Hi all...

bagginsbill: Thanks for sharing your wisdom and directions/links concerning GC. My own simple mind thought Gamma was something to do with brightness, and your post here has shown me the more complex layout of optaining, and experimenting using Gamma Control. Its a usage I've not considered before, even in photography, but you have shown me the importance of the end results, and I'll go over your post links again and again until something clicks. Much appreciated from a humble, virtual begginer...

Morkonan: WOW!!! Just look at that outfit and the work that has obviously gone into the creation of it! AND you've added the SHADOW Logo - terrific! Plus, I'll bet you've had pains and high moments putting those boots together - but the overall look is truly outstanding, if you'll permit me to say!!! You've virtually created and brought to life my long-time childhood heroine: Lt Gay Ellis... 

I was wondering, you see the ribs of the bodysuit on the left and right arms are differently aligned, do we know what causes this, if its OK to ask!?! Only I noticed that my renders show the same rib alignment...

Loving the journey...

AJ  

The rib alignment is probably due to the orientation of the arms in the UV map.

If it looks like V4's map, one arm is horizontal and the other arm is vertical. Actual neither is perfectly aligned with either axis, but slightly rotated. What this total lack of respect for orientation means is that consistent procedural effects are extremely difficult. Any basic effect shader that creates a "uniform field" will appear to be rotated 90 degrees on V4.

Of course, if you're "painting" directly on the figure with some modern 3d painting tool, none of this matters.

Wow, look's really great ...

And that boots are not so bad ... it's for sure the outdoor work(wo)man's version with buildin steel caps ... but there have been hangar's and heavy tool's and vehicles so it's saving the cute toe's ... ok, ok, V4's toe's are not so cute as they could be but need's safety too ...

Only seen problem is not your's ... comparing to other figures V4's feet seem's to be to long ...  making especialy round shoe looking a bit oversized ...

Your problem with the flying off belt buckle might be the origin. If the part's of 1figure have different origins sometimes if scaling all together they drift apart. I get this effect also sometimes in C4D.

The problem with the fabrics on the arm's is the u-v orientation. Look's like a bug not a general feature cause the legs are correct. If both arm's had different material zone it would be no problem. Switching U and V component would solve it on the right arm. But as I remember both arm's share one mat zone. Only quick solution for V4 creating a new mat zone for the right arm.

B.t.w. it seem's that the UFO forehead hair style comes to vogue ... if I look at pitklad's first hair creation in the poser forum here ...

That this case was really for the makeup ... huh ... that addiction to future but possible realities ... but that's the difference between european and american scifi ... or does someone remember Uhura or at least Janeway working on their makeup's ... not to think that Spock is wearing something like a moustache-trainer to keep his ear's spiky while sleeping ... :laugh:

Might be he as even all that little nice elves would have problems nowadays there it's forbidden by law to arrest dog ear's and e.g. all the shepherd dog's have flabby ear's instead their fine upright ones ... tz, tz, tz, ... poor Mr. Spock ... :rolleyes:

Quote - There's no problem with having VSS installed in multiple copies of Poser.

What do you mean by "hangs"? Poser locks up and is unusable and you have to terminate it? Or do you mean nothing happens. Because nothing is supposed to happen. When you run the script, all it does is load some library functions and install some buttons in your Poser Python buttons window. Many people never bring that window up and they think VSS has failed. It does stuff after you load the VSS control prop and use those buttons.

"Hangs" in that I have to terminate Poser7.  So, I haven't had a chance to use it yet. :(  I haven't tried it with Poser6 yet which I also have installed.  I'll check it there as well.  (I didn't mean to go offtopic here.  I'll try to post the bug in a more appropriate thread if necessary.)  It's probably something specific to my system.  However, I'm fairly sure it isn't "Operator Error" as I've followed several different procedures dictated for loading it properly.  /shrug

Quote - Wow, look's really great ...

And that boots are not so bad ... it's for sure the outdoor work(wo)man's version with buildin steel caps ... but there have been hangar's and heavy tool's and vehicles so it's saving the cute toe's ... ok, ok, V4's toe's are not so cute as they could be but need's safety too ...

Only seen problem is not your's ... comparing to other figures V4's feet seem's to be to long ...  making especialy round shoe looking a bit oversized ...

True.  I may be able to narrow them down in the front before I UVMap everything this weekend.

Quote - Your problem with the flying off belt buckle might be the origin. If the part's of 1figure have different origins sometimes if scaling all together they drift apart. I get this effect also sometimes in C4D.

This is what I thought as well.  I'm going to edit the centers and see if that corrects the issue.  If not, I'll try a different scaling method.  If all else fails, I'll scale it in Poser (which did not have a problem with the buckle because of the way it handles built objects like that) and then export/import it there and re-rig it for conforming.  Whatever happens, I'll eventually solve the problem.

Quote - The problem with the fabrics on the arm's is the u-v orientation. Look's like a bug not a general feature cause the legs are correct. If both arm's had different material zone it would be no problem. Switching U and V component would solve it on the right arm. But as I remember both arm's share one mat zone. Only quick solution for V4 creating a new mat zone for the right arm.

I don't think it's possible to remap V4 in a Material pose without causing the user some difficulties, is it?  Hmm..

You know, could it be possible to build two material settings for the arm within the same Material pose?  They don't actually share the exact same portion of the mapped textures after all.  The left and right arm textures are on different portions of the texture map, if I recall correctly.  One would just have a extra set of maps in it that over-rode one portion of the UV and a new, reversed, setting to switch orientations just on that certain portion of the UV?  So, for one part of the map it would go one way, and using a transmap on the other portion, the other material UV setting would be in the opposite orientation..   Do you think that is possible? 

(I'm sure I'm not using the correct terminology here.  But, if we can use transmaps and computations in Material settings, couldn't we just override a portion of the material settings using a transmap with an overlay that laid on top of it that just had a reversed orientation?)

Quote - ...Of course, if you're "painting" directly on the figure with some modern 3d painting tool, none of this matters.

I've thought of doing that but, honestly, that's quite a bit of work to get it fine tuned.  Even then, the texture is going to stretch with the mesh somewhat and it may not look as good in certain poses.  However, it's always an option.  I just don't have anything decent for topological painting.  Hexagon can do it but I don't think the results would be quite as exceptional as needed.  The free version of Blacksmith 3D doesn't have the resolution necessary and I haven't seen anything out there for free that will do more than paint some colored lines.

I started trying to do some layout lines in 3D painting on the mesh at first and then going directly into the map with a texture.  It's "possible" to do something like build an initial, undeformed, straight texture and then overlay it, follow some seam guides and then deform it.  However, too much deformation would make certain portions of the texture markedly different in appearance on the finished model.  That isn't good..

Some of this may be solved with a V4 second-skin bodysuit.  I don't have the V4 Bodysuit released by DAZ.  But, I can generate one using scripts.  The problem there comes in redistribution and I'm not sure I could redistribute it.  It's not simply a topo but a vertex-by-vertex copy... not something I think DAZ would like to see in a freebie.

Update- Mapping everything this weekend and finishing the transmap for the displacement materials.  I had to take care of some other things the past couple of days so I'm behind schedule.  But, that's no surprise. :)

I'll try to tweak the boots a bit more and take a final stab at a morph for Koz's free Bob hair.  Maybe, just maybe, I'll have the time to throw in two extra-special surprise bonuses  I've been toying with.  :)

After this project is done, I've already got another freebie project lined up and waiting!  It's a "Post Apocalyptic" series. :)  Armor/gear for Michael, the Freak and V4... all different and not just the same mesh with fitmorphs!  (A much bigger project but one I'm looking forward to just the same!)

Quote - - I don't think it's possible to remap V4 in a Material pose without causing the user some difficulties, is it?  Hmm..

That's correct. That mean's remapping and the new "right arm" have to go in the obj file as material group. Ok, using RTEncode or such the changed mesh could be distributed. But I think it's mostly worthless, even if some people would love such "corrected" uvmapped mesh, but normally no one will load a special V4 only for use of one outfit. And for other use it's senseless cause no existing texture map would fit to the right arm.

Quote - - You know, could it be possible to build two material settings for the arm within the same Material pose?  They don't actually share the exact same portion of the mapped textures after all.  The left and right arm textures are on different portions of the texture map, if I recall correctly.  One would just have a extra set of maps in it that over-rode one portion of the UV and a new, reversed, setting to switch orientations just on that certain portion of the UV?  So, for one part of the map it would go one way, and using a transmap on the other portion, the other material UV setting would be in the opposite orientation..   Do you think that is possible?

