Lizard Guy finished

Finally got him rigged. (Yay!)

Another setback (yawn!)

Okay, so I've spent a long, long time working on the texture for my lizard character, using Wings' built-in UV function. Now I export the figure as a Wavefront file, and import it into Poser, and the blinking texture is fine - EXCEPT THAT IT'S GOT ALL THESE BLUE LINES ALL OVER IT DIVIDING THE TEXTURE INTO SECTIONS!!!!!!!!!! Don't ask me why it's doing this, when the texure looked perfectly fine in Wings.
On a related note, I've tried using (as described earlier) Hexagon, and the demo version of Blacksmith Suite, and a shareware package called Tattoo, to try and paint textures directly onto a model, and they all had issues with the limitations of my graphics chip/card. The question is really whether this is sufficiently frustrating to warrant upgrading to a better PC.

Report

Haven't posted for a while, so thought it would be a good time to check in. Still no joy with Hexagon - despite having followed the instructions, the texturing still doesn't work. Maybe the next build will yield better results....
Still working on texture for lizard character. My goodness, it takes a long time. It is fun, though, a bit like doing a jigsaw puzzle, and I enjoy seeing the texture finally coming together on the character.

Hexagon Progress

Well, DAZ have made a couple of updates available for Hexagon - one to fix problems with version 2, and one to update it to 2.1 (free for purchasers of 2.0). So far so good, I can open the program and use it without any problems, but haven't really had time to play around with it properly.
Have been busy backing up everything on my computer - models, pictures, documents, everything - onto CDs. It's something I've been meaning to do for a long while, just because if my PC explodes or crashes, there's a lot of irreplaceable stuff on there, particularly my Wings models. My disk drive, however, is decidedly un-compliant at times, and only reads CDs or DVDs when it feels like it. I've had to contact the Dell support line and ask for help - having paid for the computer's warranty, it seems foolish not to take advantage of it. They got me to download new drivers for the disk drive, which hopefully will fix the problem.
Finally, an update regarding my lizard character. Have started texturing, using the UV mapping facility in Wings. It's about the closest you can get to real-time mapping outside of one of the expensive packages - create texture from figure, export it as bitmap, open it in paint program, make changes, then save bitmap and refresh it in Wings to see the results. It's painstaking but fun - a bit like doing a jigsaw. You have to try and work out which of the little bits and pieces on the map corresponds to which patch of the model. The most practical way I can think of to do that is to colour each bit, one at a time, a really loud colour, like bright pink, then look for that bright pink patch on the model. Having located it, it can then be painted the correct colour.

Mighty Morphin' Power Freak

My first experiment with using SharpConstruct to produce morphs for a Poser figure - specifically the Freak. I've added morphs to the head, chest, shoulders and forearms, to produce a fishy character. At present I'm working on another set to turn DAZ's troll into a rhinoceros-like creature.

SharpConstruct

Have made some progress with SharpConstruct. The program has been throwing up the following problems so far:
(1) When I import one of my own Poser figures from Poser 6 (as in, one of the ones I have made in Wings, imported into Poser as an .obj file, and rigged, then export it as an .obj file and open it in SharpConstruct, it turns invisible - well, bits of it, anyway.
(2) When I export part of another Poser figure as an .obj file (for the purpose of using SharpConstruct to make morphs for that figure), the body part appears in SharpConstruct facing in the wrong direction, and rotating the part causes it to fly off the screen.
(3) When I make a figure in Wings and then export it into SharpConstruct, it appears left of the centre, so that modelling symetrically doesn't work.

