Snowlily

Babies come with hats!

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Starlilly? Nonono! Make her as short as possible and call her Lilly Pution.

Grats on 50! Go click on a citizen who's name starts with M and see how much time you took.

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that's sooo tempting

anyway.. I feel like such a loser looking at this, lol Snow's Played time

I've been writing a guide to Ice/Storm controlling.. I know this is off topic for this forum, but... is 14 pages to long? >.>

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Hmmmm, maybe worthy of a calaendar appearance?

Congrats.

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o.O!

Tease!

>.> well, if you do the peacebringer, I removed the wings. Changed my mind about them... <.<

Otherwise, Snow's got lots of ref pics in my Character reference page

A free slot that's now filled with my Peacebringer! (I'd just deleted an 18 fire/kin controller >.&gt

Thank you all :-) I'm giddy. seriously. I should not be this happy over a video game.

edit Happy Rowr?

At Last!

Thought I would post the sterotypical self congradulatory 'Hey I'm 50' post the only place people know me :-D sorry for the spam, I just wanted the people that I consider friends and aquaintences, who don't nessecarily play with me to know. My first 50! it only took 15 months of paid time, and having an account since beta 3!

Curse you altism!

Seriously. I owe the Art board folks a lot, you all keep me inspired and playing! Keep doing what you are doing guys. The last year has seen the Art board become my favorite spot on CoH!

I humbly submit Snowlily for a Calander shot. See my character ref page. I'll be updating it in the next couple of days with a large number of shots too!

Plus lots of shots of Snow on my DA page too.


Awesome idea Juggy, but how do I put the Calaneder up besides just saving it as a desktop image, (and how can you tell? not that I mind, just curious)

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well done! very vibrant colors...me likey, me likey a lot!.

critiquewise? caps may need to be a bit more 'blue' than aqua...minor but the only real think that jumped out at me.~

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I second everything wp said here, esspecialy the liking part

Cap looks a weee bit too Cyan/aqua colored. Spidey is perfect though. I bet you were trying to give them different shades of blue to make them contrast against each other?

Really though, superb lighting and coloring Jug

looks to me like a low opacity gradiant layered over the original sketch to set tone and lighting before he started coloring the figure itself. Which is why the binder rings are colored. Or it could be layered over the whole picture. tough to tell, he did a great job with shading.

poor santa. all that soft fur and yet.. such pointy claws and cat like mood swings...

Wow, that was a very helpful post, thanks a ton. Really lets me see where my options are. Going to pick up a couple of the tools you mentioned and see where I can get with them. Thanks for the time you took to post all that!

that was neat

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"... A while back DJ< I noticed you gave a little demo on Rowr (which I have saved just for the photoshoped hair as a ref) I notice you did Rowrs skin texture in photoshop. Is that what you were talking about when you use the Ultra suit to make heroes?..."

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Basically, yes.

Every 3D model is comprised of little points called 'vertices' that are defined by standard X, Y,and Z coordinates. These coordinates tell the program where to place all the points in 3D space, and which points connect to which other points. Every point has a SEPERATE set of coordinates that define where a texture is mapped onto to object. These were arbitrarily named U, V, and W (the 3 letters that come before X, Y, and Z). The UVW coordinates can be moved and adjusted without moving the physical location of the XYZ points since their only function is to define where the flat texture map lays.

A good example of how his works is to think of a wrapped present. The physical box is the XYZ parameters of the present itself, while the UVW is the wrapping paper that goes around it (giving it color).

So how does this apply to Poser? When I load my character into a scene, they're naked and colorless. I need to load the "Ultra Bodysuit" on top of the character to put them in a spandex outfit. This second model has physical space and moves wherever the base figure moves... like real clothing.

Next, I load Photoshop and open the Texture Template for the Ultra Bodysuit. The template is a square JPG about 2000 x 2000 pixels in size and has a flattened out version of the ulra bodysuit painted on it. I just draw the clothing texture into the template, load the newly created bodysuit texture into Poser and place it on the Ultra Bodysuit geometry. Viola!

By now, I have a pretty good library of COH textures that I've made, so mixing and matching is getting faster each time I make a new hero.

I also need to load a skin texture for the model, eye textures for the eyes, and sometimes a custom texture for the hair... but altogether, that only takes a few minutes (I use almost entirely pre-made skins (unless I want to add a tattoo or something ("Curse you, Juggertha!" ))).

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Ok. so, I got Poser 6 (The present was mailed, and the person wasn't around to make sure I didn't open it early, muahaha!) and I got Michael 3 and Victoria 3 and a few body morphs and head morphs for each as part of the package.

I've read a few tutorials, and managed to get 'some' of the clothing to work, (ok. I managed to get pants on Michael to work, but that's about it) I assume, that the clothing that comes with poser 6 is for the models that come with it, and don't work for V3 or M3 (sigh).

Here's my stream of conciousness thoughts and questions, since organizing this post seems to elude me:

Camera controls seem really counter-intutive to me. My mouse scroll bar doesn't zoom in or out (and appears to do nothing really) I'm having a heck of a time navigating more than one camera around.

Where are these texture maps? I don't seem to have any, do they need to be converted anyway to load into photoshop so I can make any changes to them?

the tutorials I've read seem to assume that I have a basic understanding of poser jargon. For example: what is transmap hair? and why is it different or better than folical point hair? .. nevermind... all of the hair seems to suck and defy attempts to manipulate it.

is there any reason to use the poses as anything more than a starting point? I don't like any of the one's I;ve seen, and moving the figures into a pose I like isn't very difficult. am I missing some hidden benefit to paying $10 for a bunch of poses I can recreate just by looking at the picture?