I'm knowing what you mean and first approach was to say yes. But with a second look the transparency channel could not help. Even there it's 2 pieces in the uv-map it's one material in the poser mat room. So the effect have to be split in the displacement channel. All except the displacement is direction independent.

I have asked Bagginbill for assistence to have a better lace on the left and right leg seams.
He has made a fine example for having a procedural texture on only a small part of the complete material area. In his example the special pattern runs along a line build by the fractal sum.

And now I'm fiddeling with the problem to have that pattern not run along somethere but exactly along a given line in the uv-map. If that works it should be combined with other material in the rest outside of that line.

But as you see it's the same problem as for the right arm. Each time we have a area to be taken from uv-map for one pattern and to be combined with a other pattern outside that area.
In one case we have leg seams and rest of the leg and in the other case we have right arm and rest of the body, here simply the left arm.

So it's not trivial ... might be only not for me. I'm on the way and hopeful nevertheless and if the one problem is solved the right arm should work the same manner. I would say "stay tuned ..."

Actually if you make two versions of your pattern, one horizontal, and one vertical, as shaders it is easy.

You then plug them both into a Blender.

You make a mask for where you want pattern 1 = black, pattern 2 = white.

You drive the Blender.Blending value with that mask.

So all you have to do is design a good pattern for the arm that is bad at the moment - using different mU+nV to get a good line. (I assume you used m=1, n=0 for the existing case that is mostly horizontal)

Once you have the new pattern you combine with the old one using the Blender and mask. This is similar in technique to a transmap - the math is identical. The only difference is we treat one pattern as the "background" and make the other pattern the "transmapped" texture on top of it.

But I call this a blending mask.

Photoshop would call it a "layer mask".

Quote - Actually if you make two versions of your pattern, one horizontal, and one vertical, as shaders it is easy.

You then plug them both into a Blender.

You make a mask for where you want pattern 1 = black, pattern 2 = white.

You drive the Blender.Blending value with that mask.

So all you have to do is design a good pattern for the arm that is bad at the moment - using different mU+nV to get a good line. (I assume you used m=1, n=0 for the existing case that is mostly horizontal)

Once you have the new pattern you combine with the old one using the Blender and mask. This is similar in technique to a transmap - the math is identical. The only difference is we treat one pattern as the "background" and make the other pattern the "transmapped" texture on top of it.

But I call this a blending mask.

Photoshop would call it a "layer mask".

That's exactly what I was trying to describe.  A way to simply incorporate both materials using a mask to separate them from being displayed on the wrong regions (over each-other).  It's done with textures all the time and is easy to do.  (Tatoos/second-skin clothing, etc.)  I didn't think the principle was any different with generated materials with the exception of having the engine compute the materials on the fly which would have to be adjusted for the different regions.

I don't know a lot about Poser's material room but it seems relatively straightforward.  I just haven't played with it enough to learn to develop good techniques.

Yeah, something like this was in my mind ... only overlooked the blender node ... :sad:
The rest should work with simply changing the u- and v-component for the material and this only for the displaxement cause all other isn't unique in direction.

This should also work for your problems with the poke through's between the breasts but is on the second bodymap.

Have some trouble with the leg seam's (BB please look to the other thread).

So might be I do something for the second skin first ... on tomorrow or later ... cause I have first to clarify (again) something regarding some unfriendly guy's named Lehman and Brother's ... by profession seem's they are being banksters ... :cursing:

That's why I'm loving Startrek for example ... never seen a POS or ATM or credit card or something annoying there ... worst they have been faced with was low energy for the food replicator ...

Quote - Yeah, something like this was in my mind ... only overlooked the blender node ... :sad:
The rest should work with simply changing the u- and v-component for the material and this only for the displaxement cause all other isn't unique in direction.

This should also work for your problems with the poke through's between the breasts but is on the second bodymap.

Yeah, that's the solution I'm using for the poke-throughs on displacement.   I'll check the solution for switching the u/v on the texture for the arms using a blender node/transmap as soon as I can.  Lots to do but, fortunately, a lot of it is around the two surprises I'm putting into the full package.

I need to stop adding things though. :)  That is one of my personal failings - I tend to keep adding levels of detail in any project I work on whether it is just for fun in 3D or not.   There comes a time when the designing and engineering has to stop and the project has to ship out the door.

Quote - So might be I do something for the second skin first ... on tomorrow or later ... cause I have first to clarify (again) something regarding some unfriendly guy's named Lehman and Brother's ... by profession seem's they are being banksters ... :cursing:

That's why I'm loving Startrek for example ... never seen a POS or ATM or credit card or something annoying there ... worst they have been faced with was low energy for the food replicator ...

Kirk never had to worry about bouncing a check or getting his pay cut.  He also never had to pay for the multitudes of his own shirts he tore up. :)

Done my administrative walking-tour ... ok, for the moment only ... I really hate things like advocates, banks, insurence companies and other such administrative stuff ... mostly costs money, often brings anger and rarely you get money back without becoming massive ...

But now I have time again so will come up with materials for the V4 second skin.
Ok, you will need to plug in the correction for your jumper in the breast region. But the rest should work out of the box.

It will be without the leg seam at the moment. I got some trouble and posted to baggingsbill but he seems to be busy. So no further answer at the moment.

Quote - - I need to stop adding things though.

:rolleyes:  I'm knowing that ... in this case with the suit it's all on a small base. But some months ago I've seen again "The Boat" in TV. You might know, Petersen's great WWII u-boat (submarine) movie. I'm not sure how the title was in the english/american version.

So finding the adequate Type VII boat I thought it would be a good idea to build something like the sluice for some bye-bye scenes. OK, but only the sluice ... there should be some surroundings ... got the idea to have something like a fortress alongside the sluice ... a big angular wall with windows in it and some gun ports at the roofside and a stair so it could be used also for the napoleonic era.
Then there is never a sluice without some port bassin and a mole at sea side. So the building could also look nice in a today's yachting scene ... thought back to my memories of the yachting harbour's from mediterranian ports like Piraeus/Athens.
At last I decided to have a small lighthouse at the end of the mole.

The model came quite well as a rather low poly mesh ... and then my surprize loading into poser ... it was tooooo big.
Not that it not loaded but in the preview I see only the front parts. All in greater distance, e.g. the lighthouse isn't seen. But it's there if rendering. Also you have no chance to position the cameras easily. You can forget main or aux going out to the lighthouse. The only one with more or less well behaviour is the posing cam but only if you position a figure at that region and use it as selected figur.  So not a good workflow over all. Might be Vue or Bryce might be better in such things.

I now have to cut the model down into handy pieces ... and up to now I'm not sure which cut's might be best to be a bit universal.

So that's the outcome if putting idea's together without stopping at some point ...

On other hand in my example it might be better for a distance image to use one of the landscape renderers and to use poser for it's natural task to pose people and make rather close images. So you need only for example the tower of the submarine for a good image with people that could be recognized as such. Ok, and a bit from the bow/stern if looking forward/backward.

If making fantasy images it's not such a problem having some background. Can take a forest image or something else. But in scenes like in example that sluis it's essential to have a appropriate environment and to find images which matches seamless to the front scenery is difficult.

Ok, using V4 it's even no question. First I think there was never seen a woman on a Type VII tower ... ok, imagination might help get over that. But on a outgoing submarine there was not only one or two persons seen but up to a dozend or so ... and therefor using V4 (with some clothing) might not sink the submarine but definitively Poser itself ... :lol:
In that cases the old P4 people are hired as crew for the boat or even all boats or vehicules there only one would be a bit lonesome ...

I'm really curious about the surprizes you are promising ... oh, forgot it's x-mas the time of surprizes ... :rolleyes:

Quote - Done my administrative walking-tour ... ok, for the moment only ... I really hate things like advocates, banks, insurence companies and other such administrative stuff ... mostly costs money, often brings anger and rarely you get money back without becoming massive ...

But now I have time again so will come up with materials for the V4 second skin.
Ok, you will need to plug in the correction for your jumper in the breast region. But the rest should work out of the box.

It will be without the leg seam at the moment. I got some trouble and posted to baggingsbill but he seems to be busy. So no further answer at the moment.

I hope whatever problems you have get under control soon.  Great news on the materials!

Quote - > Quote - - I need to stop adding things though.

:rolleyes:  I'm knowing that ... in this case with the suit it's all on a small base. But some months ago I've seen again "The Boat" in TV. You might know, Petersen's great WWII u-boat (submarine) movie. I'm not sure how the title was in the english/american version.