I have, at least, managed to find a way around problem number 2. When I have tried exporting part of a Poser figure, say, the head, and opened it in another program - Photobrowser (a handy little utility for viewing 3d objects and images) - it opens facing the same way that it does in SharpConstruct. However, when I try opening the same file in Anim8or, it displays the right way up.
Why this should be, I don't know. It also appears that when I export a part of a Poser figure like that, it is retaining the part's location in relation to the rest of the figure. This is probably why, when I try to rotate around the head in a program like SharpConstruct or Anim8or, the part moves off the screen, because the program thinks it is rotating around the entire model rather than just that part.
Anyway, the way round this, as I found last night through a lot of trial and error, is:

1) Export the body part (head) from Poser.
2) Export the entire figure from Poser as a separate model (there is a reason for this).
3) Open the head in Anim8or.
4) Rotate the head forwards 90 degrees so it is facing you.
5) Choose Edit - Locate - Centre about origin.
6) Export the head.
7) Import it into SharpConstruct. Produce your morph.
8) Export again.
9) Import the entire figure that was exported from step 2 into Anim8or.
10) Import the morphed head into Poser
11) Cut and paste the morphed head into the same object window as the entire figure. The head will be lying, face down, between the entire figure's feet. Now rotate the head backwards 90 degrees so that it is facing you. Then move the head until it is in the same position as the head of the entire figure.
12) Delete the entire figure.
13) Export the head.
14) Import the head into Poser as a morph target. Hopefully, this will now work with the figure in Poser.

Hexagon and SharpConstruct

Well, so much for Hexagon. It doesn't work on my computer, and if the posts on the bug tracker forum are anything to go by, it's not too good on other people's computers either. The displacement mapping function and the painting function don't work at all.
As for SharpConstruct, I'm sure it will be fantastic once it's been developed a bit, but at present there are issues - one in particular with importing models from Poser. One of the things I'd like to be able to do with this program is produce morphs for figures, but the program won't display them properly. I might post something on the SharpConstruct forum to ask if the developer could build in some kind of function to centre the model in the window.

2 more programs

Have started using two more programs recently. One is Eovia's Hexagon 2 - Eovia have recently been bought by DAZ productions, and they're doing an offer where members of their "Platinum Club" can get the download version of the program for $1.99 (about a quid in English currency). The attraction of this program for me, the intriguing-looking modelling features notwithstanding, is a function for "painting" detail onto models, and another function for painting textures. Also the UV mapping feature looks very interesting. Texturing is something I've avoided like the plague so far, since the whole business of trying to paint a flat texture for a 3d figure is SUCH a fiddle. (There is, apparently, a program out there called Deep Paint 3d that allows you to paint textures directly onto models, but it is very expensive.)
Alas, these things are never without their drawbacks, as I discovered once again on trying to use the program this week. The "Paint" window, which is supposed to be a part of Hexagon's interface, has disappeared, and nothing I do can bring it back again, thereby making it impossible to do any painting onto models with it. There are other bugs as well. I've emailed the technical support people for the software, but that's about all I can do until they release a new version or service pack to address these issues.
The other program was brought to my attention by someone on the Deathfall website - it's an open-source modeller that's supposed to be similar to ZBrush. Again, it allows the user to paint detail onto models, but it's still in the developmental stage, so there are issues with the interface and other things. However, my fiddling around with it has yielded some promising results, and I can't wait to see what the programmers do with it in the future.
Work is progressing, on and off, with my lizard character in Wings. I gave him some teeth last night.

Progress report

Progress report:
Been focussing on modelling lately, as opposed to setting and rendering scenes in Poser.
Still working on lizard guy model in Wings, fiddling with bits here and there. At some point I need to make him some teeth and eyeballs or he's going to have trouble finding a lady lizard to go out with.
Going great guns with Shade. I'm really enjoying using this package and have so far produced a space gun and a rocket pack for one of my Poser characters with it. The nice thing about it is that everything I've made with it so far has come out looking clean - and the fact that you can draw shapes with it instead of box modelling really speeds up the modelling process.
Fiddled about a bit with Carrara last night. Have had it installed on my pc for months but haven't done anything with it yet.
Searching for 3d lego men to use in one of my jokey pics, came across a package on the internet called LDraw. It's fantastic - a whole software package, complete with a huge library of parts, to build 3d lego models. I get the impression that there is a big, cultish following of grown-up kids using this software and producing parts for it.
The down side: Used it to make a model, used another program to convert the resulting .dat file into .obj format, but when I tried to import it into Poser and Wings, it looked all wrong. Bits missing, leaving square-shaped holes all over the place.
The strange part - I imported the same model into Anim8or, and it looked fine. Tried exporting from Anim8or, and into Poser and Wings, and the holes appeared again.

