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Practical Poser 8: The Official Guide

1. For product information and technology assistance contact us at Cengage Learning Customer and Sales Support 1 800 354 9706 For permission to use material from this text or product submit all requests online at cengage com permissions Further permissions questions can be emailed to permissionrequest cengage com Poser is a registered trademark of Smith Micro Inc All Rights Reserved Apple Apple logo Mac and Mac OS are trademarks of Apple Inc registered in the U S and other countries Adobe the Adobe logo and Photoshop are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and or other countries Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and or other countries All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners All images Cengage Learning unless otherwise noted Library of Congress Control Number 2009933326 ISBN 13 978 1 58450 697 3 ISBN 10 1 58450 697 0 elSBN 10 1 58450 707 1 Course Technology 20 Channel Center Street Boston MA 02210 USA Cengage Learning is a leading provider of customized learning solutions with office locations around the globe including Singapore the United Kingdom Australia Mexico Brazil and Japan Locate your local office at international cengage com region Cengage Learning products are represented in Canada by
2. amp inverse n Q sHouno Cancel OK FIGURE 8 7 When saving the magnet to your library select all three magnet components in the Select Objects dialog box Chapter 8 Creating Custom Morphs 217 TUTORIAL 8 3 MIRRORING A MAGNET With the magnet saved you can now begin the process of adding another mag A net that will do exactly the same thing to the left cheek You ll do that with the J existing magnet in your scene 1 Click the magnet base Change the xTran setting from its negative value to the positive value For instance if the xTran is 0 181 change it to 0 181 This places the base on the opposite side in the same relative position 2 Adjust the zRotate value from 90 degrees to 90 degrees This flips the magnet in the other direction Your magnet should now look like the one shown in Figure 8 8 3 But wait a minute Look at his poor right cheek It s now concave That s because the magnet and the base were moved but the zone remained in place You have to change the magnet zone so that it flips the other way and Ryan s right cheek returns to normal Click the magnet zone to select it as the current object FIGURE 8 8 Ryan has turned the other cheek with the magnet having been rotated to the other side of his face 218 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide 4 To rotate the magnet in the opposite direction and change the zRotate value from 6 to 6 degrees once again changing the negative value to
3. PRACTICAL POSER 8 THE OFFICIAL GUIDE RICHARD SCHRAND Course Technology PTR A part of Cengage Learning eo COURSE TECHNOLOGY CENGAGE Learning Australia Brazil Japan Korea Mexico Singapore Spain United Kingdom United States COURSE TECHNOLOGY CENGAGE Learning Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide Richard Schrand Publisher and General Manager Course Technology PTR Stacy L Hiquet Associate Director of Marketing Sarah Panella Manager of Editorial Services Heather Talbot Marketing Manager Jordan Castellani Acquisitions Editor Heather Hurley Project Editor and Copy Editor Kim Benbow Technical Reviewer Denise Tyler Interior Layout Shawn Morningstar Cover Designer Mike Tanamachi DVD ROM Producer Brandon Penticuff Indexer Kelly Talbot Proofreader Brad Crawford Printed in the United States of America 1234567121110 2011 Course Technology a part of Cengage Learning ALL RIGHTS RESERVED No part of this work covered by the copyright herein may be reproduced transmitted stored or used in any form or by any means graphic electronic or mechanical including but not limited to photocopying recording scanning digitizing taping Web distribution information networks or information storage and retrieval systems except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act without the prior written permission of the publisher
4. FIGURE 5 8 Use these images the Front and Left Cameras to set up your own cameras 5 Because you ve already set your document window size and render set tings it s time to render your first texture guide Choose Render gt Render Default render settings are fine for this purpose Save the front image to your hard drive in TIF format 6 Repeat Step 6 with the Left Camera and render the left guide Now you can use the guides to prepare your photos 134 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide TUTORIAL 5 2 PREPARING YOUR PHOTOS F d a A A NOTE Now that the guides or templates if you will are completed it s time to pre pare your photographs for use in the Face Room Starting with this tutorial I will be using photographs that are available to you in the Chapter05 folder on the DVD The set titled Front jpg and Side jpg are smaller images while the Frontl jpg and Sidel jpg are full size and compatible with the next tutorial In this tutorial though I will use the smaller images I will also be using Photoshop as the image editing program 1 Open the Front and Side texture guides that you created in Tutorial 5 1 2 Duplicate the render of your guide onto a new layer This new layer will allow you to adjust the transparency of the guide so that you can see your texture work beneath it Set the transparency of the layer to 40 3 Open the front view of the photo that you want to use in the Face Room Paste a
5. choose the x to x option You can mirror a morph on the right side of the face to the left side of the face But the left and right sides of the morph must be contained in the same group that you are currently working on However if you create a morph for the left collar and want to mirror it to the right collar you ll have to first use the Group Editor to cre ate a group that includes both of those parts Morph one side of the group and then mirror the morph to the other side FIGURE 8 22 Ryan needs to see a dentist with his face swollen like this Chapter 8 Creating Custom Morphs 233 FIGURE 8 23 Now Ryan is looking a bit like Marlon Brando in The Godfather thanks to the Mirror feature Another option for mirroring morphs is to purchase Poser Tool Box from www philc net This reasonably priced very ingenious set of Python scripts includes many utilities that enhance the use of Poser Among them is a Mirror Morph script that will mirror morphs from one side of a figure to another 9 Finally after you complete your original morph click the Save a Copy As button at the bottom of the Morphing Tool Poser will prompt you to add a name for your new morph in the same manner you have in all the previ ous tutorials 10 If you want to continue making unique morphs click the Zero Morph button in the Morphing Tool to start from an unmorphed head You can continue making as many morphs as you like in this manner 11 After you
6. 3 Make sure Map Strength is set to 100 This will allow the image map to be the main material while the color chip will add a wash over the entire object If you lessened the Map Strength value then you would get a very washed out look to the material eventually reaching the point where the image map could not be seen at all 4 Now go to the Parameters panel and choose Lights 1 2 and 3 in whatever order you want and set their Intensity values to 0 5 Render the scene All you will see is the shirt with a yellowish cast to it as shown in Figure 4 12 Now that you have tried the Ambient section of the Material Room Simple view undo everything you have done Return the light values to 100 remove the image map and reset the Ambient color to black Editing Tools amp O Gi 4 Render Eei 100 ae see Apply texture ga E Sex to highlight Material Preview FIGURE 4 12 Combining an image map with an ambient color can make the object stand out from the rest of the scene 98 _ Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide sf In order to remove a texture from a material section click on the material thumbnail he preview click on the image s name and then select No Texture from the pop up f NOTE menu TUTORIAL 4 4 WORKING WITH REFLECTION MAPS A What is most useful in many circumstances is reflections When it comes to A eyes or metallic surfaces or glass and plastic the realism of your re
7. Because hopefully as you wend your way through these pages the spigot for your creative juices will be opened and the ideas will flow in a steady stream Remember the final outcome of your work is dependent upon how well you can manipulate the cameras But the camera like our eyes can only respond based upon the amount of light entering the lens So the second part of creating a great looking image is to get comfortable with Poser s lights That s next So when you re ready flip the page and begin the next part of your Poser journey This page intentionally left blank Mastering Lights and Shadows This Chapter An Illuminating Exploration of Light ing Casting Shadows Light Parameters and Properties Tutorial 3 1 The Three Point Lighting Scheme Tutorial 3 2 Creating the Key Light Tutorial 3 3 Adding a Fill Light Tutorial 3 4 Adding the Back Light Tutorial 3 5 Saving the Light Set Tutorial 3 6 Setting the Scene Tutorial 3 7 Creating Highlights for Eyes Tutorial 3 8 Adding a Photographic Background Tutorial 3 9 Matching the Render Dimensions to the Photo Tutorial 3 10 Using the Ground Plane to Line Up the Scene Tutorial 3 11 Creating and Placing the Image Based Light The principal person in a picture is light Edouard Maneti important thing that can make or break a render is lighting Poor lighting will eave a render looking washed out muddy uninteresting It can leave the most well con
8. Controls how the material will move from side to side A higher value makes the material more stiff causing it to move less m Stretch Damping Determines how quickly the cloth slides over its collision object over time A higher number causes the material to slow down faster which means lower numbers let the material glide farther Chapter 7 Working With Clothing 203 m Cloth Density How heavy the cloth is For instance burlap is a very heavy material while silk is very light m Cloth Self Friction Controls how easily the cloth moves over itself E Static Friction This controls how sensitive a material is to outside material it is resting against silk on a concrete block for instance and how fast it will move across that surface from a standing start m Dynamic Friction While Static Friction deals with how material moves from a resting state Dynamic Friction controls how materials will interact as they rub against each other m Air Damping Determines how the material will move through air The higher the value the thicker the air and the less the material will move or sway Clear Simulation Frases the current simulation allowing you to assign new dynamics and settings m Reset Resets all the parameters in the Dynamics Controls area TUTORIAL 7 3 CALCULATING THE SIMULATIONS The next step is to configure the Dynamic properties of each item of clothing A and then calculate the simulations The main purpose f
9. With the camera parameters set go ahead and save it so you can use it at any time in whatever scene you want 8 Go to the Camera category see Figure 2 8 You can do this in two ways E Click the Category arrow at the far right of the Library panel then select Camera gt Poser 8 gt Poser 8 from the pop up menu m Click the Camera Library button in the horizontal bar Library Search Favorites 060800060 Figures Search Favorites Pose pan GO000 Hair Hands y lt All gt X Props Light 4 Poser8 Q Show Library w lt All gt x Category Camera Camera gt Poser 8 Poser 8 Materials Downloads gt Fa 1 CP Partners Camera Sets gt Ea 13 Camera Sets 1 CP Partners CP Partners gt Ea 0 Poser gt Gy 0 Poser 7 Poser 7 gt g 1 Poser8 gt g 1 Poser8 Poser 8 gt 0 Downloads gt 0 Downloads FIGURE 2 8 The two methods for accessing the Camera category or any other category for that matter The displayed list of folders will look a bit different than in previous versions of the program You will also see that the default way in which Poser displays the folders in the Library panel is different It is set to show all folders so when changing to the Camera category you will see both Poser 8 and Downloads To change this click on the Show Library pop up menu it is set to All and choose Poser 8 see Figure 2 9 NOTE NOTE Chapter 2 Using C
10. With the use of both front and side views you can create skin textures derived from the photo of a boyfriend or girlfriend wife husband brother sister or that stranger with an interesting face sitting at the bus stop drinking a mocha latte You can then use these photos to modify the facial features of your models and literally create a digital doppelganger In this chapter you will be learning how to do both use photos for textures and as templates You can create custom faces in Poser in many ways The most obvious method is to use the Face Room introduced in Poser 5 This room allows you to customize the faces of the Poser G2 male and female characters along with additional figures developed by e frontier By importing front and side photos of a person users can create a wide variety of characters In fact through the many facial morphs available in the Face Room the range of characters that you can create is virtually limitless J also said that a picture is worth a thousand words And in addition to those 123 124 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide Here s a full list Poser 8 s Alyson and Ryan Poser 5 s Don and Judy Poser 6 s James and Jessi Miki 1 and the G2 figures of James Jessi Kelvin Koji Simon and Sydney The Apollo Maximus character a free open source model available at antonkisieldesigns com is also compatible with the Face Room There is also a Runtime Heads directory where you will find confi
11. away you can undo the operation with the Edit gt Undo menu command You can also reconform the clothing to the character with the Figure gt Conform To menu command A third option is to open the Joint Editor Window gt Joint Editor select the clothing that is not posed correctly and click the Zero Figure button to get the clothing back to its default state Then apply the pose to the human figure m The arms and legs bend when conformed You re certain you are using the right clothing but when you conform it to the figure the arms and legs bend This is acommon symptom when clothing is saved in a nonzero pose Select the clothing and zero the pose with the Joint Editor as mentioned in the previous list entry Then choose Edit gt Memorize gt Figure Resave the new memorized version to your Figures Library under a new name and use your fixed version in place of the original FIXING PoOKE THROUGH Even when you put the right clothing on the right character there will be times when you see skin poking through If you frequent the Poser communities you ll probably notice that tight fitting clothing is quite common Although it s obvious that one of the reasons is because people like to create images of beautiful women in sexy clothing a mild understatement in Poserdom another reason is because tight fitting clothing is easier to create and use than looser fitting clothing which requires adjustments in the joint parameters not a
12. but point lights are the most common Shadows are optional In addition fill lights are some times created as diffuse only lights so that they do not add additional specular highlights to the scene in areas that are supposed to be in shadow Chapter 3 Mastering Light and Shadow 61 Here s how to add a fill light to your scene 1 Create a new light 2 Move this new light to the opposite side of the positioning globe creating what is called an asymmetrical lighting setup Figure 3 9 shows the light s position and its effect on Andy As you move the light around you ll see the shadows change so use your own judgment when placing the light This ultimately is your picture and not mine FIGURE 3 9 The fill light positioned in the scene 3 In the Properties panel change the fill light to Diffuse IBL Then change to the Parameters panel and set the light Intensity setting to 20 for now This will probably change after Step 5 Diffuse IBL lights are most often used in conjunction with an image hence the term image based lighting I will discuss how to add an image to the scene later Wore in the chapter 4 Take a moment to change the light s name to Fill Light 62 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide 5 Most of the time you re going to want to adda shade of a prominent color in the scene to add continuity to its appearance Since Andy is the only model in this scene you can come up with your own color for the
13. change the color of the new light to white Red Green and Blue values set to 1 Set the Intensity to 125 This will create a light that is slightly brighter than the others and will bring the highlights out when the light is behind the figure 5 In the Light Controls area move the Back Light indicator to the top and slightly behind the globe It is easier to see the effect of the back light if you have a dark background color You can also adjust the Angle End and Dist End settings of the light to increase the effect of the back light Watch the Preview window until you get a backlighting effect that you are happy with Figure 3 11 shows an example Chapter 3 Mastering Light and Shadow 63 FIGURE 3 10 With the lights turned off objects in the scene look like silhouettes But this helps in the process of setting up back lights To change the background color go to Display gt Background Color and change the color to whatever you want NOTE 6 In the Properties panel turn off Shadows if that is turned on 7 While yow re in the Properties panel choose Key Light from the top menu to turn it back on Do the same for the fill light 8 Render your result to check the final lighting Make adjustments to your settings and tweak the light positions until you get the effect you want Figure 3 12 shows the final result 64 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide FIGURE 3 11 Adjust the position of the back light until you get a
14. commands at your disposal Style Hairs This opens the Hair Style Tool panel refer to Figure 6 5 which allows you to interactively make changes to the hairs Show Populated When active this shows both the guide hairs and the hair as it will look when populated It doesn t increase refresh time as you work with the growth group Hair Density Changes the number of hairs making up the growth group It makes the hair more lush or more thin The more hairs you add the longer the render time can become Tip Width Controls the width of the hairs at their tips Usually you will want to keep this number smaller than the one for Root Width Root Width Controls how wide the root of the hair is as it comes out from the skullcap or the object Clumpiness Groups the hairs creating clumps This is great for creat ing dreadlocks or other hair styles where the hair is closely grouped Kink Strength Controls how wavy the hair is Higher values make the hair more wavy Kink Scale Controls how intense the waves of the hair are Higher values again create more drastic waves Kink Delay Controls when the waviness will begin from the root The higher the value the farther away from the root the waviness will start to appear Verts Per Hair Controls how many vertices each hair has The higher the value the smoother the hair will appear but it also increases render and refresh times since the hairs are more complex 5 With that
15. knowledge W though is used to describe the roll of the object or the forward backward in the texture map For most texturing W has been removed and is in most circles forgotten But UVW plays off of the X Y Z coordinate system You had XYZ Cartesian coordinates to represent width height depth so to keep with the alphabetic order you got UVW Programs like Cinema4D still use the term UVW in their mapping system So what does UV or UVW mapping do Basically a UV map flattens the surface of a 3D object so that you can create a texture for it in a 2D paint program such as Photoshop To explain UV maps in simple terms imagine peeling an orange and then smashing the peel flat onto the surface of the table The peel of the orange would need to be cut in several places to accommodate being flattened out The important thing is that if you wanted to you could pin the peel back onto the surface of the orange and all the seams would line up perfectly you could wrap the orange back up in its peel Another way to think of it is to imagine taking a map of the world and wrapping it around a sphere If you have a map that is flat and rec tangular the poles appear to be as wide as the equator But the Earth is truly a sphere and the equator is wider than the poles so to wrap a flat world map around a sphere you would have to reduce the width of the texture toward the top and bottom of each side to make it fit without wrinkling UV maps
16. m xScale TT yScale mT zScale L LL Face Morph Morph head mT gt 0 000 FIGURE 5 18 The new morph Head has been added to the head s parameters 8 a A Chapter5 Creating Custom Faces 145 The eyes also have a Face Room morph associated with them Click the right eye to select it In its Parameter panel you ll notice a new morph named RightEye This is the eye morph that is associated with your first Face Room morph Rename this dial the same as you did the head Repeat this step for the left eye If you dial the face left eye and right eye morphs to 1 the face should appear as it did in the Face Room Don t forget to dial the face left eye and right eye morphs back to 0 when you want J N to use another morph or you may get unexpected results from the combination of NOTE the two morphs 9 10 Repeat Steps 7 through 11 for additional characters if desired When your morphs are all created and renamed locate the Figures Library to which you want to save your custom figures Click the Add to Library icon and enter a name for your multi character figure then click OK A thumb nail appears in the library Every time you want to add custom morphs load this figure into the library and then resave it after you are finished TuToriAL 5 5 Like Putty IN Your VIRTUAL HANDS Let s try one more modification only this time instead of using the Random Face button let s use the Morph Putty tool
17. modeled around figures that are in their default pose high heels look extremely strange when you first put them on your figure The position of the shoes on the feet makes it look like your character has just stepped on a banana peel and is about to slip and fall The heels are usually below ground level and appear to be poking through the floor Figure 7 10 shows an example of high heeled shoes that are added to a foot in its default pose FIGURE 7 10 High heeled shoes look pretty unnatural on default posed feet The solution to posing the feet is pretty obvious You ll need to angle the front of the feet downward and possibly but not all the time angle the toes upward While doing so you also have to make sure that the shoes are landing properly on your floor or the ground Figure 7 11 shows a properly posed foot and shoe CLOTHING AND MAT Fires Don t Loan CORRECTLY Just as a reminder if you ever have trouble loading clothing models make sure you re actually using a figure or prop and nota pose Pose files often show previews of the material on the item it is assigned to and can sometimes get confusing if you are just starting out with Poser or if you are in a hurry which is what happens to me a lot In addition if you don t see the MAT MATerial files appear on the model make sure you have the correct model selected for the specific MAT file One of the easiest mistakes to make is when you re working in the Material Room
18. shown at the bottom left Spherical mapping top left distorts the map on all sides and cylindrical mapping bottom right distorts the top and bottom Planar mapping would map opposite sides perfectly although the back side would be mirrored when it faced the camera and the remaining four sides would be distorted You can map each individual side of a box with planar mapping but you would have to change the orientation of the planar map for each side Box mapping does this for you automatically Figure 10 3 shows how the various types of mapping affect something that is cylindrical in shape The natural choice is cylindrical bottom right if the object is open at either end If closed at both ends as a can of soup would be before you opened it some UV mapping programs give you the option to include the end caps in the UV map In that case the end caps would be mapped in flat or planar mode Continuing with the cylinder examples note that spherical mapping top left in Figure 10 3 can also be used to successfully map a cylinder The tops and bottoms of the cylinder will be mapped so that the texture meets in the center of the flat plane Planar mapping top right will cause distortion at the sides and top and box mapping bottom left will create unwanted seams Chapter 10 UV Mapping 273 FIGURE 10 2 Going clockwise from the upper left the effects of box spherical planar cylindrical and box mapping on a cube eat ps
19. to the figure that wears it It isn t always easy to determine if you have the right clothing especially because several Poser figures have been released in multiple versions For example DAZ3D Victoria 1 and 2 share the same basic body shape and joint parameters but Victoria 3 is built a bit differently And Victoria 4 is built on a whole new mesh and config uration So putting the V4 version of an outfit on an earlier version of the model results in a poor fit and subsequent poke through see Figure 7 2 Because the joints on the two figures are different and the scale of the two models are different poke through is most evident in extreme poses FIGURE 7 2 Victoria 4 right and Victoria 3 left wearing the same clothing items There s a lot of poke through causing Victoria 3 to have very little dignity Chapter 7 Working With Clothing 179 If your clothing doesn t seem to conform properly here are some things that you can check Use clothing that is made for the figures Pay attention to the figures that you are using and select clothing made for those figures At the same time be aware that there may be other generations of a figure that use different clothing pa rameters m You accidentally posed the clothing and not the figure You re not alone with this mistake When you work with Conforming clothing it s all too easy to apply a pose to the clothing instead of to the original figure If you catch it right
20. 12 If the width of the lower section is different from that of the upper section after you remap it drag the selection from any side to resize them to match the upper section Then stitch them together one half at a time in Vertex Selection mode The final result should look similar to Figure 10 11 pants UVMapper Pro p UVMapp Fie Edt Select Mop BGS Texture View Help Vertices slal Ia Eor 4 Facets gt Weld Model Relax Shit CtrleR Assign to Align U Shft Ctrleu Materials Shft Ctri M Align Shft Ctrle FIGURE 10 10 After remapping the lower portion of the pants stitch the upper and lower legs back together WT aaa MT TT aH il TUE Eff FIGURE 10 11 Both sides of the pants are mapped in a cylindrical fashion
21. 2 4 allow you to interactively select and position cameras for various purposes By default the Main Camera is selected 26 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide Camera Selection Menu Face Camera Right Hand Camera Animation On Off Left Hand Camera Flyaround View Select Camera Move Y and Z Move X and Y Camera Plane Scale Roll Focal Length Trackball FIGURE 2 4 Camera Controls allow you to interactively select and position cameras The Camera Controls area makes the following functions available Camera Selection Menu Displays a list of cameras to choose from Face Camera This camera pivots around the currently selected figure s face even as you zoom in out or rotate the camera view Right Hand and Left Hand Cameras These cameras pivot around the desig nated hand while zooming in or out or rotating the camera Animating On Off Toggles the addition of camera keyframes to the animation timeline To prevent the addition of camera keyframes while posing objects or body parts during animation click the key icon to turn it red This turns camera animation OFF Click it again to resume camera animation Flyaround View Click this icon to get a 360 degree flyaround view of your scene Click again to turn the flyaround view off Select Camera Click to cycle through the various camera views Main Top Front Left Right Face Posing Left Hand Right Hand Dolly Back Bottom and Auxiliary Chapter 2 Using
22. 88 7 The light s color becomes very important You need something that isn t too harsh but that looks natural against the skin tone In my case I chose the following color for the light m Red 115 E Green 116 m Blue 179 72 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide FIGURE 3 18 The eyeLightCam is pointed to face Alyson s right eye 8 Repeat Steps 1 through 5 this time calling the light eyeLight_L and the Shadow Cam Lite eyeLightLeft Point it at the left eye and set it so it matches the parameters of the right eye light Figure 3 19 shows the positioning for the renders I created Also since the light colors are randomly gener ated change the color of eyeLight_L to the same color as eyeLight_R Figure 3 20 shows a comparison between the render without the eye lights left and with the eye lights USING PHOTOGRAPHS AND IMAGE BASED LIGHTING One of the most exciting features in all of 3D lighting is image based lighting IBL IBL simulates the ambient colors in a photograph or movie and lights your scene in a way that makes your Poser content appear as if it is part of the environment An IBL setup gets its light information from a light probe that projects a photo graph or movie onto a sphere to determine how the light will surround the content in your scene In most cases it makes sense to use the same image for your back ground and for the light probe Figure 3 21 shows an example of a light probe Chapter 3 Ma
23. But by the end of this chapter you will have gotten a good grasp on the controls and will be well on your way to building complex materials 3 What is this thing called a procedural shader Those things with the high falutin p 7 4 name create materials based on mathematical equations much like vector art f NOTE Because procedural shaders use math to define elements within the texture the materials are resolution independent and can be scaled to whatever size is needed to fit on a 3D model So that cube primitive you put into your scene then scaled to 10 000 percent of its size will have the same clean precise texture as its non scaled counterpart MEET THE MATERIAL Room Before you start working in the Material Room you ll need to become familiar with the controls at your disposal You can get to the Material Room two different ways by clicking on the Material Room tab at the top of the workspace or by going to Render gt Materials Either way if this is the first time you have opened the Material Room or if you have opened this room but haven t changed the default workspace your Material Room screen will look like Figure 4 1 You can use this image as a reference as we look at what each of the controls does Editing Tools 1 These are the same editing tools you find in the Pose Room with the addition of the Eyedropper tool The Eyedropper is found on the far right of the Editing toolbar Select this tool and cl
24. If you see the front portions of your object disappear as if being dissected along the same plane decrease the Hither setting until you can view the entire object FIGURE 2 6 If your object is too close to the Hither setting the front parts of it may disappear Decrease the Hither setting if portions of an object appear to be cut away in the same plane 30 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide m Yon This setting works similarly to the Hither setting except that it controls the far end of the clipping plane Anything that lies beyond the Yon setting will not appear in your Preview window This parameter only applies with Open GL hardware rendering TUTORIALS With definitions in place and a good idea of what each camera control does let s put the cameras to the test Over the next few pages you will work with various aspects of camera manipulation focusing on projects that Poser artists use most frequently TUTORIAL 2 2 CREATING AND SAVING Custom HEAD CAMERAS Pd A j J Although the Face Camera allows you to focus on the face it is also helpful to look at the face from the front left and right sides without perspective distor tion especially when you are trying to create custom morphs for facial features and expressions or when you are trying to refine features or fix seams in pho torealistic textures In this tutorial yow ll use some of the camera s Transform parameters to position and create useful he
25. Mapping Axis Alignment Position Offret X lefvvighit x ju up down y 0 Z thont back zj Scam Rotation 0 Degiees Mapping Options I Separate caps vras cylinder cap I Dont include gaps in map I Don t spread facets at poles Scaling Options I Scale Mesut Cen FIGURE 10 4 The Cylindrical Mapping dialog box with the Y axis selected In the case of the skirt you want the UV mapping to map the skirt along the Y up down axis which is selected by default Also note the Seam Rotation setting When set at 0 the seam appears in the back of the gar ment which is what you want Accept the remaining default settings and click OK Observe the left and right sides of the UV map You may notice that the seam didn t break evenly along the same line of polygons One way you can fix this is to select polygons from one side and move them to the other You ll find it easier to perform this task if you turn the checkered texture off so choose Texture gt Clear Answer Yes when UVMapper asks if you really want to clear the background Use the Magnifier tool and the Hand tool to move in closer to the left side of the texture area With the Selection tool select the polygons that you want to move to the other side of the skirt Figure 10 5 shows the polygons selected 276 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide 10 11 12 FIGURE 10 5 A portion of the skirt s polygons are selec
26. Nelson Education Ltd For your lifelong learning solutions visit courseptr com Visit our corporate website at cengage com To all my students past and present You persevered through what probably felt like endless hours of tweaking poses lights and camera positions until they were perfect This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments project Authoring a book is not one of those times There are so many peo ple who are involved with the creation of a book from the layout people to the editors and the big boss person the one who hires and assigns the people who keep everything on track So I would like to thank in no particular order Kim Benbow my editor whose insight and knowledge have made this a better book Denise Tyler whose knowledge of Poser helped keep me on track and who allowed me to update her Practical Poser 7 book My thanks to everyone who worked on laying out the book and who took my ideas and turned them into reality And to Heather Hurley acquisitions editor extraordinaire who during SIGGRAPH 2009 in New Orleans twisted my arm to write this book It still hurts by the way Te are times in life when a person can get away with taking full credit for a Okay I m kidding about the arm twisting Really And then to all my friends students and family who continually asked Haven t you finished that dang thing yet All I can say is Yep I have This page intentionally left b
27. Objects list and check JessiTop Click OK to return to the Cloth Collision Objects dialog box and click OK again to return to the Cloth Room The final layer is the jacket which must be set to collide against Jessi s arms along with the top and the skirt Once again click the New Simulation button Name the simulation JessiJacket and set the Drape Frames to 10 Click OK to create the simulation Click the Clothify button Or select JessiJacket as the object to clothify and then click the Clothify button Click the Collide Against button When the Cloth Collision Objects dialog box opens click the Add Remove button to open the Select Objects dialog box Select Jessi s chest neck right collar right shoulder right forearm left collar left shoulder and left forearm Then scroll down to the bottom of the Select Objects dialog box and check JessiTop and JessiSkirt Click OK to return to the Cloth Collision objects dialog box and click OK again to return to the Cloth Room Now everything is in place to begin the simulation which is the subject of Tutorial 7 3 in the next section CALCULATING SIMULATIONS There are three different ways that you can approach multiple simulations You can calculate all cloth simulations all hair simulations or all cloth and hair simulations Chapter 7 Working With Clothing 201 x Ifyou only want one Dynamic group then you can skip Dynamics Controls of the Cloth Room altogether If ho
28. Puckered Retracted Mouth Drawn Pursed Happy Sad High Low Protruding Relaxed Tilt Up Down Underbite Overbite Mouth Chin Distance Short Long Corners Transverse Shift Forward Axis Twist Transverse Shift Twist and Shift Nose Up Down Flat Pointed Short Long Tilt Up Down Frontal Axis Twist Tip Transverse Shift Transverse Shift Vertical Axis Twist Nostrils subcategory of Nose Tilt Up Down Small Large Thin Wide Frontal Axis Twist Transverse Shift Sellion subcategory of Nose Up Down Shallow Deep Thin Wide Transverse Shift m Temples Thin Wide m Age Younger Older m Ethnicity Less more African less more European less more South East Asian less more East Indian m Gender Male Female Take a few moments and try playing with the various morph dials As you ll see these controls work exactly the same as the Parameters panel dials in the Pose Room To apply them to the model click the Apply to Figure button under the Face Preview TEXTURE PREVIEW The Texture Preview area see Figure 5 5 provides a two dimensional flattened preview of your texture just like a UV map The preview is a bit misleading how ever because the Face Room generates square texture maps with one exception when you import textures for the Poser figures that have rectangular textures and then make texture variation modifications to them the texture is exported at the same size as the original texture Chapter5 C
29. Room is a yellow gold 1 With the Ryan model you worked with in Tutorial 6 3 still open go to the Material Room 2 In the Objects pop up menu you will see each of the growth groups listed Select Props gt Head_Hair_Bangs and the Alternate Diffuse node will change to reflect the colors assigned to the hairs This node contains three very important channels see Figure 6 19 Root Color Tip Color and Specular Color Each of these combined help you create a realistic look to your hair This node is also connected to a Noise node which helps determine how the Root and Tip Color channels interact along the follicle s FIGURE 6 19 The Hair node assigned to the Alternate Diffuse channel the slightest difference in the node can make a drastic difference in the appearance XK You will want to be careful when modifying the Specular Color channel because even of the hair NOTE 3 Change the colors for each of the growth groups to the following Root_Color Red 44 Green 0 Blue 6 E Tip_Color Red 25 Green 2 Blue 8 These two colors will change Ryan s hair from that default yellow gold to a dark brunette see Figure 6 20 Try different color combinations for more interesting and creative looks 172 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide FIGURE 6 20 Ryan with dark hair It s interesting to note that for some reason the root color needs to be lighter than the tip color something that has no basis in reality Normal
30. Shadow Min Bias Intensity m gt 0 800000 TT gt A Q sadi C Ambient Occlusion Transform xRotate yRotate Atmosphere Strength zRotate mem 0 010000 Scale Co Advanced material properties FIGURE 3 4 The light s Parameters and Properties panels Parameters Spotlight If your light is a spotlight then specific controls will appear If it is any other type of light no controls will appear in this section m Shadow Sets the strength of the shadow that is projected by the light A value of 1 indicates 100 shadow strength A value of 0 disables the shadow Intermediate values make the shadow lighter or darker Chapter 3 Mastering Light and Shadow 55 Map Size Defines the size of the depth map shadow for the associated light The default is 256 which fits the shadow for the associated light into a 256 x 256 pixel square Low values can result in shadows with very rough pixilated edges higher values create sharper shadows but also consume more system resources and rendering time Red Green and Blue Defines the amounts of red green and blue that are mixed to create the light color When all three values are set to 1 the resulting color will be white or Red Green and Blue values of 255 255 255 Color values are also automatically set when you choose a light color from the Light Controls color selector Intensity Sets the strength of the light The default intensity setting is 100 L
31. To stitch them together choose Tools gt UVs gt Stitch When UVMapper asks if you really want to stitch the vertices together choose Yes If desired choose Texture gt Checker gt Color to view the final result before you save the new skirt Remember that you cannot save with the demo version of UVMapper Professional If you have the full version of UVMapper Professional choose File gt Save Model Leave all options unchecked and choose OK to save the model with its UV information A mapped version of the skirt appears on the DVD in Tutorials Chapter 10 as skirt mapped obj Figure 10 7 shows the final result of the UV maps 278 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide uy Fle Edt Select Map Took Texture View meb Sa sOany eS amp 0ne0e nery Ow 0a oo B0 D e Ba od Be FIGURE 10 7 The final map for the skirt TUTORIAL 10 2 Usinc UVMapper To Map Pants a skirt This tutorial will show you how to break down the parts that make up a As you can probably guess mapping pants is a bit more difficult than mapping YD model in order to create a proper map When you look at a pair of pants you see two separate cylinders joined together at the top center That is also the best way to approach mapping divide the pants in half with one cylinder in each half After the division you unfold each of the cylinders to flatten them and then stitch them back together again As you start this project open the pants obj model
32. Unfortunately just about that time a local auto dealer put out a commercial with a 3D generated giant that was so horrendously not good that it turned the entire community off of anything 3D So I was limited to using Poser as a previsualization tool And I still had to tell clients that no I wasn t using 3D for their ads Oh how times have changed an interesting challenge I have been given Update a book that is considered XVI Introduction As the program gained popularity with the general public an entire support in dustry grew Entire companies were created to supply professional quality products and individual artists began making content for the program some free and some low cost Entire websites emerged where Poser users could show their artwork or supply their original creations From the most conservative to the most erotic Poser created a phenomenon unheard of in the computing world Yet there was and still is a stigma surrounding the program Some consider Poser a mere toy something that isn t worthy of serious 3D artistic expression Part of this could be equated to a purist mentality Unless I build and rig it myself it ain t worth its weight in pixels Or it could have been the 3D artists difficulty with importing models into Maya Max LightWave 3D or Cinema 4D The latter problem was alleviated with Poser 8 the version of the program that will be covered in this book With Poser 8 3D artists ar
33. a positive value The ellipse rotates in the opposite direction 5 Change the xTran value from 0 162 to 0 162 changing the negative number to a positive number 6 Now click the magnet Change the xTran value from 0 212 to 0 212 Your magnet should now be a mirror opposite of the one you created for the right cheek 7 Using the steps as described in Tutorial 8 2 save the magnet to the library as Ryan_LeftCheek 8 Finally add the Ryan_RightCheek magnet to the scene and you have a new cheeky look for your character see Figure 8 9 FIGURE 8 9 Ryan with his new set of cheeks I m not sure this will make any issue of Plastic Surgery Successes Monthly though Chapter 8 Creating Custom Morphs 219 TUTORIAL 8 4 SPAWNING MORPH TARGETS a morph target Basically spawning is a process that takes the shape of the mag netized part and turns it into a morph dial Afterward you can delete the magnet or magnets and set the morph dial to 1 to achieve the same shape as created by the magnets Z After you change the shape of a body part with a magnet you have to spawn Since both magnets are in the scene and Ryan s chubby cheeks are set you ll create the facial morphs that will become a morph dial in the Parameters panel After that you can remove the magnets from the scene and set the morph dial to 1 to achieve the same results 1 Click Ryan s head to select it as the current object Both magnets appear next
34. and you accidentally select the wrong folder Most figure models have the same name for Chapter 7 Working With Clothing 189 their materials Head Torso Hip and so on But if you choose the wrong folder you could choose a file with the same name and then the material won t fit because the model s mesh is different see Figure 7 12 FIGURE 7 11 Those six inch heels look like they could hurt FIGURE 7 12 Two MAT files each for a different figure You can see the difference in size and location of the body parts 190 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide USING THE CLOTH Room Now that I ve covered some of the common problems that can occur when using Conforming clothing you ll learn a bit more about Dynamic clothing and the Cloth Room Dynamic clothing works a bit differently from Conforming clothing The main differences between Conforming clothing and Dynamic clothing appear in Table 7 1 TABLE 7 1 Conforming and Dynamic Clothing Comparison Chart Conforming Clothing Dynamic Clothing Able to handle complex geometry More particular about clothing construction Avoid such as multilayered clothing or overlapping or self intersecting geometry or hems overlapping faces more easily that fold than Dynamic clothing Clothing geometry is divided into If clothing geometry contains more than one group body part groups that are named the boundaries between the groups must be welded the same as the figure for which Yo
35. area also includes a Do Collisions check box When this option is checked dynamic calculations will take longer but they will also prevent the hair from intersecting with body parts or other objects that have collision de tection enabled To enable collision detection on a body part or object select the part or object you want the hair to collide with Then check the Collision detection box in the Properties panel as shown in Figure 6 6 In fact I would advise setting this first before ever heading to the Hair Room Chapter 6 Working With Hair 157 Y Head Parameters Properties Internal name head Name Head M Visible lV Visible in Raytracing M Rend Mi Casts shadows Mi Collision detection Apply Collision Setting to Children Load Morph Target Displacement Bounds Tin gt 0 000000 Shading rate 0 20 Mi Smooth polygons Crease Angle 80 00 FIGURE 6 6 The Collision Detection check box is located in the Properties panel for the main model TUTORIAL 6 1 GETTING STRANDED A Now that you have Ryan on the workspace have selected his head have turned on Collision Detection in the Properties panel and have switched to the Face Camera let s go to the Hair Room and make him hairy You ll begin by creating the hair growth groups 1 Enter the Hair Room and double check that you have Ryan s head selected You need to have something selected in order to activate the Hair Growth Groups controls 2 To create the
36. as Raytrace Shadows or Depth Map Shadows Spot Infinite Point Diffuse IBL Use this to change the light type So even if you started out thinking you wanted a point light you can come here to change it into a diffuse IBL or spotlight 56 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide m Ambient Occlusion Check this to turn this feature on for that particular light m Atmosphere Strength Used in conjunction with the Root Atmosphere Node in the Materials panel this control lets you set the strength of volumetric effects in your scene TUTORIALS It s time to put words into practice by creating some different lighting schemes These projects will also include working with the camera so the materials you went through in Chapter 2 are going to come into play as well You will use base models that come with Poser for each of these projects That way no one will feel left out if they don t have a particular model There are however free models supplied by DAZ 3D on the enclosed DVD and if you want to use them you are more than free to do so TUTORIAL 3 1 THE THREE POINT LIGHTING SCHEME The three point lighting setup is the most basic and versatile lighting scheme for still life and portrait photography As its name implies it uses three lights a key light fill light and a back light Each plays a specific role in lighting the scene For this project let s start by using the Andy character the default mannequin that loads when P