It's known as either "The Boat" (with voice-overs in English by the original cast) or "Das Boot" (in German with English subtitles).  It's also one of my favorite movies!  I prefer the German version with English subtitles for words I can't understand.  It adds so much more to the movie and the actor's inflections in speaking are very important.  My understanding of German is not very good but, I can understand a bit of spoken German if it's in an appropriate context.  Outstanding movie!

Quote - The model came quite well as a rather low poly mesh ... and then my surprize loading into poser ... it was tooooo big.  Not that it not loaded but in the preview I see only the front parts. All in greater distance, e.g. the lighthouse isn't seen. But it's there if rendering. Also you have no chance to position the cameras easily. You can forget main or aux going out to the lighthouse. The only one with more or less well behaviour is the posing cam but only if you position a figure at that region and use it as selected figur.  So not a good workflow over all. Might be Vue or Bryce might be better in such things.

Either Vue or Bryce would be better at rendering large panoramic scenes.  Poser just isn't built for it and you can't get anything to look right without scaling down models to very tiny sizes and a lot of work.  Even if you get everything scaled down into one scene, I think Poser rendering (or) Firefly is handicapped in some way by the infintessimal size of the objects Poser uses.

Quote - I now have to cut the model down into handy pieces ... and up to now I'm not sure which cut's might be best to be a bit universal.  So that's the outcome if putting idea's together without stopping at some point ...

:)  I know what you mean.  I've started outlining my next freebie projects with more clear goals so I can stay a bit more focused.  It also helps that they're really unique and not replicas of something in "real-life."  That way, I have more of an opportunity to put some individual creativity and expression into them.  While I've enjoyed working on this current project very much, I think one reason I keep wanting to add things is to try to find areas for more creative license.

Quote - If making fantasy images it's not such a problem having some background. Can take a forest image or something else. But in scenes like in example that sluis it's essential to have a appropriate environment and to find images which matches seamless to the front scenery is difficult.

I agree.  A lot of people get by with simply adding a natural background or simply making it a night-time scene with low light  even though it would be out of context for the piece.

What you may have to do is find a good, high resolution background of a small port (a Meditereanean one, ideally) and then construct some foreground objects and use textures taken from the image. (Or very much like the background textures.)  So, mortar, brickwork, stone, sand, etc.. would match more closely with the background image.  In fact, any 3D ojbect or texture in the foreground which replicates something in the background would help contribute to the illusion of depth and placement.  But, free stock photos like that are difficult to find. :)

(*This image might have possibilities if you worked on it in Photoshop, added more water in the foreground, duplicated buildings in the background to make it a bit wider (and further in the background) and then duplicated some concrete births.  There aren't any more modern boats or structures easily seen in the picture.

That ferry landing looks almost like a submarine pen.  You might even be able to find a good color closeup of a submarine pen and superimpose it on the image if you wanted one in the pic  There may even be some good ones of the pens at La Rochelle..  http://lh5.ggpht.com/_EkOmk0S99dk/SC6yIfHl8YI/AAAAAAAABkM/qUK3GlzPw2A/CIMG1343.JPG  )

Quote - Ok, using V4 it's even no question. First I think there was never seen a woman on a Type VII tower ... ok, imagination might help get over that. But on a outgoing submarine there was not only one or two persons seen but up to a dozend or so ... and therefor using V4 (with some clothing) might not sink the submarine but definitively Poser itself ... :lol:
In that cases the old P4 people are hired as crew for the boat or even all boats or vehicules there only one would be a bit lonesome ...

What you might be able to do is pose each figure individually and then export them as objects.  Poser reads all the morph and deformer information for all the characters/objects BUT if they're static wavefront objects with only a texture on them, it's much easier for Poser to deal with.  You can also take the high-resolution textures and reduce the resolution in Photoshop and then reapply them to the static objects (which will keep the same maps as long as they're exported correctly and not welded.)  The downside to this is you will have to do the same for the clothing as well as it will not conform to a static wavefront object that has no rigging and you can't simply superimpose rigging from the original character file because it would be all screwed up because of the static pose.

You can also just export necessary portions (like heads, forearms and hands) and then import them as static objects and parent them to posed clothing.  That way, Poser doesn't have to load a lot of unnecessary information.

Quote - I'm really curious about the surprizes you are promising ... oh, forgot it's x-mas the time of surprizes ... :rolleyes:

I've been tempted to post "Work in Progress" pictures of them but, I'm going to keep that a secret until release.  I finished them last night and just have a couple of hard to find textures to apply to some small details.  But, they're done and should be useful for many people even if they're not a fan of the UFO series.

Quote -
     
  
            

[/quote

:)

Hiyas paramount!  I really am sorry about the delays.  Just when I think I have some time to finish I get pulled away!  But, I promise I'm going to be done as soon as I possibly can.  I spent some time on the "extras" this weekend and I suppose I could have finished packing up the other stuff using that time instead.  But, the extras really add a good touch to it all and I wanted to offer something a bit more anyway.

I love deadlines.  I love the sound they make as they go whooshing by...

Hey...

You guys just take as long as it takes... After all, I'm simply a End Product bystander here, watching you guys create my 'desired' Moonbase Girl dream outfit - with extras! My smilies were in response to the suggestion of additional items of a secret nature!!! That simply got the exitable juices flowing yet again... Its been great watching the progress here, even if most of the technical points have flown breezily over my newbie head. But I'm determined that after this thread completion to hopefully venture further than the Pose, Material, and Cloth Rooms of Poser 6 - even if somewhat tentatively at first  .

I loved 'Das Boot' (c1981) also, Jo... Think it was shown on UK TV around last year or so. The movie really worked in that it presented you with something of the feelings, emotions, agonising's of what it might be like to exist in such claustrophobic watery environment, with the threat/thoughts of a sudden and dramatic implosion hovering over you for the most of your time below the level of the sea!!! Don't think I could have lived through such calamities personally... T'was bad enough taking to the rock some numerous years begone now, when I never did really have the head for the heights. Can remember only the once (thank the Lord) when the dreaded vertigo paid me a kindly visit, following fifteen hours climbing/clambering to nudge me in my then over-confident ribs!!! I frooze for maybe ten minutes solid - and can still remember the smell and feel and touch of the nearby rocks today as it was then... So keep dem submarines well away please!!! 

Searching out that 'Das Boot' just now happened me upon the new release of the next 'Underworld' movie to hit the screens this coming January. I know it's not in the same calibre/class as Da Boot, but I just love them dastardly heroines kicking the tough-guys ass, especially when suitably attired. I also loved the Matrix run of movies (oh Trinity you kick ass), but 'Underworld' has that dark gothy punchy quality about it that sends one reeling back into our genetic past!!! Role on Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, with Rhone Mitra instead of Kate Beckinsale... Rhone isn't as peachy glamourous as Kate, which should more suit the gutsy part she has to play...

Anyway, apologies for going all movie-chatter here today...

Good luck with the next stage of R & Development of the incredible Moonbase Girl Outfit - and extras...

AJ    

There was not only the original cinema movie. It gave also a long version in 4 parts, round 8-9 hours in total. Ok, from point of action rather long but gave lots more of that atmospere cause without finding/working on targets the biggest enemy on such boats was boredom. And boredom in that situations mean's that your mind get lot's of worse fantasies.

I'm personelly be glad that I never used to get any experience in war situations. But I think if I can't omit I might stay better on a submarine than e.g. a destroyer or battleship. On second one's you might have a illusion that in worst case you would be rescued which indeed only happened to a few sailor's. So it's really only a illusion. On the subs the consequences are much clearer so you are able to be aware of them. One of my former colleagues did his military duty on a german submarine (today, not WW II). He was really lucky cause in his time they made a trip to the caribean eilands ... for a NATO / US manoevre or such ... So he had had lots to tell including cock-and-bull stories ... :ohmy:

And if you did some trip with a sailing yacht and suddenly got a storm in a cold lousy night, you know quickly that on sea the difference of working above the water level or below is not very big ... and very time rather wet ... :sneaky:

Quote - - What you may have to do is find a good, high resolution background of a small port (a Meditereanean one, ideally) and then construct some foreground objects and use textures taken from the image. (Or very much like the background textures.)  So, mortar, brickwork, stone, sand, etc.. would match more closely with the background image.  In fact, any 3D ojbect or texture in the foreground which replicates something in the background would help contribute to the illusion of depth and placement.  But, free stock photos like that are difficult to find. :)

That image is really not bad ... good atmosphere. Might not be good for submarines cause to near to normal buildings instead some more industrial environment. But it would be great for a old fashioned yachting scene. So from the time of the big J's and America Cup.
Needs only to delete that ugly loudspeaker poles on the right harbour side ...

