Davion_ofLiberty

Quicklash ... Main-Gauche wielding Regen scrapper.

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Holly crap that is cool! I love stuff like that. I wish he had a larger scale, but still very cool.

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Yeah, his stuff is geared more toward tabletop miniatures, but with some creativity these could still be used as building blocks for larger sets. The scale won't work for some items, but they are there to play around with.

I've done the Bell Tower plan provided on the website. Came out rather well and only took a couple of days (plaster drying time and lots of pieces to glue together).

It's been a while since I've posted on these boards, but I've been wanting something like this for quite some time now, but didn't have enough confidence to try my own hand at it. Heck, my custom work to make a Mr. Potato Head version of Davion hasn't got very far and I've got most of what I need to do that on hand. lol.

Anyway, just thought I'd chime in an idea for folks wanting to customize some playsets for figures, check out: Hirst Arts . They sell rubber molds for various types of plaster building blocks and they are fairly easy to use. Can get a bit expensive, but he has a decent range of mostly mideival but also some sci-fi sets.

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I would like to see what you've made.

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Nothing really all that impressive, I assure you. As I've noted elsewhere before, I'm more a hobbyist than an artist. I like to play around with the tools and see what I can do with them, but rarely end up with a completely finished product. Mostly I use the 3D apps for playing around with ideas and then throw my hands up in frustration when I can't quite get what I want done the way I want to do it and then run off to find a tutorial on how it really is 'supposed' to be done. I also play around with the Torque game engine (another hobby, not really making a game) and use 3DS Max and Milkshape to animate and export my tests to Torque.

I have been working off and on, as time allows, on modifying some existing Poser items to work for my Davion and Ruby Blaize character costumes (modifying a flight jacket currently for Davion and a jumpsuit for Ruby). Mostly, the only items I build from scratch tend to be architectural.

On a slightly different note: You didn't really specify in your question if you were looking for just information on pre-existing models such as are used in Poser or if you want to test your hand at modeling your own objects. If the latter, there are some cheaper alternatives to Max and Maya (or even Lightwave). These include, but are not limited to:

Animation Master
Milkshape 3D
Blender <- open source (aka free), but has an odd interface
trueSpace

I've used each of the above to some degree (though I only tested a trial of trueSpace and didn't like it much).

I loved Animation Master, but eventually upgraded to Max.

Blender is free and powerful, but the interface is uses is completely unlike any other 3D modeling application and can cause later confusion if you ever decide to upgrade to the more mainstream applications.

Milkshape is less than $30 and very easy to use, but can not handle the polygon count of Poser figures (but it's good for clothing and scene objects). Also, Milkshape includes the added bonus of a ton of built-in importers for models from various games (sorry, there's no CoH importer).

Thanks Speedy.

While I was at it, figured I'd provide a 2nd link with the signs and awning texture back in place, in case anyone wanted to work with those. Didn't take the time to paste them back in too cleanly, but enough to work with. If someone wants to put their own ideas in those spots, feel free to use the first line art.

Line Art
Line Art with sign textures

Also changing the subject title to reflect the updated purpose of the thread.

Wow. Hadn't realized it had been so long since I had last touched this WIP. I still plan on finishing it, just a lot of other stuff going on and not enough time to really work on it.

Anyway, not posting simply to reopen a dead thread. I just found a very interesting tutorial this evening on rendering a Poser scene out such that it can become a decent piece of Line Art. It loses a lot of the fine detail in the process (the textures don't render to lines this way only 3D objects), but I was rather impressed with the result. Ruby Line Art

Just thought I'd throw it out here as a freebie for any budding painters who want something to play with. Feel free to knock yourself out and see what you can do with it if you wish.

Not a problem. Those tools are really only the tip of the iceberg. I'm more of a hobbyist than an artist, so I've spent a lot of time digging up tools that let me take care of tasks that talent will not. Heh!

There are also tools out there that will help in creation of new clothing items, Virtual Fashion from Reyes and Clothing Designer from PhilC being two of my favorite votes. As with Wardrobe Wizard, Clothing Designer supports more figures, but Virtual Fashion allows you to texture your new clothing items easily and directly inside the designer.

Virtual Fashion makes Dynamic Clothing only. Clothing Designer includes a tool that can convert an .obj or Dynamic Clothing item to Conforming cloth. Alternately, there are other tools when used in combination that can let you quickly and easily convert dynamic clothing to conforming clothing (namely AutoGroup Editor and QuickConform from the developer of Clothes Converter, which are both available on Renderosity and possibly from Daz - not sure about that last).

While all these tools can add up in initial cost, in the long run they can save you a lot of money by allowing you to reuse what you already have or easily create an item you may be missing.

Clothing items are model specific, by default. The clothing that comes with Poser 6 for Jessi will not work directly on Victoria 3. There are ways around this, but it depends on how much effort your willing to put into it and/or how much more your willing to pay for additional tools.

