Posted on request. Here's a WIP of a weapon I am working on as part of an exercise in modeling (LW), mapping (uvmapper), texturing (Photoshop). Trying to keep the polygon counts under 2k polys per weapon. And complete modeling and conversion (for Poser) in under an hour. Lemme know what you think. :o)

if this is not a beasty looking weapon i dunno wat is... that is wat people have in mind for special/unique weapons in games like Diablo... KICK ASS MOE!!!

I think I'm getting the hang of this simple weapon speed modeling exercise. :o) The weapon here was suggested by Dragonsbld and Fillingim, as an alternative design to the usual "dragon lance" type weapons. I completed modeling this poser ready prop in under an hour, with vertices split and all surfaces ready. I'm going to try to get my time down to under half an hour. You guys should try it... it's therapeutic... like pottery, I guess. :oP Cheers! - M

Moe; what the heck is this vertice splitting procedure anyway? I volunteered to make a movie projector for a guy in the Poser forum, and did not a bad job of it considering I'm just getting my LW legs. Rendered some stills of it and thought I was quite something. Loaded it into Poser and it was a chocolate mess, even after export .obj and LW5. I went back into LW, cut each and every polygon out and put it into it's own layer (to make sure I hadn't missed any) and pasted them back into a single layer without merging points. Chocolate mess again. What the heck is the proper way to do this? (Don't even think about answering until you're finished with your race) Thanks alot.

Sweet spears, Moe:) Now all you need to make is the dragon barding and saddle for the armoured rider ;)

Hiya krimpr, I'm not an expert on modeling for Poser but in my limited experience I have noticed two things... (a) Poser has a default smoothing angle of 100 degrees, and (b) Poser doesn't like n-gons. The Poser render engine will smooth anything and everything, it is very good at that. Which doesn't work very well if you want a sharp edge or a hard corner. My first attempts looked like blimps modeled by the Pillsbury doughboy, with surface normals flipped all over the place. I always model with quads and tris for Poser, no n-gons. I try to avoid non-planar/degenerate surfaces but that's not a priority anymore. If a surface needs to remain smooth I keep the points of those adjacent polygons all merged and shared. If they need to have a sharp edge, I do exactly what you described - cut them and paste them back into the same layer without merging points. To keep track of what is happening and avoid confusion while modeling in LW, I put the smoothing angle of all my surfaces to 100 degrees. That way I can easily see what should get merged and which ones get split. Hope that helps. :o) Cheers! - M

Thanks Moe! I appreciate the tip. Is an n-gon any polygon that has greater than four points? (I know, pretty lame question, eh?) That would explain alot, as those were the problem ones, come to think of it....

Yes, krimpr... sorry, I should have been more specific... an "n-gon" is a polygon with greater than four point. :o) Some folks at DAZ have a workaround that allows you to model without splitting vertices and still retain a sharp edge, but I hear that it creates a lot more geometry. I'm not sure of this technique (never tried it, dunno how), but I like to keep my polys as low as possible. It kinda makes sense to save on polys for props so that you can go nuts on your main focus - your character. Cheers! - M

Thanks Moe; I'll keep these tips in mind. I don't expect to be a Poser suppplier or anything, but when I have finished something that was the result of alot of time (for me, anyway) I like the idea that maybe someone could get some use out of it. I appreciate the insight.

You can chamfer the edges by a small amount in your modeler to get sharp edges in Poser.

Hiya markdc, What are the advantages of the tiny chamfer/bevel aside from saving a bit of time? I know that it will definitely generate more geometry... albeit insignificant considering the rest of the scene may have over a million polygons. Just exploring other ways of "skinning the cat". :o) - M

Hi, I was just throwing out a method that I know works. I'm not familiar with the other methods, so I'm not sure of the advantages other then it being an easy method. It definately adds more geomtry, so if that is a concern, you would have to go another way. -Mark