But it's not only a point of background picture and matching textures/buildings etc. from front to background. The light must match and shadows could also be a problem ... in strenght, in direction and so on.
But a really big point is the image quality. In that harbour picture the left side is a bit blurry and especially firefly with it's "filtering" quality tends to to blur lot's more ... not only background images as also normal cloth texture. So it's tricky ...

Instead of using figures as static props I have more often rendered partly. Working from back to front and taking the result again as a background for the next part. For stills if observing correct shadows this works fine. OK and besides of stills ... I'm not sure if poser is really useful for a animation. I've tried once a very small one but was not very impressed. On otherhand running pictures are not my intention, think Smith Micro could work on a lot theme's in poser in front of making updates to animations part.

And that brings me back to SHADO ... The file in the link above is not a TXT file but a real ZIP, cut off the last extension.

I have reworked the simple silver wool mt5. It's without any transperency and a bit more darkened than before.

It is the base for the 2 material collections to be used directly on V4. Tis collections only touch the material groups covered by the bodystocking. So, please load first a character texture of your choice for make up, head, hand or feet. After this you only need to load the material collection to overwrite the neccessary parts.

As ever ther is one collection only using bump for distant shots and a second one with DISP at the end using also displacement for closeups.

As you see the 90 degree wrong uv-direction on the left arm is solved. For that the jpg in the texture directory is neccessary.

I have only blacken the left arm roughly. It covers the complete arm and more around. Also a bit of the hand is black but thisis no problem cause the hand's are separate material groups. So no need to use this map on hands.

This might be the only version there you have to change something in the breast region if getting poke throughs to your jumper.
The bumped version normally should stay covered without problems.

In both versions it might be neccessary to shorten the material in the neck region. But as seen here that upper part is the material group skin torso.
If this is to long at the neck we need to do something similar black-white to that region like for the arms.
But than this have to be "blended" with the normal skin material and that depends on what the user is prefering. So it is not a out of the box solution.

But you should first have a look if your jumper might cover that part completely. Then no need to do blendings.

I think it look's quite nice ... though a bit I miss that little transparent look like with the bodysuit. The material there looked a bit more fluffy but that's impossible with a second skin.
OK, it is possible to build in that fluff with a lot's more complicated shader. But better to have the processor working on the whole image than to have lot's of detail seen only with the microscope in biggest closeup's ... :rolleyes:

That's not finished ... more or less a brain map ... but it's a Type VII B or C tower which needs some more finishing, smoothing and texturing ...

In this example ... ok, rendered without shadows for time reasons ... I have 1 V3 leftside and a V2 on that chair and 8 Posettes, all including clothing. Not to forget the boat and that nice little fish ...

So also some peoples more is possible. I have tried the same with a additional V4. That will work too.
Ok, I have omitted using the V3 morphs in this. On this distance they are not really neccessary but that's a matter of perspective.

So with these older figures some things are lot's easier ... in technical view ...

For the costal line yesterday I have found a nice water + foam material by bagginsbill. In the middle and round the boat the water looks not bad but at the costal line it's horrible ... but comes time, comes shader ... :laugh:

Quote - ...I have reworked the simple silver wool mt5. It's without any transperency and a bit more darkened than before.

It is the base for the 2 material collections to be used directly on V4. Tis collections only touch the material groups covered by the bodystocking. So, please load first a character texture of your choice for make up, head, hand or feet. After this you only need to load the material collection to overwrite the neccessary parts.

As ever ther is one collection only using bump for distant shots and a second one with DISP at the end using also displacement for closeups.

Great!  Thank you very much!

Your point about the transparency detail being available on the materials for the bodysuit is well taken.  I suppose such transparency could be put in as a map using an offset of the original map for the material.  So, basically, a transparency map that is just a reverse of the bump map.

But, there is the question of necessity.  Such details in an overlay for a "second skin" might be nice but, it may also unnecessarily lengthen render times in situations where closeup transparencies aren't needed.  In order to best serve the user, a material pose with transparencies on and off for the "second-skin" would really be called for.  Eventually, we'd end up with a lot of different material poses that many people may not use.  I think it's possible to do but, it may not be needed.

I don't think the material for the second-skin will extend above the collar of the jumper.  If it does, another transmap cutting off the offending area is fairly easy.

I've also been thinking about adding a bump-map overlay for any V4 texture that produces "cuffs" around the wrists.  That would be very simple to do since all that would be needed is to put an overlay on the hand material which produces a "cuff" right at the seam between the hand and the forearm.  A simple line along the seam there would work just fine, I think.

Concerning the photo/sub project -   I thought you were looking for something that was suitable for a "ships boat" (small boat belonging to the sub) and passengers waving to someone at the docks/wharf.  I agree, the picture I offered isn't suitable for a full view of a submarine model.

In Poser, the biggest problem I come across in loading multiple figures has to do with textures.  Simply put, good textures take up a LOT of processing power and with multiple figures all of those loaded texture sets start to cause "slowdowns" and cache problems.  Admittedly, Poser is trying to do a great many things at the same time.  However, I haven't seen a whole lot of programs that are worse at handling their own memory caches than Poser is.  But, I don't deal a lot with such things so Poser may be one of the better applications in its class for handling cached information.

I have a somewhat older PC so my processing power gets stretched quit frequently by Poser in complex scenes.  In very complex scenes with lots of objects and textures I have to reduce the preview and go without full texture previewing except for fine-tuning.  Of course, it's not guarranteed I can render a complex scene either. :)  More often than not, Poser doesn't want to render them and will end up crashing.  I'm planning on getting a new system this month so, hopefully, that problem will be taken care of.

Quote - - Your point about the transparency detail being available on the materials for the bodysuit is well taken.  I suppose such transparency could be put in as a map using an offset of the original map for the material.  So, basically, a transparency map that is just a reverse of the bump map.

Somehow I have lost you. Equal if procedural material or a texture map it stretches directly on the mesh. So having transparency means the mesh becomes transparent. In this case using a second skin on V4 you will make V4 itself transparent. This might be good for a render of the ghostly hour but only there.
In other case using a separat bodysuit the bs-mesh will become transparent looking like fluffy wool in our example. But the original V4 mesh underlying the bodysuit will stay opaque and it's own color is more or less visible by the transparency of the bodysuit. So in this case we have let's say 2 layers like with a real clothing on a girl or boy.

In case of a second skin it's like bodypainting on a girl and making her skin transparent is like x-ray. But with the difference that a real girl show's her inward but V4 has nothing under the skin.

In the same way a bump is only a vision of shadow and light on same level of the mesh. On otherhand the displacement map changes the levels depending to it's texture. With high displacement you might distort the mesh.
So there are no different layers for bump, displacement or transparency. They all work directly to the mesh. They have no offset between each other.

Quote - - I've also been thinking about adding a bump-map overlay for any V4 texture that produces "cuffs" around the wrists.  That would be very simple to do since all that would be needed is to put an overlay on the hand material which produces a "cuff" right at the seam between the hand and the forearm.  A simple line along the seam there would work just fine, I think.

Technical ok, but a bit the same as above. With the bumpmapped material a bump will do it. If using the displacement that seam should be displaced. And than it could produce well visible distortions where it raises above the normal hand mesh level.
A other point is that the forearm group is relatively long. So better that cuff could be placed at the end of the forearm than at the hand. But even there I would suggest to have the cuffs a bit higher towards elbows. Having them directly at the border between hand and forearm means they are lying directly in bend/twist zones between that 2 limbs. This will mess up in certain poses and/or morphing's of the character parts.

Quote - - Concerning the photo/sub project -   I thought you were looking for something that was suitable for a "ships boat" (small boat belonging to the sub) and passengers waving to someone at the docks/wharf.  I agree, the picture I offered isn't suitable for a full view of a submarine model.

Oh, sorry, that was a misunderstanding. U-boats has been much much smaller vessels as for example today's nuclear submarines. They only used rubber dinghi's if ever neccessary.
Boarding normally is done alongside the mole or dock. But rendering a rubber boat is not very impressive. So in my opinion not worth the rendering effort. Especially cause that rubber is normally black or dark grey, the u-boat hull behind is grey, the water around (harbour !!) is muddy ... darkbrown and the people are wearing grey cloth ... so a very unique grey symphony ... ok, might be with a outstanding white point ... the captain's cap but only starting the journey, not at the end ... :lol:
No, that's to dark for me. Doing this with some buildings as environment give the possiblity to use some more colors.