I guess that's it for now.. making existing clothing work and makeing/editing texture maps for it is the main thing I am after.

if their is, I'm sure it's something the art department doesn't advertise >.>

Your best bet is to create your costume in 3dmax, and then import that to work with a poser model. See Dark Jedi's post in the Poser Help thread.

Alternativly, if you have Photoshop, I made all the screenshot manips on my DA page using just photoshop and cut outs of screenshots. There's limits to that however obviously. the biggest one I've found is changing the expression on the character's face. Change it too much and it doesn't look like a 'screenshot' anymore, don't change it at all and it's the same plastered on placid look your character has had their whole career.

if you are just looking to fix fuzziness, I have a couple tips. The biggest one is two parts: Demorecording and the smudge brush in your favorite image editor.

I generally make a demo of whatever action shot I want to capture, then jack up my graphic settings to max, and replay the demo and dump every frame to a .tga. Then I open them in photoshop, and get the shots I want - now at high res and no chance of missing the 'printscreen' button by a half second. Then I smudge the pixely edges with a really low strength and small brush. That generaly fixes most of it.

reposes and repaints like what I do are a little more complicated, but that's where I start. If you're looking for 3d renders though - yeah, gonna have to make your own costume out of other people props or from scratch yourself. then fit it to a Poser model.



Hope that helps

I am Sooo bookmarking this thread. Great idea jug. So many great pieces, quite a few I'm seeing for the first time! Thanks!

edit: Adding my list and trying to keep it short and limiting myself to 5. Otherwise I'd be here all day.

In no order
Crimson Storm By Doug Schuler, also by Doug, but not linking is 'White Peregrine'

The mad Maid Absinthium By Graver, also by Graver, but not linking is 'Recruitment Drive' and 'Out There'

Graver and Darkjedi are two of the guys that inspire me to participate in the maddness that is CoH. By making more interesting characters, and make art for them.

Heaven and Hell II by Juggertha

Jug has a style I adore. Somewhere between looking painted and digitally rendered, this piece in paticular show cases it well imo.

Hanged Man by CelticBolt

One of his few pieces with a background, love it.

Sisterly Love By Starchasm.

I love her Chibis!

That's awesome of you! Looks good, Congrats to CJ

I Really like this one DB. It has that classic look to it, yet still in your own, almost whimsical, style. (Perfect for the Fool card btw.)

The details in this piece are really amazing, can't wait to see it finished.

can't remote link to tripod.. try photobucket :-)

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I dedicate this to the costume art team. Aparently this is what they had in mind when they only put Gloves, Boots and a hat in for the Santa costume

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Then how come she's wearing a scarf?

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because I couldn't find any wreath's or presents in game to place appropriatly.

my original design idea was to have a christmas wreath in place of the scarf

Thanks guys. :-)

They hair always takes the longest, but is generaly the most fun to do.

PNSFW = Probably not suitable for work >.>

Nothing worse than you'd see in a victoria secrets ad walking through the mall though. PG 13 if I had to rate it.

Fox's Scarf

screenshot repaint/repose

Originals avalible on request

I dedicate this to the costume art team. Aparently this is what they had in mind when they only put Gloves, Boots and a hat in for the Santa costume

Enjoy

Thanks guys. :-) It was lots of fun to do this one.

I tried a few different approaches, one was coloring the lights on the trees to be christmasy, another was adding Jack's blue aura, and adding falling snow.

In the end they all seemed to detract from the central image itself, the interaction between Snow and Jack, so I left them out. Looking at it now (when it's not 5 am) I see a couple details I could fix or spruce up, but - meh. It looks good, I'm happy with it. Further fussing I think would just take away from it.

program - not specifically. But. try googling for 'gif animators' (might wanna add 'free' in there too)

You'll also need some editing software to crop and resize your screenshots.

If you want a 'movie' avatar of your character in motion. I suggest the excellent CoH demo launcher. search the forums for demo's, or creating editing demos (there is an excellent guide in the 'guide to guides' thread, as well as the link to the launcher.)

What you are looking to do is to use the launcher to export your movie frame by frame to a folder, then use your gif animator (I use Adobe Image ready, which lets you do this, but that's not free or cheap, so you'll have to go with what you can find) to stitch them back together into an animated gif.

Having played a bit with doing this, I'd advice only using every 2nd frame, or the action will seem a bit slow (and the file will be twice as big!)

If you are just going to have a series of poses, then setting them on a loop and delay between each frame should be very easy.

Sorry I'm not more help with specific software. I'm sure someone here can recomend a good one and the specific's to how to do it with that. (On the other hand, if you find yourself with Photoshop and Image Ready, I can help you with that in about 30 seconds.)

The Scarf


A Winter Event screenshot manip. I think this is my favorite that I have done of all the Snowlily pics.

Original cutouts (Large) for the curious. I was seriously inspired by the awesome ski resort. took about 4 hours. starting at 1am o.O

That was very help info, both of you thanks Very much.

A while back DJ< I noticed you gave a little demo on Rowr (which I have saved just for the photoshoped hair as a ref) I notice you did Rowrs skin texture in photoshop. Is that what you were talking about when you use the Ultra suit to make heroes? take an existing texture and color it to make your own? (I realize I just greatly simplified what you did)

I have Photoshop CS 2, and with what you just said, I assume I'm getting poser 5.

so mostly its a matter of wading through the free sections, building a 'closet' of outfits and models, then seeing what I need to aquire/build from there? (again, greatly simplifying the process, I know that.)

Thanks guys, both of those sites were/are awesome :-)

I'll take any other recomendations as well, building myself a nice bookmark list