Not getting into too much detail here, as it can take up pages, but with Dynamic Clothing you can run a Cloth Room simulation that can fit a clothing item for one character model onto another. First start at frame 1 and position a dynamic clothing shirt approximately where it should be on a model it was not originally meant for. You can then scale your character model down in the X and Y axis and set a keyframe. Then move to frame 30 and reset the X and Y scale back to 100. You can then setup a simulation within the Cloth Room in Poser 6. Effectively this will refit the dynamic clothing item to the new model.

It can be a pain to do and an exercise in frustration when you're first learning to use it, but it does work. The results are not spectacular, however (IMO). A google search should allow you to locate some tutorials on performing this process in more detail. Also, this works only with Dynamic cloth, not with Conforming clothing.

For Conforming Clothing, there are tools out there such as Clothes Converter (daz3d.com) or Wardrobe Wizard (philc.net) that can refit Conforming clothing from one model to another. They each have their strengths and weaknesses.

Clothes Converter tends to have better results overall, I think, but it will only perform an automatic conversion between figures using the DAZ Unimesh (Victoria 3 and 4, David, Mike 3, Aiko, Freak, She Freak, etc). It will not autoconvert to other figures such as Victoria 1 or 2, Mike 2, or any of the default Poser figures. However, you can use the tool to manually adjust the clothing to fit the new figure, with the quality of the results depending upon your patience level.

Wardrobe Wizard, on the other hand, can automatically convert between a MASSIVE list of models. It is a python script that runs inside Poser 6 and uses magnets to perform the conversion. The results are generally good, but not perfect even when running the smooth option.

These tools are best for items on the torso and legs. Neither tool works with gloves. Both can sometimes convert shoes, but don't count on them looking good or working right when later conformed to the figure inside Poser. Both can also convert hair, but for some reason Cothes Converter resets the pivot center of a hair model so it doesn't fit the character when loaded in Poser.

Regarding textures, the free Victoria and Michael figures from DAZ do not come with any textures. Those you will need to obtain separately. There are some websites out there with free textures, but you generally get what you pay for. If you want good textures, you typically need to purchase them.

And as for using textures with various models, there is little give and take there. Some of the figures share similar enough UV mapping that they can share textures, but most do not. One way to save some money on textures, or to use a texture that you really like on another figure that it normally would not fit, would be to obtain the Universal Texture Editor from 3D Universe (available on the DAZ website). The name is slightly misleading, as it is not truly universal. The basic version will let you convert textures between Victoria 1, 2 and 3 and that's it. You can get additional plugins that support other figures, such as Michael and Stephanie, but they are all DAZ centric and don't work with any of the default figures provided with Poser.

In short, Poser starts you off with the basic tools and that's it. To expand from there, your options are generally to purchase additional items from various vendors, obtain 3rd party tools that will let you convert what you already own to another model, or make your own.

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Davion

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I like it. Thanks!

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So, what version? What do I get?

Poser is currently up to version 6, with version 7 on the horizon. 7 is close enough that it might make Christmas, but I'm not familiar enough with what it offers to be excited yet. Right now, anything 5 or greater will serve you well. 6 took me a while to get used to, but I'm glad I forced myself to upgrade (I used 5 for many years). 6 doesn't actually offer that much more than 5 did, but the interface is a little more powerful and there are models that seem to prefer 6... so that's my current favorite.


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I had Poser 7 on pre-order and received it this week. For anyone who did not preorder, it should be available in the next week or two.

Initial impressions after only two days of playing around with the Poser 7 update...

The good:

1. Rendering can now be done in multiple threads, up to 4. So for those with dual or quad core systems, rendering time _can_ be significantly increased. I say can be, because the renderer splits the threads evenly between the upper and lower portions of the scene and doles each out to a given processor. If most of the render time happens to be in one half of the scene, the thread on the lighter half will complete and then that CPU will just sit idle, not adding any benefit to render times.

2. The Sydney and Simon models are, IMO, a huge improvement over Poser 5's Don and Judy and a good step forward from Poser 6's James and Jessi. As with Jessi, Sydney's hands are still way too large, but that's a minor detail (hands can be resized). Also, as with DAZ's recently released Victoria 4, a number of the Poser 7 figure morphs are magnet based, providing some more pleasant results.

3. Universal Poses. Finally a simpler way to use a common set of poses across multiple figures with decent results.

The bad:

1. Still a 32-bit application limited to 2 Gig memory useage. Large scenes may still need to be rendered in another application.

2. While multithreaded rendering is now available, network rendering is still not an option.

3. Universal Poses don't seem to work correctly on Sydney or Simon for some reason (odd that, considering those are the Poser 7 models). They seem to work fine on the DAZ models though, including Victoria 4.