37. cast shadows the scene looks more natural and people can focus on the image rather than where the light sources are and two by having fewer lights creating shadows the render time is dramatically decreased SHADOWY CONFLUENCES Bet you didn t know there are different types of shadows did you Yep There are And Poser allows you to control what shadow type you use in your scene Is the image high contrast harsh with lots of lights and darks defining its personality or is the lighting soft and natural It s totally up to you There are three types of shadows Poser s lights can cast Depth Map Shadows When you use depth map shadows Poser generates a shadow map for each light that uses them By default the shadow map for each light is 256 by 256 pixels You can increase the shadow map size if the shadows look pixilated Larger sizes produce more defined and accurate shadows but also use more resources Remember doubling your shadow map size will add four times the number of pixels that need to be calculated for the map and increase render times You can also control the amount of blur on depth map shadows with controls in the Properties panel associated with the light Depth map shadows are the best option when you want shadows with softer edges and faster render times in general Raytrace Shadows Raytrace shadows are typically very sharp and also very accurate with respect to the original shapes of the object meshes They are c
38. clothing conversion between many of the popular Poser figures and boasts excellent support and frequent updates s PhilC s Wardrobe Wizard at www philc net gives you the ability to interactively repurpose clothing models for use on multiple Poser figures So you can take clothing made for Victoria 4 and rework it to fit Jessie Aiko or other figures Phil created a very good tutorial for working with Wardrobe Wizard located at www philc net WW2_help php Though Wardrobe Wizard is now built in to Poser 8 there is a standalone version that allows you to make changes to the clothing models without having to open Poser itself m If you re a do it yourself type of person you can use Poser s magnets or an external 3D modeling program to morph Conforming clothing so that it fits your custom figure m Use Dynamic clothing and the power of the Cloth Room to morph the clothing for you Dynamic clothing is very easy to morph so that it fits custom figures A full explanation of the process is included in Chapter 11 of the Poser Tutorial Manual POSING SKIRTS Before Dynamic clothing was introduced in Poser 5 one of the Holy Grails of Poser was the development of skirts and long robes that moved and posed realistically Although Dynamic clothing fills that void quite admirably the quest for the ultimate Conforming skirt still exists In fact of all the types of Conforming clothing that you can use in Poser the most difficult to develop a
39. color red green blue persimmon and so on or it can be based on an image that is mapped onto the object s surface that infamous texture or image map In addition the diffuse channel can be made from a procedural calculation In this case you will use an image map Z The Diffuse Color section of the Simple view see Figure 4 6 is used to set an 2 You can also add a color tint when using a texture map or procedural in which case your entire image map will be shifted into the direction of the applied color tint If you do not want to tint your image map leave the diffuse color set to white If you do want to add a tint then merely click on the color slot and use the color picker to set a color 90 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide Diffuse Color Map Strength mi 100 Apply texture to highlight 3 FIGURE 4 6 The Diffuse Color channel defines the main color of the object KNOW YOUR TEXTURE MAPS The texture you will be building will use various texture maps that combine to create a complex image If you aren t sure what each texture input is here s a quick set of definitions to help you along Diffuse Color texture map Applies color to the object Highlight Specular map Determines the color of specular highlights in the object Reflection map Determines the appearance or shape of highlights in the object Bump map Adds bumpiness and texture to the object This is a simulation with the bumpy appear
40. copy of the photo into the first image you opened in between the base layer and the partially transparent copy High resolution photographs such as those found at www 3d sk billed as Human Photo References for 3D Artists and Game Developers will give you the best results However a paid subscription is required in order to download their products The best idea is to just get a good camera at least 5 megapixels and take pictures of a family member or close friend for your textures 4 Place the photograph onto the same document as the guide and name it Head_Mstr This will automatically create a new layer You need to change the opacity of this layer so you can see the guide underneath Then scale the photograph so that the outline of the head stays slightly inside the photo Figure 5 9 shows an example in Photoshop CS4 Some people advise duplicating the background layer the base layer of the guide file There is nothing wrong with doing this as for some people it might be easier to do the alignment with the guide layer above the photograph 5 You will be blending this photograph layer with modified layers created from the same photo The easiest way to accomplish this is to reset the photo s opacity to 100 you have already positioned it where you need it to be and then using whichever selection tool you like select the eyes and eyebrows leaving enough room to resize this selection Remember this selection will also be cover
41. explained activate Show Populated so you can see the actual hairs on Ryan s head 6 Next increase Hair Density to 900 You will see the numbers immediately above this control change to reflect how many hairs are now being gener ated in this growth group 7 Click the Style Hairs button to open the Hair Style Tool panel refer to Figure 6 5 Chapter 6 Working With Hair 169 8 Let s use the Hair Style Tool tools to make some changes to the Head_ Hair_FrontSideR growth group First click the Select Hairs button and then click and drag across the sideburn area of the selection Those hairs are way too long and wild so you ll need to fix them When you drag across the hairs with the Select Hairs tool you will see small selection indicators appear where the vertices are see Figure 6 15 Those are the control points If you don t have all the control points selected that you want merely click and drag across the hairs again to add to the selection 9 First let s shorten the hairs If you want to create sideburns I would sug gest you create more growth groups and populate them appropriately The hairs you re working with now might work as sideburns for a female model that loose wispy hair falling in front of the ear but they won t necessar ily work for this macho guy So turn the Lengthen dial to the left to scale these selected hairs 10 Use the Translate tool to move the hairs toward Ryan s head then click Clear
42. for the first time you will be asked where you want to place the Runtime folder see Figure 1 9 Please choose a location option for the Poser content Runtime directory Poser content location Shared User folder Users Shared Optimal Runtime location for multi user machines or machines in access restricted environments without sys admin priviledges O Documents folder Documents For multi user machines where content will not be accessed by other users O Poser folder Traditional installation method with Runtime in the application directory provides maximum backward compatibility O Choose other location Recommended when installing Runtime on a hard disk other than the primary disk and or when disk space is low on the boot volume GoBack Continue FIGURE 1 9 When installing Poser 8 for the first time you can determine where you want the Runtime folder to be installed Historically this folder has been installed inside the main Poser folder On the PC it was located in the C Program Files Curious Labs or e Frontier Poser 4 folder on the Mac this was located in the Applications Poser x folder If you have any questions about this I would direct you to the Poser user manual for more information TUTORIAL 1 2 SEARCHING FOR CONTENT Finding content was the challenge that Poser would often give to its long time users those who had downloaded and installed large amounts of figures props _ an
43. head Now let s set up the camera Using the Main Camera set the following parameters You can also refer to Figure 3 15 to make sure your numbers match the ones I have set up Hither 413 Yon 860 DollyZ 6 443 DollyY 4 938 DollyX 0 661 zOrbit 9 degrees xOrbit 2 degrees yOrbit 45 degrees If necessary select each of the three lights Key Fill and Back and have them point at Alyson s head Make sure you save this file before moving to the next tutorial Chapter 3 Mastering Light and Shadow 69 Y Main Camera Parameters Properties Other Focal l gt 55mm Perspective COTTE gt 55mm focus_Distance CENT gt 17 200 fStop TTT gt 2 800 shutter_Open i gt 0 000 shutter_Close T gt 0 500 hither TmT gt 0 413 yon mT gt 860 00 Transform DollyZ COTTE DollyY DollyX zScale yScale xScale Scale zOrbit xOrbit _ yOrbit FIGURE 3 15 The settings for the Main Camera TUTORIAL 3 7 CREATING HIGHLIGHTS FOR EYES A quick render shows a fairly well lit portrait see Figure 3 16 but when you A break it down a little bit it s not complete If you look closely at a lot of J portraits not the fashion shoot type but a true portrait sitting the eyes will often have a subtle highlighting to bring them out That s what you re about to create 70 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide FIGURE 3 16 The portrait you set
44. hours you have worked with these types of hair models Where you re really going to spend some time is in the Hair Room learning how to make sense of what is often seen as a room too complex and therefore never used O ne of the first things anybody purchases after getting a new model is hair 149 150 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide HAIR IN ALL Its Forms gt 1 Runtimenna gt Mv seu Hair props were first introduced way way back in Poser 3 and were stored in the Hair Library the location where they still reside Prop hair uses the HR2 or HRZ extension when saved into the Hair Library and is made up of polygons just like the other figures and props stored in your program If you happen to store every hair model Conforming or Prop it can definitely become a challenge to find the one you re actually looking for because if you look at Figure 6 1 you ll see that the first two hair element icons look exactly alike Even after you have used the hair in your scene you may not be able to visually distinguish between Prop and Conforming hair The easy way to figure out which you have added to your scene is to find where the hair model s name appears in the drop down menus at the top of the Preview window If it appears in the Props submenu then you have a prop if it appears in the Figures submenu you have a conforming hairstyle v Gi 19 paz va nar v i9 Jessi air v awe g Bun k Allura va sl Chipped_Bob
45. in the Image Map node click the name of the image source and use the drop down menu to browse your hard drive for the image file you need or select an image that you have already used from the history list When the parameter is a color click the color block to open up the Poser color picker If you would rather use the RGB color picker just click on the rainbow icon at the top right of the Poser color picker 114 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide Selecting nodes Click any blank area within the node you want to select You can select multiple nodes by holding the Shift key while selecting or by using the Node Options pop up menu to choose Select All Nodes or Invert Selection Arranging nodes The position of a node in your view window will have no ef fect on its operation In fact your material may become so complex that your nodes will disappear underneath your Wacros drawer If this happens just use the Advanced view scrollbar along the bottom to scroll to those hidden nodes You may find that you need to rearrange the nodes to get a better idea of how they are interconnected To move a node select and drag it to where you want it while holding down your left mouse button Creating new nodes To create a node use the Options menu and progress through the submenus to find the specific type of node you want to create Clicking on a node s input or output icon will also open the Options menu except in this case the onl
46. in your scene Adjust the camera view if necessary with the Camera Controls sf For some machines having a default figure load when you start the program can j slow the starting process It also adds an extra step to your workflow because you have to remove the default figure from the scene before creating a new one To alleviate this delete Andy or the default figure from the workspace Go to File gt Option on the PC or Poser gt Preferences on the Mac Ctrl Cmd K choose Launch to Preferred State then click the Set Preferred State button The next time you start Poser you will get a blank workspace ready for your muse to take over NOTE 2 Click the Port Setup menu in the lower left corner of the Preview window as circled in Figure 2 2 The Port Setup selections appear 3 For this tutorial choose Four Ports This divides the document window into four equal parts By default the views are Front Camera and Top Camera in the top row and Right Camera and Main Camera in the bottom row Asa reminder you can place your cursor along the border between any two view 7 y Y 8 y i j N ports to resize them in whatever manner you wish The heights of the left and right f sections can be adjusted independently of each other 24 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide FIGURE 2 2 Use the Port Setup menu to choose the number of camera views to display The Preview window will then change to reflect the camera layout you
47. is too large or too small to work with you can change the scale of the base to change the size of the magnet Parameter dials also allow you to rotate and translate the position of the magnet base The magnet base can actually be positioned at some distance from the object being deformed and then you can translate the magnet If you then move the base you won t see any change in the deformation the magnet produces m Magnet zone This is the spherical outline that indicates the area where the magnet will affect the object The magnet will have the most effect in the center of the falloff zone which initially appears as the outline of a sphere The effect Chapter 8 Creating Custom Morphs 211 FIGURE 8 3 The three parts of a magnet the base zone and the magnet itself of the magnet gradually falls off as it reaches the outer edge of the zone You ad just the shape of the magnet zone by increasing or decreasing the xScale yScale or zScale values of the magnet zone You can also change the shape of the mag net zone using the Magnet Zone Falloff graph Select the magnet zone open the Properties panel and click the Edit Falloff Graph to open the Graph Editor You can adjust the curve to have more or less effect in different areas of the magnet zone When you enlarge the size of the magnet zone you affect more polygons in the object you want to morph Reduce the size of the magnet zone to affect fewer polygons You can also translate o
48. laces night bortom high laces night bottom laces left top Wighhght laces bet top eyelets metal bis m D e a 2 9 Doc 4 06M 163 3M gt FIGURE 9 6 Eyelets and lacing finish out the texture map Ana starts with a black background which represents areas that do not receive specular highlights Next she creates a new layer and fills all areas in the clothing that will not be transparent with solid white By reducing the opacity of this layer to 30 percent she is able to determine an appropriate base level for the highlights in the clothing A new layer is created and the leather areas on the corset legs and sleeves are selected and filled with a grayscale cloud pattern Noise is added to the cloud pattern to give it a bumpy feel Progress thus far is shown in Figure 9 7 Next Ana duplicates the cutouts on the arms corset and legs and moves them to anew layer above the previous specular layers She then adds bright white borders around the leather on these areas so that the metallic trim on the leather receives the most specular highlights An adjustment layer then brightens the underlying layers a bit Figure 9 8 shows the progress to this point A new layer is added and white highlights are hand painted in areas of the corset arm and leg leather A band of light gray is added around the neck so that it receives more highlights than the lace Finally to complete the specu
49. light For the image I m creating I used the following RGB settings m Red 686 Green 0 776 Blue 1 With this new color 20 won t affect the model as much as you d probably like So change it to 35 and you will see after rendering the file that Andy is definitely feeling a bit blue Hmmm He s kinda looking like Dr Manhattan from Watchmen TUTORIAL 3 4 ADDING THE BACK LIGHT gt 7S The back light appears above and behind the subject and usually directly op posite the camera The purpose of the back light is to separate the subject from the background by creating a rim of light around the top or side A spotlight or point light is good for a back light and shadows are usually turned off because back lights are intended for highlights only This highlighting effectively separates the subject from the background 1 When setting up a back light it s best to turn off any other lights in your scene Nice and easy in this case All you have to do is turn off two lights the key light and the fill light Select each light in the Properties panel and click the On selector This will turn the light off and throw Andy into dark ness see Figure 3 10 2 Create a third light for the scene Go ahead and change the name to Back Light before moving ahead Also while you re there turn off the shadows as well 3 Set the light to point at Andy s head just as you did with the key light 4 In the Parameters panel
50. light from the light source or if it is in the shadow of another object or another part of itself Ambient Occlusion is a measure of the amount of ambient light received by a point on the surface of an object surface It simulates a huge dome light that surrounds the entire scene If a surface point is under or behind another object for example a spot behind your figure s ear that point needs to be much darker than the top most object such as the top of your figure s head The occlusion map is used to darken the ambient levels at render time where ap propriate This subtle and potent lighting effect adds quite a bit of realism to renders without the addition of many diffuse lights in your scene Although ambient occlusion calculations take up render time they are not nearly as costly as using dozens of individually calculated light sources 54 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide LIGHT PARAMETERS AND PROPERTIES Everything that has been discussed so far from shadow maps to lighting and shadow types is controlled using the Properties and Parameters panels Before actually setting up some lights let s break down these two panels so you can get more comfortable and work more efficiently when making lighting modifications Refer to Figure 3 4 as you read through this section Light 1 Light 1 Parameters Properties Parameters Ot Name Light 1 ther Shadow CO include in OpenGL ELL m 1 000 i Map Size Green Blue
51. lot of information is going to be covered A lot of thought went into how to present the content so you can easily find the feature you want to learn about when you are ready to learn it Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide in conjunction with Poser s user manuals will be invaluable learning tools If you re an intermediate user you will find helpful tips and tricks that could take you to that next level And if you are an advanced user this book will help you quickly discover how to use many of Poser s new features THE CONVENTIONS Being a cross platform application Poser is available for both the PC and the Mac there are slight differences in the way the program is operated If you have read any of my other books you know that I bring up quick key commands when ever they are available With Poser the biggest difference is in how to accomplish those quick key commands So throughout the book quick key commands will be written using the following conventions PC Mac x For instance to open an ex isting file the quick key command would be Ctrl Cmd O Continuing with the differences between Macs and PCs when I talk about right clicking that pertains to both operating systems Some people forget that Macs can use multi button mouses mice meeses and have been able to for about a decade But if you don t have a multi button mouse first off why not instead of right clicking hold down the Control Ctrl key on the Ma
52. magnet base also affects the orientation of the X Y and Z axes so it can be confusing if you rotate the magnets too often I will explain later when you move the magnet how the base rotation affects the orientation 6 Right now the magnet will only affect Ryan s waist To add a second part click the magnet to select it as the current object Then select the Properties panel and click the Add Element to Deform button The Select Objects dialog box appears 7 Select the hip from the Select Objects dialog and click OK You return to the Poser document Chapter 8 Creating Custom Morphs 223 FIGURE 8 15 The magnet for the waist is embedded inside the body All you can see to verify that the magnet has been added is the magnet zone circle 8 Repeat Steps 6 and 7 to add the abdomen right thigh and right buttock as well as the left buttock and left thigh to the magnet Your magnet will now control multiple body parts Unfortunately you cannot choose more than one part at a time in the Select Objects dialog so you have to re open the dialog box for each element you want to add 9 Click the Parameters panel and make the following changes to the magnet zone These changes will make the magnet zone narrower moving it forward on the z axis so that it only affects Ryan s front area Scale 11 xScale 109 yScale 161 zScale 70 yTran 3 734 zTran 0 561 224 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide 10 Now click the
53. magnet to select it and you ll see how it affects Ryan s belly Change xScale to 115 xRotate to 13 yTran to 3 233 and zTran to 0 851 to make his belly wider and make it stick out more Also remember when you rotated the magnet base earlier Because of this the yTran parameter moves the magnet forward and backward instead of up and down as it normally would When you re done Ryan should have a big belly as shown in Figure 8 16 FIGURE 8 16 Here s Ryan with a good ol jelly belly 11 Before you delete the magnet you have to spawn morphs for each of the 12 body parts affected by the magnet On the Ryan model itself select each of those parts in turn Choose Object gt Spawn Morph Target Name the morph target for each of the body parts as PBMBigBelly The prefix PBM which stands for partial body morph reminds you that it is one of several partial body morphs that are to be combined into a final shape Save your magnet to the library if desired as described in Tutorial 8 2 Then delete the magnet Your morphs are complete Chapter 8 Creating Custom Morphs 225 At this point I would go through each of the PBMs you just made and set minimum and maximum limits You can of course set the minimum limit to a negative number 1 000000 if you want TUTORIAL 8 6 CREATING THE FULL Bopy Morpu FBM various body parts to create the particular look you want This can be a little tedious What about making a morph
54. make the shape of the head entirely different from the default figure you are using As a result if you try to move the feature points to match your photographs you can end up with areas in your texture that are stretched or distorted 132 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide You can compromise by preparing the photos so that they somewhat match the shape of the head in the photos that you are using To start that process you create texture guides that will help you place the photos correctly When I talk about texture guides I am talking about creating basic renders that can be brought in to programs such as Adobe Photoshop Adobe Fireworks Paint Shop Pro or any other image editing program These guides could also be called templates however the term could become confused with regular texture tem plates so I ll be using the term guide instead The following steps were used to create the head guides for Simon G2 Similar steps can be used to create texture guides for any figure that is compatible with the Face Room 1 With Simon G2 selected go to Window gt Document Window Size The Preview Dimensions dialog appears see Figure 5 7 where you first need to click the Float Palette button With the new GUI the Preview panel is docked and thus locked Making it a floating panel unlocks the dimensions Now enter equal values in the Width and Height fields to create a square document In this example a value of 500
55. make two copies You will probably need to turn off Inverse Kinematics before moving the figures Figure 2 17 shows the setup from four camera views The Main Camera s focal length has been set to 80 mm for the scene FIGURE 2 17 Three figures are added to the scene for the depth of field example 2 Use the Edit gt General Preferences menu command to open the General Preferences dialog box Click the Interface tab and verify that the Display Units setting is set to Feet 3 Choose Window gt Python Scripts to open the Python Scripts dialog box Chapter 2 Using Cameras 43 4 Click to select the figure that you want to be the focus of the scene For this example I select the middle figure 5 From the main Python Scripts menu click the Render IO button Then click the Calc DoF Focal Distance button After the script runs you will see a pop up window that has a number in it The number represents the dis tance in feet from the current camera to your currently selected object 6 Copy the number onto your clipboard Ctrl Cmd C or write it down in a safe location Make sure it s secure Make sure there are no kids around who can run up grab this number and run away like gazelles Can you tell Pve had something like that happen to me Actually in all seriousness I would advise keeping this window open until you re finished plugging the number into the appropriate field see Step 8 7 Use the pop up selector menu in
56. male and female Simon and Sydney the Poser 6 male and female James and Jessi or the Poser 5 male and female Judy and Don if you want to go back that far into the annals of Poser dom Of course with the third party figures like DAZ3D s Victoria and Michael models you have a myriad of morphs at your disposal Next you re going on a hair raising adventure Sorry I just had to say that Actually there s nothing scary about what s coming up next Youre heading into the Hair Room with a look at the Dynamic Hair feature and how it can help you add realism to your renders Working With Hair In This Chapter Hair in All Its Forms Strand Hair Tutorial 6 1 Getting Stranded Tutorial 6 2 Creating and Using Skullcaps Tutorial 6 3 Stylin the Growth Groups Tutorial 6 4 Hair Color Life is an endless struggle full of frustrations and challenges but eventually you find a hair stylist you like Author unknown There are so many hairstyles for the various poser models you would think you re looking at a stylist s book at the hairdresser And as follows in the real world there are more hairstyles for the women than for the men It seems that a female s flowing tresses are much more important than what grows up top on the male models In this chapter you re going to briefly work with Prop and Conforming hair These are the most basic hair types and if you ve worked with Poser for more than a couple of
57. points at the head of this figure As a result the figure remains centered in the camera view while it walks around the scene In a similar manner you can also point objects toward a camera by using the Point At feature For example you can point the eyes of a character so that it is always looking at a camera Posing the eyes of your figure helps to get rid of the blank stare syndrome that the default eye position is famous for creating in renders Posed eyes help give your character life and personality As an alternative to using the Point At feature to pose eyes you can also use the Up Down and Side Side parameter dials that appear for each eye in the Parameters panel In fact in most situations using Point At you will also use Up Down and Side Side to control the strength of the Point At command Point At can save you a lot of time and headaches by quickly positioning elements like eyes All that s left is to tweak the settings to fine tune the pose a A 7 A NOTE A common animation technique is to use what s called a null object an invisible piece of geometry that model elements such as the eyes can point at For instance if you want to animate the collective eyes of a crowd of people to follow an off screen object you would use a null object and have all the eyes point at it Then all you have to do is move the null and all the eyes will animate To see how the Point At feature works you will creat
58. possibility of seams showing up at render time After scanning some lace and cleaning up transparent areas a layer of black lace is placed above the gray fill The lace layer is then duplicated and a slight bevel is added to give the lace some extra highlights and dimension Four layers of dark gray seams are added above the lace to place seams around the collar panties and arm lace Finally another layer adds a lighter varied shade of gray leather over portions of the arms Figure 9 3 shows the progress so far Similar details are added to the corset and legs First two layers add leather to the corset area and bust allowing the bust covers to be shown or hidden depend ing on the look desired for the outfit A central plate is added in a new layer over the center of the corset Above that layers of dark gray leather are added for a busk the area of the corset that contains the clasps and busk shadow Graceful curves are added over the leather to provide detailed cutouts Finally a layer of gems and gem insets is added to give further detail to the busk at the center of the corset Figure 9 4 shows these new layers on the corset Finally additional trim and details are added to the clothing in several layers First a couple of adjustment layers darken the color of the leather areas on the sleeves legs and corset to give them a richer appearance Additional cutouts are added to the leather on the legs and sleeves and a beveled duplicat
59. process of creating additional Runtime folders is to Y Y make Poser 8 aware that they exist Here is how you add new Runtime folders into the Poser Library Palette 1 If the Poser Library Palette is hidden click the bar at the right side of the interface to expand it 2 Ifthe Library Palette opens to display the library titles and not their contents double click any library category name Figures Cameras and so on to display the contents within it 3 In previous versions of Poser the first folder in any library was a special folder the up folder This folder has now been replaced with the Add Library button just under the Content buttons see Figure 1 15 4 Navigate to the Runtime folder you created earlier and click OK PC or Choose Mac 5 Click OK to return to the Library panel You should now see a new library folder which is the folder you selected in Step 4 6 Repeat Steps 4 through 6 for each additional Runtime folder that you want to add to your library Chapter 1 Everything Old Is New Again 17 FIGURE 1 15 To get to the top level or root library folder click on the Add Library button If for some reason you want to remove a Runtime folder select the folder in the list and a Remove Library button will appear to the right of the Add Library button Click the Remove Library button and the Runtime folder will no longer be part of the content list A SuHort RE PoseE It s a great idea to take
60. remove detail from the texture 4 In this case yow re going to add some color to the belt Instead of being pure black you re going to set a color closer to the shirt color as if the shirt were being reflected slightly in the belt s material Click on the Input 1 color chip switch to the RGB color mode and set the following values R 181 Green 110 Blue 0 When you do a preview render Ryan s belt will have a brown cast to it 5 Next go to the Alternate Diffuse channel and repeat step 2 Chapter 4 Creating Materials 117 w Ryan Cas PoserSurface Disconnect New node gt Lighting Variables blender 3D Textures edge blend 2D Textures component math_functions color_math user_defined simple_color colorramp hsv 0 083333 image_Map_2 FIGURE 4 26 Creating a connection to the Blender node in the Diffuse Color channel 6 Link Input 1 of the Blender 2 Node to the Diffuse Color channel for the Blender node Do this by dragging the connector from Input 1 to the Blender node itself Figure 4 27 shows this connection which has temporarily ruined the look of the belt The belt is too brown and the color is too flat as well as too brown But that s about to be fixed 7 Right click in any blank area of the Advanced view window and from the pop up menu select New Node gt 2D Textures gt Image Map By clicking in a blank area of the workspace you can create a free standing node that can be connected to
61. save a lot of time compared to checking all the different morph dials Choose Figure gt Create Full Body Morph The Morph Name dialog box appears 5 Enter BigBelly for the morph name and choose OK 6 Now go through each of the individual body parts to set all PBMBigBelly morphs to zero 0 Ryan Casual should return to his default shape Now with Ryan Casual selected choose Body from the Current Actor selec tion menu in the Parameters panel You should see your BigBelly full body morph in the section named Other When you dial this morph to 1 you ll see all of the individual body parts morph together at the same time to create your big belly as shown in Figure 8 18 Your full body morph is now complete You might also want to set the limits to 1 000000 and 1 000000 10 Locate the Figures Library into which you want to save your morphed fig ure Click the Add to Library button to add your new morphed character to the library assigning a name of your choosing Chapter 8 Creating Custom Morphs 227 Y Ryan Casual n omm m am mm namm 0 oom eam mamm amm vRorate n xRotate m zhotate m FIGURE 8 18 The FBM in action THE MORPHING TOOLS When you activate the Morphing Tool click the Morphing Tool button in the Editing Tools as shown in Figure 8 19 a new panel will appear This Morphing Tool panel is divided into two tabs Create and Combine The Create tab sh
62. selected You can also choose the Display gt Camera View gt Four Cams menu command to display four camera views in the Preview window To return to a single camera view choose Full Port from the Document Window Layout menu 4 If the camera names are not displayed in the ports in the Document win dow choose Display gt Show Camera Names to display them To change the camera that is displayed in one of the camera ports right click on the camera name Choose Camera View and then drag right to open the menu shown in Figure 2 3 Then choose the camera that you want to display Chapter 2 Using Cameras 25 Camera View Main Camera Aux Camera v OpenGL Posing Camera SreeD Dolly Camera Toon Tones gt Left Camera Right Camera Top Camera Bottom Camera Front Camera Back Camera Face Camera LHand Camera RHand Camera Shadow Lite Cam Shadow Lite 2 Cam Shadow Lite 3 Cam FIGURE 2 3 To change the camera that is displayed in a camera port right click the camera name to display the Camera View selection menu and select a camera from the list CONTROLLING WHAT You SEE Now that you know what the cameras do and how they can work for you it s time to actually work with them This means looking at the various methods to control position focal length depth of field and other features that will when mastered help you create your art exactly how you envision it USING THE CAMERA CONTROLS The Camera Controls shown in Figure
63. someone disputes ownership at a later time In addition all files have a creation date and time embedded in them In this day and age protect ing yourself should be a top priority Map Types The type of maps you create will match the input nodes you worked with in Chapter 4 and can all be added using an input node in the Advanced view of the Material Room These maps are shown in Figures 9 1 and 9 2 ko g N No textures Diffuse Color Texture Highlights added Transparency added FIGURE 9 1 The effect of the various image map channels when assigned to a model 244 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide Reflection added Displacement added Alt Specular added FIGURE 9 2 The rest of the image maps combined to create the final look for the outfit The images used in this section of the chapter are from Ana Winson s The Bootie texture created for Victoria 3 Ana is known as Arien on many of the Poser discus sion boards Diffuse The map that will define the color s on the figure Specular Controls the shininess of the material and controlling highlights Transparency Creates transparent and semi transparent areas on the object Reflection As it states it adds a reflection to the surface of the object Using an image map to create a reflection will cut down on render time Chapter 9 Creating Your Own Textures 245 Bump Creates the illusion of high and low points on an object Displacement The same a
64. the Advanced window You can also click on the end of the link you want to delete and use the Options menu to disconnect that end of the link Chapter 4 Creating Materials 115 Animating node parameters To toggle animation on or off click the animation toggle icon the key for the parameter you want to animate Node Window Shades When you start working with many nodes in your materials you might want to minimize the nodes you are not currently focus ing on You can roll up a node into a smaller display in a few different ways see Figure 4 25 You can toggle the display of the Output preview by clicking on the Output preview toggle icon the eye icon in the upper right of the node You can also toggle the display of the node parameters by clicking on the win dow icon just to the left of the eye icon 5 Image_Map 1 Image_Map B gt Image_Map r FIGURE 4 25 Nodes can be minimized to help save screen real estate The various Node views are Full View A Parameters Hidden B Output Preview Hidden C Parameters and Output Preview Hidden D 116 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide TUTORIAL 4 7 WORKING IN THE ADVANCED VIEW o The Advanced view allows you to connect nodes to other nodes including the A Alternate Diffuse channel which provides additional enhancements to the normal Diffuse channel You ll also notice an Alternate Specular channel that accom plishes the same thing for the Highl
65. the Materials pop up menu select Shirt from the list see Figure 4 7 Materials Y Body EyeSockets Nostrils Lacrimals InnerMouth Lips EyelashesTop EyelashesBottom TearLine EyeballLeft IrisLeft PupilLeft CorneaLeft FIGURE 4 7 Select Shirt from the Materials pop up menu 92 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide 3 Click the Browse button then navigate to the folder that contains the image map you want to use Textures are typically stored in the Runtime Textures folder but you don t have to place them there in order to use them The texture you are going to use is Ryan_PoserBookShirt png Once you have found it highlight the texture file and click Open to return to the Texture Manager dialog box 4 Click OK in the Texture Manager dialog and you will see the material updated in the preview area You can also click Cmd Ctrl R to render the scene Figure 4 8 shows the image map applied to Ryan s t shirt You will notice that in the initial rendering the new texture looks fuzzy or soft The quality isn t that good This is because you haven t changed the Render settings to a higher quality render So it is common as you work on a file for the test renders to look soft FIGURE 4 8 The new texture added to Ryan s shirt Chapter 4 Creating Materials 93 TUTORIAL 4 2 ADDING SPECULAR HIGHLIGHTS Highlights are the areas of your material where the majority of the light s fre quencies reflect straight
66. the Parameters panel to select the current camera In this example I select the Main Camera as shown in Figure 2 18 Body Parts Db Body Props v Main Camera Cameras Aux Camera Posing Camera Dolly Camera Left Camera Right Camera Top Camera A 80 mm focus_Distance T gt 31 496 fStop a T gt 2 500 Bottom Camera shutter_Open Front Camera m gt 0 000 shutter_Close Ease CaA e ramm gt 0 500 LHand Camera RHand Camera yon Shadow Litel Cam T gt 860 00 Shadow Lite 2 Cam Transform Shadow Lite 3 Cam Doz hither ee FIGURE 2 18 Choose your current camera in this case the Main Camera from the pop up menu at the top of the Parameters panel 8 Enter or paste the number generated by the Python script into the Focus_Distance field 9 At this point you ll need to decide how strong you want your depth of field effects Enter a small value for the camera s fStop parameter if you want a smaller area to stay in focus Enter a larger value in the fStop parameter to keep a larger area in focus 44 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide 10 To see the DOF results you have to use the FireFly renderer and configure 11 the Render Options dialog box to use depth of field To do so choose Render gt Render Settings to open the Render Settings dialog box In the FireFly tab of the Render Settings dialog box first apply the Final Render settings from the Auto Settings options Just drag the slider unt
67. the Work with Current Morphs box selected the morph saved with this option will only include the changes that you made with the Morphing Tool If you want to combine morphs made with magnets along with morphs made with the Morphing Tool choose Object gt Spawn Morph Target instead TUTORIAL 8 7 CREATING FACE MORPHS One of the first things you can do with the new Morphing Tool is enhance existing or create new face morphs to build totally original characters The morph brush helps you push or pull vertices around to reshape the features of your character In this tutorial you ll learn how you can define a few facial morphs and add new morph dials for the face This example will use Ryan again but you can use any figure you would like 1 Once you have loaded the character switch to the Face Camera 2 Activate the Morphing Tool if it isn t still active and make sure you have the Create tab selected 3 In the Morphing Tool panel choose Pull Relative To Surface and select the second brush shape option These are actually the default settings so unless you changed the controls while reading the last section the defaults should already be selected 4 Verify that the Display Brush option is selected and adjust the Radius value until you get a brush size that is appropriate to morph Ryan s cheek I am using a setting of 0 0122 in this example When you place your cursor over a part of the model you can move to the controls whil
68. the angles of the head to the hair To zero the pose with the character selected go to Window gt Joint Editor and at the bottom of this panel click the Zero Pose button It doesn t matter which part of the model is selected Many of the hair models come with built in morphs that allow for a wide range of posing Some like the P8 Alyson Hair2 model located in the Hair Poser 8 Alyson folder can be converted to a Beehive hairstyle with the twist of a dial see Figure 6 2 You need to be careful about taking many of these models to their extremes a setting of 1 00 to 1 500 for the Beehive for instance because anomalies in the transparency maps and the textures can occur You can see one of those anomalies in Figure 6 2 in the Beehive where portions of the shadows lose their realism This is why many people opt to paint the hair onto a model and completely forego the hair models However this isn t the best solution in many cases and as long as you know limi tations you can use many of the very high quality hair models on the market to make some very sophisticated scenes FIGURE 6 2 Alyson s hair is morphed into a beehive causing sections of the shadows to lose their realism 152 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide STRAND HAIR Strand hair also referred to as Dynamic hair was introduced in Poser 5 Unlike the other two hair elements which again are based on polygons and geometry Dynamic hair is strand based What th
69. the diffuse color for the face and body textures by the same amount Try gray or a tinted gray color to keep from introducing additional colors to the skin tone When using Poser 6 figures an alternative to the manual approach is to pur chase the Poser 6 Character Realism kit or the Unimesh Realism Kit by face_off These are available for the Mac or PC at the Renderosity com marketplace The Poser 6 Character Realism kit allows you to lighten or darken textures while adding other realistic features such as sheen bump and skin imperfections However in the following tutorial you will learn how to use the Face Texture Tool and be introduced to the Face Shaping Tool without the benefit of third party extensions TUTORIAL 5 3 MATCHING ETHNIC TEXTURES TO THE BODY To create an ethnic variation of a texture let s use the Poser 6 James VA JamesCasual model Add the figure to a new scene turn off inverse kinematics and then zero the figure Once you have done that go into the Face Room 1 Beneath the Texture Preview area click on the Import Original Figure Head Texture button and the head texture that James is using in the Pose Room will be imported 2 In the Face Texture Tool area expand the Ethnicity Age and Gender option and then expand the Ethnicity option Set the Less More African texture variation setting to 1 000 3 In the Face Shaping Tool area shown at the right in Figure 5 12 expand the Ethnicity Age and G
70. the environment by controlling the lights properties LicuT TYPES The four types of lights in Poser 8 are infinite lights spotlights point lights and image based lights Each of these light types shares similar properties such as color angle intensity and a few other parameters However each type distributes light in a different way Figure 3 1 shows a comparison of the four types of lights All lights are configured to illuminate the figure s head In addition Poser 8 introduces a new lighting type indirect lighting IDL With IDL you don t need as many lights to light your scene The Indirect Lighting feature will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter 16 Rendering Options and Techniques m Infinite lights are like sunlight They provide a more even lighting from the point at which they are placed These are the default lights in your scene and are best used as a base light from which you can build the lighting scheme for your scene m Spotlights shine light from a single point of origin and cast their light in a cone shape Spotlights are similar to lights used by photographers or in stage pro ductions You can control the angle and distance of the cone allowing you to create lighting effects such as street lamps candlelight or the light from a crackling fire Use the Angle End setting to adjust the size of the area that will be illuminated higher values light larger areas whereas lower values light smal
71. this is to click on the caution symbol You will automatically be taken to the Material Room Advanced controls ZK If you should happen to see a tiny yellow caution symbol this is an alert to adjust NOTE So let s work with image maps To assign an image map to one of the channels in the Simple view click the Diffuse Color thumbnail preview area the large gray square area to open the Texture Manager dialog box see Figure 4 5 Once this dialog opens you can select a new image file a previously used image file or a movie clip Chapter 4 Creating Materials 89 FIGURE 4 5 Click the thumbnail preview area to quickly access the Texture Manager dialog box With all of this information wrinkling your brain m sure many of you are saying Okay Enough already Let s start using this Material Room thingie That s exactly what you re going to do Right now TUTORIALS Now you are going to use various texture maps created in an image editing pro gram and assign them to the Ryan character These texture maps started out as the RyanCasualShirt jpg texture map that loads with the Ryan_Casual figure I opened the file in Photoshop and used it as the base for this project You can find the image maps used in these tutorials in the Chapter 4 folder on the DVD TUTORIAL 4 1 ADDING DiFFUSE COLOR object s primary color before any procedurals or modifiers are added to the mix This diffuse color can be anything from a uniform