Lizard guy

This is the model I mentioned in my previous post. Having got over the hurdle of modelling characters in Wings, I'm now being a bit more ambitious and attempting to produce a character whose mouth can be opened and whose expressions can be changed.

Ongoing stuff

Okay, my plan to post one image per week on the Animotions site hasn't quite worked out, but my intentions were good. In my defence, I have been doing other things, like learning how to use Shade, and modelling a new character in Wings. I shall post a pic as soon as is possible - at the moment Internet Explorer is refusing to display the Blogger homepage, and Mozilla doesn't allow me to upload images onto the site. (Sigh!)
With reference to a couple of Poser problems: There is a service pack for Poser 6 that deals with two very precise problems that I've had with the program - one is characters not being saved with morphs, and the other is the program refusing to save a file because it is "out of memory" and creating a blank file instead. I've lost several scenes due to the latter problem. Anyway, service pack now installed, we'll see if it makes a difference. I just sort of assumed that both problems were due to my heavy use of toon shading in Poser, but it appears that they are actually bugs.

Shade

Got a copy of Shade LE version 7 off a cover disc with a magazine this month. I'm always on the lookout for modelling packages with a nice, easy interface - there are a load of modelling programs on my computer now, many of which I've tried, and just given up on because you have to press a combination of keys on your keyboard, rotate your mouse precisely 180 degrees, touch the tip of your nose with the big toe on your left foot and perform the secret handshake before you can extrude a face. Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but as a guy with a full-time job, I really don't have the time for a huge learning curve before being able to do any modelling.
However, Shade, so far, seems pretty blinking simple, and it "seamlessly interfaces with Poser" - I have yet to explore that aspect of it, but if it enables me to make props, import them into Poser and toon-ify them without any complication, then brilliant.
Have decided to aim for producing one image per week to post on the Animotions site.

Have posted a few of my "Mr Snout" pictures on the Animotions website (www.animotions.com) and have had some positive responses. It's so nice to finally get some images out there - I spend so much time agonising over whether my pictures look finished enough or not that nobody else ever gets to judge them.
They've been done using the technique that I described in my post of 27/11/2005. The one above was done using Poser 6's toon shading facility, but I'm not entirely sure about it. The outlining on the character looks a bit weak, but when I try to increase the size of the outline, Poser refuses to comply beyond a certain thickness.

Wolf again

Haven't posted anything here for a while, so I thought I'd post this.
Have been spending a bit of time making characters, morphing, adding clothes, etc. Not with any particular story in mind, but something might come to me at some point. There's been a sale on DAZ recently, giving me an opportunity to get hold of some new gear for my characters.

Hmmmm...

Can't shake this feeling, looking through some of the images on a website like CGTalk.com, and then looking through the gallery on a Poser site (like DAZ) that there is a big dividing line between Poser users and other 3d creators - mainly that, with Poser images, you inevitably get repetitions of the same blinking figures doing the same things over and over again. It was an issue that came up on the Animotions website recently, where a discussion started over whether Poser was a help or a hindrance to creators of 3d work. Some users expressed the opinion that a lot of artists who use Poser tend to get a bit lazy. I could see their point.
There's got to be some kind of middle ground between the kind of (slightly sickeningly) super-talented 3d artists who build their own figures completely from scratch, and rig them and pose them and make clothes for them and build an entire cityscape for their character to live in and probably built their own blinking computer to boot, and the other kind of artists who are really just producing (yet more) images of Spider Man swinging through a city scene or Victoria 3 looking sultry as she poses with a huge gun, for fun - a hobby, nothing more.
Question is, where do I fall on that sliding scale between artist and hobbyist, and do I really want to be there? I have this creative urge to make visual things, and yet can't help thinking that using Poser is just like making Lego models or photographing Action Man in a costume that you've made for him.