Quote - - In Poser, the biggest problem I come across in loading multiple figures has to do with textures.  Simply put, good textures take up a LOT of processing power and with multiple figures all of those loaded texture sets start to cause "slowdowns" and cache problems.  Admittedly, Poser is trying to do a great many things at the same time.  However, I haven't seen a whole lot of programs that are worse at handling their own memory caches than Poser is.  But, I don't deal a lot with such things so Poser may be one of the better applications in its class for handling cached information.

I'm with you in point of the caching or better the garbadge collection of that memory. Not the menu entry "reload texture" is needed mainly but there should be a entry called "free up all texture memory".
In my experience poser holds all textures as long as possible. So if I try out some different clothings with different textures while building a scene, it's best to save the result and restart poser completely to get rid of all unneccessary things first before rendering.

For sure textures are a problem but less to processing power than for memory. Independent of the size of a jpeg on harddrive if using real color (24 bit) you need 3 bytes each with 8 bit to have 1 pixel. So a 1500 * 1500 pixel bitmap means 51.5 Mb. If using higher resolution, e.g. 3000 * 3000 pixel, we talk about 206 Mb. Normally this makes only sense if you don't use a jpeg but a tga or bmp for example. Jpeg is not a lost less format, so you have quality loss even with 100% jpeg quality. Having that on 3000 * 3000 pixel means only to see that loss better. But poser has to stretch that giant map on the obj-mesh and to hold it in memory ... for each figure, cloth, prop, background and so on. Also the obj data including morph's data reside in memory. That fill's up nicely ... :sleep:

Also the filtering default setting "quality" is normally bad. The processor has lot's to do and the outcome is only blurry, worst than 50% jpeg compression. So only with hair that could be fine. For all other textures set filtering to "None".

On other hand using procedural shaders mean's calculating them to the object data on the fly while rendering. This is not memory consuming but makes the processor(s) warm up heavily.
Most work is neccessary using raytracing and having lot's of transparencies and/or reflecting materials and/or displacements. You could see this everytime rendering "stops" at hairs or glossy metal, e.g. swords. Ok, it doesn't stop really but poser has to recalculate lot's for that bucket.

But this is the point I normally never use shadowmaps with the light's. First I find the result's of that more badly than worst raytracing. Rather seldom that shadows are placed where they should and I found that especially shadows on the floor don't happen. Towards a wall it's better.
But second and most important point also that shadowmaps are bitmaps that fill up the memory depending of the resulting render image size and the number of used light's.
So normally a image rendering well with raytracing often breaks if using shadowmaps. In P7 normally it doesn't break completely but is ommitting shadowmaps if memory is low. You get the picture but only with partly shadows. Also not good.

So surely apps like C4D have better ressource management but comparing to the prize and the number of companies having had their hands on poser, it's really, really not too bad.

Programming graphical programms isn't the easiest. Databases, text editor and such stuff is no big matter. But for example up today microsoft is trying to do something with graphical programming and the outcome is normally somewhat between useless and rubbish including vista's desktop.

Personally I don't know why people needing this ressource wasting ... ok, ok, diagonal flying windows might be a good efffect in a showroom but if I have seen it once or twice I don't see anything new. But for work I need a square window in front of my nose and not somewhere in upper corner bended und twisted ... :cursing:

So in my opinion MS should build their operating systems as a base level with all neccessary ressources applications will need and a simple commandline interface. This would be well for all that nasty but neccessary and useful tasks like backup, data transfering or even rendering tasks. No need for the graphical overhead, all power and ressource to the task.

And then as second part a graphical environment, the desktop, for the user to work with.
Letting out all that other gimmicks and small "helper's", e.g. zipping. A experienced user will need a real programm for that task and not the buildin crutch. And there are lot's of as paid or freeware all better than MS stuff.
On other hand that stuff will not help unexperienced user's ... they think it work's but normally making more breakage than good.

So my advice to MS would be concentrate on the operating system and let the environment doing people which have more special knowledge of that. And might be try to licence that third party stuff if needing to sell a "complete" system.

So the approach of DOS/W98 was not really bad as also seen with linux/unix ...

Quote - - In very complex scenes with lots of objects and textures I have to reduce the preview and go without full texture previewing except for fine-tuning.

This might be not mainly a problem of poser but of your gahics card. As far as you use hardware support the preview in poser is done by OGL directly with the card. Also a point where Vista is useless cause MS kicked out their OGL support. It was not best of breed in XP or even W2K but it was there.

But for OGL you can really forget all that directX rubbish used for most gaming graphics cards.
What really is essential for this OGL rendering is the bandwidth of the card connected to the motherboard. Only the expensive top level cards have well bandwidth. Have a look to the NVidia website and their technical fact sheets.

So if you are not using the pc for gaming it's a super idea to buy a top card from one or even two generations back. So we talk about card's round 1 year aged. But opposite to the newest generation also these older top level card's are rather cheap AND they are doing their job in best manner.

So building my Dual Core a year back the NVidia 8xxx was brand new and heavy prized. I build in a NVidia 7900 that was one of  the top models of the 2 year back generation but cost's only like the base models of the 8xxx. But it has double bandwidth compared to that newer one's at reasonable pricings and that brings the push to the preview window. Never having any problems to stay in full textured mode.

Quote - > Quote - - Your point about the transparency detail being available on the materials for the bodysuit is well taken.  I suppose such transparency could be put in as a map using an offset of the original map for the material.  So, basically, a transparency map that is just a reverse of the bump map.

Somehow I have lost you. Equal if procedural material or a texture map it stretches directly on the mesh. So having transparency means the mesh becomes transparent. In this case using a second skin on V4 you will make V4 itself transparent. This might be good for a render of the ghostly hour but only there.

What I mean was using a transparency to block out a portion of the procedural texture.  Then, as you correctly point out, you'd have to put in another procedural (or texture map) to make up for that on the skin of the model. 

Quote - In the same way a bump is only a vision of shadow and light on same level of the mesh. On otherhand the displacement map changes the levels depending to it's texture. With high displacement you might distort the mesh.  So there are no different layers for bump, displacement or transparency. They all work directly to the mesh. They have no offset between each other.

I understand.  But, you can affect how those are expressed in certain areas using processing nodes before they are applied to the mesh itself.  At least, as far as I know.  I'm relatively new to this but, you can extensively modify the procedurals before they're ever applied to the mesh itself in the rendering process.  That is what I mean - You apply transparency nodes to isolate the effects you want in certain regions before those materials are linked into the channel.  So, the main body texture could have several procedurals hooked into it with different transparency nodes blended in and the transparency channel isn't touched.  (My apologies for not knowing the proper terms here.  That creates some difficulty in explaining my meaning at times. :) )

Quote - Technical ok, but a bit the same as above. With the bumpmapped material a bump will do it. If using the displacement that seam should be displaced. And than it could produce well visible distortions where it raises above the normal hand mesh level. A other point is that the forearm group is relatively long. So better that cuff could be placed at the end of the forearm than at the hand. But even there I would suggest to have the cuffs a bit higher towards elbows. Having them directly at the border between hand and forearm means they are lying directly in bend/twist zones between that 2 limbs. This will mess up in certain poses and/or morphing's of the character parts.

Good point.  In a displacement map, they would definitely run the risk of distorting the mesh if not enough room was left for movement of the limbs.  For a bump map, it may not be that big of a deal.  Then again, such a detail in the texture is really only good for closeups anyway and, for that, you'd want displacement if at all possible.  So, it would be best to plan on using displacement to begin with for that kind of detail and just let the user reduce it to a bump-map if they desire.

Quote - Oh, sorry, that was a misunderstanding. U-boats has been much much smaller vessels as for example today's nuclear submarines. They only used rubber dinghi's if ever neccessary.

True.  I was a big curious as to why I though you meant a wooden ship's boat as being with a U-Boat.  It would be extremely hard to get in and out of the submarine even if they tried to load it in the torpedo loading bay. :)

Quote - Boarding normally is done alongside the mole or dock. But rendering a rubber boat is not very impressive. So in my opinion not worth the rendering effort. Especially cause that rubber is normally black or dark grey, the u-boat hull behind is grey, the water around (harbour !!) is muddy ... darkbrown and the people are wearing grey cloth ... so a very unique grey symphony ... ok, might be with a outstanding white point ... the captain's cap but only starting the journey, not at the end ... :lol:  No, that's to dark for me. Doing this with some buildings as environment give the possiblity to use some more colors.