72. through your lights into the scene Tm glad you asked One reason is if you are creating eye lights Eye lights are used to get rid of shadows around the eyes that might be created by the eyebrows or hair You can also use them to create eye highlights In either case the light would be pretty thin and it would be extremely hard to focus the light without looking through it Another reason for using shadow light cameras is to see exactly where an object s shadow would fall 68 4 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide x af NOTE Included on the DVD in the Chapter 3 folder is a face file titled Pleasant fc2 It s located in the Alyson_Original folder which you can place directly in the Runtime Library Faces lPoser 8 folder TUTORIAL 3 6 SETTING THE SCENE d A ZV With the lighting scheme created in Tutorial 3 1 let s use the shadow light cameras to refine the scene s lighting If you need to open the three point lighting scene you created in the previous tutorials lightingSetup pz3 Yep Good ol Andy the Mannequin Android is back for more But not for long Select him and delete him from the scene Add the Alyson Casual model Figures category gt Poser 8 gt Alyson gt Alyson Casual Go to Poses gt Poser 8 gt Alyson gt Standing gt Thinking and add the preset pose to the Alyson model If you installed the Pleasant fc2 file into the Faces folder add that to the figure s
73. to add hair to Poser clothing or props and how to pick up hair colors from underlying textures You ll also learn how to work with the various types of Poser clothing and the differences between Conforming clothing Dynamic clothing and hybrid Conforming Dynamic clothing Finally you ll learn how to decipher and build materials in the advanced Material Room Introduction xvii Some of the most frequently asked questions involve creating and customizing Poser clothing Although these are advanced level skills that often require software other than Poser it is a topic of great interest and need to Poser users I will address this in the later chapters First you ll learn how to use magnets to create morphs in Poser You ll also learn the steps involved to export and import morphs to and from an external morphing program Through several chapters you ll learn the proce dures involved in modeling a simple piece of clothing how to create UV maps for common clothing articles shirts skirts and pants how to assign materials in clothing and how to group them correctly so that your models work properly in Poser You ll also learn how to save different types of Poser content into the Poser libraries so that they also work properly In addition you ll learn what makes the Poser rendering engine work and how you can enhance your Poser renders so that they look their best Who Wit BENEFIT FROM THIS PLETHORA OF INFORMATION As previously mentioned a
74. try this with a scene that has one figure with a hip and one without To understand how the orthogonal cameras work imagine holding a huge sheet of X ray film in front of your camera and then shooting parallel X rays from the opposite side of your scene to expose an exact image shadow of your objects onto the film The key here is that the X rays are parallel This means that objects are displayed at their actual sizes regardless of how distant they are from the camera Chapter 2 Using Cameras 23 When you work with orthogonal cameras you will probably find that having j L several up at once is a great help You can divide your Preview window into several camera views to allow you to view left right top and bottom for quick and accu rate placement of objects with respect to each other Tutorial 2 1 shows you how to accomplish this NOTE TUTORIAL 2 1 USING AND SELECTING MULTIPLE CAMERA VIEWS Poser allows you to see more than one camera view at a time in your Preview A window This is handy when you are trying to position content in your scene A it can also be comfortable for many 3D modelers and animators because it turns the screen display into the more familiar multi port view You can select which camera will appear in each of the views To configure the Preview win dow to display more than one camera follow these steps 1 Choose File gt New to create a new scene in Poser The default figure Andy appears
75. v Bl 4 Amoreca Poser 6 Poser 7 Poser 8 Radiant Jaguar Halr Amarseda A3 fi Amarseda SP3 Prop Conforming Strand FIGURE 6 1 The three different hair types Prop left Conforming middle and Strand right It is not uncommon to purchase a Conforming or Prop hair model and have pre af lA sets for various versions of the figure it s created for For instance if you purchase t NOTE a hair model for the Victoria 4 character you might very well receive morph files Victoria 3 Aiko 3 Stephanie Petite 3 and Victoria 4 much more bang s for the buck NOTE Chapter 6 Working With Hair 151 So what s the big deal about the differences between Conforming and Prop hair If they re virtually indistinguishable other than how to select them on the workspace why even bother trying to determine which is which The biggest difference is that Prop hair often plays nicer with others Huh Prop hair can be more easily reposi tioned along the xTran yTran and zTran and scaled using the x y and zScale dials to fit numerous models in your library So in many ways Prop hair is more useful in a wider range of images You re not stuck using a specific model because a particular hair model is set to conform to it It s easiest to reposition and scale the Prop hair while your figure is in the zero pose before you make any changes to the pose of your figure otherwise it can be quite time consuming to match
76. was properly loaded into your scene It is much eas ier to attach a prop to a figure when the figure is in its zero or default pose It takes more time to place a prop on a figure that is already posed because you have to translate and rotate it precisely to position it correctly You ll have to manually position a standard prop with the editing tools or with the Tran and Rotate dials in the Parameters panel After that you ll need to parent the prop to the figure by selecting the prop and choosing Object gt Change Parent Make sure you attach the prop to the appropriate body part such as the head for a hat or earrings or the hand for a ring or a sword Afterward whenever you move the parent body part the prop should move as well m Smart props already know what they are supposed to be attached or parented to Basically a Smart prop is a standard prop that was saved to the library after it was attached to the appropriate body part When you load a Smart hat for example it finds the head and positions itself at or near the correct position and at the same angle of the figure s head Figure 7 1 shows an example of Smart props Alyson s earrings automatically find their way to the correct places when you add them to the figure Chapter 7 Working With Clothing 177 FIGURE 7 1 The earrings on Alyson are Smart props automatically positioning themselves when brought into the scene COMMON CLOTHING PROBLEMS Let s say you ve
77. whereas positive values morph the feature more toward the other end The morphs in the following list add asymmetry to the face which can make your character look more realistic and natural Chapter5 Creating Custom Faces 127 FIGURE 5 4 Use the Morph Putty tool to visually sculpt your head shape The asymmetrical morphs are removed from use when you select the Symmetry option 5 in the Face Shaping Tool Bridge subcategory of Nose Shallow Deep Short Long Transverse Shift Brow Ridge High Low Inner Up Down Outer Up Down Forward Axis Twist m Cheekbones High Low Shallow Pronounced Thin Wide Protrusion Asymmetry m Cheeks Concave Convex Round Gaunt m Chin Forward Backward Pronounced Recessed Retracted Jutting Shallow Deep Small Large Short Tall Thin Wide Chin Axis Twist Forward Axis Twist Transverse Shift m Ears Up Down Back Front Short Long Thin Wide Vertical Shear Forward Axis Shear m Eyes Up Down Small Large Tilt Inward Outward Together Apart Height Disparity Transverse Shift m Face Brow Nose Chin Ratio Forehead Sellion Nose Ratio Light Heavy Round Gaunt Thin Wide Coronal Bend Coronal Shear Vertical Axis Twist m Forehead Small Large Short Tall Tilt Forward Back Forward Axis Twist 128 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide Jaw Retracted Jutting Wide Thin Jaw Neck Slope High Low Concave Convex Lips subcategory of Mouth Deflated Inflated Large Small
78. work on the same principle When you create a UV map you are unfolding your 3D object onto a flat plane Along with telling the software what shape your object is you are also determining which axis to orient the texture map to in other words whether you are looking at the object from the top side or front Chapter 10 UV Mapping 271 That is what a UV map does It basically tells your 3D software that the pixels in one portion of a flat 2D texture are applied to one or more specific polygons in the 3D model So to wrap the Earth texture around the sphere properly you have to create a UV map that says Wrap a rectangular texture around this object in a spherical fashion and place the top left corner of the image at this point of the 3D model Types of UV Maps Most modeling or UV mapping software allows you to create at least four common types of UV maps m Spherical Best for globes and other objects that are shaped like a sphere m Planar Best for flat objects such as a door a tabletop or a mirror A playing card is also a good example of planar mapping If you flipped the card over you d see a mirror image of the map that is projected on the front m Box A natural for box shaped objects that require a different texture or orien tation on each side m Cylindrical Good for cans sleeves and many types of clothing Cylindrical mapping can also include mapping for solid ends also known as end caps when need
79. 0 px Syke Normal Opachy 100 FIGURE 9 15 A noise layer is added to the non transparent areas 258 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide Next Ana duplicates the beveled lace from the diffuse map and places it above the previous layers She uses an adjustment curve to lighten the lace so that it brings the details forward in the bump map Next the leather areas are again superimposed over the lace and lightened so that they do not recede into the texture as much These additional steps are shown in Figure 9 16 Di Feather 0 px Styles Normal Pass Through Opty 100 aj Layer M copy j a taver 91 copy 4 A a BD conver ee lace bevel copy i aj Layer m1 none for bump E gt Curwen Boe A i me ne 1562M Doc 446M js darkening of le aj e J J FIGURE 9 16 Lace details are added and covered with the leather areas in the corset sleeve and legs To complete the bump map all of the intricate details are added in the lightest colors so that they are raised higher to add more detail The cutouts on the corset arms and legs are added as are some lighter areas that raise the gems and gem in sets The metallic trim areas around the lacing eyelets corset sleeves and legs are the brightest areas of the bump map causing these areas to be raised the farthest Figure 9 17 shows the finished bump map Chapter 9 Creating Your Own Textures 259 G Feat
80. 1 8 When you place one panel group with another it can increase the overall panel width reducing the size of the Preview window Sometimes you can scale down the Ore panel group but most of the time you can t Chapter 1 Everything Old Is New Again 9 FIGURE 1 8 The Animation Sets panel docked with the Library and Parameters panels 7 To undock the Animation Sets panel move the cursor to the right of the window s tabs until the cursor turns into a hand icon Click and drag the panel from the panel group and release The panel will be floating above the rest of the GUI Another exciting aspect about the new interface is that you can set up panels for multiple monitors The Animation palette for instance can be moved onto a second monitor in a dual monitor setup thus adding more space for the main Pose Room window And remember if you want to save your new interface layout you need to go to Edit gt Preferences and select Launch to Previous State the next time you open Poser your layout will be as you like it WHERE Your CONTENT LIVES All physical Poser content files must reside beneath a master folder file directory named Runtime for Poser to properly display the content in the Library panel 10 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide With Poser 8 you are able to define where your Runtime folder is created It can be in its default location or it can be in a location of your choosing When you install the program
81. 5 FIGURE 8 5 The repositioned scaled and rotated magnet It no longer looks like Ryan is wearing a bonnet 214 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide oo A p 7 x NOTE Notice in Step 5 that instead of scaling and rotating the magnet which would move the polygons in Ryan s face I scaled and rotated the magnet base to change the size and rotation of the magnet itself Always change the magnet base when you need to reposition or scale the magnets without affecting geometry 6 Ifyou move the magnet at this point to morph the cheeks the magnet will change the polygons in the entire head This is because the magnet zone currently surrounds the entire head You need to move the magnet zone forward toward the front of the face and decrease its size so that it only affects the right cheek To begin click the magnet zone the white outline around the head to make it the current object The Parameters panel will show Mag Zone 1 as the current object 7 Some Poser users find it easier to work with magnet zones when they can view them in three dimensions You can change the display of the magnet zone to Wireframe to help you visualize the area that it affects With the magnet zone selected choose Display gt Element Style gt Wireframe The mag net zone turns into a wireframe ellipsoid 8 Adjust the camera so that you see Ryan Casual s head toward the side or use the Head Cameras that you created in Chapter 2 Using Ca
82. 6 Creating the Full Body Morph FBM The Morphing Tools Tutorial 8 7 Creating Face Morphs Tutorial 8 8 Fixing Poke Throughs Distributing Morphs Avoiding Problems Everyone is like a butterfly they start out ugly and awkward and then morph into beautiful graceful butterflies that everyone loves Drew Barrymore in this case what she says is rather apropos especially in the Poser world Throughout our lives we morph into an amalgam of experiences creating the unique individuals we are It s said that the only constant in life is change and change is what I m going to talk about in this chapter changes through morphs and magnets Here you will learn what morphs are how to create them and how to manage the morphs you have You ll also learn about external binary morphs which save morphs in an external compressed file separate from the character file I might seem strange to quote Drew Barrymore in a chapter about morphs but 207 208 WHAT Main Camera Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide ARE Morpus Morphs are used in Poser to alter the shape of a Poser object For example if you want to open a character s mouth close the character s eyes or change the charac ter s shape you turn a dial to make that happen You are using morphs to accomplish those tasks In the case of the Poser 8 figures as well as Victoria 4 or Michael 4 from DAZ3D or RuntimeDNA s LaRoo2 product the models are packe
83. CTION 4 DYNAMICS CONTROLS The Dynamics Controls area contains settings that define how hair moves during animation when objects collide against it or when affected by wind forces These settings are most important when you are using Dynamic hair in an animation However they are also useful when you want to render a still image of hair while it is in motion such as when a long haired woman turns her head quickly There are eight Dynamics controls m Gravity Controls how much or how little the hair is affected by gravity Higher values weigh hair down more and negative values cause hair to float which is great for underwater or space scenes E Spring Strength Defines how much hair bounces when in motion Higher values are more bouncy m Air Damping Defines how much or how little the hair reacts to wind Higher values blow more easily m Spring Damping Defines how stretchy the hair is Lower values allow the hair to bounce longer Bend Resistance Controls how much or how little the hair is allowed to fold or bend Position Force Controls how much or how little the hair reacts to dynamic forces Higher values cause the hair to remain stiffer and more resistant to movement collision and wind Root Stiffness Controls the stiffness of the root of the hair the hair closest to the head Root Stiffness Falloff Controls how near or far from the head the stiffness range extends The Dynamic Controls
84. Cameras 27 Move Y and Z Click and drag left or right to move the camera along the Z forward backward plane Drag up or down to move the camera along the Y up down plane m Move X and Y Click and drag left or right to move the camera along the X left right plane Click and drag up or down to move the camera along the Y up down plane m Camera Plane Click and drag left or right to move the camera along the X left right axis or up or down to move the camera along the Z forward or back axis m Scale This zooms into or out from the scene without affecting focal or per spective settings m Roll Click and drag to roll the camera clockwise or counterclockwise m Focal Length Click and drag toward the left to decrease the camera s focal length click and drag toward the right to increase the focal length m Trackball Drag the trackball to rotate the camera around its center drag in the direction you want the camera to rotate CAMERA PARAMETERS The Parameters panel contains dials that allow you to set additional camera para meters although many of the parameters are the same as those in the interactive Camera Controls area To view the parameters and properties of a camera as shown in Figure 2 5 select the camera from the menu at the top of the Parameters panel The parameters are as follows m Focal Sets the camera s focal length The default setting of the Main Camera is 55 millimeters mm which is g
85. Cengage Learning 2009 or the Poser Tutorial Manual 2 Click the New Simulation button in the Cloth Simulations area of the Cloth Room The Simulation Settings dialog box appears 3 Enter JessiTop in the Simulation Name field 4 The default settings create a simulation that starts at Frame 1 and ends at Frame 30 the default length of a Poser animation Leave these settings at their defaults 5 Set the Cloth Draping value to 10 frames see Figure 7 18 This allows the top to settle on the figure s body before the Dynamic Controls calculations begin Then click OK to exit the Simulation Settings dialog 6 Next click the Clothify button in the Cloth Objects area of the Cloth Room 7 If necessary select JessiTop from the Cloth Objects drop down list and then click the Clothify button Of course you don t have to do this step if JessiTop is showing in the menu After you turn the object into cloth the buttons in the Cloth Groups and Dynamics Controls areas will be enabled 8 Before you leave the Cloth Objects section you have to tell Poser which object s the top should collide against If you do not choose any collision objects the clothing will fall to the ground Generally you want the cloth ing to collide with the smallest number of body parts possible because it will save on system resources by reducing the number of calculations that have to take place Click the Collide Against button to open the Cloth Collision
86. E 6 Change the Hair Length value to 15 and then change Pull Down to 00030 Use whichever method you re most comfortable with when changing parameters by moving the dial or by clicking on the number to activate the numeric field and typing in a new value After changing the values the strands will appear to curl downward and will be much shorter If you d like you can do a quick render to see what you have at this point but that render will not be anywhere close to what you re going to end up with In fact m sure Ryan would be very upset to look like he s loosing that much hair Normally I add hair like this so that as I m selecting polygons for the different growth groups I know where those polygons need to be selected You will see why this is important as you move through Steps 7 and 8 You can click and drag across the model to select multiple polygons at one time A square bounding box will appear when you do this showing which sections of the model will be selected Remember to use the Deselect Polygon button to remove unwanted polygons from the selection In addition you can hold down the Ctrl key and click on the polygons you want to deselect or you can also use the click and drag method to deselect multiple polygons 7 Create a new growth group click the New Growth Group button in the Hair Growth Groups area not the New Group button in the Group Editor panel I named it Head_Hair_FrontSideR because I m on
87. I LAS ele a eS un m buck Fad inex i gad a1 3 J 3 FIGURE 9 19 The detailed cutouts on the leather portions of the clothing get a greater level of displacement Chapter 9 Creating Your Own Textures 261 To complete the displacement details Ana adds a light gray border around the edges of the leather where the metallic trim appears in the texture map Light gray areas are also added to raise the jewels jewel insets eyelets and laces on the corset The last step is very important for displacement When there are stark transi tions between light and dark the displacement will leave very sharp edges instead of soft transitions Ana adds an adjustment curve that blurs and softens the edges of all the displacement layers so that the displacement effects transition smoothly from one level of displacement to another A portion of the final displacement map is shown in Figure 9 20 Auto Select Laver Show Transform Contrals A IEA POP POPS A EA ZAP OP EP LSS SOS P P A uses Normal Opacity 10 tock ra Fal 100 dpi gm m mew a o Tsao evens jrweh eriet f metal ren gt pre baak caf Laver 6 ee ee thadan team LJ lace copy a i s pecudarity metal bas A17 4 a FIGURE 9 20 The metallic trip eyelets and laces receive the highest levels of displacement while an adjustment layer adds smoothness to the transitions As you learned in Chapter 4 the
88. Interpolation Quaternion Interpolation A Short Re Pose More Animation Techniques Using the Walk Designer Blend Styles Tweaks Working in the Talk Designer Biovision Hierarchy BVH Files A Short Re Pose 370 373 374 375 377 378 378 380 382 390 391 392 395 405 408 409 410 411 411 419 421 422 423 424 431 436 438 Xiv Contents Chapter 16 Appendix A Appendix B Appendix C Rendering Options and Techniques Building Faster Scenes Rendering Environments Sketch Renderer Area Renders Comparing Renders Using the FireFly Renderer Automatic Render Settings Manual Render Settings Additional Rendering Options Saving Render Settings Production Frame Indirect Lighting The Sketch Designer A Short Re Pose Content Providers Supported File Types Frequently Asked Questions General Interface Questions Building Scenes Cameras Lights and Shadows Face Room Hair Room UV Mapping Materials Rendering Index 439 440 44 442 442 445 446 446 448 449 451 453 454 462 466 467 471 475 475 476 482 484 484 485 485 486 489 493 ma Leal Introduction the epitome of Poser knowledge written by arguably one of the most respected Poser users there is Denise Tyler That s the conundrum I was faced with when first approached by the publisher of Practical Poser 7 So I did what any ra tional person in my position would do I read the book and cogitated and cogitat
89. Objects dialog box shown in Figure 7 19 198 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide FIGURE 7 18 The Simulations Settings dialog box FIGURE 7 19 Dynamic clothing must collide against your character s body other clothing articles or other objects that it might come into contact with Chapter 7 Working With Clothing 199 9 To select collision objects click the Add Remove button in the Cloth Collision Objects dialog box The Select Objects dialog box opens 10 Select any body parts clothing or other objects that you expect will come into contact with Jessi s top Select the hip abdomen chest neck right collar and left collar Figure 7 20 shows a portion of the selected parts Select collision objects bail E Bp g et FIGURE 7 20 The suggested body parts the shirt will collide against 11 Click OK to return to the Cloth Collision Objects dialog box The various collision controls are now active So what do those things do I ll take a moment to review them Collision Offset This determines how far away from the object the material is colliding against will begin affecting that material Collision Depth This determines how close to the collision object the cloth object must be before it is affected Static Friction This determines the amount of friction that is created when the cloth object collides against the collision object s This al lows for more realistic movement because of the drag that is gene
90. Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide 1 Choose File gt Import gt Background Picture When the Open dialog box appears open the derelictBarn tif image file you downloaded from the DVD Poser tells you that the width height ratio of the background image is dif ferent from your Preview window Click Yes to force the window to match the image Figure 3 22 shows the derelictBarn tif file in the background Posing Camera FIGURE 3 22 The background image has been loaded into the Preview window If for some reason your Preview window no longer displays the entire photo select Window gt Document Window Size Then click the Match Background button and choose OK to complete the change Image It will immediately remove the picture from the scene and return your NOTE XK If you want to remove the background image go to Display gt Clear Background aspect ratio to its original settings NOTE Chapter 3 Mastering Light and Shadow 77 2 Another way you can add an image is to go into the Material Room Choose Background from the Object menu The Color channel of the Background Palette will be attached to a BG Picture node Alternatively you can use a background color of your choice specified in the BG Color node solid black Black node or a background movie BG Movie Adding a background image to the scene and forcing the Poser file to match the width height of that image is the first step in preparing your scene You want to
91. Selection to deselect those hairs 11 If your hairs are like mine on the model that is not on you personally you have some sticking through the ears Select those then shorten and translate them as well This hair section should look something like you see in Figure 6 16 Do not be afraid to rotate the view or zoom in and out so you can get a better idea of what you are doing You want to constantly change your view to make sure lt a everything is as you want it FIGURE 6 15 The vertices of the selected hairs FIGURE 6 16 The translated hairs are highlighted with small yellow squares no longer grow out of Ryan s ear 170 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide 12 Click Clear Selection 13 Select the rest of the hairs in this growth group see Figure 6 17 Use the Translate tool to sweep them backward When you finish do a quick render and your hairs should look close to what you see in Figure 6 18 Repeat this process for the rest of the hair groups before moving to the next project FIGURE 6 17 The selected hairs that will be swept back along the side of Ryan s head FIGURE 6 18 The swept back and styled hair Chapter 6 Working With Hair 171 TUTORIAL 6 4 Hair CoLor It s okay for some situations but you will more than likely want to have more variety in hair color Brunettes redheads even little blue haired men or women are possible Here s how X The default color of the hairs created in Poser s Hair
92. Setup Room Content Room FIGURE 1 2 The revised interfaces for the Material Face Hair Cloth Setup and Content Rooms Chapter 1 Everything Old Is New Again 5 Pose Hair Props Cameras Figure Face Hand Lights Materials L brary Searcti Favorites O0GOEG0000 Show Library w lt All gt x Category Figures fy FIGURE 1 3 The content directory icons positioned horizontally FIGURE 1 4 The Search panel But You re My FAVORITE If you re like me there are models you use over and over and over again Having to navigate through numerous folders can become a tedious process that just wastes unnecessary time Welcome to the new Favorites panel see Figure 1 5 Here you can store links to your favorite models those models you just can t create your images without The Favorites can also be found inside the Runtime Libraries Collections folder 6 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide Search Favorites vy 3 Figures x Andrea P i Michael 4_All Morphs Victoria 4 2 FIGURE 1 5 The Favorites panel TUTORIAL 1 1 Make THE GUI Your Own While this new look is welcome it s not uncommon that you would want to set 7 up the interface to work the way you do While these control panels are set up in fa the same default positions they always have been you might want to move them to some other location or remove some of the panels altogether Here s how 1 Notice the almost imperceptible d
93. TUTORIAL 10 1 Using UVMapper To Map A SKIRT d A In order to get used to creating UV maps let s start with something simple a skirt As you prepare to create a UV map you need to think about the main types of mapping that you have spherical planar box and cylindrical and which will work best for the particular model you are mapping UVMapper also creates polar mapping but the needs for this type of mapping aren t as common as the others Of these types of shapes a skirt most closely resembles a cylinder so that s the mapping type that will be assigned 1 Open UVMapper Professional Choose File gt Open Model and locate the Tutorials Chapter10 folder on the DVD that accompanies this book Choose skirt obj and click Open 2 UVMapper displays the statistics of the object Click OK to continue A 3D version of the skirt appears in the Perspective view on the right side of the screen Initially the left side is blank indicating that the object does not have any UV information Chapter 10 UV Mapping 275 Choose Texture gt Checker gt Color This puts a checkered pattern with numbers in the Texture view on the left This helps you position objects so that seams match and also helps you determine whether the texture map is facing in the right direction Because the skirt most resembles a cylinder in shape choose Map gt Cylindrical The Cylindrical Mapping dialog box shown in Figure 10 4 appears Cylindrical
94. With Ryan s head selected click New Growth Group and name it Ryan_HairGoup 4 Select Edit Growth Group and add the model s entire head and scalp as you see in Figure 6 12 Try to match both sides of the head as closely as possible Remember to rotate around the model making sure you don t have any unwanted polygons selected Chapter 6 Working With Hair 165 FIGURE 6 12 The selected polygons for the skullcap 5 Once everything is selected click the Create Prop button A dialog opens asking you to name this prop I named mine Ryan_Skullcap After clicking OK the new skullcap will appear outlined on Ryan s head and will also be a selection in the Props drop down menu 6 At this point I will usually go back into the Pose Room remove the model itself and then save the skullcap to a folder inside the Props folder So in the Pose room select the Ryan model and delete him leaving the skullcap hovering in space see Figure 6 13 7 Select the Poser 8 folder inside the Props folder and create a Skullcaps folder With the latter folder selected add the skullcap naming it Ryan_Skullcap Now your skullcap is saved and ready to add to your figure at any time 166 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide FIGURE 6 13 The finished skullcap But wait That s just one big ol skullcap without any areas defined like they were in Tutorial 6 1 And you are right You can take the skullcap into the Hair Room divide it into diff
95. a View from the pop up menu that appears Chapter 2 Using Cameras 21 Display Render Animation Window Scripts Help v Show Camera Names 4ux Camera Production Frame n From Left Ctrl Document Style gt From Right Ctrl Figure Style b From Top Ctrl T Element Style gt From Bottom From Front Ctrl F Depth Cued Shift Ctrl D i From Back Tracking Deformers gt Face Camera Ctr v Ground Shadows Posing Camera Ctrl Right Hand Camera Ctrl sd Naar niga Left Hand Camera Ctri v Bend Body Parts Dolly Camera Ctrl Foreground Color Background Color Fly Around Ctrl L Four Cams Shift E roun cture hift E FIGURE 2 1 Use the camera selector in the interactive Camera Controls area left or the Display gt Camera menu command right to choose a predefined camera view Poser s cameras are intended to help you accomplish many diverse tasks and accommodate a variety of personal work styles and needs You can create final ren ders from any of the cameras in Poser The Main Camera Ctrl Cmd M and the Auxiliary Camera no quick key command work in a similar fashion they rotate about the center of your scene The focus of rotation can be changed but by default these cameras rotate around the center of the scene Most people happily stick with the Main Camera to com pose and render their final scene however other cameras are available m Auxiliary Camera An excellent tool to compose you
96. ad cameras The Transform parameters are very similar to those you see in any other object DollyX DollyY and DollyZ The Dolly settings move the camera left or right X up or down Y or forward and backward Z xScale yScale and zScale The Scale settings scale the camera s width X height Y or depth Z In addition the Scale setting increases or decreases the overall size of the camera xOrbit yOrbit and zOrbit The Orbit settings rotate the cameras forward to backward X around Y or side to side Z Roll Pitch and Yaw These settings apply to the Dolly Posing Face and Hand cameras and how they rotate around their own axes Positive Roll settings turn the camera to its left scene s right positive Pitch settings make the camera pitch upward scene appears to go downward and positive Yaw settings tilt the camera to the left scene appears to tilt right Chapter 2 Using Cameras 31 Although the process to make these cameras is somewhat similar for all Poser figures you ll create a set of cameras for the figure of your choice here These cameras will allow you to view your character s head from the front back left and right when you add it to a Poser document from the library To create and save the cameras follow these steps 1 Choose File gt New to create a new scene If you have not changed the Poser preferences the default figure will appear in the scene Delete it 2 Add a different c
97. added clothing to your figures and something doesn t seem right Body parts stick out The clothing doesn t pose correctly or it doesn t pose at all Sometimes you add items from the library and you don t see clothing at all What s going on and how do you fix it The following sections anticipate some of the more common problems that Poser users face and explain how to prevent them CLOTHING DOESN T CONFORM CORRECTLY We have all faced it We go to the closet pick out our favorite shirt or pants put them on and they don t fit any more Somehow our waistlines have expanded or on the good side that diet has worked and the clothes are too big Maybe we just grabbed the wrong item and we accidentally put on our spouse s clothes Well with Poser clothing especially Conforming clothing this can happen in its digital correlation 178 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide Basically for Conforming clothing to work properly you have to use clothing that was built for the figure that wears it This is because each figure has its own body shape along with unique joint parameters that tell Poser how to bend and blend the body parts when you pose them If clothing is made for a different figure than the one you re working with it may not be enough to rescale the clothing so that it fits around the figure correctly To work properly Conforming clothing must also use joint parameters that are extremely close if not identical
98. advantage of Poser 8 s Area Render fea ture and only re render that small section of your scene as needed For clothing that does not have sizing or adjusting morphs use the xScale yScale or zScale dials in the Parameters panel to scale the body part down scale the clothing part up or do a combination of both m Use magnets or the morphing tools to alter the shape of the clothing so that it fits better These tools can shape and morph any object in Poser You ll learn more about them in Chapter 8 Creating Custom Morphs 182 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide FIGURE 7 5 Using the Hierarchy Editor you can turn the visibility of unneeded body parts on or off Some of the new models such as Victoria 4 s bodysuit take advantage of the new Magnetize Pose feature In the case of the bodysuit model you will find a folder titled Magnetize Clothing inside your Victoria 4 folder Pose DAZ s Victoria 4 Magnetize Clothing When you select Magnetize to V4 from the list the clothing will automatically be reworked to fit the Victoria 4 model When Bopy SHAPES ARE DIFFERENT Many Poser figures offer morphs that change the overall body shape Busty buxom women and muscular heroic men pervade the Poser art galleries but when you try to create and dress one of your own the figure bursts out of its clothing like the Incredible Hulk going through his metamorphosis without those miraculously stretchable pants The morphed figur
99. age Map and Movie allow you to choose image maps or animated AVI or MOV files as textures UsinG NopeEs The variety and complexity of nodes can be overwhelming when you are trying to select the right node to develop a certain type of material but after a little bit of practice you ll get the hang of which groups of nodes work best for your tastes A node s output can be used as input for any number of other nodes Wherever you see a plug icon on the right side of a root node or a regular node it indicates that you can plug the output of another node in to affect that parameter For example you can feed two images into a Subtract node a subcategory of the Math nodes and use the resulting output image to create the diffuse color of your material It is com mon practice to use the same output to drive several parameters and it often helps make the materials and environments more believable In real life we often find that many properties of materials both affect and are dependent upon each other Now that you know a bit about the anatomy of a node let s examine how you actually handle them m Parameter values Nodes typically accept several parameter types The most common are numbers colors image files and outputs from other nodes To edit parameter values click on the number you want to edit and either type the new value in the number field or use the dial to change the current value When the parameter is an image file such as
100. al you worked in Vertex Selection mode This allowed you to select points along the unwrapped mesh and modify the texture map in order for the tex ture not to stretch along the surface of the object When you choose the By Facet mode UVMapper selects the actual faces of the unwrapped mesh so you can either modify the entire mesh object or specific faces of the mesh In this tutorial you will be selecting specific faces of the mesh 6 With the Rectangular Selection tool select the entire left side of the pants to the center seam Make sure that you select all of the polygons on the in side of the leg The easiest way to do this is to start with the selection on the left side of the pants and drag to the center until the selection box is exactly over the center line of the pants 7 With the selection still active choose Map gt Cylindrical The Cylindrical Mapping dialog box appears Accept the default Y up down for the Axis Alignment option and continue with the next step 8 By default cylindrical mapping places the seam toward the back when you are mapping to the y axis You want the seam to fall on the inside of the leg To do this enter 90 degrees in the Seam Rotation field Then click OK to exit the dialog box UVMapper Professional maps the pants leg in a cylin drical fashion 280 NOTE Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide 9 You ll notice that some of the facets in the bottom of the leg are flipped around the wrong
101. alcu lated during the render rather than before the render as is the case with depth map shadows Render times are significantly increased when using raytrace shadows For the best results use the FireFly render with quality settings at least halfway as shown in Figure 3 3 Raytrace shadows will not render when FireFly is set to draft render mode Ambient Occlusion AO AO adds additional contrast to images by reducing the amount of ambient light in the shadows making them appear darker This option is typically used with IBL but can also be used with the other light types Shadow maps and ambient occlusion often confuse a lot of people even those who have used Poser or other 3D applications for some time This information will become important as you read through this and subsequent chapters as well as when you start building more intricate scenes Chapter 3 Mastering Light and Shadow 53 FIGURE 3 3 When using raytraced lights set the FireFly render quality to at least the halfway point if you also want to calculate raytrace shadows m A shadow map is basically a depth map of the scene as viewed from the light s point of view The purpose of a shadow depth map is to tell the render engine how far the effect of the light goes and which surfaces are in front of others from the light s perspective At render time the shadow map for each light is consulted to see if the spot on the currently calculating ray object is receiving
102. alue creates a more gradual transition If you set the Edge and Transparency values to the same number there would be no effect because they would cancel each other out For this project you will assign a transparency map to Ryan s shirt The trans parency map Ryan_PoserShirtTransparency tif is located in the Chapter04 folder on the DVD You will add the transparency map to the shirt which will ultimately look a bit strange because the Ryan model does not have a body underneath the shirt At the end of this short tutorial you will also discover how to fix this problem To reduce the number of polygons making up a model portions of an underlying mesh like Ryan s body that would be underneath the shirt and pants are removed This can cut down on the time needed for a computer s processor to calculate the geometry in order to render it 1 Select Shirt from the Materials pop up menu 2 In the Transparency section click the thumbnail image area and then nav igate to the Ryan_PoserShirtTransparency tif file Ifyou render now the shirt will be semi transparent because of the Falloff and Edge settings These two settings create a blurring effect on the mesh affecting the way in which the transparency is assigned to the model and in this case blending the white and black values in the transparency map creating a semi transparency You don t want this you want the shirt to be opaque and the hole in the side to be a
103. ameras 33 Library Search Favorites 0GO e 60090 Show Library w lt All gt ma lt All gt Category Fig gt Poser 8 gt 45 Poser Downloads gt 0 Downloads FIGURE 2 9 Determine what folders you want displayed by selecting an option from the Show Library pop up menu There are definite advantages to reducing the number of folders displayed in the Library panel If you have numerous Runtime folders it could get very confusing figuring out which folder contains the model you are looking for By changing the display to show only the Runtime folder you are working with it cuts down on the clutter On the other hand by having multiple Runtime folders visible you can search through them more efficiently in order to find out were a particular model is located 9 Click the Create New Folder button at the bottom of the Library list the folder with the symbol on it In the Folder Name dialog box name this new folder In this case I went out on a limb and called it Ryan Head Cameras Click OK to create the new folder When you create a new Library folder you won t actually see a folder icon in the Library panel until you add content to it Don t worry if all you see is a 0 File Name where the folder should be the icon will appear later 34 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide 10 11 12 13 14 15 Make sure Ryan s head is selected by clicking on it once or select it using any other me
104. ance caused by the texture itself The mesh of the object is not affected in any way Transparency map Determines which areas of a texture are opaque and which are transparent and also prevents shininess in transparent areas Mask map Determines the areas that should receive stronger highlights Displacement map Adds additional shape to the geometry by actually warping the mesh Mask 2 map Determines areas that will receive additional specular highlights Chapter 4 Creating Materials 91 Before starting drag the Project_01 folder from the Chapter 4 folder on the book s DVD to your desktop or to any folder where the files will be easy to access Also if necessary replace whatever figure might be in your workspace with the Ryan_Casual figure Remember with Poser 8 you can now drag the figure onto the workspace The Ryan_Casual figure comes with a really interesting shirt style Not sure where it came from but I know no one in my area would be caught wear ing that style of t shirt But that s neither here nor there Let s add a new texture to the shirt one that shows the pride you have in owning this book 1 In the Simple view section of the Material Room click the Diffuse Color thumbnail preview square The Texture Manager dialog opens to prompt you to choose another texture You can refer back to Figure 4 5 if necessary 2 Because the Body is the active element of the model you will want to change this to the shirt Using
105. anel to the Favorites list Create New Remove from Change Figure Folder Library Create New Add to Library Add to Favorites Figure FIGURE 1 12 The control buttons at the bottom of the Library panel 3 With the Andrea model selected click the Add to Favorites button A pop up menu will appear to let you create a new folder in the Favorites panel or just add the model to the main area of the panel see Figure 1 13 Select New Folder A new window appears where you can name this folder Title it Figures and click OK It will look like nothing happened 4 Switch to the Favorites tab Now you have a Figures folder and inside that is the Andrea model 14 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide ategary gt E 4 Poser 6 gt Gy 8 Poser7 v F 3 Poser8 v f 4 Additional Figures gt g 1 Animals gt 2 Hands v ri 2 Maenneguins Add to Favorites gt lt lt New Folder gt gt lt lt empty gt gt Installed Jul 1 2009 Modified Jul 17 2009 4 And ad or 6 Skeletons gt E 10 Alyson 11 Ryan gt DD 2 WalkDesigner FIGURE 1 13 The Add to Favorites submenu lets you create a new folder or save your file in the top level of the Favorites panel When you restart Poser or any time you create a new scene you can quickly add Andrea to your scene by going to the Favorites panel and doing one of two things m Double click on the model This is the other traditional method for addi
106. anything This is just another way to create a new node in the Advanced view of the Material Room 118 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide Ryan Cas PoserSurface Image_Map image_Map_2 0083333 M Blender_2 Y Cradient Bum is FIGURE 4 27 Input 1 of the Alternate Diffuse Blender node is linked to the Blender node of the Diffuse Color channel 8 In this new node click on the word None in the Image Source row Using the familiar Texture Manager dialog select the buckleReflection png image file you ve been using At this stage nothing happens because this node isn t attached to anything it s free floating waiting for a reason to exist So let s give it one 9 Link Input 2 of the Alternate Diffuse channel s Blender node to the Image Map node see Figure 4 28 for reference In the PoserSurface preview pane at the bottom left of the PoserSurface pane you will see the effect of the reflection image on the material Chapter 4 Creating Materials Belt PoserSurface Blender image_Map Image_Map_2 083333 Blender_2 Gradient Bump Image_Map_4 FIGURE 4 28 The Image Map node is linked to the Input 2 channel of the Alternate Diffuse s Blender node 10 Now let s add another node this time to the Alternate Specular channel Click on the plug icon and choose New Node gt 2D Textures gt Image Map then assign the reflectionMap png image file If you do a preview render you will