These are just my initial impressions. With a dual core system, the multithreaded renderer is reason enough for me to upgrade from Poser 5 or 6 to 7, but mileage may differ and for those that render in external applications that will not be a factor. And if you only have a single CPU on your system, that feature will provide no benefit over Poser 5 or 6. I still tend to prefer rendering in Poser over exporting the scene to Bryce or 3DS Max, even if those do provider better render results and performance, simply because the export process is a pain in the neck (and the Max plugins that simplify this process such as Body Studio and GestureMax don't seem to have been updated for 3DS Max 9 as yet)

I second the Renderosity recommendation. Pay special attention to the Poser forum on that site for information. Remember to run a forum search to see if a question has been asked before entering a new post there, though (some people on the site can be a bit touchy about that).

As for the question of whether Poser comes with some free models, the answer is yes. The models are limited, but they are free. Further, check out the daz3d website for the free Victoria 3 and Mike 3 figures as a starting base (assuming they still have the free offer available for them, you get only the base model for free, morphs, textures, clothing, etc are extra).

Hmm. While I don't typically respond to these threads requesting a 'me too', this one has me intrigued. Feel free to add Davion to your list if you still want to do more.

Oh wow. So far that has to be my favorite of all your watercolors.

Fraps doesn't perform any video compression so the output will be very large, as you have seen. One easy way to reduce the size is to take your avi generated by fraps, and process it through something else such as Windows Movie Maker. Movie Maker will generate a .wmv file with a significantly smaller size. You do, however, need to be careful in the final output you select so that it won't reduce the image quality of the video.

As always, incredible work.

Apparently it doesn't like me. No matches. My picture scared it.

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o.O

if someone woulda showed me that with no 'prelim' I'd have said 'sloppy photoshop edit' but if WP has seen him too...

weird.

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Yeah, looked like a lot of stretching and mirroring to me in the first link. But now that I look closer to the second link, the model is missing its arms, and that's not just a photoshop editing effect. Rather odd.

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You must learn the fine art of the 'hover'!! There's a small 'zone' above the surface of the tablet where the cursor will track to the stylus without activating line drawing goodness. Do like what someone suggested earlier, moving your finger down so it's just below the pen tip, so your finger can touch the surface without the pen tip actually touching, so you can get used to it.

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Oh good grief. That works great! Shows how quickly I gave up on the tablet if I haven't figured that out on my own after a year. Each time I'd convince myself to give it another try, I'd give up again after fighting with the positioning. Thanks.

I feel your pain. I picked up a Wacom Sapphire about a year ago and never have gotten used to the thing. I just can't wrap my brain around figuring out where the stylus is going to end up on the screen when it touches down.

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Much better!! Warning a poser collision problem. Her left foot looks to be "in" the ground not on it.

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Ah. Actually the foot is in the right place, I just got the SS trail too high when I moved it and it is covering her toes. Makes it look like they are in the ground. Easy enough to fix.

Ok. Time to concentrate on finishing up the costume and the last sign. Then I'll worry about what to put in the path of that building fireball.

Thanks again. Good suggestions all.

Ruby WIP - layout updated

Ok. Did a bit of recompositing of the scene, zoomed in towards the shops, brought Ruby closer to the camera. Kept pretty much the same pose, just slightly different angle and added the fireball back in to give a reference for the positioning.

Zoomed in this close, there are some obvious texture and poke through problems with the costume and some wonkiness with the coffee shop window reflection. Will work on that later. I also realize the fireball heat trail angle isn't quite right and Ruby obviously needs some facial expression updated. Will work on those, just more or less testing whether this angle works better for the scene.

Also, the chest is at the default position for the model, don't know that I've ever seen anyone comment on the Vicky 3 chest being too low before. I don't think it looks quite as off as it did at the original angle, but maybe that's just my desire not to have to find a way to 'fix' that talking. Does everyone still think the placement is too low with this view?

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i just thought it looked as though she was reaching back to throw a punch...mid-sprint

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Actually, the image first started with her thowing a fireball, so that is how the pose started, indeed. But since I removed the fireball (had too wide an angle and no place for it to go) I can see that the pose may need to change. I'm also wondering if the breast placement may be an optical illusion based on the angle. As I rotate around they don't really seem as off place. Still thinking about that.

I really like the idea of changing the key shop into an SO shop.

Will see what I can do with tightened focus and the suggestions so far.

Thanks all.

Hmm. Ok, I see what you mean. I'll have to think a bit about how to correct those issues. Thanks.

Hello all. I decided I'd tackle a 3D image of one of my alts, Ruby Blaize.

This is what I have currently come up with WIP Ruby Blaize. I know that I still need to come up with a jacket and do some texture work on the legs (which is perhaps going to be the toughest part for me). However at this stage I'm looking for a couple of suggestions on the scene itself.

1. Right now, to the right hand side I have a locksmith shop. As with the cafe sign and the movie poster in the alley, I want to change the locksmith sign to some form of CoH or community reference, but I can't think of anything that works at the moment. Any ideas? I'm not opposed to changing it from a locksmith to something else, for that matter. Just uncertain what to use.

2. The right hand side of the image seems very empty. I could perhaps move the SUV from the alley to the road, but I think that would be too much. I also think more people in the background would be overkill. For those with a better eye for composition, would perhaps something like just putting graffiti on the rolling metal doors do the trick?