True.  If you were doing a night scene though, that black, inky image of the rubber dinghy against the moon's reflection on the water might look pretty good though.  If you had crew, crouched down in the boat, and some reflections here and there, you could make it look ominous or even desperate, depending on how you presented it.  I'm no art-critic nor am I a professional artist though.  

Quote - I'm with you in point of the caching or better the garbadge collection of that memory. Not the menu entry "reload texture" is needed mainly but there should be a entry called "free up all texture memory". In my experience poser holds all textures as long as possible. So if I try out some different clothings with different textures while building a scene, it's best to save the result and restart poser completely to get rid of all unneccessary things first before rendering. 

I agree completely.  One thing I do is use a separate program to free up my memory cache on the fly while working in Poser.  Luckily, Poser doesn't seem to have a problem there and will reload textures on its own during rendering if it can't find them already in memory.  However, over multiple renders this causes a problem sometimes and it's best to restart Poser and let it figure out you've been "erasing its mind" the whole time. :)  I'd rather have Poser force a reload of textures when I am actively using it (during Rendering) than have it sit there and hold onto all that memory just to save some texture-loading time during rendering while I am trying to work with it.

Quote - Also the filtering default setting "quality" is normally bad. The processor has lot's to do and the outcome is only blurry, worst than 50% jpeg compression. So only with hair that could be fine. For all other textures set filtering to "None".

I agree.

Quote - So surely apps like C4D have better ressource management but comparing to the prize and the number of companies having had their hands on poser, it's really, really not too bad.

I agree there as well.  Poser is a really good tool set for what it is designed to do.  There are other rendering packages out there that are much better but, Poser is just fine for most hobbyists and many artists. 

Quote - Programming graphical programms isn't the easiest. Databases, text editor and such stuff is no big matter. But for example up today microsoft is trying to do something with graphical programming and the outcome is normally somewhat between useless and rubbish including vista's desktop.

I wouldn't know about Vista... I don't ever intend on using that.  I use XP-Pro and will use that until the next Micro$oft O$ comes out. :)

Quote - So the approach of DOS/W98 was not really bad as also seen with linux/unix ...

I agree.  There's a lot of unnecessary, bloated junk that comes with Window's OSs these days.  I want Micro$oft to make operating systems but would rather someone else make all the front-end gadgets.

Quote - - In very complex scenes with lots of objects and textures I have to reduce the preview and go without full texture previewing except for fine-tuning.

Quote - So if you are not using the pc for gaming it's a super idea to buy a top card from one or even two generations back. So we talk about card's round 1 year aged. But opposite to the newest generation also these older top level card's are rather cheap AND they are doing their job in best manner.

Good points about OGL.  I also don't tend to buy the newest cards on the market but, instead, by one or two generations behind.  There's a huge difference in cost-savings and performance differences aren't always big enough to justify the extra expense, especially if I'm upgrading from a much older card.

I desperately need to get a new system.  It's not money that is the issue, it's the time I feel is necessary in researching various components.  So, it may take me a month or so to figure out exactly what I want, thirty minutes to order it and four hours to assemble it..  But, it's a task I really need to undertake because the system I'm using now is several years old.

Anyway, getting back on topic:

I'm still working on the project, still polishing it up and making sure everything works right.  When I get ready to post it, I'll probably PM you and the other's who have shown interest here so far with a link to a "beta" version so you can test it on your machine before I post it at ShareCG, if that's ok with you.  No obligation to test, of course.

Hey...

Hope its OK to drop my latest learning render effort into this space here...

Whilst in this Moonbase Girl (Sci-Fi) theme, I'm experimenting trying to build an environment where our Cult Sci-Fi heroine Lt Ellis and her equally decisive compadres can roam and hopefully kick some dastardly alien butt... 

Yesterday I started playing with some alien landscape surfaces, sprayed in a starscape, placed some items plus V4 here and there, and got to practising with half a dozen or so spots... 

I was trying to arrive at a point/render/finish where the marooned heroine appeared to be in the vacume (vacuum) of space with no air around her and a long way from home...

It took an hour of selected area rendering alone to arrive at the desired single spot lighting position for the visor, which for me is the drawpoint of the image... ...I know the left arm is virtually invisible (as my other half kept telling me) in the render... But each time I vaguely lit the arm, the total effect of the character being in a distant and desolate vacume or vacuume, was lost - oddly enough. 

No post work involved

Total work and render time 4-hours...

Hope you like just a bit my rendering beginnings...

Please scrutinize at will...

Terrain and backdrop: 3d real-o-rama space
Planet:  MCPlanet RNDA freebie
Suit for V4: Suit 004 Posermatic
Space Rocket50; Awful Soul

AJ 
     

Morkonan,

on most completely with you ...

Such tricky pre-procedural materials I'm just trying with a lot help by bagginsbill. It's for the seam's along side the legs. Would not be the easiest but could bring some reality to that parts.

Black rubber boat in the moon light ... for sure a worthwhile theme ... but I tend more to do this with a yacht. Normal rubber boats are a bit shiny and giving reflections. But all that war materials are pushed extremly to completely without shine or reflections ... today as in the last century ...
So from point of reality if they did a good job, it would be a picture of a glossy moon over the sea with a big dull point with no given contour ... a happy yachting crew with some bottles of beer and might be one overboard makes more fun ... :laugh:

War is never funny so I think in these pictures there should be a sense of black humour like in example this u-boat lost im time and meeting Cesar's triremes ...

Quote - - I desperately need to get a new system.  It's not money that is the issue, it's the time I feel is necessary in researching various components.  So, it may take me a month or so to figure out exactly what I want, thirty minutes to order it and four hours to assemble it..  But, it's a task I really need to undertake because the system I'm using now is several years old.

One month to figure out is the maximum ... otherwise the components are date out again ... :huh:
I did a search for a new monitor in July/August but come not to a buy. Now I looked again for the actual prizes and didn't find most of them I once had written down. All things back to the beginning and again ...

If you didn't mount a pc for longer times be warned. Things have become more difficult to have the components matching ... not connecting, ok mostly, but working together.
One year ago with my new pc I took by tradition a asus-board. All worked harddisk, network and even memory ... no problem ... but for the hell the sound chip came not to life ... wether with XP nor W2K ... ok, normally no big need for squawking compartment but paid is paid. So it has to work even if to be switched off. Gave the board back to the shop, they sent to asus to examine ... all that nice guarantee stuff ... after round 8 weeks all was back with the information that board is fine, use the newest drivers. Ok, thats the first I do with new IT equipment loading lot'S of drivers from lot's of sites. So nobody knows why but it didn't come alive. I lastly managed with the shop to change that board ... but their have been times this was lot's easier ...

Fine, fine, no problem to make a beta test ... saithere to find and here we go ...

Hi paramount, nicely done ... congrat's ...

Not to criticize your master ... I think the shadows are correct and the left arm is laying in the dark and therefor not much visible.

B.t.w. what gloves did you use ... gloves is a everlasting theme, not mauch there in market, especially in freebies ...

I hope the vacuum is not to empty ... cause she might have problems with her helmet not matching her suit ...

Apropos helmet, the lighting of the visor this very nice but I miss a small highlight/glance on the helmet above the visor.

The only iritating is that diagonal darkblue strip on the blue planet. Is that part of some rings or a mismatch in the texture ... very strange ...

For the effect of floating silently through the space it might be easier to have their legs/feet visible. Mostly with wrong shadows people are floating over the ground there they stand on it. But here this could the right impression. Especially if bending their knees some 20/30 degrees backward and spreading her legs for a small V.

Is that starship just exploding? It's not so clearly or am I on the false highway ?

Hey, Jo...

The gloves come with the Suit-004 by Posermatic... The suit/outfit can be used for numerous scenarios: Sci-Fi, motorcycle, or just being cool... There are a few areas on the suit (notably at neck and down by lower tummy sides) where the flesh it bare and quite deliberately so, so one has to mat the most of the torso if using as space type pressure suit. I matted the helmet black - I think - and changed the usual rubbery material of the suit with spandex finish - as this takes to lights much the better.  I tried with slight spot highlight around various parts of helmet for a bit, but kept removing this as the look/appearance inside the visor - like slight hard-breathing misting up - kept getting distracted. Yeah! That's a ring system around that freebie planet. I should have - now you point it out - composed that so the division line wasn't so confusing and irritating to the eye. The character is supposed to be walking - just - on the surface of the moon/planetoid/whatever, and yes indeed, her distant space craft has crash landed - thus marooning her. The exploding/burning space craft looks pretty whimsical, I feel, due to me having a lack of Poser pyrotechnics at hand. They look quite good close up, but at about 30-metres or so out, they lack that certain firey punch....