107. apping 269 The What and Why of UV Mapping 270 Types of UV Maps 271 Using UVMapper Professional 274 Making Templates 290 UV Mapping with Maxon s Body Paint 4 4 5 291 A Short Re Pose 303 Chapter 11 Groups and Materials for Models 305 About Group Names 306 Decompressing an OBZ File 310 Using Poser s Group Editor 311 Saving Grouped Objects for Later Use 317 Using Auto Group Editor to Map Grouped Models 319 Using UVMapper with Grouped Objects 325 A Short Re Pose 329 Chapter 12 From Modeler to the Poser Library 331 Importing OBJ Files 333 Anatomy of a Smart Prop 341 Creating Conforming Clothing 347 Making a CR2 File 347 Removing Morphs from a CR2 349 Cleaning Up the CR2 357 A Short Re Pose 360 Chapter 13 Joint Parameters and Dependencies 361 Adding Bones to a Figure An Overview 362 Adding the Finger Bones 364 The Joint Editor 367 Setting Joint Orders 368 Renaming Joint Parameter Dials 370 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Contents Setting Joint Centers Adjusting the Twist Axis Working with Inclusion and Exclusion Angles Using Bulge Settings Adjusting Spherical Falloff Zones Adjusting Joint Parameters for Clothing Adding Bones to Clothing Inclusion and Exclusion Angles for Clothing Spherical Falloff Zones for Clothing Setting Dependencies A Short Re Pose Animation Techniques Getting Ready to Animate Keyframes and Interpolation Animation Layers Animation Sets General Animation Tips Animation Timing Loop
108. arch it is often faster to search for a folder than an individual 4 file NOTE You can also view previous searches or later searches if you have searched backward by clicking on the left or right arrows that bracket the Search button see Figure 1 10 Library Search Favorites Searchin yj All Categories Or search only for these content types Previous Next FIGURE 1 10 Use the back and forward arrows to scroll through your searches 12 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide TUTORIAL 1 3 SAVING YOUR FAVORITE CONTENT As I mentioned earlier you probably have models you use over and over and SA over again They might be the G2 figures that come with Poser or Daz s amp Victoria 4 Michael 4 or any of the other Millennium figures Maybe it s a prop you use over and over again Or you have a specific MAT Material file you particularly like Whatever the case you can use the new Favorites tab to store and quickly retrieve often used files 1 One of my new favorites is the Andrea model searched for in the last section So that s the first one ll add to the Favorites panel In the Library panel go to the Figures category and open Poser 8 Additional Figures Mannequins and click once on the Andrea figure see Figure 1 11 Notice the difference in the way the Library panel displays content While scrolling through the content the thumbnail images are small But when you click on a model the thumbnail size incre
109. ases and you get a lot of information regarding that particular item including the files installation and modification dates and how large the model is AF Immediately beneath the Library panel is a collapsed palette Click on the handle J icon and a menu will appear that gives you control over the size of the Library s icons as well as what features you want active in the Library panel gt E 4 Poser 6 gt 5a 6 Poser v Gy 3 Poser v f 14 Agaitional Figures gt im 1 Animals gt 2 Hands X Ea 2 Mannequins Andrea Size 12 9 kB Installed Jul 1 2009 Modified Jul 17 2009 ha Andy g 6 Skeletons gt 10 Alyson gt 11 Ryan gt yj 2 WalkDesigner FIGURE 1 11 The new look for the way content is displayed in the Library panel Chapter 1 Everything Old Is New Again 13 2 Beneath the files listed is a series of buttons see Figure 1 12 These buttons include the following m Change Figure Replaces the figure in the Preview window with the one selected in the list m Create New Figure Adds the selected model to the scene while keeping all other models in the workspace m Create New Folder Creates a new folder inside the current library category m Add to Library Adds the selected item in the workspace to the selected folder in the library m Remove From Library Removes the selected item from the Library list m Add to Favorites Adds the selected item in the Library p
110. at you frequently use or how to memorize f o and restore one camera that gets saved with your Poser project TUTORIAL 2 3 CREATING YOUR OWN CAMERAS Poser 8 enables you to create your own cameras and have them appear in the A camera selection menus That means you are no longer limited to using one of A the 13 basic types of cameras that are installed with Poser And there are two camera types you can choose from when creating you new cameras Dolly or Revolving To create a new camera follow these steps 1 Choose Object gt Create Camera and choose either Dolly or Revolving from the expanded menu m The center point of a Dolly Camera is the camera itself That is it ro tates around its own axis The view of the camera changes as you move the camera around in the scene When you create a Dolly Camera Poser names it Dolly Camera followed by a number Dolly Cameras accept Roll Pitch and Yaw transformations as well as DollyX DollyY and DollyZ translations m The center point of a Revolving Camera is the center of the Poser workspace When you move a Revolving Camera you still look at the same part of the scene but you look at it from a different angle When you create a Revolving Camera Poser names it Aux Camera followed by a number Revolving Cameras also accept Roll Pitch and Yaw transformations as well as DollyX DollyY and DollyZ translations 2 To change the name of the camera select the camera from the Actor li
111. ature value at 1 750 This will help create faces that are more re alistic than those created with the setting at its default of 0 Leave the Exaggeration Min and Exaggeration Max settings at their defaults of 1 5 and 1 5 respectively 5 Click the Random Face button until you get a face that you like Figure 5 17 shows an example of a nice morph created in this manner 6 To transfer the face to the figure in the Pose Room click the Spawn Morph Target button immediately underneath the Face Preview This is a little tricky initially because it appears as if nothing happens If you click the Spawn Morph Target button again you ll actually create a second dupli cate morph So resist that urge 7 Go to the Pose Room where you will see absolutely no difference in your character s head Ah but wait Select the head and open the Parameters panel if necessary Scroll down to the bottom and you should see a new category named Morph along with a new morph named Head as shown in Figure 5 18 This is the head that you created in the Face Room Click the arrow that appears at the right of the morph and choose Settings to re name the dial to a name that you will recognize the next time you load the character 144 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide Random Face FIGURE 5 17 An interesting randomly generated face Y Head Parameters Properties Transform Twist T Side Side lt mT Bend TT Taper m Scale
112. available in the User Defined pop up menu by placing them in the Poser 8 Runtime Python poserScripts Wacros UserDefined folder within your Poser 8 installation This area of your screen is a drawer which means that you can close the drawer to hide its contents by clicking on the drawer handle 15 Click the handle again to toggle the drawer open Node Options pop up menu 11 This menu as shown in Figure 4 3 only appears in the Advanced material view where you can click the Node Options menu icon right click anywhere within the Advanced view tab or right click anywhere within a node The Node Options menu allows you the options to Cut Copy Paste Delete Apply to All Select All and Invert Selection Some options on the menu act upon the currently selected node 86 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide Materials FIGURE 4 2 The list of all model parts as seen through the Material group list menu m Library Palette 12 and the Parameters Properties panels 13 These are the same as their counterparts in the Pose Room m Animation Drawer 14 This serves the same function as it does in the Pose Room Python scripts should be installed in the default Poser Runtime folder If you install them in the Downloads folder or in another external runtime folder they may Wore generate errors The Simple view of the Material Room is the perfect place to whet your creative whistle while learning how to create materials for y
113. bove minimum NOTE recommended system specs you may prefer Prop or Conforming hair because it requires fewer resources Many people say that to effectively use the Hair Room some background in hair styling is a plus I tend to agree though I m not a hair stylist m just lucky to know how to comb my hair so I don t look like I have bed head all day So creating a strand based hairstyle is not exactly my proverbial cup of tea Has that kept me out of the Hair Room Nope Not in the least And it shouldn t keep you out either There are two considerations you will face when entering the Hair Room will this hairstyle only be used on this particular model in this particular image or will it be something you will want to use over and over again If the former then you can create Dynamic hair directly on the model if the latter you will want to create a skullcap that will then conform to or be a prop for your model s Let s first add hair to a single model then you ll move on to making and saving a skullcap Chapter 6 Working With Hair 153 Before beginning create a new scene and add the Ryan character to it Not Ryan_Casual just plain ol Ryan Because this particular model is naked or nekkid as is said in my part of the country and looks like an unclothed Ken doll I will work from the Face Camera so no one is offended I also changed the focal length of the Face Camera to 55mm rather than its default 95mm Now that
114. c s keyboard xviii Introduction DIGGING IN With all of this said it s now time to dig in and begin working with Poser 8 There s a lot to explore and discover The techniques that you learn in this book will help you get up to speed very quickly with the questions that Poser users ask most I am also open to suggestions and additional questions that can be covered in future editions of this book and I will watch the various forums in the online Poser com munities for questions or comments from readers DVD ROM DownNLoaps If you purchased an ebook version of this book and the book had a companion DVD ROM we will mail you a copy of the disc Please send ptrsupplements cengage com the title of the book the ISBN your name address and phone number Thank you Everything Old Is New Again In This Chapter Poser s New Features Tutorial 1 1 Make the GUI Your Own Where Your Content Lives Tutorial 1 2 Searching for Content Tutorial 1 3 Saving Your Favorite Content Tutorial 1 4 Creating Runtime Folders on Your Hard Drive Tutorial 1 5 Adding a New Runtime Folder to the Poser Library roots from the days when Kai Krause first designed its graphical user inter face GUI Krause was one of the preeminent user interface designers back in the 1980s According to Wikipedia Krause significantly broadened conventional notions of the graphical user interface by applying innovative design principles and providing real
115. ceived and designed layout looking unfinished and pedestrian Lighting is the descriptive prose of an image Claude Monet stated For me a landscape does not exist in its own right since its appearance changes at every moment but the sur rounding atmosphere brings it to life the light and the air which vary continually A sk any accomplished 3D artist and they will tell you that the single most 47 48 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide For me it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value And that is very very true Look at a mountain range at different times of the day and it will take on different personas The play of light on a given object gives it an ever changing character In other words embrace the light AN ILLUMINATING EXPLORATION OF LIGHT ING Lighting adds realism and texture to a scene in ways that can t be accomplished with models or textures alone Even detailed models and meticulously crafted tex tures will look mediocre if you don t pay attention to the way you light your scene Poor lighting choices can make a render look dull and lifeless Carefully planned lighting can make an image or scene come alive The advanced lighting and shadow features in Poser 8 enable you to achieve lighting effects comparable to what you would expect from more expensive software However before getting into that let s look at what types of lighting are available and how you can affect
116. cene Ryan will have a body showing through the hole in the shirt see Figure 4 21 108 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide FIGURE 4 21 Ryan now has a waist showing through the shirt THE ADVANCED VIEW AND A DISCUSSION OF NODES The Advanced view of the Material Room is like a huge collection of pipes and control points that can be connected in an infinite number of ways to create the material you want Unfortunately that s exactly what makes the Material Room seem so overwhelming at first The Advanced view is really where you take advantage of the power of Poser s material capabilities many of which work in conjunction with the FireFly render ing engine When you open the Advanced view you ll immediately notice that there are more parameters jammed into a smaller space The left side of the Advanced view window displays the PoserSurface panel which is a list of materials and their root nodes A node is a building block used in the creation of a material Nodes have specific types of inputs internal parameters formulas and outputs depending upon what type of node they are The various nodes when joined together create a material that is also known as a procedural shader also interchangeably referred to as a material shader or more simply as a shader All shaders start with a root node The basic anatomy of nodes is shown in Figure 4 22 where you see the various compo nents that can make up a node Chapter 4 Creatin
117. cket Figure 7 23 shows the selected vertices in the jacket s collar 4 Now that you ve told Poser to keep the collar where it is it s time to cloth ify the jacket Close the Group Editor panel and then click on the Calculate Simulation button to watch the magic happen Figure 7 24 shows the final clothified scene Chapter 7 Working With Clothing 205 FIGURE 7 23 The vertices along FIGURE 7 24 The jacket s collar stays in place the collar s edges are selected while the rest of the jacket is clothified A SuHort RE PoseE So there you have it common problems with Conforming and Prop clothing solved You ve discovered what those crazy blue triangles are used for in some of the clothing items The controls in the Cloth Room have been made clear or at least less muddy You ve clothified a suit You ve constrained vertices You ve done all kinds of fun stuff But it s not over yet There s more fun coming your way and some more methods for fixing those dag nabbed nagging poke throughs Yep this means you re going to work with magnets and Poser 8 s enhanced morphing features This page intentionally left blank Creating Custom Morphs In This Chapter What Are Morphs The Anatomy of a Morph Tutorial 8 1 Creating Morphs with Poser Magnets Tutorial 8 2 Saving a Magnet Tutorial 8 3 Mirroring a Magnet Tutorial 8 4 Spawning Morph Targets Tutorial 8 5 Creating the Partial Body Morph PBM Tutorial 8
118. clothing texture but want to change the color or add some extra detail to it yourself you can use your customized version for your own renders When you distribute all or part of it either for free or for sale you are entering the danger zone Several scandals have been brought to the attention of the online Poser community In some cases the scandals could have been avoided with a better understanding of copyright laws and ethical standards Ignorance of these laws does not serve as an excuse Copyrights are literally the right to copy something The original creator of the object or the material is usually the holder of the copyright unless ownership was transferred legally by contract or other written permission Basically if you don t own the copyright for something you can t use or redistribute it in whole or in part unless you obtain permission from the person or persons who hold the copyright The safest and best rule of thumb is if you didn t make it yourself don t use it without permission from the original copyright holder If there is any reason to question who the original copyright holder is the rule of thumb is when in doubt leave it out This means that you cannot copy the hand of one model onto another edit the underlying mesh or geometry of a model or take someone s texture map file and change some colors on it and then redistribute any of it without explicit permission from each of the original copyright h
119. complete your morphing session don t forget to save your new character to the Figures Library Simply navigate to the library of your choice and click the Add to Library button at the bottom of the Library panel Poser will prompt you to enter a name for your new figure and then you should see a thumbnail appear in the Figures Library 234 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide TUTORIAL 8 8 FixiING POKE THROUGHS throughs in clothing when you pose your figure Figure 8 24 shows an arm muscle that is poking through a sleeve The Morphing Tool is much easier and quicker to use than magnets for fixing these types of problems You ll also find the tool to be a very effective solution for fitting clothing to body shapes that are different from the default body shape Z Another handy use for the new morphing features is to help eliminate poke FIGURE 8 24 Diego s upper arm is poking through the sleeve of his jacket Chapter 8 Creating Custom Morphs 235 The following steps work really well when you are trying to adjust poke through in clothing a 4 A NOTE NOTE 1 Add your figure and clothing to your scene and conform the clothing to the figure In this case I used the Diego character which is located in the Figures Poser 8 Ryan folder He s a variation of the Ryan character The clothing is located in the Props Poser 8 Ryan P6 James WW Conversion folder The pose I m using can be found in the Poses Poser 8 Ryan Sta
120. cted morphs The morph data is furnished separately and library files are included in the Pose Library to inject or remove the morph data from the model Utilities such as Injection Magic and Injection Pose Builder are available at DAZ3D to help you prepare injection morphs such as these 238 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide There are also some tutorials available at DAZ3D s Tutorial Arcana www daz3d com support tutorial index php cat 6 regarding creating injec tion morphs by hand or with the previously mentioned utilities AVOIDING PROBLEMS Many things can go wrong when you create morphs For example the software you use to create the morphs might place the vertices in a different order when you save the geometry Or you can accidentally move the geometry and when you apply it to your figure the geometry might fly off in a different direction than you intended To avoid these problems here are a few things to keep in mind m Don t move the position of the figure after you import it into your modeling program For example if the figure comes into your modeling program with its feet above or below ground level don t translate the position It will affect the ending position of your morphs m Many modeling programs cannot handle the extremely small scale used in Poser If you are using a program such as Maya Cinema 4D 3D Studio Max Carrera or Hexagon go into the Preferences of both Poser and your modeler and set the
121. ctivated allows you to deselect selected polygons on your model Previous C and Next E buttons Allows you to quickly change to another growth group Chapter 6 Working With Hair 159 Current Group drop down menu D Allows you to select a specific growth group from the list E New Group button F Allows you to create a new growth group by clicking on this button Delete Group button G Clicking on this will delete the currently selected growth group Modify Selection Area m Add All button When selected all the currently selected object s polygons are added to the active group m Add Group button When selected the current group can be added to other groups making up your growth group This effectively creates a subgroup within that growth group set m Remove All button When selected this will remove the polygons from the selected group m Remove Group button When selected this removes the currently selected group and places the polygons into the main growth group This works in con junction with the Add Group button Invert button When selected it inverts the selection so the currently selected polygons are deselected and the currently unselected polygons become selected m Add Material button Clicking on this will create a material group that is assigned only to the selected polygons Hide Show Area Hide Other Objects When selected all non selected objects in your scene will be hidden If you hav
122. d other content As mentioned earlier the frustration many felt when trying to find that elusive file is now over as long as you can remember the file name that is WY Chapter 1 Everything Old Is New Again 11 1 Click on the Search tab next to the Library tab Referring back to Figure 1 4 you can see the various controls at your disposal including the Search For field and criteria for where you want Poser to look for the file in question While it may seem to be a good idea to just keep All Categories checked it can actually slow down the search response If you know you re searching for a figure then choose Figures so Poser will only search in that particu lar folder within the selected Runtime folder In order to do this deselect All Categories The content types will highlight and you can choose which folder or folders to search through Poser s Search option only searches in the selected or active Runtime library It does not search your entire hard drive for content 2 Type in Andrea This is the name of one of the two new mannequin figures that come with Poser 8 Poser loads with Andy the other mannequin on the workspace 3 Select Figures from the content types list 4 Click Search to have the program search for the model Within a few moments the model will appear There could be more than that one model in the list the search engine is not infallible but Andrea should be there 3 7 When conducting a se
123. d with morphs so many in fact you can literally create anything from photorealistic to cartoon like with a few tweaks of the dial Figure 8 1 shows Michael 4 and a small portion of the face morphs that you can work with When you move a body part with a bone it always bends twists or turns around the same center point The basic shape of the body part doesn t change much except around that center point Morphs on the other hand can affect one or all of the vertices in an object For example if you want to make your figure smile puff up his or her cheeks raise his or her eyebrows or even gain or lose weight you use one or more morphs to do it om S p am i am am am amm am g imm E Sa FIGURE 8 1 Figures such as DAZ3D s Michael 4 come with accessory morph packs that help you create whatever character you would like Chapter 8 Creating Custom Morphs 209 At its most basic and this is something I can say with confidence that you have done since the first day you opened Poser you adjust the dials in the Parameters panel or with the Face Shaping Tool in the Face Room refer to Chapter 5 to make changes to your character s pose body shape or facial features I m going to take this a bit further in this chapter so just bear with me for a few more paragraphs First in order to comfortably work with morphs it s good to know what goes into making a morph I m a big fan of knowing a little something abou
124. drive for example follow these steps oo A 7 1 Using Windows Explorer or the Finder on your Mac locate the drive onto which you want to store your extra Poser content Let s assume your secondary hard drive is drive D Create a folder that will store your additional Runtime folders For example you can call the folder Poser 8 Runtimes It helps to indicate the version number in case you have Runtime content from previous versions of Poser Inside the new folder create additional subfolders as needed For example if you want to create a folder that stores content for each of the third party figures you use you could create additional folders named James Jessi Kelvin Koji Miki Olivia and so on for each Poser figure that you own You might also want other folders for items that you can use for any char acter such as Hair or Scenery Eventually you ll have a folder structure that looks similar to Figure 1 14 J N In addition to individual files you can also select entire content folders NOTE 16 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide Poser 8 Runtimes Hair James Jessi Kelvin Koji Koshini LaRoo Michael 4 Miki Olivia Scenery Victoria 4 e viv v vV v iE v Y vie PRR ee FIGURE 1 14 Create one or more folders to organize and store Poser content in categories that suit your needs TuTORIAL 1 5 ADDING A New RUNTIME FOLDER TO THE POSER LIBRARY The second step in the
125. e a complex image with a lot of props and items assigned to the selected object this can make the view much easier to work with m Show Multigrouped Faces When selected you will see all the polygons making up a group If for instance you have created a model in a 3D modeling appli cation and grouped the polygons selecting Show Multigrouped Faces will show all the polygons in that group Show Non Grouped Faces When selected this will show all the polygons that are not part of any group 160 NOTE Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide Geometry Functions Area Create Prop Does exactly as it states When selected this will create a new prop from the selected polygons A screen will appear where you can name the prop that has been generated Spawn Props When selected creates props for all of the object s growth groups Assign Material When selected this creates a new material class for the selected polygons A material class is a defined area where a new material can be placed Assign Smoothing ID When selected this allows you to define smoothing groups so when assigning the smooth polygons feature when rendering these polygons will be smoothed into the surrounding polygons Refer to Chapter 16 Rendering Options and Techniques for more information on smoothing the polygons Create Perspective UVs When selected this assigns or maps UV coordinates to the specific polygons in the group This is especially
126. e a new scene and bring in another of the new figures that comes with Poser Alyson She is in the same Poser 8 master folder as Ryan To point eyes at a camera follow these steps NOTE 1 Pose your figure get everything but the eyes exactly the way you want it I used a pose from the Alyson Standing folder Then I took some time to give her a little friendlier expression You don t need to exactly duplicate the expression or the pose you see in the fol lowing images Take some time and create an expression or a pose you like before moving to Step 2 Chapter 2 Using Cameras 39 2 Choose the camera that you want to use for your final render For this example I moved the Main Camera closer to Alyson s face for a portrait render The Face Camera does not feature a Point At option so it won t work in this instance 3 Click one eye to select it You can see that the element is selected because its name will appear in two locations immediately above the Preview window and at the top of the Parameters panel 4 Go to Object gt Point At The Point At dialog box shown in Figure 2 14 appears Notice that this dialog box allows you to point the eye at anything in your scene You can point it at an object the character is holding for example or at another figure in the scene 5 Choose the Main Camera the one you selected in Step 2 Then click OK to apply the setting If you accidentally selected an item you don t want y
127. e able to import the PZ3 the native Poser format or PZZ the compressed Poser format files into their mod eling program of choice and have an extremely high quality still or animated figure in their scene This can now save hours of work while producing high quality fig ure animations perfect for web television or movie productions Poser therefore is much more than its humble beginnings would ever have indicated Wuat Asout THis Book s CONTENT It is assumed that you have a strong working knowledge of Poser While many introductory aspects are covered in the HTML files included on the accompanying DVD you vill be best served to review the Poser Reference Manual and the Poser Tutorial Manual that came with your software In these pages you will be taken further into the program find out more about the new features and discover just how powerful Poser 8 has become Nearly everything in Poser 8 has been upgraded In many cases these upgrades are under the hood On the other hand there are numerous changes that will imme diately jump out at you The first chapter will deal with the most apparent update the graphical user interface GUI I then move to higher level topics mainly cov ering the features that you ll find in the Poser rooms You ll learn how to prepare photographs so that you get the best results in the Face Room You ll also learn how to create and save custom faces in the Face Room You ll learn how to use the Hair Room
128. e changes to the mesh for as often as a single brushstroke passes over the same polygons Uncheck this option to make changes to the mesh when the brush passes over polygons only once Stroke Check this option to allow mouse movements to adjust the degree of the morph in the area on which you first clicked the brush Uncheck this option to allow the brush to affect areas outside the initial area you clicked upon This latter option allows you to paint morphs on your geometry very freely Group Check this option to specify the groups the Morphing Tool will affect Enable this option to display a list of all polygon groups that exist for the cur rent actor and then select a group to work on Display Mesh Check this option to display the wireframe mesh as a guide while you create your morphs Display Brush By default Poser displays the area that the Morphing Tool will affect as a multicolored circular area with the red part of the circle having the most effect and the green area of the circle having the least effect An example is shown in Figure 8 21 If you find the display distracting check this option to hide it while you work on your morphs Work with Current Morphs Check this option if you want to create a morph that works in combination with other morph settings Set the existing morphs as desired and then use the Morphing Tool to customize the morphs further 230 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide When you set the previ
129. e of Michael 4 in Figure 7 6 shows you an example of this Chapter 7 Working With Clothing 183 FIGURE 7 6 DAZ3D s Michael 4 has gotten a bit too big for his britches The ability to create your own characters is part of the fun of Poser But what fun is it if they don t fit into their clothing Certainly there must be a solution actually there are several m Ifyouare using DAZ3D figures Michael Victoria Stephanie Petite David Aiko and others many DAZ original Conforming clothing products include most if not all of the morphs that the figures include Other merchants that make clothing for DAZ3D figures include morphs that are compatible with only the most popular body morphs When body morphs are included a complete morph list usually appears on the DAZ3D product information pages Use the same morph settings in the clothing as you did when you created your character 184 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide m When Conforming clothing does not contain body shaping morphs you can use utilities like The Tailor available at www daz3d com for PC only or the Wardrobe Wizard which is now included in Poser 8 It is accessible in the Scripts drop down menu at the top of the Poser screen The Tailor allows you to alter clothing made for a particular figure so that it fits a morphed version of the same figure Wardrobe Wizard is a Python script that converts clothing from one Poser figure to fit another This utility supports
130. e of the cutouts adds additional dimension Curved lines are added to form a metallic border around the leather corset sleeves and legs and then beveled to add dimension to the trim Figure 9 5 shows these additions Chapter 9 Creating Your Own Textures 247 E Adobe Photoshop z Smo 3 Fle Ede Image Layer Select Fie View Window Heip Maho Salai Layer Show Tranchorm Cantrok ED mmn Goes 456M 163 3 FIGURE 9 3 The Bootie texture is made up of several layers a gray fill two lace layers seams on the collar panties and arms and leather areas on the sleeves Dy Chato Select Layer Show Tranefortn Coriroks Ps Layers Chanosk Lpy TA TA A ER EA TR ER AR A A A TA P L A FA PA TALA LTR FR TR a Opiy 107 Loch a 2 B coe g cow cth S y DB cm a nae lee ee s a EA buck gt q uth dow ies ee lewher base C4 tant modesty panel Doct 456M 163 2M FIGURE 9 4 Leather and intricate detailing are added to the corset 248 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide my Ato Select Layer Show Transform Controt Layers i 2 mo fs j2 jD jis j5 j6 j7 j0 j9 po L ous i Opty 100 Lock a gt imeal bits A g E Curves 9 E dover meta bits EA corsa malal outre gt L Jona tatal outline base C Jo mes border EA hagr metal border baza gt A band melal outline APE kad decoranon FIGURE 9 5 Metal
131. e still seeing the area you are affecting This way you can change brush sizes and interactively see the area of the model that will be affected 5 Adjust the Magnitude setting until the brush responds to your liking Too high of a value makes the morph brush work too easily Lower values give you finer control of the brush effect Test the setting by making adjustments to the face with the Morphing Tool and click the Zero Morph button to restore the face to its original shape before you continue finding a setting you like In this example I used a setting of 0 174 232 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide 6 Uncheck the Accumulate option and check the Stroke option This allows you to work anywhere on the face with the morphing brush 7 Make some changes to the left side Ryan s face In this example I made changes to his cheek and into his jaw just under his lower lip to simulate a swollen area where he might have a tooth problem You may need to use a combination of Push Pull Smooth and Restore to get the shape you want An example of the change I made is shown in Figure 8 22 8 Fortunately there is an easy way to make the morph symmetrical on the other side of the face You can use the Mirror feature to create an identical morph on the right side of Ryan s face see Figure 8 23 To do so click the Mirror button in the lower section of the Morphing Tool Because you want to mirror the left side x to the right side x
132. e to build the foundation of your materials You can then go to the Advanced view to enhance that base texture to fit your needs But you might be saying to yourself Hey He went through that awfully fast And you would be right There are entire books out there that deal entirely with creating textures and almost all of them go into great detail regarding node based texturing The nodes in Poser s Advanced view are the same as in most other 3D applications although the interface will be different So if you want to travel further into the complexities of texture creation you might want to look into texture specific books on the market and use those to work in Poser s Advanced view of the Material Room It will be well worth your while You re now going to explore another area of Poser that seems to confuse people more than many other aspect of the program the Face Room So after you re finished practicing with nodes move on to Chapter 5 This page intentionally left blank Creating Custom Faces In This Chapter Face Room Overview Tutorial 5 1 Creating Texture Guides Tutorial 5 2 Preparing Your Photos Tutorial 5 3 Matching Ethnic Textures to the Body Tutorial 5 4 Saving Multiple Faces in One Figure Tutorial 5 5 Like Putty in Your Virtual Hands I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that Lauren Bacall two quotes you can say that two photos are worth a million faces
133. ed If you take the time to use the right type of mapping on each object or each portion of an object you can avoid stretching and distortion Sometimes the right mapping isn t obvious especially with organic shapes so you have to experiment with what works best With careful study you can break any object into one or more of these different shapes Before we get on with the tutorials it will help you to see how the different types of mapping look on different shapes It is important to note that the results of the various types of mapping also vary depending on which axis you orient the mapping to With that in mind the examples shown in Figures 10 1 through 10 3 show objects oriented as they would normally appear top up bottom down and with front facing toward the viewer at a slight angle Figure 10 1 shows how a sphere looks when mapped with each of the different mapping types In this example both spherical top left and cylindrical bottom right mapping do an adequate job of mapping the sphere with minimal distortion On the other hand planar mapping top right creates distortion on the sides and box mapping bottom left creates too many seams 272 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide FIGURE 10 1 Going clockwise from upper left a sample of spherical planar box and cylindrical mapping In Figure 10 2 you see a cube that is mapped with the various mapping types The most natural choice for a cube is box mapping
134. ed and then cogitated some more Satisfied that I had sufficiently engulfed myself in the material I re read the book and then thought about it some more Then it finally came to me I couldn t do it I couldn t rewrite what is already a staple in many users libraries What I could do was carry the torch I could add to and augment what was already there This is Poser after all No matter the updates there is still a comfortable familiarity with the program that has been meticulously retained by everyone involved in its production By becoming involved with this book there is almost a feeling of coming home I have been involved with Poser since version 1 One of the first books I ever wrote was Poser 4 Pro Pack fx and Design which was fairly well received and the first one produced covering the program It s amazing how far Larry Weinberg s brainchild has come since then see www larryweinberg com gallery2 v PoserHistory Having started as an experiment in creating posing references for comic book artists Poser has become a program that many artists use to assuage their artistic muse on a daily basis I look back at my history with the program I initially bought it due to curiosity After I opened it and played around for a while I decided that maybe I could use it with my new company Back then those first generation mod els looked amazing and there had to be some way for me to incorporate them in the layout work I was doing
135. ed band tattoo The displacement map is too strong but I gave numbers that would best show how the displacement works You should change the setting to best fit your vision of what a tatt like this would look like A SHort RE Pose Now that you have worked with textures and modified existing UV maps you re set to start experimenting and building your own textures either for your own use or to sell There are entire books that cover texture creation and how to make photore alistic materials from scratch That didn t fall under the scope of this chapter but you got an introduction and some knowledge of what to look for and what tech niques to use to create specific looks in your texture files In the next chapter you ll take it a little farther learning how to create your own UV maps so that if you begin creating content for Poser you can create the texture maps as well UV Mapping In This Chapter The What and Why of UV Mapping Using UVMapper Professional Tutorial 10 1 Using UVMapper to Map a Skirt Tutorial 10 2 Using UVMapper to Map Pants Tutorial 10 3 Using UVMapper to Map a Shirt Making Templates UV Mapping with Maxon s Body Paint 4 4 5 Tutorial 10 4 Importing a Poser OBJ File into Body Paint Tutorial 10 5 UV Mapping a Shirt Using Body Paint Tve been researching the plants and looking at their heights time color texture and foliage Cindy Gehm the most common maps most people will work
136. el only While you have controls to create a prop there is no way of grouping these six separate regions Bangs FrontSideR FrontSideL BackSideR BackSideL and Back into one large skullcap You can select each of them and create a separate skullcap for each head section or skull segment if you will but that would be very inefficient to work with Let s take a few moments to define an area that can be used as a skullcap and then export it as a prop for use on different instances of the Ryan model When you create a skullcap you cannot redistribute that file or make money off of it This is because the polygons that have been created are extracted from a copyright protected model The only way you can make a skullcap that can be redistributed either for free or for a fee is to model your own skullcap in a modeling program such as Cinema 4D Maya or 3D Studio Max to name a few 1 Create a new file remove Andy and add Ryan I m starting to feel like those two models are old friends who come over watch the big game with me and join me to quaff a few drinks on a quiet Saturday evening Kinda sad isn t it I have included a new face file on the DVD It s located in the Chapter06 Runtime Libraries Face Poser 8 Ryan_Originals folder and is named Clarence fc2 Iam using this face for this tutorial and if you want you can use it as well 2 Set the camera the same way you did in Tutorial 6 1 and go into the Hair Room 3
137. elp keep vertices in place in relation to your figure For example they will keep the strap of a dress in place if your figure drops her shoulder Soft Decorated Groups Used for items like pockets or other flexible decorations that are not attached to the main clothing article This prevents the pockets from falling off the clothing m Rigid Decorated Groups Used for items like buttons cufflinks jewelry or other rigid objects that are a part of the clothing but not attached to the geometry Finally the Dynamics Controls area contains several parameters that help you define the behavior of the cloth CREATING AND SAVING DYNAMIC CLOTHING Although the Cloth Room is relatively easy to use it is very resource intensive Chances are you might need to use more than one article of Dynamic clothing in a scene If resources are scarce make sure you pay attention to the polygon counts in your Dynamic clothing especially if you are going to use more than one piece of Dynamic clothing in each scene Remember that each piece of clothing will require a separate simulation You can either calculate all simulations at the same time or calculate each simulation individually It is also easier to use pieces of clothing that were designed to work together For example if you have a shirt pants vest and coat that were purchased in the same set chances are very good that they were designed in layers In other words if you put the shirt on it t
138. en you render your scene it will look something close to what you see in Figure 4 18 FIGURE 4 18 The belt now has a texture and displacement map assigned to it Also if you copy the Diffuse Color material to the Highlight section you can get a belt that has more of a leather look to it see Figure 4 19 Experiment a little bit until you get something you like Chapter 4 Creating Materials 105 FIGURE 4 19 With highlights the belt can look more leather like TUTORIAL 4 6 WORKING WITH TRANSPARENCY Maps And now you re at the final section of the Material Room Simple view A Transparency As you may know transparencies are determined using shades fuo of gray with black being totally transparent and white being totally opaque There are three options associated with the Transparency setting Transparency Edge and Falloff m Transparency Creates a transparent region based upon black values in an assigned image or in a texture Black will be totally transparent white is opaque and shades of gray create semi transparent areas m Edge This parameter determines how transparent the edge of the object will be A high Edge value makes the edges of the object more transparent 106 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide a A 7 A NOTE Falloff This parameter sets the rate at which the transparency becomes more opaque as you approach the edge s of an object A smaller value produces a sharper edge while a higher v
139. ender things look pretty good But 7 remember you can use image based lighting to control the color and quality of I the light to make your figure look like he s actually being lit by the image itself Chapter 3 Mastering Light and Shadow 79 FIGURE 3 24 Position the camera so that James appears to be walking across the rocks and so that the perspective of the Ground plane matches that of the photograph You ll go into the Material Room to do this But first get rid of the lights so you can start with a blank slate 1 Choose Window gt Python Scripts and use the Utility Funcs gt Delete All Lights script to delete the default light set from your scene 2 Use the Create Light icon in the Light Controls panel to create a new spot light Change the color of the light to white 3 Click the Material tab to enter the Material Room In the Wacros panel at the right click the IBL button The Texture Manager dialog box appears as shown in Figure 3 25 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide 11 12 Texture Manager Choose a texture for Image_Map w derelictBarnA hdr 2 rar Cancel FIGURE 3 25 The Texture Manager dialog box asks you to choose a texture for your IBL light scheme The Texture Manager dialog box asks you to choose a texture for the image map At this prompt you will choose the image that you will use for the light probe Click the Browse button and locate the derelictBarnA hdr file After you
140. ender morph category and then expand the Ethnicity morph category Set the Less More African morph value to 0 500 Your character should now look like the one shown in Figure 5 15 4 Immediately under the Face Preview area click the Apply Shape Only button to add the face morph to James Do not click the Apply to Figure button or else the head shape and the texture will automatically be applied to the figure You only want the features applied at this point gt When you click the Apply Shape Only or the Apply to Figure button you will not automatically be taken back to the Pose Room To see your changes applied to the actual figure click on the Pose tab NOTE Chapter5 Creating Custom Faces 141 FIGURE 5 15 James s face has been modified and the color of the skin texture has been changed 5 If you try to apply the head texture to James at this point Poser automati cally generates an alpha map that blends the head texture with the current body texture Unfortunately this won t look quite right with an ethnic tex ture The way around it is to save the ethnic texture into a separate file and manually apply it to the head in the Material Room To begin this process click the Save icon that appears at the right of the Texture Preview area shown in Figure 5 16 Poser asks if you want to change the resolution of the texture Choose Yes to save the texture at 1024 x 1024 Choose the folder to which you want to save the texture a
