here's the UV mapping for the body of the final mesh:



Again, note the layout- it'll be nothing like Daz/Poser meshes.

Just because a mesh happens to be that of a curvy naked woman does NOT mean that it automatically originates from Daz/Poser!!!

Now quit dragging my name through the mud dagnabbit!!!

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Hypatia Callisto

There are reasons for the similarity. They ARE similar (not the same), even down to the uvmapping of V3. But not similar to V4, it is similar to V1-3. (3 was just a mod of V1-2 anyway... V2 having really just been a morph set addition to V1) V4 was an entirely new figure, so aside from the Victoria name, there is no similarity.

Some of us are old timers from the Poser communities, and I have been a DAZ customer since it was called... Zygote. I was around when the name change happened. Zygote and DAZ split, and the parting was not entirely amicable.

Anyway... just shedding a little light on it. You're allowed to use that mesh in this way of course... but its interesting that so few people actually take the little extra time to do human modelling in Zbrush and do the same sort of conversion... its actually not that hard to whip out a Zbrush human these days.

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"I suppose so," said Alice.

"Well, then," the Cat went on, "you see, a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad."

"I call it purring, not growling," said Alice.

"Call it what you like," said the Cat.

Hypatia Callisto

and just fyi, no sculpt has the same topology as the actual mesh. All sculpts are just a patch, all sculpts have exactly the same topology... a square patch of vertices.

Amael Juran

Can I clarify that you're speaking about the similarities between Zygote's open source mesh and the V1-3 Victoria meshes? Sorry to be pedantic but I can't afford to leave any doubt here.

I wanted to show the origins of the mesh that I use so as to leave no doubt where it comes from- i.e. that the mesh is a modified open source mesh as can be seen from the identical mesh topology between the starting & modified mesh in the pictures I posted above and that is NOT a product of Daz/Poser.

I did know that Daz broke off from Zygote allright and that Daz used Zygote's open source mesh as a starting point for the early Victorias- I've tried to say all this before but I don't think anoyone heard

Ann Otoole

If you are not:

• quoting Mao while wearing Che Gear and
• being in general some rich kid or rich old person that quotes Mao and
• wears Che gear because someone at a Latte house said it was cool and
• you have no clue about what these people did (worse than Hitler) and
• working to deny freedom without knowing that is what you are doing

then no I would not call you a Maoist. I reserve that term for idiots that are stealing oxygen and money.

And yes I do know the history quite well. But apparently that version of history is not taught at Chinese Government Owned and Operated universities like Stanford.

eku Zhong

you might loath to give this link away... but..
you wouldnt have to go through the same explanation everytime if you complied with the terms of use...

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Hypatia Callisto

They are both based on Posette. (the Poser 4 figure) They are not the same exact mesh (they are improvements on it, rather, incorporating many things that the community did to make Posette better) but you can definitely see the progression in the mesh. DAZ's current figure is no longer based on the old Millenium figures. They also used a body scan, adapting the mesh to it for later work.

No, they didn't. Zygote didn't opensource their figure until YEARS later. The Poser 4 figure has never been opensource. When Zygote/DAZ made these figures for Poser, the split of DAZ and Zygote had not happened yet.

Hypatia Callisto

That's why I don't use opensource meshes. As I said, its easy to make a humanoid in Zbrush anyway, why bother with restrictive licensing? Anyway, its pretty clear that DMCA's can't be easily filed if this figure is used as a base.

eku Zhong

exactly.. any DMCA filed on the statues .. no matter how much work you put into them, Amael, is not really valid because your statues are a derivative of someone else's intellectual property.. which in turn is open source.

sad... but very very true..

Amael Juran

I felt that I was complying with the terms of use and I considered them very carefully before starting my work.

I am not distributing the open source mesh itself and I did consider the derivative issue- I feel that my statues are significantly different from the original open source mesh... they're composed of at least 12 seperate sculptie parts with various other prim props & parts, scripts & textures. The final product bears no resemblance to the original mesh in either topology or form/shape.

If you took random people off the street, showed them the original mesh and then showed them one of my statues (with topology), I feel that not too many of them would say the latter is a derivative work of the first.

But, anything for a bit of peace- if it'll keep folks happy and give them something else to nitpick over then I'll start including the notice with the statues.

I disagree. Leaving aside the mesh derivative or not issue, the finished statues in world are not just the statue mesh- they include various props & prim parts, texures & scripts. Usually a solid week of work is required to finish everything that's not the body of the statue. I feel that there's more than enough material (other than the statue body) to file a DMCA.

Pussycat Catnap

So rather than taking a Daz model and converting it to a texture map / sculpty map...
Its a Daz model instead... from whan Daz had the name Zygote.

In other words, its not 'A', but 'a'.

In the end... it sounds like the technique is exactly what I thought it was. Converting a Poser model, via some other 3D program that exports shapes into bitmaps, into a sculpty map.

Which therefore means, if its legal, and it appears to be so, its an easy market for any experienced Poser user that also knows how to save models out from other 3D-apps could enter into that business line in SL.

Ann Otoole

But.. but.. even though some know it is possible the turbo squid free model sculpty resellers swear aggressively it can't be done!

eku Zhong

they swear aggressively that it cant be done out of fear that others will find out how to do it..

Amael Juran

Ok, I'm done trying to explain this to you- you're clearly either not reading or understanding the information that I've specifically written to and for you in my posts.

For someone who casually throws around damaging rumours about works being imports of Daz/Poser meshes, you seem to know or understand very little about those companies, their products & their EULAs (there's a little hint for you there).

But please, by all means, continue to make assumptions and half read/understand the information that's being presented to you. When you end up in court, you might finally understand the phrase "the devil is in the details" and why it does matter that something is 'a' but not 'A'.

And thank you so much for the line about sculptie statue making being an "easy market" and the inference that it's not hard to do- I haven't laughed that hard for quite some time. Again, the devil is in the details and I hope that you find this out for yourself.

Anyhoo, the bottom line is this (which has been the reason behind all of my posts to you):

If you ever again say or imply or infer that my work uses products of Daz or Poser then I will have no choice but to take action against you/your posts for libel. My work has nothing what-so-ever to do with Daz/Poser meshes and I have gone to great lengths to explain to you exactly why this is. You saying otherwise is spreading false information about me/my business which is damaging to my reputation and that of my business. This is unacceptable for obvious reasons and will not be tolerated in future.

Clear enough for you?

Free Xue

I brought enough for everyone!

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