...The starfield looks pretty nice though I feel...        
AJ    

The starfield is seen sharp ... not trivial according to poser's "quality" texture filtering ... :biggrin:

Yeah, I've seen that the suit normally isn't designed for space. Even with black skin coverage it's seen that the jumper and the pants are 2 parts not covering complete body.
That outfit is really not bad but I'm a bit sparse in spending money. So normally only for the main figure and clothing that is very versatile and including lot's of pieces. In that area of clothing I have the bodysuit for most purposes. And than there are lot's of good free stuff to be combined to that. So last I've bought some clothings from Jasmina, not only but also cause having gloves and stockings in the bundle.
All other thing's e.g. props, environments and even textures I don't spend my money normally. I'm really satisfied with the freebies. Ok, often they are not conforming to morphed figures but with a bit tweaking or better spend the money for thing's like wardrobe wizard, all is on the right way. It's a bit of "the way is the target" ... let's have fun fiddleing around ... :laugh:

The point with the helmet highlight was that there is that blue reflection at it's backside. So there is some (environmental) light from behind or around the figure. On other hand such glow of the visor is coming from the planets light ... from front. And therefor I missed that front highlight a bit. Of course seeing to the lower end of the helmet, it's a bit shiny. There is a small reflection.

Are the planet rings a separat material group. If yes, I suggest giving them a different color as the planet. There color could be influenced more by the sun's color (which ever) than the planet's color, right ?

Is that yellow point in the middle of the explosion the carrier of the material ?  I would try to make him invisible and than rotate that explosion to the same axis as the starship.
It first time looked a bit like a fountain or geyser in that upright position.

Though it'S not so easy with eyplosions in space. Normally it's only a flash and than broken thing's fly to all directions due to the behaviors of vacuum. So a long burning fire on a starship wreck is not the reality. Fire need's oxygen and there is not much in vacuum.
Might be a interesting variation to heavily overlight the starship with a white glow around. There have been shader's for that ... have to consult my runtimes. And than having some circles around the ship. That might simulate the first moment of explosion.
The idea is interesting ... let's see if I give em a try ... :unsure:

Explosions are more something for animations than to stills. In stills a wreck in a rock or sand dune might be easier. But that's a question of the main subject. In this case with V4 in front such a wreck in the back is not very detailed. So to see it's run into the rockies is difficult. Therefor some light effect is the right possibility ... for sure.

Seem's they have a real big problem ... if staying on board ... :scared:

If you want to play with it, rename the file back to zip and unpack. It's the pz3. So all shader's are in there.

The starship is Thunderbird1. You can find it at vanishing point (www.vanishingpoint.biz/freestuff.asp) under thunderbirds. Also there is a poser 5 explosion ... no, no, not poser is exploding, it's a set for use in poser ... haven't tried that up to now.

Then there are 3 poser standard props torus. Sized and rotated to fit to the camera view.

The shaders are mostly from a package by ajax. Found it sometimes somewhere in freebies.
They are used as is with exception at the ships engine room. I added a spot node to displacement with a heavy amount to break up structure.

With a bit more time that spots could be changed to be more spiky and less dense. Than looking more like small explosions or outbreaks.

The shader of the inner ring is fire explosion. As I remember it was included in P5 so might be also in P6/7. Don't know cause I mix all materials not directly and specific belonging to a figure or prop in one separate runtime. It's easier to find and use them with all other parts.

Looking to the picture there could be one more torus covering all others with a shader mostly full transparent and having some small black/dark pieces/triangles. This would simulate broken part flying away.

The background is also only shader, no texture image. I think it came originally also from ajax but I've modified it some time ago. For my needs it was much more blue something like early morning or evening.

But for some minutes with trial and error not to bad I think ... :biggrin:

Hi...

Nice explosion, Jo... Methinks Scott Tracy should be wearing at least the asbestos gloves in that lovely TB1. Yeah, I've got the Thunderbirds (1,2,3 at least) and they're really cool items to be had.
 
I get a bit lost when I see words as: Nodes, Shader, Procedurals etc, etc (Sorry!), but try to follow as best as would have it. I know most of these 'beasties' live in the Material Room, in that more complex section I so far dare not to venture much. The plugging in and out (nodes?!?) is one thing, but those calorific values/numbers look decidedly unfriendly amounts for wee Poser/CGI cadet like me... I've made a planetoidy prop thingy from a tutorial once in there, which was fun, but hold much of the worries concerning extreme electrocution if get wires crossed/shortcircuited!!! 

Still little confused with types of Zips (much sorry again) files... I mostly instal zips which I download to desktop first then use the handy auto Poser Content Room instal option, with 95% success... Some zips (5% only thankfully) bring up the dreaded Copy option in Content Room, which baffles me no end. I use Stuffit unzipper, which Creates either Red, Green or Blue files... Only the Red ones make sense to me - not very computer happy unfortunately... I gets by though... 

I should spend more time experimenting in more complex Material Room and other Rooms, rather than most time organising and listing of newly added Content...

All great fun though!!!

AJ         

Hi Paramount,

adding content from all that mostly lovely freebies (and some paid articles) is the most time consumptive task ever ... :mad:
But on other hand I find it useful to have all ready on disk instead of searching through zip-files for thing's that might be there ... or there ... or somethere ...

One most important tip ... never, never, never unpack anything directly to your well structured and working runtime(s). Everytime have a emtpy runtime structure at hand and unpack to that. Then look through and get rid of all that licence, promo, readme, etc. stuff. In most cases it gives you no or non long lasting advices. In my experience to archive it is waste of diskspace. OK, if you want to be legal in all case of distributing freebies or even images you have to try to hold that licence stuff in archive ready to be found if needed. But I have not found a way to do this with consistence and reliability ... we are talking about hobby and there I never found the way to do such administration wether for my books, photographs or other things ...

With that included zip it's most easy. This attaching seem's to ignore zip-file. So I added .txt to the original zip file as last extension. Delete this by renaming in windows explorer and you should end with a zip-file (made by winzip) which should bring no problem to all unzippers (e.g. stuffit) which are valid working with zip-files.
The pz3-scene file in that zip can be placed where ever you want. Other than CR2 or such PZ3 is not specific to the poser structure's for it's own place. OK, the parts included in the pz3 should stay at their correct location inside the poser runtime structure. But in this case thats all the standard positions.
If you have XP or higher and the XP included zip-service (which I personelly have shot to the moon cause being rubbish from my point of view) you should be able to drag and push the pz3 to a folder of your choice. No need for a poser specific unpacker.

If you need tutorials to neary almost of the poser topics try
Dr. Geep's poser university (drgeep.com/NPU/NPUWelcome.htm) a really funny but informative place.

As a library to lot's of material room topics have a look to
Acadia's collection, here under www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php

And as a basic tut of node basic's try this www.castleposer.co.uk/my_tutorials.html
Though written for Poser 5 (I believe) it's correct for all following versions.

Roughly in short:
Shader normally mean's one specific material in whole for one material group (a defined group og polygons). Technically (since Poser 5) it's implemented as a shader tree with the ever existing root node ... the poser basic material seen top left in the material windows in extended version. To each of it's channels, parameter dials or color fields, you might combine additional nodes. Normally each of this again have channel's for taking nodes. The purpose of the node defines what possibilities are given. In theory as far as I know there is no limit combining nodes. In practise at some far point poser will explode but at a much much nearer point it makes no more sense cause all these nodes need'S processor power in render calculation.
So there is a point your render would never end in a reasonable time.

Procedural in this context mean's that the shader is build (mostly) by nodes and mathematical formulas to simulate the look and feel of a real material. The opposite would be a texture map, a image given as jpg or else, giving the color and look of the material. In this case the render engine "only" need's to spead that image according to the U-V-coordinates of the polygon mesh. And of course such image maps can be combined with procedural parts in the shader tree.  Huh, so easy while so complicated ... :biggrin:

That stuff can be made very mathmatical, academic, ... or seen as a big playground changing a bit here and a bit there and to see the outcome. Only I would prefer to have a better (bigger) preview  window. It's a little bit annoying with each small, smallest change to have a testrender (even if only partly) to get a view to the result.

Have a nice 4. Advent ...
Jo

Oh, I've forgotten the rest of that temporarily runtime stuff ...