141. erent sections as you did in the last tutorial re save that prop and when you add it into your scenes select the groups and add the hair to them TUTORIAL 6 3 STYLIN THE GROWTH GROUPS Let s return to tutorials gone by Tutorial 6 1 that is and continue the tour l of the Hair Room controls You have set the hairs for the different sections of a Ryan s head but you haven t styled those hairs yet Let s look at how you do that Chapter 6 Working With Hair 167 1 Re open RyanHair and go back to the Hair Room 2 Select the Head_Hair_Bangs growth group and then click the Grow Guide Hairs button In this instance it makes sense to have the hair combed back and one of the easiest ways of accomplishing that is to use the Pull Down and Pull Back controls Using these controls is not always the best but it will work for this instance 3 Change the Pull Back and Pull Down values to the following m Pull Back 0 00210 m Pull Down 0 00005 Figure 6 14 shows the hairs sweeping back across Ryan s head You can also use the Pull Side control to have the hair sweep to either side of Ryan s face But for this PI just have it sweep back FIGURE 6 14 Ryan s thin hair is swept back using the Pull Back and Pull Down controls 168 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide 4 Select Head_Hair_FrontSideR This time you re going to work with Section 3 of the screen Styling Controls Here is a breakdown of the various
142. ff Multiply with Lights and Multiply with Object Color Figure 4 16 shows the metal elements with the buckleReflection png image assigned Map Strength at 75 and both Multiply with Lights and Object Color turned on 102 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide FIGURE 4 16 The reflection with the Map Strength at 75 and both the Multiply with Lights and Object Color options turned on TuToriAL 4 5 AppiINGc A Bump Map Adding bump maps can drastically alter the way a viewer perceives the reality of A your overall material Most objects have some sort of chaos to their surface even glass plastic and other seemingly smooth objects When you add a bump map to your object it gives the appearance of high and low points without actually changing the geometry of your model By clicking on Displacement in the Bump section of the Simple view you are telling Poser to actually alter the geometry of the shape with the high and low points actually warping the mesh Figure 4 17 shows the same metal ball from Tutorial 4 4 with the metalMat png assigned as the bump As you can see in the left hand image the ball looks very bumpy But look closer The edges of the ball are perfectly smooth So the bump map is merely giving the impression of height whereas when I turned on displacement the right hand image the metal ball s mesh has been altered Chapter 4 Creating Materials 103 FIGURE 4 17 A comparison between a bump map left and a dis
143. g Materials 109 PoserSurface 2 5 image_Map 7 FIGURE 4 22 The basic anatomy of nodes in the Advanced view Each of these items serves the following purposes PoserSurface panel 1 This is also referred to as the root node This panel is the central gathering point for each material shader s root node It accepts input from various components colors settings and other nodes to define and create the current material A root node has no node outputs to connect to other nodes instead its output is the material shader itself The panel shows a preview of the material in its PoserSurface preview pane 8 in real time a handy feature when editing nodes and making changes to parameter values Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide Output 2 Each node except the root node has at least one output connector The output value is based on the functionality of the node the input s fed into it and the values of the parameters used in its calculations Outputs are depicted by the male half of a two pronged electrical plug Parameter view toggle 3 This toggles the display of the node s parameter value area Output preview toggle 4 Toggles the display of the node s Output preview pane 6 m Input s 5 All nodes have at least one input connection although not all nodes require external inputs to function Inputs are depicted by the female half of a two pronged electrical plug Output preview pa
144. ger right Chapter5 Creating Custom Faces 137 10 Save this image as either a TIF PNG BMP or PCX file You could also save the file as a GIF or JPG but both of those formats are lossy they throw away some file information and aren t recommended for high quality work The GIF file format only supports 256 colors of the 16 7 million available and the JPG format throws away information it says it doesn t need in order to simply look good on a screen 11 Now for the side view This view is probably the most critical when it comes to avoiding distortion in the final texture Most distortion comes from the head being tilted differently from the Poser figure You will use the Side jpg image as the guide to properly align the angle of the photo graph As you did with the front photo scale the side view photo to size and then rotate it Figure 5 12 shows the finished setup A FIGURE 5 12 The scaled and rotated photograph shown over the guide image 12 Using the same techniques as in Steps 6 7 and 9 modify the photograph to fit as closely as possible with the guide layer You might need to include the ear this time lining up key areas with the model s ear 13 Save the side image in the format of your choosing preferably in a lossless format 138 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide 14 Import the revised photographs into the front and side views in the Face Room s Photo Lineup You will probably see that
145. gh dynamic range imagery HDRI for an even more realistic appearance REVIEWING THE LIGHT CONTROLS The basic lighting control is one of the more iconic elements in the Poser interface In that small package comes a wealth of control for adding and manipulating lights in your scene As a review let s look at what controls are at your disposal You can refer to Figure 3 2 as you read through this section Light Controls Light Position Indicator Create Light Light Intensity Delete Light Light Properties Light Color FIGURE 3 2 The Light Controls panel Chapter 3 Mastering Light and Shadow 51 Create Light Click to create a new light which is configured as a spotlight by default New lights generally appear above and to the right of the Preview win dow left side facing you m Delete Light Deletes the currently selected light Verify that you have selected the correct light before you delete it as this action is not reversible Light Properties Displays the properties of the currently selected light in the Properties panel m Light Colors Click the Light Color icon to open a color picker and select a new color for the light Light Intensity Adjusts the brightness of the light from 0 to 100 You can in crease the setting to greater than 100 to create very bright lights You can also enter negative values for interesting shadow effects Light Position Indicator Click and drag to position the
146. guration files for all the supported figures And because a wide variety of third party figures are also available for use in Poser you ll learn about a handy feature that works for any figure that contains morphs With the Randomize Morphs Python script you can create unique faces for other Poser compatible figures Face Room OVERVIEW The main areas of the Face Room are shown in Figure 5 1 Each of these areas serves a specific purpose and helps you achieve a wide range of characters for your Poser scenes The following sections give a brief overview of the Photo Lineup area texture variation face sculpting Texture Preview Action buttons and Face Shaping Tool FIGURE 5 1 The Face Room areas Photo Lineup 1 Face Shaping Tool 2 Face Texture Tool 3 Texture Preview 4 Face Preview 5 and the Action buttons 6 Chapter5 Creating Custom Faces 125 The Photo Lineup area perhaps the most challenging part of the Face Room is shown in Figure 5 2 Use this area to import front and side photos of the same person and to create a face texture for your character As you work with the facial outlines and feature points in the Face Room you will get the best results in the Photo Lineup area if you take your time save often and make changes in baby steps Photo Lineup front Apply Shape FIGURE 5 2 The Photo Lineup area is used to create the texture using a front and side view photo Most people new to the Face Room tr
147. h it all the way to the edge you would have straight edges when you reduced the size of the layer Now you can add your reflection map to a folder of your choice within Poser and use it whenever you want The map I made is available in the Chapter 9 folder on the DVD Chapter 9 Creating Your Own Textures 257 Bump Maps Bump maps are usually grayscale images Light white values create areas that appear more raised from the original surface of the mesh and dark black areas appear more indented or recessed from the surface This effect is most apparent where the sur face of the object is perpendicular to the camera and falls off as you get to the edges of the object For this reason bump maps are great for objects that are farther away or for objects whose edges are not prominent or are hidden behind other objects For the bump map Ana starts with a black background On a new layer she selects all non transparent areas in the clothing and fills the selection with a middle gray that has some noise added to it for texture The noise adds to the bumpiness of the base bump map Over the base noise layer she selects the leather areas on the corset sleeves and legs and fills them with a varied gray base with a slight leather appearance The areas of the lacing and eyelets are made lighter to raise them from the leather area of the corset Figure 9 15 shows the initial progress Fie Edt image Layer Select Hiker wiew Window Help SO Feather
148. h the cloth ing While this works very well it s rather tedious having to go to the pop up menu select the body part and then turn off its visibility Chapter 7 Working With Clothing 181 Y Right Thigh Parameters Properties Internal name rThigh Name Right Thigh O Visible M Visible in Raytracing M Bend M Casts shadows LJ Collision detection Apply Collision Setting to Children Load Morph Target Displacement Bounds TTT gt 0 000000 Shading rate 0 20 M Smooth polygons Crease Angle 80 00 FIGURE 7 4 After selecting the body part visibility has been turned off in the Parameters panel m Go to Window gt Hierarchy Editor scroll down the list of elements in your scene and then uncheck the parts you don t want to see in the render Figure 7 5 shows the Hierarchy panel and the Left Thigh element turned off E Sometimes a body part is only partially covered by clothing so you won t have the option of hiding it In cases like these select one of the problem sections in the clothing or the body selection itself Check the Parameters panel for morphs that loosen the clothing in the offending body part and use them to adjust the clothing m Another option to address partially covered body parts is to do two renders one with the body part visible and another with the body part invisible and then composite the two images in your favorite graphics editor If you decide to use this method you can also take
149. hair groups click once on the New Growth Group button in Section 1 A window will open asking you to name this particular growth group Name the group whatever makes sense for you and then click OK All the controls in Sections 1 and 2 of the Hair Room will become active 3 Click the Edit Growth Group button in Section 1 This will open the Group Editor panel see Figure 6 7 and turn the figure on the main workspace gray so you can more easily see the polygons you select The Group Editor panel is used in many of the rooms including the Cloth Material Set Up and of course Hair Room You need to be very aware of what you re doing within this panel because you can actually make a permanent change to the model and inadvertently mess it up 158 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide Group Ed tor Polygon C lt lt headHair gt gt F New Group Delete Group G Modify Selection Add All Add Group Remove All Remove Grou Invert Add Material C Hide other objects C Show multigrouped faces CI Show non grouped faces Geometry Functions Create Prop Spawn Props Assign Material Assign Smoothing ld Create Perspective UVs Reverse Group Normals Auto Group Weld Group FIGURE 6 7 The Group Editor panel Referring to Figure 6 7 let s take a moment to look at these controls Group Editor Area m Select button A When activated allows you to select polygons on your model m Deselect button B When a
150. haracter from the Figures Library In this example let s use the new Ryan Casual which you can find in the Figures Poser Ryan folder Drag the figure onto the Preferences window 3 Use the Figure gt Use Inverse Kinematics menu command to turn off Inverse Kinematics on the right and left legs 4 Choose Window gt Joint Editor and click the Zero Figure button in the Joint Editor to zero the position of your figure Close the Joint Editor when you are finished 5 Using one of the methods discussed earlier switch to the Front Camera 6 Use the drop down menu at the top of the Parameters panel to display the parameters for the Front Camera as shown in Figure 2 7 Body Parts Body Props Main Camera Aux Camera Posing Camera Dolly Camera Left Camera Right Camera Top Camera Bottom Camera Front Camera 1 Back Camera a Face Camera LHand Camera RHand Camera xRotate Shadow Litel Cam a oaa Shadow Lite 2 Cam Shadow Lite 3 Cam zRotate N FIGURE 2 7 Use the drop down menu in the Parameters panel to select the Front Camera 32 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide 7 Adjust the DollyY and Scale settings until you get a close up of your char acter s head To help you get started use the following values m DollyY 31 485 m Scale 18 The DollyY control moves the camera up and down along the Y axis while Scale acts like a zoom control and for all intents and purposes moves the figure closer to the camera
151. helpful when you need to place a specific image map section onto a corresponding section of your model Reverse Group Normals When selected this reverses the normals the way the polygons face This is often good for environmental mapping Auto Group This is used when you are ready to take a model into the Setup Room see Chapter 13 Joint Parameters and Dependencies to create a cus tom Poser figure Weld Group This is used if you want to rename or rework predefined groups that have already had a bone structure applied so you can change their setup in the Setup Room 4 With the Select button active select the forehead polygons as shown in Figure 6 8 It can often be difficult to select polygons if your Preview window is set up to dis play in the Smooth or Texture Shaded modes To more precisely select the polygons you want change to Smooth Lined mode After you have chosen the polygons and grown some hair you might want to change back to Smooth or Texture Shaded so that the polygons are no longer visible 5 Click the Grow Guide Hairs button in Section 2 Growth Controls A set of strands will sprout from the selected polygons see Figure 6 9 Chapter 6 Working With Hair 161 FIGURE 6 8 The selected forehead polygons that will become the Bangs hair group FIGURE 6 9 Strands of hair sprouting from the head wild and crazy and totally not what you ll end up with 162 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide NOT
152. her Opx Style Normal Pass Through Opachy 100 ii E Bm gt i aj iver d copy j a taver 91 copy 7 GEJ BG DP gt lace bewel copy ull Oe el a FIGURE 9 17 Decorations and metal trim are added to the brightest layers of the bump map DISPLACEMENT Maps To create her displacement map Ana once again begins with a solid black layer Next she duplicates a copy of the lace layer and places it above the black base A third layer adds deep shadows at the seams of the garment Next lighter gray seams are added around the panties and the leather on the corset arms and legs is filled with a solid gray value that is similar to the lightest color in the lace Figure 9 18 shows the progress thus far A slightly lighter shade of gray is added around the center of the corset to raise its level slightly Next the cutouts on the arms legs and corset are duplicated and brightened to raise the detail outward from the base leather on the sleeves Figure 9 19 shows this next level of displacement which really adds a lot of detail and di mension to the leather areas 260 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide fie Ed Image Lever Select Pier View Window Hep Saar i we ree Teserhoom Carirah a 4 3 FIGURE 9 18 Deep gray provides the least amount of displacement for the lace and leather areas of the corset Pat AA AA A AN AN AN I I f FA
153. highlight that is acceptable FIGURE 3 12 A final rendered portrait of Andy using the three point lighting technique a A x NOTE Chapter 3 Mastering Light and Shadow 65 This is pretty good Andy s pretty well lit But what about those highlights How will these lights translate to a humanoid figure Save this file and let s replace Andy with Ryan Casual so that the latter is in the exact location as the former 9 10 Go to the Figures category and choose Poser 8 gt Ryan gt Ryan Casual and then click the single check mark button under the Figures list This is the Change Figure button When you click on this the Change Figure dialog will appear For now leave all selections unchecked and click OK In the next window leave Keep Current Proportions unchecked and click OK Ryan will be placed into the scene exactly where Andy was Notice that Ryan looks dark the lights aren t affecting the figure That s because I broke the Point At links Remember I had the lights pointing at Andy s head but Andy s not there any more To make the lights affect Ryan select each light and set Point At to Ryan s head When you replace one model with another the new model will retain the name of the original model So Ryan Casual will continue to have the name Andy It s a little bug that will hopefully be fixed in later versions of Poser 11 12 13 Take a few moments to pose him In my case I set Point At t
154. hting nodes These work with lighting properties Each of the five categories Specular Diffuse Special Ray Trace and Environment Map has a submenu of additional choices Some interesting lighting nodes gather light from envi ronmental inputs such as the probe light in the Diffuse subcategory and gather in the Ray Trace subcategory nodes m Variable nodes These return values based on the current point on an object being rendered These nodes have very cryptic variable names such as N P frame_number u v Du Dv dPdv dPdu dNdv and dNdu Their purpose is to look at various values that are being returned at any given point in time For example the N node returns the value of the normal at the current point on an object the frame_number node returns the current frame number and the v node returns the coordinate in space of the current point on the current object Chapter 4 Creating Materials 113 m 3D Texture nodes These are math based or often fractal based and create output that is calculated for all three spatial dimensions X Y and Z Many of these nodes can be used to simulate natural materials Nodes included in this category are Fractal Aum fBm Turbulence Noise Cellular Clouds Spots Marble Granite Wood and Wave3d m 2D Texture nodes These produce output based on 2D transformations X and Y You can use these nodes to create 2D patterns such as Wave2d Brick Tile and Weave Two additional 2D textures Im
155. iRes file with the xTran yTran and zTran dials set to 0 bu 1000 FIGURE 7 15 The Import Options dialog box Chapter 7 Working With Clothing 195 8 Select Jessi s hip as the parent for the top as shown in Figure 7 16 Choose OK to continue Why choose the hip rather than her body When you zeroed the figure the zero point became the common point along the model By choosing the hip for all the clothing objects they clothify around a common point on the model so they fall correctly on the character s extremities 9 Repeat Steps 6 through 8 to import JessiSkirt obj from the same location as the top Again select Jessi s hip as the parent to the skirt 10 Repeat Steps 6 through 8 to import JessiJacket obj from the same location as the top Once more Jessi s hip will be the parent to the jacket Figure 7 17 shows Jessi more modestly dressed and ready to have her clothes clothified FIGURE 7 16 Jessi s hip element selected in the Object Parent dialog box 196 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide FIGURE 7 17 Jessi s clothes are ready to be clothified TUTORIAL 7 2 MAKING MULTIPLE SIMULATIONS should always create the simulations for the underlying layers first and then follow with each subsequent layer until you reach the top most layers Think of the way that you dress and the order in which you put on your clothing In this tutorial Pm going to assume that you put your shirt on before your pants or your sk
156. ick any object or any part of an object to load or edit the material used on the selected part E Preview window 2 Camera Controls 3 Light Controls 4 UI Dots 5 and the Document Display Style toolbar 6 Each of these does the exact same thing as it does in the Pose Room m Material Room interface mode tabs 7 These tabs allow you to switch between the Simple and Advanced material editing view formats Object list menu 8 The Object list menu allows you to select an object in the current scene You can also select the Background Atmosphere and Lights options Chapter 4 Creating Materials 85 10 1 000000000 ex 12 53 Poser sB 12 20 vaiwene ec gt BBD ns 20 vawene Connie gt D 11 20 Universe Pirate gt DY ts 20 veers toons gt i is 20 uuene uor D 14 20 usmene ww BBD 112 sowane Teon Gamps j i moa gt D 16 sopnances iu somamanece FIGURE 4 1 The Material Room interface showing the Advanced view Material group list menu 9 The Material group list menu allows you to se lect any of the materials that are associated with the current object The current object appears in the Object list menu Figure 4 2 shows the expanded list for the Ryan character m Wacros drawer 10 Wacros are Python scripts created to work specifically with materials Several predefined wacros cover the most common Material Room tasks You can create your own wacro scripts and make them
157. iew and a Discussion of Nodes Tutorial 4 7 Working in the Advanced View There are no absolutes in painting Allis measured by that relative term quality It is in this search for quality that the artist is of necessity the eternal student Rex Brandt of money is spent on textures for clothing props and figures to enhance the Poser products People are always looking for high quality textures to make their models stand out from the rest And artists are creating amazing textures using Poser s Material Room as well as with Photoshop Paint Shop Pro and other image manipulation programs or a combination thereof Of course this isn t to say that the moment you begin creating your own materials you will end up earning tens of thousands of dollars and be able to quit your day job While this has hap pened for a few the majority of digital artists make enough to simply augment their income while having a lot of fun doing it Cerne materials for Poser characters can be a very lucrative enterprise Lots 83 84 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide With that in mind this chapter delves into Poser s Material Room using both the Simple and the Advanced views You ll learn about the various types of maps texture bump displacement reflection and transparency in order to build pro cedural shaders These can be created quickly and easily even though the Material Room might appear a bit daunting when you first enter it
158. ight or Specular channel as you ll discover in a bit When you attach an input to the Alternate Diffuse channel the two inputs blend based on your settings to result in a material with more depth One way to use the Alternate Diffuse channel is to make modifications to the appearance of the diffuse texture without taking it into an image editor By making texture modifications in the Material Room you open up a wider variety of results that can be achieved with one set of image maps For this section you will use the Belt texture so you can enhance its appearance You will want to close the Wacros section of the Advanced view as you work through this tutorial Otherwise you will run out of room to work efficiently NOTE 1 From the Advanced view of the Material Room choose Belt from the Materials pop up menu 2 Click on the plug icon to the right of the Diffuse Color channel and choose New Node gt Math gt Blender see Figure 4 26 By selecting this new node the original connection will be broken 3 Connect both Input 1 and Input 2 to the Image Map node that is attached to the Specular Color channel Why do this You just effectively hooked the Diffuse Color channel back to the image you just disconnected it from By reassigning the image map to the two input channels you now have more control over the look of the diffuse color You can blend colors to give an entirely different look or you can use gray values to enhance or
159. il it s aligned with Final or until it s all the way to the right Then click the Manual Settings button as shown in Figure 2 19 Increase the Pixel Samples setting to reduce blotchiness in the render I will start with a value of 5 for this example FIGURE 2 19 The Auto Settings and the Manual Settings options 12 Check the Depth of Field box in the Options area of the Manual Settings 13 screen You can click the Save Settings button so you can render the scene at a later time using these settings but if yov re like me instant gratification is the name of the game So just click Render Now to render the scene Figure 2 20 shows an example of a render that uses depth of field If you like the way the scene looks re open the Render Settings dialog box All your settings will still be there and you can click the Save Settings button to save the settings XK When you render a scene using the Depth of Field option your renders will take much longer NOTE Chapter 2 Using Cameras 45 FIGURE 2 20 Interesting results can be achieved using depth of field A SuHort RE PoseE And there you have it The basic method used to work with cameras At this point you should make changes to the parameters for the selected camera and perform some test renders to see what happens Also practice creating new cameras and save them into the Cameras Library The more youre able to have in place before moving ahead the better
160. ill be more transparent and lighter shades of gray will be more opaque To create the transparency map shown in Figure 9 10 Ana starts with a pure black layer She then duplicates the lace layer and fills it with white making portions of the lace opaque The leather areas on the sleeves corset and legs are duplicated and filled with white to make them opaque White areas are added to create seams in the panties bodice and sleeves Finally a border of white is added to make the neck band opaque as is a layer of white that makes the lacing opaque 252 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide ar BE icc cotow 2 HBR serena oft Doc 4 00M 156 2M a Senetine nanan FIGURE 9 10 Using a light gray creates a partial transparency in the leg material RAYTRACED REFLECTIONS AND REFLECTING MAPS When reflections appear in objects they typically reflect their surrounding envi ronment To that end Poser allows two different ways to incorporate reflections in your Poser scene raytraced reflections and reflection maps Raytraced reflections simulate how the elements of your scene might appear if projected onto an imaginary hemisphere that surrounds your scene The reflections are then bounced back onto your Poser content during render time You create ray traced reflections in the Advanced view of the Material Room Raytraced reflections do take some time to render so the option of using re flection maps can s
161. in the workspace When you move a panel around like this a bluish purple overlay will appear when the panel is positioned where it can be re docked see Figure 1 7 m Close Closes the panel You will need to go back to Window gt Panel Name to re open the panel When you turn on Drag Docking Enabled you can undock and move any of the panels not just the one that was clicked on to activate the command v Docked Floating Drag Docking Enabled Close FIGURE 1 6 Panel pop up controls 8 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide FIGURE 1 7 When you move a panel group over another panel group a bluish highlight will appear to show the location where that panel will be docked 3 Suppose you want to add a new panel to those already in place Let s say that you do a lot of animations so you re constantly opening the Animation Palette or moving it around as you are setting up those anima tions It would be great to have that particular window always available to you To do this go to Window gt Animation Palette The palette will open above the workspace 4 Click to open the panel options and choose Drag Docking Enabled so you can drag the panel into the panel group you want 5 Drag this panel underneath the Parameters panel A bluish tinted box will appear to show you where the panel will be docked refer to Figure 1 7 6 Once placed the panel will be accessible without blocking out any other controls see Figure
162. in UVMapper Professional 1 After opening the pants obj model UVMapper displays the statistics of the object Click OK to continue A 3D version of the pants appears in the Perspective view on the right side of the screen Initially the left side is blank indicating that the object does not have any UV information 2 Turn off the display of the background texture It will help you see things more easily until you get to the final stage To do so choose Texture gt Clear 3 The best way to start with pants is to first map them in planar mode with out separating the front and back To do so choose Map gt Planar The Planar Mapping dialog box appears see Figure 10 8 Chapter 10 UV Mapping 279 Planar Mapping Alignment Orientation C Axis Hutizuntal g C Asie Vertical G Z Axis Spit Don t Spit di By Qrientation By Position with Otfset of 0 T Gapem Map I Scale Recut FIGURE 10 8 Keep the pants as a whole when you begin to map them 4 By default UVMapper Professional does planar mapping on the z axis and by orientation These two options together split the clothing article be tween the front and back sides You don t want to split the clothing right now so choose Don t Split as shown in Figure 10 8 Click OK to continue 5 If you are continuing from the previous tutorial you ll need to change to Facet Selection mode To do so choose Select gt Select Method gt By Facet In the last tutori
163. ing the underlying photograph Head_Mstr Chapter5 Creating Custom Faces 135 FIGURE 5 9 The photograph is placed over the guide and its opacity is reduced to show both layers Copy and paste this selection placing it automatically onto a new layer Turn off the visibility of the Head_Mstr copy layer then change the opacity so you can see the guide Scale if necessary and use the Warp tool to fit the eyes to the guide layer s eyes Figure 5 10 shows the eyes and eyebrows in place over the guide layer Rename this layer Eyes and then blur the edges so they blend with the photograph better I will leave the method of blurring up to you Repeat Steps 6 and 7 for the nose and the mouth naming the layers re spectively Figure 5 11 shows the re worked photograph along with the original You might need to use the Clone Stamp and or the Healing Brush or their equivalents if you re not using Photoshop to clean up areas if they don t blend into the original images In addition you might want to use the Clone Stamp to get rid of the nostrils that dark shadowy area let the lighting add that shadowiness because all that will happen is the dark sections will bleed into the face texture 136 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide FIGURE 5 10 The eyes and brows have been scaled and warped to match the eyes and brows in the guide layer b Ani FIGURE 5 11 The original photograph left and its modified almost doppelgan
164. into the camera They are particularly important for adding realism to eyes glass and other shiny materials Highlights are usually white but you can tie them into an image map or a procedural material if you prefer to create more complicated highlight effects You ll learn more about this in the steps that follow Many times the easiest way to add highlights to a material is by using the same image map This often gives the most realistic look to the material and can be done very quickly by clicking the Apply Texture to Highlight button at the bottom of the Diffuse Color channel controls When you click this button Poser copies the texture map from that channel to the Highlight channel saving you from having to manually look for the file again This will work in most instances but not necessarily for all When it comes to this shirt and this tutorial Pll discuss adding highlights in two different ways by using the texture map to create highlights and by using a dif ferent image map to create the highlights First the original map 1 Again choose Shirt from the Material pop up menu 2 Click the Apply Texture to Highlight button located in the Diffuse Color section The Ryan_PoserBookShirt png file will appear in the Highlight thumbnail preview area 3 In order to see the highlight you will need to change the highlight color from black to white I m going extreme here With white the highlights will be very prominent but yo
165. ion for dresses is to make the skirt as one group the hip or a different group named skirt or something similar The body handle appears centered beneath the figure generally below ground level Figure 7 8 shows the DAZ Morphing Fantasy Dress for Victoria 4 By dragging the cone shaped handles surrounding the skirt portion of the dress you can make small changes to the position of the dress to better fit whatever pose you put V4 in FIGURE 7 8 Body handles help you adjust the position of long clothing Chapter 7 Working With Clothing 187 After you pose the clothing with the body handles you will typically find morphs that will improve the flow of the clothing For example in the DAZ3D Morphing Fantasy Dress several morphs appear in the body that widen loosen flare twist and otherwise style the pose of the dress Figure 7 9 shows an example of some of the morphs in use ah ram Sm _ 7 jan a oe FIGURE 7 9 The V4 Morphing Fantasy Dress and some of the skirt morphs in the Parameters panel POSING SHOES Shoes come in all shapes and sizes ranging from sandals to thigh high boots For the most part shoes conform to the feet in much the same way as other Conforming clothing As long as shoes are relatively flat there isn t a lot of extra work involved to pose them 188 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide The exception to this is shoes that have high heels Because clothing is typically
166. irt and that you put the jacket on over both I feel pretty safe in that last assumption the shirt pants or skirt that s a whole other matter that s really none of my business Z When you have more than one layer of Dynamic clothing on a figure you In the case of the clothing that you now have on Jessi you will create the sim ulation for the top first and set it to collide with Jessi s torso Then you will create the simulation for the skirt and set it to collide with Jessi s lower body and the shirt Chapter 7 Working With Clothing 197 Finally you will set up the simulation for the jacket and have it collide with some of Jessi s body parts as well as the top and the skirt If you don t choose the previous layers of clothing as collision objects the layers above them will act as if the under lying layers aren t even there and chances are will end up intersecting the layers below So go into the Cloth Room if yow re not there already select the top and let s get started 1 Go to the Animation Drawer at the bottom of the workspace and change the first frame to Frame 15 You do this by clicking in the left numeric field and typing in 15 Then place Jessi into a new pose You can always go to the Pose Room and select a pose from Jessi s Poses folder or you can just create one of your own by opening the Parameter panel If you are unsure how to do this refer to the book Poser 8 Revealed The Official Guide
167. is entered in both fields Choose OK to change the document size to the desired window size Preview Dimensions Width 500 Height 500 Match Background FIGURE 5 7 Click the Float Palette button in order to resize the document window Now you need to configure the render settings so that you render the image at the same aspect ratio To create a texture guide that measures 2048 x 2048 pixels choose Render gt Render Dimensions The Render Dimensions dialog box appears First select the Render to Exact Resolution option Then make sure that the Constrain Aspect Ratio box is checked Next click the Match Document Window button The values in the Width and Height fields should change to match the dimensions of your document window Chapter5 Creating Custom Faces 133 Square textures are more efficient with memory than rectangular ones and it also helps to create textures that are divisible by a power of 2 Recommended sizes for textures are 512 x 512 1024 x 1024 and 2048 x 2048 Poser will not go higher than 4000 x 4000 3 Now enter 2048 in either the Width or Height fields The other value should automatically change to match Click OK to set the new values 4 The goal is to create texture guides from the front and left sides so you ll need to create a Front Camera view and a Left Camera view for your renders discussed in Chapter 2 Using Cameras Set up your cameras as shown in Figure 5 8 Lert Camera
168. is means is that Dynamic hair is actually made up of hair strands that grow from the prop called skullcaps or follicle sets Although you can grow hair directly on a figure s head skullcaps or follicle sets are necessary to create hair that you can use more than once or to create hair that you can share with or distribute to others Dynamic hair has advantages and disadvantages over the geometry based hair that you have already become familiar with The key advantage is that Dynamic hair can respond to changes in position movement and wind forces Instead of creating morphs that make the hair move you use controls in the Hair Room to calculate how the hair responds to those forces You can also style bend and shape individual guide hairs to create complex hairstyles for your figure without ever having to adjust polygons in a 3D modeling application a f Asanalternative to Dynamic hair you can also take some Prop hair models into the j s Cloth Room and clothify them Clothified Prop hair will respond to changes in posi tion movement and wind Although Dynamic hair might behave more realistically clothified Prop hair will calculate faster and be easier on system resources Clothifying clothing and other objects is discussed in Chapter 7 Working with Clothing s The main disadvantage of Dynamic hair is that all of the calculations and rendering j N consume a lot of processor resources If your computer is barely a
169. ividing line between the panel sections Move your cursor over that line and the cursor will change into a grabber icon indicating that you can click and drag to resize the panel group On the positive side you can increase the size of a window and some palettes will move to accommodate this new configuration On the other hand you can actually expand a palette or panel in such a way as to cover up some of the other panels and their controls in the group For instance you can drag the Camera Controls panel upward and cover up half of the Editing Tools controls Chapter 1 Everything Old Is New Again 7 2 There is also a very small pop up menu officially called the Palette Docking Control Square to the far right of the tabs in the various panel groups Again this can be very hard to see But if you look closely you will notice a small square indentation Click on this square to open the sub menu where you will see the following commands m Docked When this option is checked as shown in Figure 1 6 the palette is docked with the other panels in the user interface When you switch to this it will put the control panel back in its last location Floating Turns the panel into a floating window that can be posi tioned anywhere in the workspace just as the windows did in earlier versions of the program E Drag Docking Enabled With this feature enabled you can drag a control panel away from the panel group and dock it anywhere else
170. kzi tat w rat BS m m A a a E HTS FIGURE 10 3 Although cylindrical mapping bottom right is a logical choice for objects that are cylindrically shaped spherical mapping top left also works very well 274 USING Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide UVMapPeER PROFESSIONAL With the basics out of the way let s take a look at how you can actually apply this information The tutorials in this section use UVMapper Professional www uvmapper com a demo of which is included in the Freebies Software_Demos UV_Mapper folder on the DVD that accompanies this book UVMapper Professional is a PC only program If you are using a Mac then you can download UVMapper Classic from the same site Even though the last update was in 2006 the Mac version of UVMapper seems to be working just fine with v10 6 1 Snow Leopard which is what is installed on my computers UVMapper Professional UVMP was as of this writing updated in 2008 with UVMapper Classic for Windows having been updated in 2009 oo A y NOTE Ts of y NOTE A If you are using the demo version of UVMapper Professional you will not be able to save your models so mapped versions of the models used in this chapter are in cluded on the DVD in the Chapter 10 folder UVMapper Classic for the Mac does not have all the features discussed in this chapter and I have not been able to find a program like UVMP for the Mac with those same features
171. l or won t be affected by the simulation Figure 7 21 shows what the Group Editor panel looks like The Dynamic Controls area is where the magic truly happens This section lets you control the physics of the cloth as it interacts with itself and with the atmos phere What s nice is that the Poser programmers did all that high falutin math stuff so you don t have to Following is a breakdown of how each of the Dynamic Controls functions so you can more accurately build a realistic cloth simulation m Calculate Simulation Determines how the cloth will fall in each frame based on what has been assigned in the other sections and begins simulating the clothification process Yes I know clothification is not really a word but maybe if I m really persistent it will become one 202 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide Preview Rende jessi W jessicaHiRes Y jessijacket Posing Camera FIGURE 7 21 The Group Editor panel shows the vertices that make up the group s objects allowing you to make changes to what is and isn t affected in the cloth simulation m Play Simulation Lets you review the simulation to make sure the elements do what you want them to do Collision Friction This ignores both Static and Dynamic Friction and goes with the cloth s Dynamic settings instead m Fold Resistance Controls how the material folds A higher number makes the material more stiff thus not folding as easily m Shear Resistance
172. lank About the Author the second book he has written that covers this program His other books include Vue 6 Revealed and Vue 7 Beyond the Basics as well as books covering web design Adobe Photoshop video editing and 3D modeling techniques When not writing he has been instrumental in helping to create two bachelor s degree programs for Nossi College of Art in Tennessee one in graphic design and the other in video production P ractical Poser 8 The Official Guide is the 14th book by Richard Schrand and This page intentionally left blank Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Contents Introduction Everything Old Is New Again Poser s New Features The New Graphical User Interface Search Me But You re My Favorite Where Your Content Lives A Short Re Pose Using Cameras Camera Overview Controlling What You See Using the Camera Controls Camera Parameters Tutorials A Short Re Pose Mastering Lights and Shadows An Illuminating Exploration of Light ing Light Types Reviewing the Light Controls Casting Shadows Shadowy Confluences Light Parameters and Properties OO U UNN 19 20 25 25 27 30 45 47 48 48 50 51 52 54 x Contents Tutorials 56 Adjusting Lights and Shadows 67 Using Photographs and Image Based Lighting 72 A Short Re Pose 82 Chapter 4 Creating Materials 83 Meet the Material Room 84 The Simple View 87 Tutorials 89 The Advanced View and a Discussion of Nodes 108 Usi
173. lar map the eyelets are lightened to receive more highlights and the laces are darkened to re ceive little to no highlights The finished specular map is shown in Figure 9 9 250 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide Ando Sect Lover Sow tenderer Te Ib 3 i a ge r y e voles a D ack 5 tipigi i k mad borde od E gt E A gt copy b FIGURE 9 7 Highlights are created using shades of gray Fic Edt Imse Laym Seixt Fie View Widow Hel Salach Layer haw Transco Carirah FIGURE 9 8 Lighter shades of gray are added to the arms corset legs and metallic trim Chapter 9 Creating Your Own Textures 251 Lock a Fa w A r yeets x T neck 4 ye highigh gt a 3 i metal border i BP rl 90 C d Ba o fues 2y b D I O S a 19 Doc 1 12mM 1 3M b FIGURE 9 9 The final highlights are added to the leather areas the neck and the eyelets TRANSPARENCY MAPS Transparency maps determine which portions of an object s surface are transparent and which are opaque Because transparency maps only use the brightness values of an image and ignore the color data they are usually grayscale images Transparency maps typically start against a pure black Red 0 Green 0 Blue 0 background Where black appears in the transparency map the clothing will be in visible All white areas in the transparency map will be fully opaque Darker shades of gray w
174. ler areas Chapter 3 Mastering Light and Shadow 49 Diffuse IBL FIGURE 3 1 The four types of lights in Poser 8 infinite lights spotlights point lights and image based lights 50 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide Point lights introduced in Poser 6 are omnidirectional meaning that they shine light in all directions from a central point Point lights are also called global lights A soft point light in your scene can prevent total darkness in your render and give your scene a minimum threshold of ambient light Take care not to make point lights too bright because they can wash out your scene and make it appear flat Because point lights cast light in all directions throughout the scene it might take a long time to calculate depth map shadows For that reason these lights cast raytrace shadows only Diffuse IBL image based lighting was introduced in Poser 6 These lights simulate many colors in a single light The colors and placement of the light in your scene are derived from an image or movie that you specify The end result makes your render appear as if your character is actually a part of the original image or movie making it a great choice for work that requires photorealism Image based lighting is diffuse only meaning that if you want specular highlights in your scene such as eye glints or highlights in hair you will need additional lighting that is not image based This is the feature that allows you to use hi
175. lic trim and additional details are added to the corset sleeves and legs To finish the detailing on the corset several layers are used to build up eyelets and lacing on the back of the corset Care is taken to line up the lacing across the back seam so that the laces match up perfectly a process that is well worth the effort Figure 9 6 shows the detail on the lacing and eyelets SPECULAR Maps Specular maps control the color and amount of highlights in a material shader Images that define specular color can be color or grayscale Darker values will pro duce softer highlights and lighter values will produce brighter highlights If you are using colored specular maps desaturated colors will produce milder highlights whereas saturated colors create very hot highlights When you develop your diffuse texture in layers you can reuse some of the layers to create additional maps for your material shader Such is the case with the specular map that Ana created for The Bootie Here s how she approached the spec ular map Chapter 9 Creating Your Own Textures 249 Fie Edt Image Layer Select Fier View window Hap A gt Qa Reze Windows To Fit Zoom All windows AclualDiews Fa Screws Brad Siw Liyo J Pass Through f tock a deplacement Opacity 1n6n sprodlarily gt Lacos tesir Laces tight lop highight Laces right tap scar Laft baltom hight Laces tat batiam
176. light in your scene The center of the globe represents the center of your camera view As you rotate the camera the positions of the lights move according to where they are with respect to your scene and the current camera view af You can also add lights by going to Object gt Create Light and then selecting the light type NOTE sf Ifyou find you have too many lights or some unneeded lights in your scene you have two ways of deleting them You can click on the trash can icon in the Light 4 Controls panel or go to Figure gt Delete Figure A light when selected is consid ered a figure in your scene If you want to start all over instead of deleting each light individually you can use a Python script that comes with Poser Go to Scripts gt Utility gt Delete Lights All the lights in your scene will be removed and you can then start fresh CASTING SHADOWS Unlike the real world where lights no matter how many combine to cumulatively affect our environment we have full control over how the lights interact with our scenes It s a power trip of ber proportions because you control the way they cast shadows if at all what a light will affect and how heavy that affect will be The most common practice is for one light to cast a shadow not necessarily the main light either while the rest just enhance the scene There are two reasons for this 52 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide One by having only one light