AAAAAAAAARRRRGGGH!!!! Part 2

Have had a repeat of the same problem described in the previous post - last time it happened with Victoria 3 RR, this time with the Freak RR. Both of these figures have a LOT of morphs and a lot of places on their bodies that need colouring - plus I've got them both wearing Treadz (tough-looking boots supplied by DAZ Productions) which are complicated figures in themselves. In both cases I lost the figures when Poser ran out of memory, and rather than not saving them at all, the program just saved them as blank Poser files. A lot of work consigned to oblivion in the blink of an eye.
The solution? I'm still working on that. What I am doing is saving each of those figures twice, so if one gets "blanked", there is at least an older copy in existence. I'm also avoiding adding toon shading to the figures boots.

Another curiosity is that, when I toon shade these Millennium figures (as DAZ calls them) - Victoria or Michael or the Freak - they get a jagged black outline appearing around their head in renders. Except when they are in close up.

AAAAAAAAARRRRGGGH!!!!

Tried building a scene last night, which featured two figures and some background objects. Got the figures set up right, tried to save it, and got a message saying "You are out of memory! Please save your work soon and allocate more memory to Poser." Tried deleting the background objects from the scene, but still got the same message. Tried deleting one of the figures and got the same message again, but this time the program closed down. Scene lost.
I really, really hope this was just a one-off.

Web page is almost finished - it's just reached that stage which I reach with every project, of dithering around. Haven't yet made a decision of whether to publish it on Geocities (which is where my other website is) which is free but you have to put up with adverts popping up, or to use someone else - this is part of the reason for the dithering, I wouldn't know where to begin choosing another host.

Compositing

Asked a couple of guys at work today about how they would get around the following problem:

1. I select a figure from a picture with a blank background (or a background of just one colour.
2. I paste that figure onto another picture with a different coloured background.
3. Since the figure is anti-aliased, a horrible outline appears around them.

They both offered some advice, involving feathering and drawing onto a layered transparent background. Both of them are using rather more expensive software than my current drawing package, and so it may be a matter of upgrading to a package with more features.

There are probably tutorials about this on the internet, but finding them is another matter.

Toon-ifying imported objects

Okay, I appear to have cracked the problem (of imported props, 3ds or Wavefront turning black in toon renders when an outline is added). The (convoluted) process for making it work is as follows:

1. Import the object.
2. Enter the Setup Room.
3. Leave the Setup Room. This will enable you to add the object to the Figure library.
4. Add the object to the Figure library.
5. Create a new scene.
6. Add the new figure to the scene.
7. Enter the Setup Room.
8. Leave the Setup Room.
9. Add your toon shading and outline to the object, and then render. Et voila!

Logically, there is no reason why this should work. But so far it appears to. :)

Further progress

Okay, this is better. I've got outlines appearing around my figures now (the ones I rigged myself) - Adding them to Poser's library appears to have made the difference. The problem with the shadows under Poser 5 characters seems to have been resolved the same way.
Still got the difficulty with not being able to create outlines around imported objects. The solution may be to turn those objects into Poser figures before trying to toon render them. After all, the existing Poser props and figures had to start out as wavefront or 3ds objects at some point.

Progress

Have taken time out for Christmas and being ill, so haven't done a great deal of creative stuff lately. Still experimenting with Poser 6. Currently I'm trying to transfer all the old characters that I created or modified in Poser 5 to Poser 6. A difficulty that's turned up with this is that while figures that are created in Poser 6 automatically generate shadows (regardless of whether there is a ground object beneath them or not), Poser 5 creations don't. I'm trying to work out if there's a way to persuade Poser 6 to give these older figures a shadow object.

I came across some great pictures on the Animotions website (www.animotions.com) by a guy calling himself Ironcommando. He sets up figures and scenes in Poser and then traces over them with Flash to produce very comic-booky looking images. He's also got a website of his own with a very charming, retro-style comic strip called Capt'n Eli (I'm not sure if he uses the same technique to produce the comic strip, but it certainly contains 3d elements) at www.captneli.com.
Check it out.