Then in these temporary runtime it's more easy to check all things having correct path informations and are completely at the right location.

Also I ever change library folders. It might be nice to have the creator as a folder name but that makes things confusion / unclear. For example I sort on clothing (if enough as cloth-bot, cloth-top, cloth suit), footware, lingerie, juwelry, hair, and so on.

With a additional folder Clothkit where all packages belong having in example matching Skirt, Top AND Boot's or Shoe's. So in that folder than creator's or suit's name are allowed as subfolder.

And also using this order I go really crazy with look to the poser creator's themself mixing up CR2's, PP2's and also OBJ's in one library folder. Than this folder is burned into the CR2 making it complicated to place it somethere in the figures folder. They also have been so stupid placing real CR2, named as PP2, in the props folder. A complete mess ... :cursing:

Ok, if satisfied with all, move it to it's final location. I found this the only way to keep slightly somewhat like the master of desaster ...

Hi, Jo...

Well thanks for all that accumulated wisdoms and tut links... Yes that DrGeep is indeed a hoot! To say the least. I've done some of his 'classes' and found them very helpful actually, but suspect there might be probable glitch in my Poser set-up (more than likley due to my own hair-brained attempt at instal 3-4 years ago since, and not knowing at all what I was doing!?!). I have found sometimes doing some tuts that a particular operation/selection/task in that tut has led to non-action in my Poser package, which leads me to consider the existance of a glitch created by ones-self!?! I gets by though...

I do tend to unload/unpack zips (don't shout at me now...) into the standard Poser 'Download' directory/runtime/folder, as it seems to work easier (for me anyways) than having to play about with creating new runtime folders and sending stuff there... Sometimes when I have tried that route, I have not been able to draw the content into a newly created runtime in Poser, and so take my easier route - Poser Downloads. I'm pretty sure my Downloads folder is fit to busting these-a-days, and well expect the contained characters, props, clothing, lights, etc, etc, to burst out and fill my study with shreads and sheards of amazing and colourful Poser-friendly content some day soon... Not too soon hopefully! 

I'm gonna go try those tut links now, Jo... And hopefully learn something in the process!!! I've kept most of the downloaded zips in a seperate folder (3-gigs so far. Yikes!!!) somewhere, and will try again to add some new runtimes with them, and see if I can make them appear with their own divisions, as you suggest. Think Poser will appreciate the change, and work undeniably better because of it. 

I'll use these pages of your suggestions over and over again, and hope that some of your well founded knowledge/expertise will permiate my dense skull structures at the very least!?!

To you and everyone here during this final countdown to yuldy xmas, have a great time and please be there numerous Renderosity/Daz/Poser etc related goodies in them nice glinting stockings for you all.....

MERRY XMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL.......

AJ 
 

Might not be a glitch in poser setup but the poser versions have some small differences in behavior. Normally that should not be but as ever shit happens. A real glitch in setup normally is leading to crash rather quickly.

:ohmy: 3 gigs of zip files ... that's a easy backup on a dvd ... :laugh:
I've abandoned to save with cd's (first) and dvd's (later). Now have a external 500 gig harddrive for backup purpose.
Witout several runtimes no chance to survive ... and 24 day's x-mas time is a real stress ... for the unzipper, the harddrive, the backup, and, and, and, ... even if letting out bare textures or toon or kid's thingys ... huh ... :huh:

You see things tend to get more and more complcated. I'm really glad that the pain of sorting the overcrowded main runtime lies behind me. Now the main runtime is completely empty except of the primitives, light and camera geometries and some toon stuff from original package's.
So some different poser version's are able to work with all the stuff. Even V42 is residing completely in a external runtime ... thanks P7 plus SR's.
Only some python stuff need's to be in the main runtime. Didn't do so much with these stuff up to now. So it's easier to have it duplicate if neccessary ...

Was in hope for getting Morkonan's package under the x-mas tree ... let's see ... :unsure:

Though, Darth Vader said he might come later. What a mess! Now they are unsure if he comes as Ebenezer Scrooge or as the Grinch ... 

Never mind ...

A MERRY X-MAS TO ALL ...
Joyeux Noel ...
Fröhliche Weihnacht ...

Now that's one party I would like to have an invite to... ...plus a few twigs of mistletoe for prosperity maybe!!! Nice vehicles in the background also...

Did some terrific tutorials from your vast list yesterday, Jo... Had great pleasure in learning how to add reflections to surfaces... Not sure I'll be able to use that simple Material Room page anymore - much prefer the nodey more advanced settings option now... Cheers!!!

Oh! Hope you like the Moonbase Control Area I put together for future use using the amazing P.I.C.K. system of construction... 

Have a nice one!

AJ 

No room for mistletoe's ... not in image but in the real poser memory ... :cursing:
Poser was not amused and stopped raytracing the shadows without my explicit allowance ... a act of revolution and so the delinquent got a quick execution ... followed by a friendly resurrection ... :rolleyes:

Why does poser creators think portraits are the only legal images ... :mad:

Though the screen panels looks more like startrek ... so some ages away from SHADO ... but the hall looks really nice. Although (see above) you'r absolutely unable to crowd that room with an acceptable number of people working there ... not without crashing poser.

B.t.w. "crashing" ... hope you did also some of that nice plywood bars under the panel desks ... :lol:

And I enormous missed that round shaped oldfashioned secretary desk of the duty officer ... :biggrin:

Time to make the xmas cards but therefor have to repair a xmas freebie first. Some conforming flaw's in that package ... seem's xmas came to quickly this year not only to me as also to others.

Cheerio ...
Jo

Hi again after that comprehensive holiday's ... uffz :tongue1: ... and a new successful year 2009 to all of you ...

Apropos successful ... Hi Morkonan ... how about the ongoing with the suit ... may I offer you some assistance with beta testing or something else ??

Hi, Jo...

Nice to see some activity here on this (your both) Moonbase Girl Outfit thread, after much plungering of foodstuffs and maybe not quite enoughs liquid tipples and most certainly TOO much bad jokes and capers during that gone past now festive of times!!!
 
Hope you guys and everyone here at Renderosity world are about to partake in a Post-Nutcracker year!!!

Good to be back...

PS: I've delved deep into that advanced Material Room world of nodes and such like things thanks to you, Jo, and am finding and much enjoying a new found lease of creativity and learning...

AJ

Hi all!

Just a quick note:

Sorry for the absence and lack of an update.  I was out of town over the holidays visiting my last relative and ended up spending the holidays sitting by her bed in the hospital.  She had complications from an old surgery and I took her to the emergency room at 5am Christmas morning.  She's out now and fully recovered.  But, I was out of town for much longer than I expected and am only just now able to get back into a regular schedule.

I'm checking over what I have and what's been posted in my absence.  I really need to finish this up in the next few days.

Again, sorry for the delay. :(

Hi and welcome back, Morkonan...

We thought we'd lost you for a while there...

Sorry to hear about your unwell relative and her situation - and on Chrismas morning - but glad to hear she's out of hospital and on the road to recovery! I'm sure it was your looking over her at that unfortunate time that helped her back onto her road to recovery.

As before, you take as long as it takes to get back into the swing of things... Glad to have you back.

I'm getting all excited again now...

AJ 

Hi Morkonan,

sad to hear about your trouble. And as ever such things happening in holydays.

But no worries, if real life is calling, it's of biggest importance to react there and not in the fantasy worlds ... even if it's poserverse ...

So, good to have you back and glad your relative is back on deck ... especially if it is your last one.
Knowing that cause most of my family is looking over my shoulder from somewhere over the skies ... hope they are satisfied with what they see. :unsure:

So take time to rearrange yourself and let us know if you need some assistance ...

Jo

Thanks for the kind words guys!

I am really sorry for the delays.  It's embarrassing me. :)  Even with the personal issues I had over the holidays with a sick relative, I don't look to that as a good excuse.  It's just the way I am even though it wouldn't be so harshly considered by anyone else. 

So, I'll try to get this thing done ASAP.  The extra "freebie" which is secret atm took a bit more time.  It's done, except for the texturing.  I'm sure any UFO fan will love it since it's in a heck of a lot of UFO series screenshots. ;)  I should be able to finish the texturing.  But, if there is any other delay, I'll just release them separately.  (No, it's not a vehicle.  There are plenty of 3D Models of UFO TV series vehicles out there.  This is something nobody else has ever done that I know of.)

I'll PM anyone who expressed interest in the thread a link for the BETA as soon as possible, just to make sure I don't release a monstrously hideous creation on the Poser community.  48 hours after that, if all is well, I'll release it publically.