177. ly So if you don t use a specific tool or control set very often you can remove it to make room for other tools you use more regularly Chapter 1 Everything Old Is New Again 3 FIGURE 1 1 The new interface cleaner yet familiar This is the same for each of the program s rooms Material Face Hair Cloth Setup and Content Figure 1 2 shows each of these rooms and their new interface layout A subtle difference in the interface appearance comes from the icons for the various content directories the folders where your models reside Since the first version of the program the directory icons were stacked vertically at the top of the Library panel Now as you see in Figure 1 3 they are positioned horizontally giv ing more room to what s really important access to the content itself SEARCH ME In addition to the new yet not new GUI long requested features have been added to help users speed up their workflow If you are like most you have gigabytes worth of content living on your main hard drive as well as on external drives Unless you are completely and absolutely profoundly organized your Runtime folder will often become unwieldy and finding the model you want will become a time consuming chore A new Search feature has been added so you can quickly and easily find that model you re looking for see Figure 1 4 4 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide Material Room Face Room Hair Room EGS EEE
178. ly the root color would be darker and any highlights would be created with a lighter tip color While there is no formal reason for the color anomaly as long as you know this is how hair coloring works you can assign lighter shades to the root and darker to the tip to make the hair look the way you want You should also try giving Ryan a beard mustache goatee or other types of facial hair as well as some chest hair to see how different settings can affect the look of the hair on your figures The final thing to do is activate Do Collisions in the Dynamics Controls section You already set up Collision Detection for Ryan s head so Do Collisions will recog nize those polygons and not cut into them There is one problem though with this many hairs it s going to take a long long time to render To help speed up the dynamics calculation time go to the animation controls and set the animation to 1 Chapter 6 Working With Hair 173 frame by clicking once on 30 and typing in 1 When you click on the Calculate Dynamics button the Draping window will appear showing you how much time is left until the draping process is complete A SuHort RE PoseE While hair on a figure is the first thought when using the Hair Room there are so many other things you can create From the fletching on arrows to horses tails to grass and plants to feathers Literally anything that is thin and usually grown can be created in the Hair Room Just use
179. ly selecting the right front side of the head Refer to Figure 6 10 for polygon selection for this group 8 Add strands of hair as you did in Step 6 using the same numerics for right now The numbers will be changed later in this tutorial 9 Repeat Steps 7 and 8 to create the following growth groups E Head_Hair_BackSideR m Head_Hair_Back m Head_Hair_BackSideL E Head_Hair_FrontSideL Refer to figure 6 11 for a composite of the different growth group head sec tions to help you in the creation of your growth groups Don t worry about slight overlaps those will actually benefit you when growing the hair Also watch out for stray selected polygons around the ears You don t want hair growing out of them unless you re creating a really really old character Chapter 6 Working With Hair 163 FIGURE 6 10 The growth group polygons for the front right side of Ryan s head FIGURE 6 11 The different growth groups assigned to the different head areas When rendered the strands of hair will slightly overlap so that you don t have gaps or bald spots 164 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide And there you have it the base for your hairy head Save this file as RyanHair before moving on to the next tutorial TUTORIAL 6 2 CREATING AND USING SKULLCAPS NOTE NOTE You have now created a basic hair setup by defining separate areas of the model s head and then adding hair to those sections This setup is assigned to this mod
180. mage editing program after you create this base texture By default Poser stores the Face Room textures in PNG format in the Runtime Textures Faceroom folder The file name is based on the date and time that you applied the texture to the figure 130 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide AcTION BUTTONS The Action buttons shown in Figure 5 6 are used to apply the shape of the head the texture or both to the currently selected figure in the Pose Room FIGURE 5 6 The Action buttons flank the Face Preview and Texture Preview windows Ifyou only have one figure in the Pose Room the changes will apply automat ically If you have multiple figures make sure you have the correct figure selected as the current figure before you use these buttons Chapter5 Creating Custom Faces 131 Each Action button is described in the following list Random Face 1 Poser generates a new face and texture for the model Reset Face Room 2 Reverts back to the default face and texture This will cause you to lose any changes you might have made You would need to use Spawn Morph Target prior to resetting your face if you want to retain what you have done Apply to Figure 3 Click this button to apply the head shape and texture to the currently selected figure This option replaces the character s default head with the head you created in the Face Room If the new texture has sufficient resolution to be larger than 512 x 512 Poser asks if you
181. make sure that the actual render dimensions match your workspace which will be accomplished in Tutorial 3 9 TUTORIAL 3 9 MATCHING THE RENDER DIMENSIONS TO THE PHOTO you ll probably find that you need a lot of test renders The usual process is tweak render tweak render tweak and render again and again and again until you get it right To render the entire photo in your scene you ll have to set up the render dimensions so that they match the dimensions of your Preview window Follow these steps Z When you work on your scenes especially making modifications to the lighting 1 Choose Render gt Render Dimensions from the menu or use Shift Ctrl Cmd Y The Render Dimensions dialog box appears as shown in Figure 3 23 FIGURE 3 23 Use the Render Dimensions dialog box to define the size of your test and final renders 78 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide 2 Choose one of the following options m Ifyou want your test renders to remain the same size as the Preview window choose the Match Preview Window option m To render an image that is larger or smaller than the Preview window first select the Render to Exact Resolution option Make sure that the Constrain Aspect Ratio box is checked so that you maintain the required width to height ratio to display the photo properly Then enter the desired width or height in either the Width or Height field The other dimension should change accordingly to keep the photo at its
182. mber about a generic reflection map is that it doesn t have to be overly detailed You can see that in those Chapter 4 files included on the DVD 7 ff In Photoshop create a file that is 1024 pixels by 1024 pixels Color mode should be set to grayscale and make the file 72dpi Fill this Background layer with black and then create a new layer 3 Change the Foreground color to Black and the Background color to White White will become the specular value and black will be flat Shades of gray will provide varying specular intensity Remember you re dealing with Adobe Photoshop in this tutorial so if you re using a different program you will need to translate this information to fit with your particular program s features 4 Once the colors are set go to Filter gt Render gt Clouds Clouds uses a frac tal generator to create random cloud like patterns using the foreground and background colors These fractals are resolution independent just like vector files so you can increase their size without loss of quality If you aren t happy with the pattern you can either go to Filter gt Clouds the first option in the list or press Cmd Ctrl F to generate a new pattern Basically you want a fairly good smattering of black throughout the image Open the Levels window Image gt Adjustments gt Levels or Cmd Ctrl L and click on the Black point eye dropper Use Figure 9 12 for reference if you aren t sure whe
183. mentioned earlier in the chapter Make 7 sure both eyes and the head are reset to 0 and then go back in to the Face Room 1 By default the Morph Putty tool is active As mentioned earlier place the cursor over the part of the head you want to modify and then click This will set a pin which you will see as a green dot Do this between Simon s eyes as shown in Figure 5 19 While still holding the mouse button down drag downward to create a heavy alien like brow as shown in Figure 5 20 Click on the left corner of the mouth and drag inward to make his mouth much smaller Click on the inside corners of the eyes and drag away from the nose making them smaller as well Now click in the middle of his forehead and drag upward to increase the size of his noggin Figure 5 21 shows the final result Click Spawn Morph Target and repeat the morph naming steps shown in the last tutorial Figure 5 22 shows the rendered head 146 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide FIGURE 5 19 Stick a pin between Simon s eyes FIGURE 5 20 An alien brow has been formed Chapter5 Creating Custom Faces 147 FIGURE 5 21 The finished alien head FIGURE 5 22 There are aliens among us 148 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide A SHORT RE Pose Poser allows you to customize your figures in a number of ways Through the Face Room you can create several different characters of varying ethnicities that are based on the Poser 7
184. meras 9 You re going to change all scale settings zRotation values and x y and zTran values for the magnet zone You want to create an elliptical magnet zone that will enhance and raise Ryan s right cheekbone To modify the magnet zone select Magnet Zone from the Props list in the Parameters panel then use the following settings Scale 3 yScale 40 xScale 81 zScale 56 yRotate 11 xRotate 73 zRotate 6 xTran 0 162 yTran 5 632 zTran 0 224 Chapter 8 Creating Custom Morphs 215 10 Now that you have changed the shape of the magnet zone you can move the magnet to examine how it affects the right cheek You will scale the cheekbone so that it is a little bit larger and also pull the faces forward zTran and to the right xTran After you select and set the Magnet val ues in the Parameters panel as follows your cheek magnet should look like the one shown in Figure 8 6 Scale 80 yRotate 8 xTran 0 212 yTran 0 363 zTran 0 733 Face Camera FIGURE 8 6 The new magnet makes the right cheekbone dramatically more pronounced 216 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide TUTORIAL 8 2 SAVING A MAGNET gt Time to make a decision You could leave Ryan s cheek swollen like this and A create a texture that looks like he s been in a fight But hey that s not what this amp chapter is about Youre here to create magnets so you can better modify your models This means that yo
185. mp highlight and displacement maps use gray values from black to white to do their magic 3 Once the image map is added set the Highlight Size to 55 4 Render the file and you will see the added highlight on the shirt s artwork see Figure 4 10 FIGURE 4 9 The rendered shirt without highlights left and with highlights added right You would really want to tweak the Highlight Size value to make the texture look better but you get the idea By using a specialized map you can add more in terest and more detail to your materials Chapter 4 Creating Materials 95 FIGURE 4 10 A highlight has been added to the material by using an original image map rather than by duplicating the diffuse map TuTorRIAL 4 3 ADDING AMBIENT Maps To A MATERIAL The Ambient section of the Material Room Simple view simulates the overall Y lighting condition in an environment This control is a little different in that it ist affected by the other color properties What exactly is ambient light It is light that comes from all directions It is a natural fill light Ambient light is the light that exists in indoor or outdoor envi ronments before any additional lighting is added The relative intensity of ambient light along with any fill lights added to the scene is known as the lighting ratio and is important for calculating the contrast in your image Basically when you turn out the lights in a room so that there are no other light s
186. n Figure 4 14 100 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide FIGURE 4 14 The reflection map assigned to the sphere object Now that you see how a simple pattern in black and white can literally be turned into a pattern that adds an extra semblance of realism to your model let s see how you can use it for good ol Ryan Figure 4 15 shows the belt buckle and the metal elements before any changes are made 1 Open the Ryan file you saved a few minutes ago 2 Zoom in so you can see the figure s belt buckle This figure has a number of metal pieces on him so you re going to add some reflection maps to help make them look better 3 Go into the Material Room and from the Materials pop up select Metal It s located down at the bottom of the list Chapter 4 Creating Materials 101 FIGURE 4 15 The metal elements before the reflection settings are changed 4 Before adding the reflection map let s add a basic reflective quality to the metal pieces Click on the Reflection section s thumbnail preview and select Ray Trace reflections from the list then render your scene This adds some basic reflective qualities to the metal elements that will make the reflections maps look more dynamic 5 Click on the thumbnail preview again and select Spherical Map from the list Navigate to the Project_01 folder and choose buckleReflection png Click Open and then OK Practice by changing the Map Strength as well as by turning on and o
187. n easy task Speaking of clinging clothing I love alliterations Figure 7 3 shows Victoria 4 in the V4 bodysuit in one of the standard poses that comes with the model As you can see that clingy material doesn t fare well with her thighs or to a much lesser extent with her breasts This is a perfect example of what can happen with clothing and something that if you have used Poser for more than a few hours you have more than likely experienced yourself Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide FIGURE 7 3 Some dramatic poke through issues with the Victoria 4 model in one of the standard poses One solution is to fix problem areas after you render using an image editor to blend or clone surrounding areas over the skin that shows through But this can be rather time consuming Imagine taking the image from Figure 7 3 into Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro or any other image editor and fixing it in post production or post as it s often referred to You would have to take time to match the pattern in the bodysuit material get into the small nooks and crannies between V4 s fingers and really take time to fix the image in a credible manner Instead you can address some poke through issues before you render your scene m Select the body part that is poking through the clothing Open the Properties panel and uncheck the Visible box to hide the offending body part as shown in Figure 7 4 Repeat this for each body part that is poking throug
188. n set the Scale to the same value you used for the Front Camera 18 in this case Chapter 2 Using Cameras 35 16 Adjust the DollyX setting until the head is centered in the Preview window a setting of 1 000 works well for this 17 Repeat Steps 7 through 10 to save the new camera as Ryan Head Left or a similar name for your character Make sure you select the Left Camera from the Select Objects dialog box 18 You can create Back and Right Head Cameras for your character as well The Right Camera settings will be as follows m DollyY 31 845 m DollyX 1 000 m Scale 18 The Back Camera settings will be as follows m DollyY 31 485 E Scale 18 When youre finished your Ryan Head Cameras Library will look like that shown in Figure 2 11 You ll have a complete set of cameras that you can use while creating head morphs or for checking out head textures for your character Library Sea Favorites 068860000 ry Poser 8 x y c era b Sho v 5 Poser8 gt Gj 12 Camera Sets gt g 1 CP Partners gt a N Poser 7 gt gj 1 Posers v f 4 Ryan Head Cameras ag Ryan Head Back g Ryan Head Front Ryan Head left g Ryan Head Right FIGURE 2 11 Four Head Cameras Back Front Left and Right are created and saved for Ryan 36 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide a Refer to Appendix C Frequently Asked Questions for information on how you j he can use Camera Dots to save cameras th
189. n the Chapter 3 folder on the DVD It s titled derelictBarn hdr and will be used as part of Tutorial 3 8 I have also included a TIF file created in Photoshop that you can use to practice creating light probes or HDR or radiance image files Chapter 3 Mastering Light and Shadow 75 It is important to note that IBLs are diffuse only That is they don t add high lights to an image As a result it s good practice to use other lights in addition to an IBL for example you can position a second light in approximately the same position as an IBL and use it for the specular highlights When using a standard three point lighting arrangement with a photographic background it seems a natural choice to use an IBL as a fill light so that you cap ture the ambient colors from the photograph or movie If you use an IBL for your fill light you might consider using the key light to generate the predominant light in the scene such as sunlight in an outdoor scene or a streetlight or the moon in a night scene Poser also has a feature that helps achieve even more realism when using pho tos for a background By default the Ground plane in Poser is set up as a shadow catcher When set as a shadow catcher the Ground plane itself is invisible but it captures the shadows as if the ground were solid This allows you to apply realistic shadows to photographic backgrounds If you align the default Ground plane so that the perspective is the same as your
190. n work your way in toward the area that is pok ing through You will eventually brush away the poke through of the arm as you pull the sleeve out over the arm Figure 8 25 shows the result of this procedure 236 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide FIGURE 8 25 The fixed sleeve after the morph has been applied DISTRIBUTING MORPHS Morphs can be distributed in a number of different ways and the method you use depends on the user s license of the figure that you created the morphs for Remember these models are copyrighted and you can t just give them out to anyone You need to read through the End User License Agreements EULAs and all pertinent in formation that comes with the models to know what you can and cannot do when considering distribution of original morphs Here are some other considerations you need to take into account when dis tributing your morph sets m By default Poser saves morph data for objects as external binary morph files These files have a PMD extension and are saved in the same library as the original character file The only drawback to this option is that PMD files are compatible Chapter 8 Creating Custom Morphs 237 only with Poser 6 7 and 8 If you want to create morphs that are compatible with earlier versions of Poser you should disable this feature so that Poser saves the morph data within the CR2 file To do so choose Edit gt General Preferences on the Mac choose Poser gt Prefe
191. nd name it JamesEthnicHead If you intend to add to or improve the texture in your image editor save the texture in a lossless format such as TIF If you will use this texture as the final version you can save it as a JPG file with 100 quality 142 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide NOTE Import Original Figure Head Texture FIGURE 5 16 The texture Save button Mac users When you export the image file there is a glitch in the Save feature The file you export more than likely will be blank But and here s the good news the file has actually been saved in the Runtime Textures Faceroom folder in the main Poser folder Hopefully the rendering problem will be fixed by the time you read this but it s been an issue since Poser 7 so I m not sure it will be If you are saving in the TIF format make sure to turn compression off You cannot import a compressed file into Poser 6 Click the Material tab to enter the Material Room Select James as the cur rent figure and the head as the current actor 7 In the Image Map node click the Image Source name field then locate and select the ethnic face texture that you saved in Step 5 or go to the Textures Face Room folder to access the texture and click OK to apply it 8 Now select James s body as the current material In the PoserSurface Diffuse Color root node click the white color swatch which is white by default 9 After the Poser color selector window ap
192. nd use are dresses skirts and robes The difficulties are due in part to the technicalities involved in making Poser objects When dividing the human character into body part groups the right and left legs are separated by the hip To pose automatically with a figure the clothing must be divided in the same manner This means that skirts dresses and other long robe like garments have to be divided that way as well Chapter 7 Working With Clothing 185 For dresses and similar clothing you will often find right and left thighs serving as the legs of the skirt and a full length hip section separates the two sides Because of this the skirt has no shins so it doesn t bend at the knees Additionally the cen ter hip section remains fairly rigid and serves as the blending zone between the two legs As Figure 7 7 shows this design makes it difficult to achieve sitting poses in all but very short skirts The middle hip section of the dress has a tendency to stretch and distort the texture when legs are moved sideways forward or backward FIGURE 7 7 Long Conforming skirts can present problems when modified to a sitting position As a result of these limitations long dresses and skirts usually look their best with standing poses and even then mostly in poses where legs are not spread too far from their original straight position Most long clothing now comes with con trol handles that give much more control over posing the dress or
193. nder can be greatly enhanced by adding a reflection The Reflection section in the Simple view gives you two ways to configure the reflective quality of your material You can choose between a spherical map or raytrace reflections The former takes advantage of image maps to create the reflection and renders quickly while the latter will take longer to render You can change the tint of your reflection by selecting a color or image or procedural calculation in addition to your main reflective element You also have an option called Multiply with Lights which creates reflection effects that will be darker where there is no light The Multiply with Object Color option tints the reflection effect with the current diffuse color It s difficult to get the reflections set to a specific area such as the image section of the t shirt because the image map assigned to the material is turned into a spherical map Namely it is turned into a sphere to cover a 360 degree radius But it s definitely not impossible However where the reflection map is really going to stand out is on metal So yow re going to do two things in this tutorial First you ll look at how a reflection map is applied to a primitive object in this case a sphere and second you ll add it to Ryan to bring out some details in the metal object in the texture Before starting save your Ryan file You ll come back to it momentarily 1 Create a new file If you have the And
194. nding folder Even though you selected the Diego character you will see Ryan as the name in the figure s list That s because Diego was built from the Ryan character and the name was not changed You can change it by selecting the body open the Properties panel click on the model s name to activate the text field and type in the new name After that the new name will appear in the figures list 2 Examine the figure for poke through issues In the example shown in Figure 8 24 you see the arm poking through his right sleeve As you learned in Chapter 7 Poser 8 figures have Magnet deformers just as the Victoria 4 model clothing models do These deformers can be found in the Poses Poser 8 Ryan or Alyson Specialty folder Before you open the Morphing Tool click the offending body part that is poking through the clothing In this case click Diego s right shoulder Choose Figure gt Lock Figure This prevents accidental morphing of Diego s body while you work on the clothing morph Now click the Morphing Tool icon to open the Morphing Tool Make sure that you have Pull selected as the morphing mode Select the type of brush you want to use and adjust the Radius and Magnitude val ues of the tool to get the results you desire Check Accumulate and Stroke so that you can build up the morph as you work Start the stroke on a section of the shirt where the arm is not poking through the sleeve and the
195. ne 6 Displays a preview of the node s current output m Animation toggle 7 Toggles animation on and off for the selected parameter The animation toggle icon is a small key PoserSurface preview pane 8 This pane shows a real time display of the material with the current node and parameter configuration Depending on what object you have selected in the Advanced view the root node may have other nodes attached to it For example Figure 4 23 shows three connections from the PoserSurface panel Diffuse Color and Specular Color plus Transparency with connections to different Image Map nodes Image Map and Image Map 3 A shader s root node mixes together all of the material modifiers that are plugged in to it A material modifier can be a static value an image a color an algorithm another node or any combination of these There are four different types of root nodes that accommodate the various items that can use shaders The most common node is a material root node but you ll also find three additional nodes that include specific properties for backgrounds hair and lights Here s an analogy Think of the Advanced view as a cookie factory Raw ingre dients the various types of nodes are brought into the system and mixed via several input pipes the inputs and outputs of the nodes Spices and chemicals are added to change the flavor the parameters within the nodes and the operations they perform Finally it all c
196. ne of these options to determine the point of reference that relates to the changes in the morph Choose Surface the default to create changes based on the direction at which the surface normals of the polygons are facing Choose Screen to move the vertices toward the current view relative to the screen Brush styles The five brush shape icons display how the Morphing Tool will affect the area that you morph Choose the first option button to move one vertex at a time The remaining options affect the area that you define by the radius setting but each option has a different falloff rate The second brush shape affects the vertices in the middle of the brush but gradually falls off to having no effect in the outer areas Each successive brush falls off more rapidly until the last brush shape which has no falloff at all and will affect all vertices equally Radius This setting defines the area that will be affected by the Morphing Tool If you have the Display Brush feature enabled as described later you can see the effect of the Radius value setting and how large the affected area will be Decrease the value to affect a smaller area and increase the value to affect a larger area Magnitude This setting determines the strength of the Morphing Tool Reduce this value to obtain finer control over the response of the brush Higher values will create results that are more dramatic but not as easy to control Accumulate Check this option to mak
197. ng In some ways this is a no brainer If patterns are too large you ve lost your semblance of reality If too small you ve made something that loses its details due to miniaturization Resolution Unlike print where your document needs to be 300dpi the reso lution of an image map is 72dpi However the resolution is based upon the width and height of the file A high resolution image is commonly between 2 500 x 2 500 pixels and 4 000 x 4 000 pixels 246 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide CREATING CLOTHING TEXTURES Now let s look at how Ana Winson created The Bootie texture for Victoria 3 This section will feature Adobe Photoshop since creating textures based on the model s template s has to be done in an image editing program First Ana created a template for The Bootie measuring 2500 by 2500 pixels Higher resolution templates allow you to create detailed textures that can later be downsized if necessary Working in Photoshop a layer of white fill is placed above the template layer and turned off while developing the textures After the textures are done the white fill layer can be turned on to cover the template and provide the background for the texture Next a new layer is created in which all areas of the clothing are filled with a dark gray solid color with a slight bit of noise This serves as a base for the clothing texture The solid color extends slightly beyond the borders of the clothing to avoid the
198. ng models to the scene m Click and drag the model onto the workspace That s right Click on the model in the list and drag it to the workspace This is the new way of adding content to your scenes You ll be doing that a lot throughout the course of this book It s a great way to add elements to the scene Now you can save all your favorite figures props materials and poses for quick and easy access Chapter 1 Everything Old Is New Again 15 TUTORIAL 1 4 CREATING RUNTIME FOLDERS ON Your Harp DRIVE re r If you re like most Poser users the first or even the second folder isn t enough to manage all of your files Eventually you ll find that several gigabytes of con tent are too cumbersome to maintain in one or even two folders Then again there s the almost 25GB I have in my folder Yes m a glutton for punish ment In the Poser world several gigabytes of content are not uncommon With the Poser 8 library s Add Library feature you can create as many Runtime folders as you like They can appear on any drive in your system too You ll find it easier to locate items if you separate your several gigabytes of content into several smaller Runtime folders For example you might use one Runtime folder to store hair another to store clothing for the Poser 7 female another to store clothing for the Poser 7 male and yet another for props and scenery To create multiple Runtime folders on a secondary drive your D
199. ng Nodes 113 A Short Re Pose 121 Chapter 5 Creating Custom Faces 123 Face Room Overview 124 Face Shaping Tools 126 Texture Preview 128 Action Buttons 130 Matching the Head and Body 139 Variations on a Theme 139 A Short Re Pose 148 Chapter6 Working With Hair 149 Hair in All Its Forms 150 Strand Hair 152 Section 1 Hair Growth Groups 153 Section 2 Growth Controls 154 Section 3 Styling Controls 155 Section 4 Dynamics Controls 156 A Short Re Pose 173 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Contents Working With Clothing Types of Poser Clothing Common Clothing Problems Clothing Doesn t Conform Correctly Fixing Poke Through When Body Shapes Are Different Posing Skirts Using Body Handles Posing Shoes Clothing and MAT Files Don t Load Correctly Using the Cloth Room Creating and Saving Dynamic Clothing Calculating Simulations A Short Re Pose Creating Custom Morphs What Are Morphs The Anatomy of a Morph The Morphing Tools Distributing Morphs Avoiding Problems A Short Re Pose Creating Your Own Textures Textures and Copyrights Map Types Texture Considerations Creating Clothing Textures Specular Maps Transparency Maps Raytraced Reflections and Reflecting Maps Bump Maps Displacement Maps A Short Re Pose XI 175 176 177 177 179 182 184 185 187 188 190 192 200 205 207 208 209 227 236 238 239 241 242 243 245 246 248 251 252 257 259 268 x Contents Chapter 10 UV M
200. nt tattoo131_dispGray and save the remaining visible layers as Armband png FIGURE 9 25 The tattoo prepared as a displacement object 11 12 13 14 15 16 Chapter 9 Creating Your Own Textures 267 a Screen o Opacity sox je isd ols a Fill 100 fel T Fi ql tattool31_dispGray fsa E Effects Ss Bevel and Emboss Fy tattool31_displacement Effects Bevel and Emboss Black a tattool31_blur2 4 rool tattoo131_blurl tattool31 s 1 gt Tattoo T Background a er OOod FIGURE 9 26 The order of the layers with their content names to help you put your file together Turn on the visibility of three layers you turned off in Step 9 and save the file as Armband_disp png In Poser s Material Room select Ryan s body and in the Diffuse section change the image file to Armband png Go down the list to Displacement Click on the plug choose New gt 2D Textures gt Image_Map and add the Armband_disp png file Next to Displacement in the PoserSurface node list change the value to 0 00855 Go to Render gt Render Settings and make the following changes Auto Settings Set to Final m Use Displacement Maps On Render your file and it will look very much like what you see in Figure 9 27 268 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide FIGURE 9 27 The rendered file with a rais
201. nto a blank Poser scene I have imported the latter Use the Figure gt Use Inverse Kinematics command to turn IK off on each leg and use the Joint Editor to zero the pose of Jessi The Zero Pose button will not zero the xTran yTran or zTran dials in the Parameters panel so you may need to adjust those settings manually see Figure 7 14 f L The Jessi figures are located in the Figures gt Poser 6 gt Jessi folder NOTE 4 Click the Cloth tab to enter the Cloth Room If the Room Help window appears close it Choose File gt Import gt Wavefront OBJ The Import Options dialog box shown in Figure 7 15 appears Uncheck all of the options to import the OBJ file at the scale and position at which it was created Click OK to continue When the Import Wavefront OBJ dialog box appears navigate to the folder you created and select JessiTop obj Click Open to import the object If for some reason the clothing does not get placed correctly on the model you ll need to go to Window gt Parameter Dials Move the clothing into place before moving to the next step The reason this would happen is if you hit Cmd Ctrl D to move the figure to sit on the Ground plane more accu rately If you didn t change Jessi s position the clothing will fit just fine With the top selected choose Object gt Change Parent The Object Parent dialog box appears 194 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide FIGURE 7 14 The JessiH
202. nuing let s rename this light Light 1 really doesn t tell you any thing and if this were a scene where you had a dozen lights remembering what light is doing what job would be rather difficult Click on the Properties tab and rename Light 1 to Key Light Using the Point At command can save you a lot of time and energy as you con tinue building your scene s When you need a light to continuously illuminate a specific part of your model you can use Point At so that you don t need to keep repositioning that particular light each time you move the model And by adding color to the light you can dramatically alter the overall look of the model s colors so by starting with neutral colors you can focus your attention on the scene creation process before getting more detailed TUTORIAL 3 3 ADDING A FILL LIGHT 4 The fill light softens the contrast of the key light and makes more of the subject visible The fill light usually comes from the opposite side of your key light for example if your key light is on the left your fill light is on the right Because they are typically used to add ambient color in your scene fill lights are some times tinted to use a color that is predominant in the scene such as blue for moonlight or yellow for sunlight Fills are usually about one eighth to one half as bright as the key light depending upon how much shadow contrast you want in your final image Spotlights can be used for fill lights
203. o each eyeball having them point at the Main Camera He s going to be a dangerous dude in the little story I set up in my mind All he needs are a few scars and he ll be set to go Render the scene Figure 3 13 shows the rendered Ryan along with the P8 Ryan Hair 1 hair model added to his head His skin color is a bit pale because of the white light Change the Key Light color to the following settings and then re render This light shade of pink is just enough to pull out some red in the skin Save this file for later use m Red 1 000 m Green 867 m Blue 933 With the lights in place and before moving on to Tutorial 3 5 save this scene as lightingSetup pz3 You will come back to it later in this chapter 66 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide FIGURE 3 13 A rendered Ryan using the three point lighting scheme The background was changed to black to enhance the back lighting TUTORIAL 3 5 SAVING THE LIGHT SET This light set is one of a kind Well okay it s a one of a kind light set equal to vy the number of you who are reading and following along I keep seeing the equation LS R xB Light Sets Readers x Books but that s neither here nor there Since you took all this time to create this set why not save it for later use in any other portrait scene you want to create This process is identical to saving your cameras which you learned how to do in Chapter 2 1 In the Library palette select the Ligh
204. of a key light should appear similar to the lighting you want in your final scene except that the shadows will be darker and have very harsh contrast The most obvious choice to use for a key light is a spotlight 1 Because you have removed all the lights in the scene the only control you have in the Light Controls panel is the Create Light icon see Figure 3 6 Click this icon to create a new light which by default should be placed at approximately the 10 o clock position on the panel s Light Position Indicator This light again by default will be a spotlight Light Controls FIGURE 3 6 A total eclipse of the Light Controls panel 2 At this point you don t need to worry about any kind of exact positioning Nope This is going to be purely visual Click on the Light Position Indicator and move it until it s in the upper left section of the globe Figure 3 7 shows the new position for the light What you have accomplished here is to position the light approximately 45 degrees off your camera If you moved the light to the center of the globe icon the light would be placed directly in front of or behind the scene s figure 3 Because Andy is fairly tall he is an android you know the light is point ing more toward his chest than his head With the light still selected fix that by using the Object gt Point At menu command and from the list select the Head see Figure 3 8 Now the light is pointing exactly as y
205. olders Here are some resources you can use to learn more about copyright law E www copyright gov wwwz chillingeffects org http darkwing uoregon edu csundt copyweb Useful In addition the Copyright Laws and Ethical Standards forum at Renderosity com addresses specific questions that Poser content creators have regarding copyright and ethical issues Free membership is required to access the forums Once there point your browser to www renderosity com mod forumpro showforum php forum _id 12395 When you reach the point of wanting to build your own image maps you need to make sure you have the right tools This might sound like a no brainer comment but the right tools often mean getting a higher end type of program to work in Adobe Photoshop as well as Corel s Paint Shop Pro Painter and Draw are a few Chapter 9 Creating Your Own Textures 243 There is also GIMP a free alternative that is available for both the PC and Mac There are others but these are some of the most popular The main thing when building textures is to have a program that works with layers and to save that layered file before saving the flattened image that is used in Poser s A layered file serves a couple of purposes First if you want to make any changes to color or position you can do it quickly and easily without having to start from scratch Second and maybe most important that layered file serves as proof that a texture 1s yours in case
206. om the menu When you placed the EPS file it was brought in as a Smart Object You don t want it to be a Smart Object but rather a regular pixel based image Once converted press Cmd Ctrl I to invert the layer The black will become white which is what you need in order to raise the tattoo on the arm 266 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide and then search for Smart Objects X To learn more about Smart Objects in Photoshop go to Help gt Photoshop Help NOTE 6 10 Open the Layer Styles window by clicking on the fx button at the bottom of the Layers window Select Bevel and Emboss then make the following setting changes m Style Inner Bevel m Size 10 pixels m Angle 141 m Shadow Mode gt Opacity 100 The tattoo is too sharp for what you want to accomplish So select Filter gt Blur gt Gaussian Blur and change the setting to anywhere between 3 5 and 4 pixels Figure 9 25 shows the tattoo layer that is about to become the dis placement map Next duplicate the beveled layer and in the Edit gt Fill window make sure you have Preserve Transparency active and fill the layer with 50 gray Set the Opacity to 19 This gives just enough gray to the white sections of the displacement to soften them more naturally Adda layer under the displacement layers and fill it with black Figure 9 26 shows the layers and their order Turn off the visibility of the top three layers Black tattoo131_displaceme
207. omes together to be baked in the oven the root node which combines everything The final result is your wonderful tasting cookie the resulting material as shown in the PoserSurface panel Chapter 4 Creating Materials 111 w Ryan Cas Materia Shirt PoserSurface image Map T image map 3 FIGURE 4 23 Two material nodes attached to three different root nodes in the Material Room Advanced view Nodes are versatile black boxes that act upon the input fed into them and then output something else as a result of their unique actions To connect a node to the root node you click on the little plug icon on the right side of the PoserSurface panel From there choose New Node to display the submenu shown in Figure 4 24 There are five major types of nodes Math Lighting Variables 3D Textures and 2D Textures Within each major node category there are several nodes that behave in different ways Here is a brief description of each node and what it represents m Math nodes These perform mathematical calculations and transformations based on the values of their inputs The Math node choices are Blender Edge Blend Component Math Functions Color Math User Defined Simple Color Color Ramp and HSV 112 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide PoserSurface Math Lighting Variables 3D Textures 2D Textures 9 000000 Nes fa f a I El fa FIGURE 4 24 A material node s submenu m Lig
208. ometimes decrease your rendering time considerably Reflection maps can create believable reflections where you don t have to reflect elements in your scene Typically a reflection map is a photograph of some real world elements that is spherized To create the reflection map for The Bootie Ana took a photograph Chapter 9 Creating Your Own Textures 253 from inside a window looking outward She then increased the contrast to increase the difference between the light and dark areas Finally she ran the image through a spherize filter giving the reflection map the appearance of looking at something through a metallic ball Figure 9 11 shows a similar type of reflection map and the results it achieves on the Poser mannequin Ciao El al FIGURE 9 11 Reflection maps are frequently created by reflecting real world environments onto an object 254 TUTORIAL 9 1 d d NOTE Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide MAKING A REFLECTION MAP IN PHOTOSHOP In addition to the raytraced reflections image maps can be used to create real istic reflections as well And those maps don t have to be photorealistic to add that realism to an object You added a reflection map to the belt and metallic pieces in Chapter 4 and in this tutorial you will see how I made those maps I will be using Adobe Photoshop CS4 for this project but you can use other image editing programs to create the same type of image The main thing to reme
209. or this tutorial is to show you how to perform Dynamic calculations when there are multiple simulations in one scene So let s get simulating You ll create individual simulations for the skirt and top The jacket will be covered in Tutorial 7 4 1 Select JessiTop from the Cloth Simulations area pop up menu This makes that particular Dynamic cloth object active 2 Click Calculate Simulation in the Dynamics Controls area Within a few moments the simulation will begin You ll see the program running through the frames of your animation and the cloth settling more naturally against Jessi s body 3 Select JessiSkirt and repeat Step 2 Figure 7 22 shows Jessi in my scene with the skirt and shirt clothified 204 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide FIGURE 7 22 Jessi s skirt and top are clothified TUTORIAL 7 4 CONSTRAINING PARTS OF THE CLOTH too much and literally folds down too far on the shoulder This can be fixed by making a Choreographed Dynamic Group I m going to make sure the collar stays in place while the rest of the jacket clothifies EA If you did the jacket simulation right now you would find that the collar softens 1 Select JessiJacket from the Cloth Simulations area pop up menu 2 Click on Edit Constrained Group in the Cloth Groups section 3 When the Group Editor panel opens drag across the edge of the collar You might want to activate Hide Other Objects so you can more easily work with the ja
210. oser 8 opens Andy also needs a face Select the head and in the Parameters panel set Facial Features to 1 000 This will give ol Andy a human like face almost like Robin Williams robot character in the movie Bicentennial Man But I digress Pose Andy in the following manner Head Neck E Twist 15 mu Twist 19 E Side Side 3 E Bend 5 Chest m Side Side 4 Chapter 3 Mastering Light and Shadow 57 Next move the arms so they are down by his side using the method you are most comfortable with They won t be seen in this shot Now set the Main Camera as follows DollyZ 4 042 DollyY 5 356 DollyX 0 264 xOrbit 10 yOrbit 32 Your Preview window should now look like what you see in Figure 3 5 Now go to Scripts gt Utility gt Delete Lights You re starting without any lights in the scene and will create them as you need them When you select this Python script you ll be told that it can t be undone Click OK because you don t want those lights in the first place Yours will be much better FIGURE 3 5 I m ready for my close up Mr DeMille 58 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide TUTORIAL 3 2 CREATING THE KEY LIGHT The key light is the main light in the scene It will also define the shadows on the A subject The key light typically appears anywhere between 15 and 45 degrees to amp theleft or right of the camera and 15 to 45 degrees higher than the camera The lighting
211. ou want it In addition if we move the light later on this will keep the light pointing at Andy s head as you move the light Chapter 3 Mastering Light and Shadow 59 FIGURE 3 7 The approximate position for the key light FIGURE 3 8 Select Head from the Point At list gram Poser can crash at the worst possible moment too So I would suggest you XK It s a good idea to save your file often While it doesn t happen a lot like any pro rE use Ctrl Cmd S every other step or so 60 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide NOTE 4 White and gray lights are neutral color lights that don t affect the colors in the materials of the objects you are rendering When the Red Green and Blue values are each set to 1 the light is pure white or gray depending on the Intensity setting Set the Red Green and Blue parameters to 1 and set the Intensity of the light to 100 There is another way to accomplish this task You knew that was coming didn t you You can use what s called a wacro the Set Up Light Style wacro to be specific Go to the Material Room and click the Set Up Light Style wacro button at the right side of the window Select White Only after the Choose a Light Style dialog appears then click OK The current light will turn white Another way to get to the Material Room is with the light selected open the Properties panel and click the Advanced Material Properties button at the bottom 5 Before conti
212. our choice Load that model each time you want to use it and the settings will be as you saved them so you won t have to constantly turn off Inverse Kinematics or zero the figure again 2 Select the Face Camera and if it isn t already change the display mode to Texture Shaded 3 Click Ryan Casual s head to select it as the current actor Then choose Object gt Create Magnet Your scene should look similar to Figure 8 4 In my warped way of looking at things Ryan now appears to be wearing a very plain Easter Bonnet But I digress FIGURE 8 4 A magnet is created for Ryan Casual s head Chapter 8 Creating Custom Morphs 213 4 The first thing you notice is that the magnet zone automatically encloses and is centered around the selected body part and the magnet base appears near the base of the head or in this case is cutting through his wattle You want to affect one of the cheeks with this magnet so let s start by moving the magnet base right and upward toward the right cheek Click the magnet base to make it the current object then make the following adjustments E xTran 0 181 E yTran 5 631 E zTran 212 5 Because part of the magnet is buried inside his head you can also rotate the magnet base so that you can see the magnet better You ll also make the mag net a little smaller Scale the magnet base to 7 and adjust the zRotate value to 90 degrees Your magnet should now look like the one shown in Figure 8
213. our models You can use the next section to hone your already burgeoning skills Once you ve gotten the hang of it the Advanced view of the Material Room won t look quite so menacing If you re comfortable in the Simple view then you can skip ahead to the section The Advanced View and a Discussion of Nodes later in this chapter Chapter 4 Creating Materials 87 w Ryan Cas PoserSurface Image_Map Apply to all Select all Invert selection YCradiant Burp Twist Side Side oT Beng FIGURE 4 3 The Node Options menu in the Advanced view THE SIMPLE VIEW New node Math Lighting Variables 3D Textures 2D Textures The Simple view of the Material Room shown in Figure 4 4 allows you to quickly assign colors or texture maps for the most common types of materials and mater ial settings used in Poser Those who are familiar with Poser Pro Pack and earlier versions of Poser will find the Simple view to be somewhat easier to use than the Advanced view Here you can assign texture maps and pertinent settings for diffuse color highlight ambient reflection bump and transparency maps as well as view a preview of the texture as you make your changes The Material Preview pane shows what your material looks like with the current parameter settings 88 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide FIGURE 4 4 The Material Room Simple view interface the associated setting in the Advanced view The quickest way to do
214. our selection to point at go back to the Point At dialog box and click the None button at the bottom FIGURE 2 14 The Point At dialog box allows you to point an object toward any other figure body part object light or camera in your scene 40 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide 6 When you return to the Preview window one eye should be pointing at your camera Select the other eye and repeat Steps 4 and 5 to point it at the same camera Figure 2 15 shows the eyes before and after they are posed Notice the difference it can make to an image FIGURE 2 15 Before her eyes were posed Sydney had a blank stare left After her eyes are pointed at the camera she gains a little more personality right The Point At control in the Parameters panel will not appear until you have selected Object gt Point At Then it will appear at the very bottom of the Parameters panel in a new section called Other Expand that section to see the Point At control dial 7 Many times the Point At feature will be extreme With this example it isn t but the eyes are a bit more turned than they need to be to truly stare at the audience The easy way to fix it is by changing the Point At inten sity With one of the eyes selected go to the Parameters panel and at the very bottom of the list is Point At By default it s set to 1 00 the full power To reduce the Point At effect use the dial and reduce the value until you are happy with
215. ources it is the ambient light that you are using to see the room Based upon lighting conditions a heavily overcast day or a bright sunny day the look of the area changes because that color making up the ambient light is interacting with the objects around you 96 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide Now let s apply this concept to materials in Poser Ambient color is essentially emitted from an object when it s added to a material Even if you delete all of the lights an ambient color other than black will cause an object to appear self illuminating However it doesn t actually illuminate the scene see Figure 4 11 If you set the ambient color too bright you will lose all the shadowed areas of the object and create an overall flattening effect on the materials applied You can combine color with a texture map in the Ambient section to cause that element to stand out in your scene 1 Making sure Shirt is selected in the Materials pop up click on the Ambient section image preview and add the Ryan_PoserBookShirt png file 2 Click on the color chip at the top of the Ambient section and select a yellow color It doesn t matter what the shade of yellow is just use one you like FIGURE 4 11 The shirt s ambient color has been set and all lights in the scene have been turned off Also the background color has been turned to black The shirt appears to glow but does not illuminate the scene Chapter 4 Creating Materials 97
216. ous morphs back to zero you will then see only the custom morph that you created yourself If you want to create a totally original morph leave this option unchecked and use a combination of magnets and the Morphing Tool to create your morphs Mirror Select an option from the Mirror menu to mirror the effects of a morph on one side of a group to the opposite side Note that this option does not affect multiple groups the affects of the morph are only mirrored in the current group you are working on The x to x option mirrors morphs on the left side to the right side The x to x option mirrors morphs on the right side to the left side The y to y option mirrors morphs on the top side to the bottom side The y to y option mirrors morphs on the bottom side to the top side The z to z option mirrors morphs on the front side to the back side The z to z option mirrors morphs on the back side to the front side Zero Morph Click this button to remove all changes made by the Morphing Tool in the current group FIGURE 8 21 The area that will be affected is displayed as multicolored dots by default Chapter 8 Creating Custom Morphs 231 Save a Copy As Click this button to save a copy of the morph under a name of your choosing A dialog box prompts you to enter a name for the morph The new morph dial appears in the Parameters panel when you select the body part from which the morph was created Note that if you created the morph with
217. ous options that will control how your morphs react Chapter 8 Creating Custom Morphs 221 8 Figure 8 13 shows the Edit Parameter Dial dialog Set the Min Limit to 0 which will restrict the morph from going below 0 and set the Max Limit to 1 000000 which will keep you from taking the morph higher than 1 Edit Parameter Dial Parameter Settings Value 1 000000 Min Limit 0 000000 Max Limit 1 000000 Name Cheeks Chubby Sensitivity 0 020000 FIGURE 8 13 Limits have been set so you can t overdo a morph 9 Taking this one step further click on the right arrow again and select Split Morph You ll get a warning message that this will split the morph into left and right channels which is what you want After clicking OK you will have two more morph channels Cheeks_Chubby_r and Cheeks_Chubby_l Now you can control each cheek separately Once again though you will have to set limits for the morphs or else you could get something that looks like Figure 8 14 FIGURE 8 14 Without limits you can really mess up poor Ryan s features 222 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide With the limits set you can now save your figure and the file for later use I overwrote the original Ryan_Casual file replacing it with this one That way my morphs will appear the next time I load him and work with his head By overwriting the file you would completely replace the original If you think you lA would ever want to use
218. ower values create a dimmer light and higher values create a brighter light Values above 100 and negative values can also be used Properties Name Change the name of the light Highly recommended if you have a large number of lights in your scenes Many light sets that you download or that come with models you might have purchased usually have a large number of light types assigned to do specific chores in the scene Using descriptive nam ing conventions can help you quickly find and modify the lights in your scene Include in OpenGL Preview Poser supports previewing up to eight lights in the scene If you have more only eight will be used This control lets you define which lights are seen in the Preview window Visible Check to display the light indicator in the Document window Uncheck this option to hide the light indicator Animating On by default this option creates a keyframe when you make changes to a light in any frame but the first frame This allows you to animate light properties such as color position rotation or intensity Uncheck this op tion if you want your light to remain the same throughout an entire animation On When unchecked turns the light off so that it no longer shines light Shadows Check this option if you want your light to cast shadows It takes longer to render scenes in which multiple lights cast shadows If you choose to cast shadows select one of the types of shadows introduced earlier such
219. own in Figure 8 20 contains tools that allow you to push pull smooth or restore vertices to their original positions In other words you can cre ate your own custom morphs by moving vertices and polygons around with a tool that is similar to a paintbrush There are five sections in the Create tab The controls in these sections serve the following functions m Push Pull Smooth and Restore Select one of these options to determine how the Morphing Tool will affect your geometry Push moves the vertices inward like a dimple toward the direction that you push the tool Pull moves the ver tices outward like a bump toward the direction that you pull Smooth evens out the irregularities in the morph creating softer transitions between high and low areas Restore gradually removes the morph in the areas that you use the tool 228 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide Editing Tools Preview Render Untitled 2S ce w Ryan Casual w Hip Clear Morphs Clear Pins Lock All Unlock All FIGURE 8 19 Clicking on the Morphing Tool opens the Morphing Tool panel Morphing Tool Create Combine Push Relative to Pull smogu screen Surface T Magnitude J t Average nurmals Accumulate 7 Stroke Group Display Mesh Display Brush Work with current morphs wW Mirror Zero Morph Save a ropy as FIGURE 8 20 The Create tab of the Morphing Tool panel Chapter 8 Creating Custom Morphs 229 Relative To Select o
220. pears click the tricolored square in the upper right corner to open the RGB color picker Set the RGB color values to 150 150 and 150 to create a medium shade of gray The face and body colors should now match Chapter5 Creating Custom Faces 143 TuTORIAL 5 4 SavinG MuLTIPLE FACES IN ONE FIGURE Many Poser users like to save one single figure that contains all of their charac 7 ters You can use the Face Room to generate a head morph and then apply it to your figure as a morph You can then save the figure to the library after you add the morph When it s time to create another morph start with this custom character To illustrate this process I will generate some custom faces with the Random Face button Pll be using the Simon G2 figure but you can use whichever compatible figure you prefer Make sure you turn off inverse kinematics and zero the figure after placing it into a new scene 1 Change to the Face Camera so that you can see your figure s face as you create the new characters Brighten the default lighting if necessary so that you can see the facial features more clearly 2 Click the Face tab to enter the Face Room 3 Click the Import Original Figure Head Texture button The default face texture for your figure appears on your Face Room head 4 It will help create more realistic faces if you set the Caricature value in the Face Shaping Tool to a negative number For purposes of this tutorial set the Caric
221. photograph or movie the Ground plane will render a pretty decent low cast shadow over the photographic background It is a quick and simple solution if you don t have time to do any post processing work in programs like Photoshop Paint Shop Pro or CorelDraw f To use the default Ground plane as the floor in your scene go to the Material Room and select the Ground plane from the Object menu Props gt GROUND Near the bottom of the Poser Surface window uncheck the Shadow Catch Only option This allows you to see the Ground plane To add a texture to the Ground plane click the Diffuse _Color node button and choose the node you want to attach such as a 2D Textures gt Image Map node You ll learn more about materials in Chapter 4 Creating Materials NOTE TUTORIAL 3 8 ADDING A PHOTOGRAPHIC BACKGROUND Now that you have a firm grasp on HDRI and image based lighting it s time to A explore exactly what photographic images can do to add realism to your renders In this tutorial you will add an image that has been saved as an HDRI file and use it to illuminate your scene Before starting create a new scene and add any human model to the workspace For this project m using DAZ 3D s Michael 4 character But any character model will work for this If you have the Michael 4 character I have included a pose file Stroll pz2 for your use It s in the Runtime folder inside the Chapter 3 folder on the DVD 76
222. placement map right In order to see your displacement maps in the render you need to go to Render gt Render Settings Ctrl Cmd Y and turn on the Use Displacement Maps option NOTE When using the Displacement option you control the strength of the displacement by clicking on Manual Settings in the Render Settings window Render gt Render Settings or Ctrl Cmd R and changing the Min Displacement Bounds value to NOTE something other than the default 0 A setting between 02 and 05 is a good starting point Let s see You have made a new shirt material and made the belt buckle look more realistic Howzabout adding some interest to the belt itself 1 Make sure Belt is selected from the Materials pop up menu 2 Click on the thumbnail image of the Diffuse Color channel and add the beltMaterial png file in the Chapter04 folder on the DVD This will add a clothlike pattern to the belt 3 Set the Diffuse Color to somewhere between 25 and 35 gray You will probably need to click on the red green blue square the color picker to go into the other color selection modes Select RGB and change the values to 152 152 152 4 Click on the thumbnail preview area of the Bump section and select the same image beltMaterial png 104 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide 5 Turn on the Displacement option 6 In the Render Settings window turn on Use Displacement Maps See the previous Note if you don t know how to do this Wh
223. planation with examples explaining depth of field try the following online resources www dofmaster com dof_defined html and www azuswebworks com photography dof html Main Camera Parameters Properties Other Focal lt gt 55 mm Perspective 4 e gt 55mm focus_Distance a T 17 200 fStop q Mii 2 800 shutter_Open n 0 000 shutter_Close L 0 500 hither ELL 0 413 yon ETT gt 860 00 Transform DollyZ TTT 9 460 DollyY TTT gt 3 040 Dollyx CET gt 0 066 pate 1 TTT gt 100 yScale e 100 xScale 100 Scale 4 100 zOrbit xOrbit yOrbit FIGURE 2 5 Poser camera parameters mimic settings found in real world cameras Chapter 2 Using Cameras 29 m Shutter_Open and Shutter_Close These two settings represent the point in an animation frame when the camera shutter opens and when the camera shutter closes 0 0 represents the beginning of a frame and 1 0 represents the end of a frame The results of this setting are only visible when you activate 3D motion blur Hither This setting controls the location of the clipping plane which is a spec ified distance from the camera that defines what objects are visible Anything between the camera and the clipping plane will not appear in the Preview window After you get past the clipping plane you will see the objects in your scene Figure 2 6 shows what happens if an object is too close to the Hither set ting
224. proper aspect ratio When rendering a scene that uses a background photo it is recommended that you set the FireFly renderer to Final quality You ll learn more about rendering in Chapter 16 Rendering Options and Techniques TUTORIAL 3 10 USING THE GROUND PLANE TO LINE UP THE SCENE This image has an area set where you can comfortably place your figure so that A he s walking in the scene But you have to line up the character so he looks like he s part of it The grid making up the Ground plane will work perfectly for this 1 If you do not see the grid for the default Ground plane superimposed over the image select Display gt Guides gt Ground Plane It will also make it easier to see Michael s feet if you turn off the ground shadows choose Display gt Ground Shadows to uncheck them 2 Use the Camera Plane controls the control with hands pointing in four directions to move the figure to the right side of the image You can also hold down the spacebar and click and drag within the Preview window to pan or tilt the camera 3 Use the camera Trackball control to turn the Main Camera so that your figure is walking toward the left side of your screen and so that the perspec tive of the Ground plane matches the perspective in the photo Figure 3 24 shows a good placement for the camera angle and position TUTORIAL 3 11 CREATING AND PLACING THE IMAGE BASED LIGHT Now let s light this scene If you do a test r
225. r personal experiences and point of view There is nothing more personal than art But wait Why quote a photographer when we re talking about the rendering of polygons and the manipulation of pixels Well nothing gets done in the 3D world without cameras It s just a fact of digital life When you open any 3D application your initial view is through the Main Camera Each render is based on how well you Te quote from Flliott Erwitt www elliotterwitt com a photographer and 19 20 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide can manipulate the camera how well you know optics and then use that knowl edge to define the final appearance of your render Yes lighting plays an integral part in the process and that will be covered in Chapter 3 But ultimately the power of your image comes from the way in which you capture it And that s down through the lens of that virtual camera When you first create a new Poser scene Poser displays the contents through the Main Camera There are several other cameras in Poser and each of them has controls that are similar to real world cameras those controls and properties can be modified and saved for later use In this chapter you ll learn how to use Poser s cameras for different applications You ll also learn how to save your own custom cameras as well as how to point cameras and objects at each other CAMERA OVERVIEW Poser comes with 13 different camera presets that can help you build and
226. r rendering your image with the IBL the scene looks pretty good But it can use a little more fine tuning You might want to make sure the ground is set as a Shadow Catcher if Michael appears to be floating This way shadows will appear under the character in a natural manner 82 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide FIGURE 3 27 The second light has added depth to the highlights and shadow in the image A SHort RE PoseE Lighting as you learned in this chapter is a complex process There are no short cuts or magic steps that will make one light set work for every scene You must use trial and error built upon a strong knowledge base to bring your scenes to life There s more information in Appendix C Frequently Asked Questions to help you go even further But suffice it to say this will not be the last time you touch lights while working through this book So now it s time to move on You ll leave lighting behind and begin learning how to bring your figures to life using another method materials Yes my friends it s time for drum roll please the Material Room 4 Creating Materials In This Chapter Meet the Material Room The Simple View Tutorial 4 1 Adding Diffuse Color Tutorial 4 2 Adding Specular Highlights Tutorial 4 3 Adding Ambient Maps to a Material Tutorial 4 4 Working with Reflection Maps Tutorial 4 5 Adding a Bump Map Tutorial 4 6 Working with Transparency Maps The Advanced V
227. r rotate the magnet zone on the x left right y up down or z forward backward axis to position the magnet base away from the center point of the magnet zone Magnet This is the element that actually moves the polygons in the object The polygons that move are determined by the area defined by the magnet zone You translate rotate or scale the magnet to move the polygons in the object After you move the magnet you can make changes to the placement of the magnet zone or magnet base until you achieve the desired shape of your morph TUTORIAL 8 1 CREATING MORPHS WITH POSER MAGNETS You will better understand the function of each magnet part if you use it your A self In this tutorial you ll create a morph for Ryan Casual s face The morph _ will change the shape of his cheeks Actually you ll use two magnets to create the morph one on each side of the face To create the face morph for Ryan Casual follow these steps A 212 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide 1 After creating a new scene add Ryan Casual from the Figures gt Poser 8 library Turn off Inverse Kinematics and use the Joint Editor or the Zero All Python script to zero his pose You will find that it s often a good idea to turn off Inverse Kinematics and to zero out the figure when you first start working with it If you get tired of constantly re peating the actions in Step 1 merely perform the actions and then save the figure into the folder of y
228. r scene from different viewpoints without having to modify the position of the Main Camera or using up several Camera Dots Camera Dots allow you to store camera settings in the scene You can store up to nine different camera configurations These settings are stored in the program not in the scene which means that those camera settings will be available in every scene you create m Posing Camera Ctrl Cmd This rotates around the center figure s hip If for some reason the center figure does not have a hip the camera will rotate around the center of the body 22 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide NOTE NOTE Face Camera Ctrl Cmd Specialized camera that helps you define facial expressions It focuses on the center of the figure s head This camera can also help you define and modify hair styles created in the Hair Room If yow re a content developer to make this camera function correctly you must name the figure element head Left Hand Camera Ctrl Cmd Specialized camera that helps you define hand poses It focuses on the center of the particular hand letting you rotate around the element so you can refine its pose If you re a content developer to make this camera function correctly you must name the figure element Hand Right Hand Camera Ctrl Cmd Specialized camera that helps you define hand poses It focuses on the center of the particular hand letting you rotate around the element so yo
229. ractical Poser 8 The Official Guide FIGURE 9 23 The finished tattoo on Ryan s arm TUTORIAL 9 3 ADDING PERSONALITY TO SKIN TEXTURES about a texture that involves multiple nodes I knew you were going to ask so as people like me are wont to say your wish es are my command And you ll use the same texture map you just put the tattoo on Z The tattoo was fairly simple in that it only involved one texture node What This time you ll do one of those tattoos that are raised on the arm that seem to have become very popular over the past few years This will be tribal band or in this case a Celtic band around Ryan s right arm 1 Download Tattoo131 eps from the Vector Graphics website 2 In Photoshop go to File gt Place and then scale and rotate the band so it looks like Figure 9 24 Chapter9 Creating Your Own Textures 265 FIGURE 9 24 The band tattoo in position 3 Set the Blend mode for this band layer to Screen and the Opacity to 50 This will make a very light band encircling Ryan s arm Save this file as RyanBody_TattDiff png The name stands for Tattoo Diffuse 4 Create two more copies of this tattoo layer and then blur both of them with the Gaussian Blur filter You want just enough of a blur to create a softening effect to the band allowing the skin to look stretched when the displacement map is added 5 Duplicate the Tattoo131 layer and then right click on this new layer and select Rasterize fr
230. rated Dynamic Friction This determines the amount of friction created when the cloth object moves across a collision object Start Draping From Zero Pose Important to have active when you are creating Dynamic cloth By starting from the zero pose which you set up in Tutorial 7 1 the draping of the cloth will be accomplished correctly Ignore Head Hand Feet Collisions Does what it implies When active the cloth object will not collide against those particular elements 200 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Now that you know what those controls are you re going to ignore them OK not ignore them just leave them set to their defaults So click OK to assign the collision objects and return to the Cloth Room The next layer above the top is the skirt This piece of clothing must be set to collide against some of Jessi s body parts but must also collide with the top To begin click the New Simulation button again Name the simula tion JessiSkirt and set the Drape Frames value to 10 Click the Clothify button Or select JessiSkirt as the object to clothify and then click the Clothify button Click the Collide Against button When the Cloth Collision Objects dialog box opens click the Add Remove button to open the Select Objects dialog box Select Jessi s hip and abdomen as well as the right and left thighs Then scroll down to the bottom of the Select Collision
231. re are a few settings in the FireFly renderer that must be enabled for displacement maps to work the Min Displacement Bounds setting in Manual Settings has to be at least as high as the displacement value that you enter in the Displacement setting in the root node Also make sure you enable check the Use Displacement Maps option 262 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide TUTORIAL 9 2 CREATING A REALISTIC TATTOO maps that made up The Bootie texture let s turn to skin textures There are many skin textures on the market and many of them have tattoos but in most cases the tattoos appear to be merely plopped on top of the texture and don t exactly look natural How can you make a tattoo look like it is actually ink in jected into the skin Z After looking at clothing and seeing how Ana Winson went about creating the The artwork I am using for the tattoo is free and can be downloaded from Vector Graphics at www vectorgraphics info vector clipart php cat tattoos2 1 From Photoshop or whatever image editing program you are using open the RyanBody png texture file located in the Runtime gt Textures gt Poser 8 gt Ryan folder After doing that go to File gt Place and place the Tattoo103 eps file onto the template 2 Rename the tattoo layer Tattoo_Base 3 Scale the tattoo and move it into position on the upper arm Use Figure 9 21 as a guide to the size location and rotation of the tattoo image FIGURE 9 21 The ta
232. re this and the next item are located Move your cursor over a medium gray portion of your image and click That medium gray color will become black Repeat this process with the White point eye drop per selecting the brighter areas of the image until you get something that looks like what you see in Figure 9 13 Chapter 9 Creating Your Own Textures 255 Levels Preset Default wy G Cancel Channel Gray a ae Auto Input Levels Ae Preview Output Levels FIGURE 9 12 Use the Black and White point eye droppers to set new saturation levels in your image ia FIGURE 9 13 The re saturated cloud image 256 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide 6 Go to Edit gt Transform gt Scale or select the Move tool and turn on Show Transform Controls in the Options bar Either way you will get control handles around the clouds layer Scale this image down so you have about a 1 4 inch border around the clouds layer see Figure 9 14 FIGURE 9 14 Scale the clouds layer so there is an approximate 1 4 inch border 7 Go to Filter gt Blur gt Gaussian Blur and blur the image until all the details are gone and you are left with flowing shapes If you want you can change the opacity of the layer to bring the brightness of the whites down a bit The reason you added the border before blurring the clouds layer is so that you have a seamless reflection map Also if you blurred the clouds layer wit
233. reat for landscape renders because this focal length results in a fairly wide field of view Smaller focal lengths may produce a noticeable fisheye effect as more and more of the surrounding view is com pressed into the camera s field of view m Perspective The Perspective setting is usually calculated automatically by Poser and is the same as the Focal setting You can change the perspective of your current camera and zoom in or out without affecting the physical location of your camera Changing this setting from the automatically calculated default can be confusing so unless you have a reason it s probably best to leave it at its default 28 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide Focus Distance This setting allows you to specify the distance at which objects will be most in focus A focus indicator moves backward or forward through the scene to indicate where focus will occur Objects that are farther away from the focal plane will be blurred fStop The fStop is a measure of the size of the lens aperture the opening that allows light to come into the camera during an exposure fStop settings determine the depth of field for your renders The depth of field is a measure of how far in front of and how far behind your focus distance objects will remain in focus A good rule of thumb about the relationship between fStop and depth of field is that the higher the fStop the deeper or longer the field of focus For a quick ex
234. reating Custom Faces 129 FIGURE 5 5 The Texture Preview area How to Use Third Party Textures You may have third party textures that you want to use on your Face Room compatible figures It can be helpful to use those face textures while you create a character morph in the Face Room To import a third party head texture into the Face Room click the Import icon the page icon on the left of the Texture Preview area shown in Figure 5 5 Locate the face texture that you want to use and click Open to return to the Face Room Your third party head texture should now appear on the head You are now ready to create your character morph with the Face Shaping Tool The Import Original Figure Head Texture button will not load a third party texture It loads the texture that is assigned to the model you are using You will learn more about this button later in the chapter More Notes About Face Room Textures Because they are created on the fly Face Room textures aren t as perfect as those meticulously created by hand They contain smudges and may be slightly misaligned from the physical geometry of the features For example you might notice when you close the figure s eyes that there are unwanted smears on the eyelids It s important to be aware that Face Room textures contain these undesirable artifacts however they still make a great starting point You can always use the original photos to improve the Face Room texture in an i
235. rences and click the Misc tab Uncheck the Use External Binary Morph Targets box as shown in Figure 8 26 Many models have copyright restrictions on the CR2 files meaning you cannot redistribute the CR2s without the permission of the copyright holder This includes DAZ3D content as well If you are hoping to sell your modifications you will need to set up INJ REM files and distribute those General Preferences Document Interface Library Render Misc Save Files Software Update IL Use file compression T Check for updates z on launch I Use external binary meron oe Temp Files Path Users richardschrand Library Caches lemporaryitems Poser 8 0 P eee Python Editor Set Python Editor Cancel OK FIGURE 8 26 Uncheck the Use External Binary Morph Targets box to create morphs for earlier versions of Poser If you want to distribute morphs with your own original clothing you can save the morph data within the CR2 library file To do this make sure you uncheck the Use External Binary Morph Targets box and also that you do not use file compression when saving your files to the library Your morphs will be saved along with the clothing in an editable CR2 file Many characters most notably the DAZ3D Unimesh figures such as Michael 4 and Victoria 4 Aiko 4 The Girl 4 and so on are furnished with separate face and body morphs The base character file has morph channels within it that are ready to accept inje
236. render scenes In addition the Object gt Create Camera menu commands allow you to create your own custom revolving or Dolly Cameras Cameras can help you accom plish other tasks as well For example you can use the orthogonal cameras From Right From Left From Top From Bottom From Front and From Back to help you customize and position characters and objects position magnets and set up joints for character development You can use the Left Hand Camera and Right Hand Camera options to help you pose a figure s hand to get the fingers just right s What exactly does orthogonal mean The formal definition is having a set of p 7 a mutually perpendicular axes meeting at right angles So an orthogonal element f NOTE such as Poser s cameras is an element that describes its location based upon the point where the X Y Z coordinates meet in 3D space Orthogonal cameras move along two of the three spatial axes which vary depending on the camera view Part of the versatility and power of Poser is the ease with which you can switch between the available cameras The two most obvious ways to change your current camera view are with the interactive Camera Controls area that appears within the Poser workspace or with the Display gt Camera menu options Both methods are shown in Figure 2 1 A third way to access a particular camera is to right click on the view indicator at the top left of the Preview window and choose Camer
237. return to the Texture Manager dialog box click OK to exit You ll be asked if you want to activate Ambient Occlusion for this light This is a feature that prevents light from affecting recessed areas making shadows appear darker Choose Yes to return to the Material Room Go back to the Pose Room and render the scene In the case of an IBL it won t matter where you position the light indicator around your scene The light probe image determines how the scene is lit Figure 3 26 shows an example of what your scene might look like at this point After you render the image you may decide that you want to add some highlights and shadows because IBLs are diffuse only Click the Create Light icon in the Light Controls to create a second light for the scene Look closely at the photograph and notice the direction that the sunlight is coming from In this case the sun is coming from the front left That s where the second light will be positioned Choose Object gt Point At and point the light at your figure s left shoulder 10 Set the yTran setting to about 7 This raises the light well above the figure s head To move the light back slightly and toward your right make the following adjustments m xTran left to right 1 573 m zTran front to back 5 318 Render the scene again to check the shadows and highlights Figure 3 27 shows the final result Chapter 3 Mastering Light and Shadow 81 FIGURE 3 26 Afte
238. rial 9 3 Adding Personality to Skin Textures The true worth of a man is not to be found in man himself but in the colours and textures that come alive in others Albert Schweitzer Room way way back in Chapter 4 in order to combine several type of image maps There are hundreds upon hundreds of textures available for free or for sale to enhance the models in your collection But even with all that you will more than likely have a vision for a particular look that just isn t available through online communities This means you have to create that texture yourself It s not as scary as it might sound You can build upon the existing textures in your library adding elements that bring your vision to life In the case of DAZ3D s Victoria or Michael 4 there are Merchant Resource Kits for sale that give you the layered base textures you can use as an underpinning for the final texture you want to build No matter how you build the textures though if you are using an existing texture as you base there are some legal issues you must be aware of Y have spent time in both the Simple and Advanced views of the Material 241 242 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide TEXTURES AND COPYRIGHTS Because Poser content is distributed digitally it is all too easy to reuse elements cre ated by others in your own projects If you purchase the content you have the right to modify it for your own use For example if you purchase a
239. robe Usinc Bopy HANDLES As early as 2000 even before the release of Poser 5 and Dynamic clothing there was discussion in the Poser community about different ways to approach the morphing and posing of figures and clothing Developers on the Poser technical boards began discussing the possibility of using phantom or ghost body parts parts that are not actually visible on the body or clothing but exist in the underlying hierarchy structure to pose and otherwise manipulate clothing and figures The challenge was devel oping them in such a way that the average Joe would be able to use them without too much difficulty 186 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide Asa result of the discussion regarding ghost parts body handles were introduced during the first quarter of 2002 This ingenious method of posing figures adds extra ghost parts to the figure s standard hierarchy For example in addition to the upper body parts the abdomen and the hip a dress might have another extra part named skirt To pose the skirt you drag a little piece of geometry called a body handle which is typically shaped like a cone or a sphere These body handles allow the user the freedom to work with clothing that poses in part with the character and in part by manual interaction Although body handles can be used in long hair beards and extra clothing parts you see them used most often in long dresses robes and other flowing clothing The solut
240. rrectly Figure 6 4 shows a basic breakdown of growth groups and placement for hair As you can see there are four sections the bangs 1 two sections along the side of the head 2 and 3 and the back 4 This makes for easier styling and is similar to the way hair is added to doll heads be FIGURE 6 4 To best set up the Growth Groups you will want to think about sections like those you see here SECTION 2 GROWTH CONTROLS Select the group that you want to grow hair on from the Current Group menu in the Growth Group section Then click the Grow Guide Hairs button in the Growth Controls section to grow a starting group of hair Use the dials or number settings in the Growth Controls area to specify the Length and Length Variance settings or shagginess of the hair The Pull Back Pull Down and Pull Side controls are not intended for styling Instead they define the base properties of the hair For example hair on the sides of a male head normally pulls back A buzz cut doesn t pull down at all it goes straight up so the Pull Down setting is a negative value Long hair has more weight in real life so it should be set to pull down Chapter 6 Working With Hair 155 SECTION 3 STYLING CONTROLS The Styling Controls area offers tools that help you select deselect move twist and curl hair This is where the real styling takes place Click the Style Hairs button to open the Hair Style Tool panel shown in Figure 6 5 The op
241. s You re able to move these into new locations and dock them as you like You can even use multi ple monitors to open the interface even further In this chapter PI discuss some of the new features and then build on those when moving into subsequent chapters Poser s New FEATURES Immediately upon opening the program you will see that a lot of modifications that have been made to the Poser interface There s a sense of newness blended with familiarity To discover the plethora of changes let s start with the GUI THe New GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE With Poser 8 the look of the GUI has been modernized However even though it has been brought into the 21st century the GUI has also remained true to Krause s design concepts When you first open Poser 8 you will be greeted with the Pose Room shown in Figure 1 1 a more organized and accessible interface that at once looks familiar while showing off its cleaner layout It s also worth noting that de pending on your screen resolution the number of palettes or panels you see either increases or decreases For example you will see fewer panels at a resolution of 1024x768 than you will if your resolution is set to 1920x1600 Windows have been organized and dock comfortably into one another They have been given a more modern look that is familiar to most 3D and 2D artists Controls can be undocked or moved and docked with other tools They can be removed from the main interface entire
242. s the bump map only this warps the mesh actually creating high and low points on the object The Alt Specular map shown in Figure 9 2 is an addition that enhances the specularity in the lacy area of the garment This is a more specialized map and is not used for every texture oa A NOTE Poser uses pre defined UV texture templates You ll learn how to create your own UV maps in Chapter 11 In this chapter you ll draw on UV templates that come with the models TEXTURE CONSIDERATIONS There are some basic considerations when creating any texture whether it s a skin texture or for clothing Repeating patterns Most textures consist of some sort of repeating pattern That pattern can be seamless such as plaids or stripes or the actual material such as burlap or denim or chaotic such as pores on the skin Shadows and highlights In most cases you should leave shadows or highlights off of the diffuse map The lighting in the scene will add those for you By try ing to paint these elements onto your diffuse map you will often create com peting shadows and highlights that ruin your work Height and depth These relate to shadows and highlights If you re going with a bump map only then adding some shadows and highlights to show height in areas such as buttons will be necessary If on the other hand you are using a displacement map the scene s lighting will take care of all highlights and shad ows in your image Scali
243. scale to the same units feet inches miles and so on If that doesn t work as you expect you ll need utilities to scale the figures up for morphing and then scale the figure back down by the equivalent amount for importing into Poser Because procedures vary from 3D program to 3D program it s a good idea to touch base with others who use the same modeling software that you use Chances are they have figured out the best approaches for your soft ware and can help you through the process m When using an external program for morphing don t make any changes to the construction of the geometry that is don t weld vertices don t add or remove vertices and don t subdivide any vertices Doing so will make your morphs in compatible with the original figure m When you try to import a morph target into Poser you might get a message that says Target geometry has wrong number of vertices First check to make sure you have selected the right body part to add the morph to Then make sure that the morph target you are importing was created for that body part If the body parts are the same you may have inadvertently added or removed vertices during the process of creating the morph One way to verify this is to open the morphed version in UVMapper Professional and compare the number of ver tices in the original with those in the morphed part Chapter 8 Creating Custom Morphs 239 Sometimes the morph target appears to apply i
244. sections Each area of the Cloth Room serves a specific purpose For example in the Cloth Simulations area you can assign a name and additional parameters for your cloth simulation You can specify parameters such as the frame numbers through which the simulation takes place whether or not you want to drape the cloth before calculations start as well as additional cloth collision options Use the Cloth Objects section to choose the item to turn into cloth and to spec ify the objects that will cause the clothing to react when the cloth collides against them You can choose any body parts on your figure other cloth objects or other props in your scene Remember however that you should keep the number of collision objects as low as possible to conserve resources The more items you select the longer calculations will take and the more resources will be used 192 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide The Cloth Groups area contains several buttons that help you divide your clothing object into several types of cloth groups Dynamic Group Gives you the ability to create more than one type of clothing in your object By default all polygons in your clothing are assigned to one cloth group and they all behave the same If you create additional Dynamic groups you can assign different properties to the vertices that are included in the new Dynamic group m Choreographed Groups Respond to keyframed animation Constrained Groups H
245. see that the two reflection maps are actually working pretty well but you re losing some detail in those reflections Let s fix that 11 Click on the color chip for Input 2 of the Alternate Diffuse node and using the RGB color window set the color to Red 181 Green 110 Blue 39 This will give a slight brownish cast to the edges of the blended reflections 120 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide 12 You can now set a grayscale value to both the Alternate Diffuse and Alternate Specular channels to control the brightness of the reflective belt surface Figure 4 29 shows the Advanced view of the Material Room and all of the connected nodes Image_Map Image_Map_2 image_Map_4 FIGURE 4 29 The finished material in the Advanced view of the Material Room There is now a nice highlight that goes from the dark belt color into a brown ish color that looks like a reflection from the shirt that then blends into white Of course you can also change the color of the Alternate Specular node to give a deeper shade of the appropriate color for your scene or just add a darker shade of gray to mute the white highlights a bit Chapter 4 Creating Materials 121 A SuHort RE PoseE Between both the Simple and Advanced views of the Material Room you have the power to create virtually any material you can imagine In many cases old pros of Poser might shun the Simple view because of its simplicity and lack of controls but it is a great plac
246. some time to get yourself organized when working in Poser If you just updated to Poser 8 you will want to link to your previous Runtime fold ers and get used to the new GUI Move the control panels to the location s you are most comfortable with Remember after you have moved the panels and set your workspace to your specifications make sure to go to the Preferences window and set the Preferred State options This page intentionally left blank Using Cameras In This Chapter Camera Overview Tutorial 2 1 Using and Selecting Multiple Camera Views Controlling What You See Tutorial 2 2 Creating and Saving Custom Head Cameras Tutorial 2 3 Creating Your Own Cameras Tutorial 2 4 Pointing and Parenting Cameras and Objects Tutorial 2 5 Using Depth of Field Tve found it photography has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them television producer who is known for his photographs of abstract and absurd moments in real life could not be more apropos to the world of 3D artistry 3D art in all reality has little to do with the things we see because not many of us experience fantastic landscapes populated with hordes of dragons scantily clad watrior princesses or grungy space pirates fighting mutant aliens on strange barren planets 3D art however has everything to do with how we actually see things Even if you are creating a real world style image the outcome is a result of you
247. st in the Properties panel It should automatically be selected right after you create the camera Enter a new name in the Name field as shown in Figure 2 12 Press Enter to set the new name for the camera 3 Adjust the settings for the camera in the Parameters panel until you get the view you want in the Preview window 4 By default youre still viewing your scene through your new camera Switch to another camera view in the Preview window and then switch back to the camera you just created by selecting it from the Camera View pop up menu in that same window see Figure 2 13 Chapter 2 Using Cameras 37 Dolly Camera 1 Properties Dolly Camera 1 Main Camera Aux Camera v OpenGL Posing Camera SreeD Dolly Camera Toon Tones Left Camera Right Camera Top Camera Bottom Camera Front Camera Back Camera Face Camera LHand Camera RHand Camera Shadow Litel Cam Shadow Lite 2 Cam Shadow Lite 3 Cam v Upper Left FIGURE 2 13 Select your custom camera from the Camera View pop up menu after right clicking the camera name in the Preview window 38 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide TUTORIAL 2 4 POINTING AND PARENTING CAMERAS AND OBJECTS J F J Poser cameras can track any object in your scene conversely any item in your scene can follow the position of a camera For example let s say you create an animation in which your figure walks around the scene in a circle You can set up the project so that the camera always
248. stering Light and Shadow 73 FIGURE 3 19 The positioning for the eyeLight_L light FIGURE 3 20 There is a big difference in the visual interest of the portrait with eye lights added to the scene 74 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide FIGURE 3 21 Light probes for IBLs use photographs or movies that are projected onto a sphere NOTE to determine the color and intensity of the light hitting the object in your scene Poser is also able to use HDRI high dynamic range imaging formats as light probes Although you can use a regular photograph as an image probe you will get more accurate results with a spherical light probe There are a couple of utilities that can help you make more accurate light probes One such utility is HDR Shop a PC only program that at the time of this writing is free for noncommercial use You can download a copy from the Institute of Creative Technologies at www ict usc edu graphics HDRShop However if you have money to burn there is Genetica Pro www spiralgraphics biz An alternative is Flexify which is a rea sonably priced Photoshop compatible plug in available for purchase from Flaming Pear Software www flamingpear com flexify html When using Flexify you might want to combine it with Topaz Adjust from Topaz Labs www topazlabs com adjust There is a free demo of Topaz Adjust on the attached CD Rom Make sure to read the ReadMe file in order to activate the demo An HDR file is located i
249. t everything Pm interested in from its history to the parts that make it up This way even if I don t go into a specific area of design creating morph packs for resale for instance I want to know how it s accomplished so I have a better understanding of why the morphs are set up as they are THE ANATOMY OF A MORPH When you create a morph in Poser or import a morph target that was created in an external program Poser compares the starting shape or the source shape to the ending shape or the target shape When you save the morphed character to the li brary the library file includes the delta information for each morph That is the library file stores information that describes how far each vertex in the morph moved and from where and to where it moved Let s say for example that you see a dial that changes the size of the eyeballs on a character When you increase the setting on the morph dial the entire eye gets larger as shown on the left eye in Figure 8 2 If each eye contains 200 vertices the morph information adds 200 extra lines of information to your library file for each eye because you are changing the position of every vertex in the eyeball On the other hand let s say there is another dial that only affects the vertices in the pupil of the eye In this case let s say that the dial only moves 20 of those 200 vertices Poser doesn t store the morph information for all 200 vertices for that morph Instead i
250. t only stores the information for the 20 vertices that change the size of the pupil If the figure or clothing doesn t have a morph that will accomplish what you want your Poser content to do you have to create the morph yourself There are several programs you can use to create morphs for Poser content One method is to use Poser magnets which help you deform the polygons in an object by pushing pulling twisting moving translating or rotating them After you wrap your head around the three basic parts of a magnet it s not too difficult to create morphs with them In fact some very popular Poser morph artists create their morphs strictly with Poser magnets One such artist is Capsces whose character morph packs enhance many popular third party Poser figures with entirely new levels of caricature and realism 210 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide an ps n i am m FIGURE 8 2 Morphs can affect all vertices in an object image left or just a portion of the vertices like in the pupil image right A magnet has three parts the magnet base the magnet zone and the magnet These parts are shown in Figure 8 3 m Magnet base This is the bar shaped rectangle that appears at the base of the magnet The center of the magnet base defines the operating point of the magnet Dials in the Parameters panel allow you to scale the base which changes the overall size of the magnet prop without affecting the geometry If the magnet
251. ted in preparation for moving to the other side Pick the Hand tool and pan the Texture view down to see the remaining polygons if you couldn t get them all in the first round Shift click to add the additional polygons to the selection if necessary You can also Alt click to remove polygons from the selection Use the Magnifier tool to zoom out until you can see the entire texture again Or use the View gt Reset View menu command Press the Shift key while you use the right arrow key to move the selected polygons to the right side When the polygons get close to where you want them use the right arrow or left arrow keys without pressing the Shift key to nudge them into place one pixel at a time If necessary zoom in closer with the Magnifier tool to position them immediately next to the existing polygons Figure 10 6 shows proper placement To stitch the moved polygons back into the skirt you need to switch to Vertex Selection mode To do so choose Select gt Select Method gt By Vertex 13 14 15 16 Chapter 10 UV Mapping 277 FIGURE 10 6 Place the polygons immediately adjacent to those on the other side Zoom out until you see the entire right side of the skirt Use the Rectangular Selection tool to draw a selection around the polygons on the right side making sure that you enclose all of the polygons you moved plus some additional for good measure The selected vertices turn red
252. texture that is close in color to the photographs you are using for your figure If your new texture is too far off you might have to create an original body texture using photographs of the same person that you used in the Face Room or by bringing both texture maps into your graphics editing program and make adjustments to the color of the body texture Even if your texture is far off in color having Poser blend the head texture down into the body texture may be a good way to get a baseline color and texture area to use when adjusting the rest of the body texture color VARIATIONS ON A THEME The Face Texture Tool shown in Figure 5 14 applies color and shading changes so you can modify the ethnicity sex or age of the face texture You can also use this area to darken eyebrows or create the appearance of a beard Face Texture Tool Facial Color Beard Eye sockets Eyebrows Ethnicity Age and Gender Ethnicity less more African 4 nT 0 000 less more European NTT 0 000 less more South East Asian m 0 000 less more East Indian TT O Age Gender FIGURE 5 14 The Face Texture Tool area of the Face Room If you have one or more light skinned textures that you like but want to create darker skinned ethnic characters there are a number of approaches you can take 140 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide One way to darken skin is to use the Material Room to adjust the procedural shaders Try darkening
253. that affects all those body parts at one time Now that would be a time saver That s what you ll do now You will create a full body morph FBM from the PBMs you made in Tutorial 8 5 Life is good Z PBMs are great Their one problem though is having to change the values of 1 Continuing from the previous tutorials click Ryan Casual s abdomen and set the PBMBigBelly morph dial to 1 2 Repeat Step 1 for the other body parts that are part of the PBMs Ryan should now look like what s shown in Figure 8 17 FIGURE 8 17 Ryan s belly is ready for an FBM which not only stands for a full body morph but also a full body makeover 226 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide NOTE 3 Before you create your full body morph make sure that there are no other morphs that are dialed in anywhere else on your figure other than the ones you want to include in the full body morph For example if you are creating a full body morph to make a big belly and only a big belly make sure that you don t have any extra muscles dialed in anywhere else on the chest arms or legs Otherwise every time you use your big belly morph you ll also get muscles thrown in to the mix You can also zero out the figure by using the Wardrobe Wizard When you open the wizard s controls click the Utilities button then Morphs gt Zero All Morphs Once you have created the FBMs you can use the Wardrobe Wizard to once again set the dials back to 0 This can
254. the altered photographs make it much easier to create your new face texture with a minimal amount of resizing and moving of feature points Only move the feature points when you need to refine the texture placement on the 3D model in the Face Preview area Figure 5 13 shows an example ofa finished texture after some points have been adjusted FIGURE 5 13 The textures imported onto the model As you can see you re going to want to be careful with the small details of your photographs In the case of the Side jpg photo the subject has hair over his ear so that is being added to the image You would have to clone this out so that it doesn t show up on the ear because as you can see the hair does not look realistic as part of a texture I m also a big fan of removing shading from the source photo those shadowy areas inside the ear should be lightened because the lights in the scene will create their own shadows on the model Chapter5 Creating Custom Faces 139 MATCHING THE HEAD AND Bopy If you are using photographs to create a face texture you have two options in match ing the head texture to the body texture When you save or try to apply the head texture to the figure in the Pose Room Poser asks if you want to change the head texture to match the body texture If you choose Yes Poser blends your head texture to the body texture by adding a graduated alpha transparency edge over the image This is a good option if you have a body
255. the non modified original model save the one you modify f OnE as a new model This way you won t have to reinstall the original Poser 8 content TuTORIAL 8 5 CREATING THE PARTIAL Bopy Morpu PBM Now that you know how to create and spawn a morph that affects a particular v part of the body let s explore how to affect multiple body parts with a single _ magnet For this project you ll continue to modify Ryan the poor guy giving him a pot belly The guy s been sitting on the couch too long that s all there is to it Here you will start with one body part the abdomen and then add more to the list of body parts that the magnet will affect 1 Go to the Main Camera view so you can see Ryan s entire torso 2 Click on his waist to make it the active element 3 Choose Object gt Create Magnet Note that the magnet initially appears inside Ryan so that you cannot see it You should however see Mag 1 dis played in the Parameters panel and you ll also see a small magnet zone that surrounds the abdomen as shown in Figure 8 15 4 Click the magnet base to select it or choose Mag Base 1 from the menu in the Parameters panel Adjust the zTran value to 0 6 to bring the magnet outside of the abdomen 5 Set the xRotate value for the magnet base to 90 degrees to rotate the mag net Note however that this step is not necessary You are only rotating the magnet base to make the stomach area a bit more visible Rotating the
256. the result Here are the settings I used for Figure 2 16 m Right Eye 0 375 m Left Eye 0 734 Chapter 2 Using Cameras 41 FIGURE 2 16 The eyes Point At values have been lowered to give a more realistic appearance of looking at the viewer TuTORIAL 2 5 UsinGc DEPTH OF FIELD der engine and with some simple settings on your camera This process also 2 Depth of field DOF effects can be achieved quite easily with the FireFly ren eA makes use of a Python script written by Stefan Werner What is depth of field It defines what area of an image will be in focus most likely the subject and what areas are out of focus foreground and or background elements in the scene For some images such as landscapes a large DOF may be appropriate while for others such as portraits a small DOF may be more effective In cinematography a large DOF is often called deep focus and a small DOF is often called shallow focus The camera s focal length fStop and focus distance all play a part in deter mining the areas of your scene that will be in focus and the areas that will fade with depth Smaller fStop values create a smaller area that is in focus 42 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide 1 Create a new scene For this tutorial I m going to use Andy the mannequin with his Android face in view for the world to see Use whatever figure you would like but no matter which you choose go to Edit gt Duplicate figure name and
257. the scene is set up and the camera is chosen let s take a quick tour of the workspace First you ll see that the Hair Room is divided into various sections And as with the rest of Poser 8 s interface the Hair Room has experienced a makeover as well but if you are familiar with the controls from previous versions you won t really see anything new here the controls are just presented in an up dated manner Refer to Figure 6 3 as you move through the following sections FIGURE 6 3 The Hair Room interface SECTION 1 HAIR GROWTH Groups Before you can grow hair on an object you have to create hair growth groups that define which polygons in the object will grow hair A hair object can contain several growth groups and each group can be a different length or have different properties such as curliness or how it responds to gravity Make sure you have selected the 154 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide correct object on which to grow hair Click the New Growth Group button and assign a growth group name for the area you want to affect To specify the polygons in the group click the Edit Growth Group button and use the Group Editor to select the polygons Continue in this manner until you have finished creating one or more growth groups The Growth Group section is probably the one area where you want to take the most time And you will quickly find that time will be well worth the effort in order to set up the hair groups co
258. thod you re comfortable with Click on the folder you just created to make sure it s active then click the plus button at the bottom of the Library list This is the Add to Library button Enter Ryan Head Front or a similar name for your character for the camera set name Then click the Select Subset button The Select Objects dialog box shown in Figure 2 10 displays all of the cameras you can choose from In this case you only need to select the Front Camera which you used to create your current camera view Check the Front Camera and then choose OK to return to the previous window Select objects Select items to include v pg UNIVERSE G Main Camera ey Camera G Posing Camera o o o o o Oo o Oo o oO a o Cancel FIGURE 2 10 Use the Select Objects dialog box to select the camera that you want to save Choose OK again to display the Save Frames dialog box which asks if you want to save a single frame or multi frame animation camera Choose Single Frame and click OK The new camera appears in the library For the Left Camera select Display gt Camera View gt From Left from the menu or choose Ctrl Cmd Then from the Parameters panel select the Left Camera from the drop down menu Be sure not to choose LHand Camera which is different Set the DollyY parameter to the same value you used for the front camera 31 485 in this case This will position it at the same height as the Front Camera The
259. time interaction for the user neither of which were widely deployed in the 1980s because most users found them too oblique to learn and remember Of course these are now common elements in all GUIs on all operating systems rounded corners drop shadows transparent backgrounds Amazing how far we have come isn t it O ne thing that can be said about Poser is this it has retained and honored its 2 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide Having founded MetaCreations Inc Krause put his visual stamp on not only Poser but on Bryce and the popular Kai s Power Tools Since its inception Poser has kept the look and feel of Krause s interface for both good and bad One of the bad things Poser was always a bit of a screen hog Okay maybe that was an under statement You had control window upon control window each of which over lapped the other taking up screen real estate They covered the workspace and you had to constantly open and close windows or move them to the side so they d be out of the way when accessing the controls you needed or to work with the figures Poser s innovative look was also its hindrance to many users Still one could never deny how cool the program s interface looked With Poser 8 the interface has been updated and refined while retaining the feel and functionality that Poser users have grown to expect The basic user interface has been streamlined and modernized with docked palettes and panel
260. tions are outlined in the following list Select Hairs Selects the hairs you will work with as you click and drag across the hairs in the Growth Group Translate Hairs Let s you interactively move the hairs forward backward up and or down Curl Hairs Twists the selected hair into curls Scale Hairs Lengthens or shortens the hairs as you drag Deselect Hairs As it states this will deselect the hairs as you drag across them Translate Hairs In Out Moves the hair forward back toward away from the fig ure If you aren t careful you can literally translate the hairs into the model itself Twist Hairs Twists the hairs into clumps Good for braids or more complex hair styles Constrain Length Keeps the hairs at the same length as you make changes or when turned off causes the hairs length to change as you manipulate them Falloff Tip Root Determines how much of the length of the hair is affected by the changes you are making Closer to the tip only the vertices near the hair tips will be affected closer to the root the more length will be affected by your changes Lengthen Will increase or decrease the length of the selected hairs Clear Selection Quickly deselects the selected hairs Hair Style Tool G Mi Constrain length Falloff tip Clear Selection FIGURE 6 5 Use the controls in the Hair Style Tool to translate curl scale or twist hairs 156 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide SE
261. to the face 2 Choose Object gt Spawn Morph Target The Morph Name dialog box appears 3 Enter a name for the morph dial such as Cheeks_Chubby Click OK to save the morph to the Parameters panel You should see the morph dial in the Morph section of your Parameters panel as shown in Figure 8 10 FIGURE 8 10 The Cheeks_Chubby morph dial was spawned into the Parameters panel 220 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide 4 Click one of the magnets and press the Delete key to delete it Click OK to confirm that you want to delete the magnet 5 Click the head to make the second magnet visible and then click the second magnet to select it Press the Delete key and then choose OK to confirm that you want to delete the magnet 6 Click the head to select it as the current object Then set the dial for your new morph target to 1 You should see the head morph as shown in Figure 8 11 mm mm e amm rm e m ram ide mamm om FIGURE 8 11 The morph dial now controls Ryan s cheeks 7 The problem you have at this point is that the dials can be dialed up to extremely high numbers and can completely mess up Ryan s handsome face You can control just how strong the morph can be both positively and negatively by setting limits To do that click on the arrow to the right of the Morph dial see Figure 8 12 In the resulting pop up menu select Settings FIGURE 8 12 The arrow shown here will give you access to vari
262. ts runtime folder 2 Click the Create New Folder button and title the folder Portraits 3 With the new folder highlighted click the Add to Library button Name this 3 Point Lighting and click Select Subset Chapter 3 Mastering Light and Shadow 67 4 Select the three lights from the list and click OK 5 Choose Single Frame from the Save Frames window Your light set is saved and ready to be added to any scene you want ADJUSTING LIGHTS AND SHADOWS Wouldn t it be great if you could actually see what a light sees Well guess what You can Each light you create has a camera associated with it These are called shadow light cameras They allow you to look into your scene through the light ex actly as the light sees it It s almost as if you have a little spy cam inside the light that you can access at any time so you can fine tune your lights Figure 3 14 shows the shadow light cameras in the Cameras list These are also represented in the Camera View selector in the Preview window Preview 3PointLighting Andy Body Parts Body Props Cameras Main Camera Lights Aux Camera Posing Camera Dolly Camera Left Camera Right Camera Top Camera Bottom Camera Front Camera Back Camera Face Camera LHand Camera RHand Camera Shadow Cam Lite 4 Shadow Cam Lite 5 Shadow Cam Lite 6 FIGURE 3 14 The shadow light cameras are located in the Preview window pop up menu Main Camera When might you need the ability to look
263. tself correctly But when you dial the morph in the body part looks all wrinkled and jumbled This is because your morphing software reordered the vertices If this happens delete the morph from the Parameters panel Then when you re import the morph check the Attempt Vertex Order Correction box in the Load Morph Target dialog box This may resolve the problem If it doesn t UVMapper Professional also has the capability to re order vertices and you may be able to fix the morph that way A SHort RE PoseE So there you have it A run through of the morphing procedures from creating and saving morphs and magnets to using morphs to fix those frustrating poke throughs What wasn t discussed was the way in which you can use magnets in an imations to simulate all kinds of things including some alien entity crawling under the characters skin But from what was covered in this chapter you re ready to begin modifying your characters with original morphs of your own design As you get better at it you should think about offering them for free and eventually for a price on the various websites that cater to the Poser user like Renderosity com RuntimeDNA com PoserAddicts com and others This page intentionally left blank Creating Your Own Textures In This Chapter m Textures and Copyrights Creating Clothing Textures Tutorial 9 1 Making a Reflection Map in Photoshop m Tutorial 9 2 Creating a Realistic Tattoo E Tuto
264. ttoo rotated scaled and positioned on Ryan s left arm Chapter 9 Creating Your Own Textures 263 4 Go to Filter gt Blur gt Gaussian Blur and change the setting to 2 This will blur the tattoo giving the initial appearance of the ink spreading slightly under the skin 5 Change the Blend mode to Darken and reduce the Opacity to 33 see Figure 9 22 Normal Dissolve Darken i Opacity 33 Multiply Color Burn Fill 100 Iv Linear Burn Darker Color y Lighten Screen Color Dodge Linear Dodge Add Lighter Color Overlay Soft Light Hard Light Vivid Light Linear Light Pin Light Hard Mix Difference Exclusion Hue Saturation Color Luminosity FIGURE 9 22 The Blend mode is set to Darken and Opacity to 33 6 Duplicate the Tattoo_Base layer change the Blend mode to Overlay and the Opacity to 80 This will darken the tattoo and turn it to a maroon like color Title this layer Tattoo_Overlay 7 Duplicate the Tattoo_Overlay layer change the Blend mode to Soft Light and the Opacity to 64 Title this Tattoo_SL This darkens the tattoo while adding a little more red to the edges 8 Save the file as RyanBody_Tattoo png 9 In Poser go to the Material Room select Ryan in the Object list and Body from the Material list Replace the RyanBody png file with your new tattoo image When you render the scene the tattoo on Ryan s left arm will look very natural see Figure 9 23 264 P
265. types of clothing you can use in Poser Conforming Prop and Dynamic Conforming and Prop are the most common types and ones that you have used in one way or another since you first opened Poser Dynamic clothing while it is most realistic because of the way it fall and flows with the model it s attached to is both revered and misunderstood So a good portion of this chapter will deal with dynamics You will also discover how to overcome one of the banes associated with Conforming and Prop clothing poke through When it comes to Dynamic clothing what is often confusing is the need to cre ate an animation to have the clothes fall properly in place even if you only want to create a still image By having the clothing drape around the figure via multiple frames the way in which the clothing interacts with the model is enhanced as is the realism In the section Using the Cloth Room you will make clothing that looks and flows naturally on various figures There are two types of categories when it comes to accessories such as earrings bracelets necklaces and other pieces of jewelry props and Smart props The dif ferences are explained in the following list m Standard props initially appear in your scene in their default as modeled position Generally this is in the exact center of the stage If you already have other content located in the center of the stage there is a chance that you won t be able to see that the prop
266. u can also use the Group Editor in the Cloth Room they are created The body part to create cloth groups that give areas of the clothing groups should match those of the different Dynamic properties that simulate different underlying figure as closely as types of cloth possible To attach the clothing to the figure To attach the clothing to the figure select the clothing select the clothing item and choose item and choose Object gt Change Parent Generally Figure gt Conform To Select the you select the character s hip or body as the parent name of the character as the but items like scarves or hats are better parented to object to conform to the head After conforming the object the After assigning the parent you must create a clothing poses automatically when simulation in the Cloth Room to pose the clothing you pose the character Morphs may be necessary to make Cloth simulations make the clothing move realistically the clothing move more realistically in an animation in an animation Chapter 7 Working With Clothing 191 The Cloth Room is shown in Figure 7 13 This is where you change static clothing props into clothing that can move and animate with more realism than Conforming clothing You accomplish this by working through the four main areas of the Cloth Room the Cloth Simulation area 1 the Cloth area 2 the Cloth Groups area 3 and the Dynamics Controls area 4 FIGURE 7 13 The Cloth Room and its control
267. u can refine its pose If you re a content developer to make this camera function correctly you must name the figure element rHand Dolly Camera Ctrl Cmd A unique camera in that it rotates around its own center unlike the other perspective cameras that rotate around a point or object in your scene This camera lets you easily duplicate that traditional Hollywood style camera move in your animations Left Ctrl Cmd Right Ctrl Cmd Front Ctrl Cmd F Top Ctrl Cmd T Bottom and Back Cameras no quick key commands These are the orthogonal cameras They are extremely useful when you are setting up joint parameters positioning magnets placing objects in an exact relational position and in other instances where a perspective view makes it difficult to determine the exact position of objects An orthogonal camera uses a tech nique called orthogonal projection that shows the view without any perspective distortion or lens anomalies To understand how the Posing Camera works go to Display gt Camera View gt Posing Camera or Ctrl Cmd Next open the Joint Editor window Window gt Joint Editor or Shift Ctrl Cmd J Select the hip on your figure and change the X coordinate of the Center Point to 01 You will see the viewpoint of the camera track the center of the hip The center point is displayed as a red symbol located over the selected element Note however that Poser can sometimes get confused if you
268. u can use shades of gray or other colors to tone the highlights down or create interesting color washes Here you ll use white as I just stated In the Highlight section change the color by clicking on the color chip and selecting white in the color picker 4 By default the Highlight area s Map Strength dial will be set to 100 which is where you want it For Highlight Size the value is determined by how you want the highlights to look on your model In this case change this value to 100 and then render Figure 4 9 shows a comparison between the shirt without a highlight map and with it There is a marked difference in the realism of the image when highlights are added to the texture What if you wanted a specific area to have a highlight on your material Let s say the book cover on the shirt was made from a shinier material than the shirt itself You would need to use a specially created image map to do this a specular map 94 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide Specular maps are grayscale images where white defines shiny areas and black defines the non shiny surfaces Shades of gray give different levels of shininess to the surface 1 Making sure you have Shirt selected in the Materials pop up click on the thumbnail image area of the Highlight section 2 Navigate to the Project_01 gt Extra _Maps folder and select the Ryan_ PoserBookShirtSpecular png file You will see that this is a grayscale image Many times specular bu
269. u have two options to make Ryan s other cheek as pronounced as his right cheek The first option is to save the magnet to the library mirror some settings after flipping the magnet to the other side of his head and make him cheeky on both sides or you can create a new magnet from scratch and type in all those numbers again I don t know about you but I prefer the first method So that s what I ll do If you want to create a new one from scratch follow the steps again in Tutorial 8 1 and change the magnet s settings Since you re going to save the existing magnet you ll need to create a new folder in the Props library where you can store it I m calling my folder Ryan_Magnets but you can call yours whatever you d like 1 Click on the folder you created to make sure it s the active folder Since it s empty it won t open to reveal its contents but there will be a small curved arrow to the right of the folder name indicating that the folder is active 2 Click the magnet in your Preview window and then click the Add to Library icon at the bottom of the Library panel The New Set dialog box appears 3 Click the Select Subset button to open the Select Objects dialog box Check Mag Base 1 Mag 1 and Mag Zone 1 as shown in Figure 8 7 4 Click OK to return to the New Set dialog box Assign a name to the magnet such as Ryan_RightCheek Click OK to save the magnet to the library Select objects Select items to include
270. ucks under the pants the vest goes over the pants and shirt and the coat goes over all other clothing without the previous layers poking through If you randomly pick clothing that was not designed to work together you may need to adjust the scale of each layer of clothing or use magnets to reshape the clothing so that the underlying layers do not poke through the layer or layers that are above them Chapter 7 Working With Clothing 193 And remember those durn ol poke through issues discussed earlier in the chapter Well if you don t deal with them before you calculate the simulations you may get error messages that the simulations have failed This is because Poser expects the cloth to remain outside of the figure so when clothing intersects the geometry of the figure calculations can go out of bounds TUTORIAL 7 1 PREPARING THE SCENE _ The pieces of clothing that you ll use in this tutorial were designed to work A together You ll add a top skirt and jacket to Jessi before you create the simu lations You ll begin this tutorial by importing each clothing article 1 of 7 Before you open Poser locate the JessiTop obj JessiSkirt obj and JessiJacket obj and the related JPG files in the ChapterFiles Chapter07 folder on the DVD that accompanies this book Copy these files to the location of your choice I would suggest making a folder on your desktop and storing the files there Load Jessi or JessiHiRes i
271. up in Tutorial 3 6 1 Create a new light called eyeLight_R and turn off shadows This will remain a spotlight so its focus can be controlled 2 In the Properties panel select Cameras and the last Shadow Cam Lite in the list In the same manner in which you changed the name of the lights change Shadow Cam Lite to eyeLightCam You will want to do this with all the other shadow lights as well naming them for their corresponding light s name 3 Select eyeLight_R again Go to Object gt Point At and choose rightEye from the list see Figure 3 17 Now as you move the light around the eyeLight camera will always point at Alyson s eye This will save you a lot of work 4 As you begin this process switching to the quad view four viewports will be very helpful Change one of the viewports to the eyeLightCam so you can see exactly what the light is seeing You ll also notice that the light s icon has a camera attached to it That s the Shadow Cam Lite in all its glory Chapter 3 Mastering Light and Shadow 71 FIGURE 3 17 Select the right eye from the Point At list 5 Select Cameras gt eyeLightCam in the Parameters panel Its controls will appear Use the xTran and yTran controls to move the light until it s facing Alyson s right eye Refer to Figure 3 18 to help you with the positioning 6 Select Lights gt eyeLight_R and change the light s settings to the following m Angle End 3 m Distance End 10 E Intensity
272. want to change the tex ture resolution Click No to keep the texture at that size or click Yes to create a larger texture of the dimensions stated in the dialog box After Poser gener ates the texture you may be informed that the face color is different from the figure color Click No to apply the face texture exactly as you see it in the Face Room This will probably require that you create or alter the body texture yourself If you click Yes Poser will create a blend between the Face Room texture and the body texture through the use of an alpha mask Spawn Morph Target 4 Adds morph dials for the head left eye and right eye to the figure that is currently selected in the Pose Room When set to 1 the morph dials duplicate the face created in the Face Room Apply Shape Only 5 Applies the shape but not the texture to the figure that is currently selected in the Pose Room Apply Texture Only 6 Applies the texture but not the face to the figure that is currently selected in the Pose Room Import Original Figure Head Texture 7 Applies the head texture from the figure that is currently selected in the Pose Room onto the head in the Face Shaping Tool area TUTORIAL 5 1 CREATING TEXTURE GUIDES The Photo Lineup area of the Face Room allows you to move feature points to match photos This can often be a very tricky endeavor because head shapes vary from person to person Differences in gender age race height and weight can
273. way and create a tear in the leg To fix that use the Polygonal Selection tool to select the lower half of the pants making sure that you start the selection above where the distortion begins An example is shown in Figure 10 9 FIGURE 10 9 Select the lower portion of the pants to fix the distortions 10 With the selection of the lower half of the pants leg in its original position 11 choose Map gt Cylindrical again The settings should remain from the pre vious time you used them Click OK to exit the dialog box Now choose Vertex Selection mode Select gt Select Method gt By Vertex Make a selection that includes the area where you broke the connection between the upper and lower portions of the pants as shown in Figure 10 10 Then stitch them together Tools gt UVs gt Stitch Select the other half and stitch them together as well If you select the entire width of the leg to stitch the vertices together UVMapper will stitch them together at the seam This makes the UV map hard to read Selecting half at the time prevents this from occurring 12 Now return to Facet Selection mode Select gt Select Method gt By Facet Select the other leg and choose Map gt Cylindrical again This time enter 270 degrees in the Seam Rotation field so that the seam appears on the inside of this leg Then choose OK Chapter 10 UV Mapping 281 13 Remap and stitch the lower portion as you did in Steps 10 through
274. well a hole in the side Change the Edge and Falloff settings to 0 and then re render The edges of the black regions of the transparency map image are no longer blurred and the hole you wanted to create is now well defined Your image should look like Figure 4 20 When rendered this file is a bit disconcerting because Ryan has no body That s right Ryan ain t got no body Sounds a bit like part of the lyrics to an old David Lee Roth song doesn t it Here s how to fix that 5 Add the Ryan figure that s the one without clothes to the scene As long as you haven t moved Ryan_Casual Ryan will be placed in the same spot as his dressed counterpart Chapter 4 Creating Materials 107 FIGURE 4 20 The transparency map assigned to Ryan s shirt 6 Open the Hierarchy Editor Window gt Hierarchy Editor and turn off the visibility for all of Ryan s body parts except for his waist and abdomen Make sure you do this to Ryan not Ryan_Casual You might want to save the abdomen and waist as a separate model so you can use f it over and over again NOTE 7 Choose either Ryan s waist or abdomen to make it the active model then go to Figure gt Set Figure Parent You want to make it so the bare abdomen moves with its corresponding element on the Ryan_Casual model So in the Figure Parent window choose Shirt and then Abdomen or Waist whichever is the corresponding part you chose on Ryan Now when you render the s
275. wever you want to make multiple groups then you f 7 NOTE will need to work through this area Let s take a few moments to look at the various controls in the Cloth Groups and Dynamics Controls areas First lIl cover the Cloth Groups section which has four types of groups E Dynamic Made up of the entire object This is the default grouping created when you create your Dynamic cloth object m Choreographed An empty one is also created when you make your Dynamic cloth object Choreographed vertices can be excluded from the cloth simula tion or can be keyframed Constrained Allows you to define specific vertices that are not affected by the clothifying This is good for sections that need to stay with the mesh such as the straps of bathing suits An empty Constrained group is created when you clothify E Decorated There are two flavors of the Decorated group Soft and Rigid Decorations are things like pockets or knots in ties They are elements that move with the underlying object such as the shirt color in the case of a tie Soft decorations can bend and flex while Rigid decorations don t An example for the latter would be pins or buttons When you click on the New Dynamic Group button you get the chance to name the new group Then you would click on Edit Dynamic Group to begin adding or removing vertices Just like working in the Hair Room you select points along the model s surface the vertices that wil
276. with But what if you get into or are already into creating 3D models for Poser The need to create templates like the ones you have worked with becomes very important Actually in order to map a texture onto an object correctly you need to create a UV map Some 3D applications give you the ability to unfold your mesh and create a template Others don t A UV map is more or less a flattened representation of the surface of a 3D ob ject Without some way of mapping textures and other properties on the surface of an object the entire surface of the object could only be one color or one material Y just spent time making textures using pre defined texture maps These are 269 270 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide If poorly mapped the UV map can make textures appear distorted In this chapter youll learn about various types of UV maps that you can generate and how to break an object down into its basic shapes so that distortion and stretching are minimized when you map textures onto it THE WHAT AND Why oF UV MAPPING To begin what exactly does the UV in UV maps stand for Untethered vertices Uncooperative vermin Uncool vehicles Nope The U represents the X axis hori zontal and the V represents the Y axis vertical So why not just go with X and Y and call it what it is XY Mapping It comes from history actually You have the base X horizontal Y vertical and Z or Zed depth coordinates that s common
277. y available menu choice will be to make a new node An alternate way to access the Options menu is to click a node s input or out put icon and drag to create a wire When you release the mouse the Options menu will open with the option to create a new node These methods will only work when clicking on empty input and output icons Just adding a new node won t do any good until you link it to something Deleting nodes To delete a node select it and press the Delete key Alternatively you can right click on the node and use the Options menu to delete the node Linking nodes You can click the output icon of one node and drag it to the input icon of the node you want to connect it to Conversely you can start with the input icon and drag to an output of another node to connect those two nodes After your nodes are connected successfully you will see wires linking one node to the other Moving links To move a link to another node just grab the end you want to move with your mouse drag it to where you want it to go and then release it If you want to leave that end unconnected just drop it anywhere in the Advanced view window Many to many links Remember you can connect the input and output of a node to as many other inputs and outputs of other nodes as you need However an output can only go into another node s input Deleting links To delete a link just click on the end you want to disconnect and drag it to anywhere in
278. y figure load it with new scenes delete him and then go to Props gt Primitives in the Library panel and select Hi Res Ball Once in the scene scale the ball to 500 and use Ctrl Cmd D to reposition the object on the ground plane Ctrl Cmd D drops the selected model onto the ground plane but in this case the quick key command raises the ball model so that the ball is sitting on top of the ground 2 Click the Material tab and add a diffuse color to the object by clicking on the color chip in the Diffuse Color section In my case I used a metallic gray 3 Add the metalMat png file from the Project_01 folder as the image map Chapter 4 Creating Materials 99 4 Set the Map Strength to 50 When you render you will see a brushed metal like surface as shown in Figure 4 13 Not very metal ish is it FIGURE 4 13 A brushed metallic surface created using both a diffuse color and an image map assigned to the Diffuse Color channel 5 Set the Highlight color to a gray color and the Highlight Size to 2 This will reduce the size of the points of light reflecting off the surface of the metal ball 6 Now go to the Reflection section and click on its thumbnail preview square Choose Spherical Map from the Choose Reflection Type dialog and click OK This will open the Texture Manager window and from here select reflectionMap png from the Project_01 folder When you render the scene the sphere will look very similar to what you see i
279. y to use the Photo Lineup area to both morph and texture the head to look like the photos they are using However when you keep the Apply Shape option checked while you adjust the red outline and green feature points you quickly end up with a severely distorted head see Figure 5 3 and you need to start all over again The best approach is to leave the Apply Shape option unchecked and use the Photo Lineup area strictly for texture generation 126 Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide FIGURE 5 3 With Apply Shape active you can quickly distort your model Boy am I going to hear about this one Face SHAPING TOOLS The Face Shaping Tool allows you to visually sculpt or create morphs on your Face Room head Click the Morph Putty icon 1 in the Face Shaping Tool area shown in Figure 5 4 Then click on the 3D Face Preview in the area you want to morph 2 A green dot appears Move the dot to reshape the morphs until you are satisfied Rather than sculpting the morphs by dragging with your mouse you can dial in a face using the many Facial Morphs dials 3 available in the Face Shaping Tool You can control the minimum and maximum range of all dials by the values you enter in the Exaggeration Min and Exaggeration Max 4 settings in the Face Shaping Tool The Facial Morphs dials are arranged in the following categories A value of zero means that the morph has no effect Negative values morph the feature toward one end of the spectrum
280. your creativity and you ll soon be creating everything from sea anemones to flowers pine trees and the aforementioned grass and feathers Also practice with the Dynamics Controls for the growth group to add even more realism via gravity and air resistance After you have worked in the Hair Room for a while flip the page to go to Chapter 7 where you ll explore working with cloth You can t always have naked Poser people populating your scenes now can you This page intentionally left blank 1 Working With Clothing In This Chapter Types of Poser Clothing Common Clothing Problems Using the Cloth Room Tutorial 7 1 Preparing the Scene Tutorial 7 2 Making Multiple Simulations Tutorial 7 3 Calculating the Simulations Tutorial 7 4 Constraining Parts of the Cloth Our clothes are too much a part of us for most of us ever to be entirely indifferent to their condition it is as though the fabric were indeed a natural extension of the body or even of the soul Quentin Bell no influence on society However it could be argued that the Victoria model in all her numeric incarnations is one of those people who have tremendous influence on Poser society with or without clothing or wearing as little as possible when going into battle Me Twain also said Clothes make the man Naked people have little or 175 176 TYPES Practical Poser 8 The Official Guide OF POSER CLOTHING There are three

Practical Poser 8: The Official Guide

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