so Im in this clothing making mood now and have recently started perfecting fur. I can actually make pretty decent looking fur...even at high resolution now (see inset).

so for a little quiz...
what can I possibly be making that is combined of both?
hint..no one has ever made one.

muahahahaaaaaa

:)
BT

Is it IT ? Sharen

no no no...wait...how about is it a furry thing from afar? Sharen

I bet you Q guess's this...Sharen

A MINK COAT

OH darn that was my third guess....yes a fur coat....(don't let the animal rights people see this...)Sharen

Mink coat has been taken... but there are rabbit or fox-fur stoles (for movie stars), hand muffs (very Victorian), ear muffs (very practical), belly-button warmers (not very practical). Ethnic items would include Scottish sporrans and Russian hats. True regalia includes ermine trim on crown and cape. Being that it's Brycetech, though, I suspect nice furry bedroom slippers with felt claws at the tips for padding around in. :) Carolly

hmmmm... a furry g-string for a winter NVIAT! Nahhhh... I think Carolly is right on this one. Big, fluffy, cyberfur slippers (no living animals harmed while making this product). This is really neat! Is it a texture or an object? I'd love to see some body textures using this method.

A fox fur stoll thingie? Personally I prefer Ace Ventura idea and just use the Monopoly guy (hey, turn about's fair play)

A hairy Caterpillar! LOL

Well, it reminds me of a "feather boa" that I asked for yesterday over at the wishing well forum........but since it is "fur" I am not sure? But, I do think that if you gave it some bright colors, it could work out as a boa, Hell, Vicky would never know the difference. LOL! Genny

For fear of upsetting animal rights activists, dare I wonder if it's an animal skin rug, such as a bear skin? Sincerely, Bill

British Royal Guard hat

A toupee..heheh Marque

mike's merkin

Cousin It on a bad hair day?

That is some very nice looking fur, BT. I believe Carolly is right. It is a stole. I'd like to see some nice thigh high fur boots, though. :) Beth

you all have given some excellent ideas for further uses for this when its all done. This would be pretty cool as part of a werewolf texture or similar wouldnt it? That'd make me develop a new way to do this because I'd need better control of the fur color in the chest, neck, and rump area. Im currently rendering another picture thats actually part of the item..but Im gonna crop it so you cant tell what it is yet..lol I also have some additional texturing things to do as I'm working on the mesh technique as well as the fur itself. I think I have the mesh technique down now. When Anton finishes the cat, I'll try making conforming fur for it maybe. lol, and yes..I had already fully intended (as a joke) to include the statement "no animals were harmed during the making of this..." render 2 coming in a bit :) BT

btw genny..this technique can also be used to make feathers so a feather boa would be a snap. BT

Oh! Oh! Ohhhhhhhhhh...... it's my new desktop picture!!! Can you tell I'm happy???? To me it looks like a wolf's body...

So, then what is it....what will this be? Sharen

An ewok

Barbarian clothes! Caveman clothes! Fur capes! Fur rugs! And other furry fur things!!

Ok it's a cat having a snooze!

BryceTech, could your procedure be used to "coat" or "fur" Lemurtek's Second Nature anthropomorphic characters? And more importantly, what software must we use to create this effect? I can't imagine Poser 4 being able to handle this. If, on the other hand, Poser 4 CAN be used, the crashing sound you'll hear will be that of my jaw plummeting to the floor. Sincerely, Bill

the images are RAW poser renders..no touchup has been done to either image. The only editing at all was in the first post where I made the inset of the hi-res render. I posted a tutorial on this method a while back. I abandoned that method and have adopted a new one because I get more control over the hair. Instead of fake looking hair, it now looks more like fur. this is a different version of the hair technique used to make my bat (here in the store) which by the way is to be in a big screen movie this spring sometime. as for software to actually make the mesh Im using amapi, uvmapper, photoshop and rendering in poser..nothing special. this item when done, will probably hit around 25-30000 polys.. not sure yet because its not done and I dont know exactly how to model parts of it yet. I am using Poser4, a 500 mhz machine and 384 RAM...very low-spec as compared to current machines. :)

Chewey from Star Wars?

This looks fantastic! I can't wait to see what it is, and more importantly; I can't wait for the tutorial }-) That fur is beautiful, and I imagine a LOT of folks around here would love to be able to produce furry things.

!CLANG! !THUD! Aw gweat! Ah thimp ah bwoke mah ja'! Seriously, thanks for those specs'! Wow! Rendered in Poser 4 with a relatively "low end" machine?! Lt. Mzzkiti (as "performed" by Lemurtek's Guenevere) would look so cute with a fluffy chest tuft using this technique! Hmm, I'm surprised Little Dragon hasn't popped in. This would enhance his "Furrette" characters as well. Sincerely, Bill

Cousin It on a bad hair day?< Now that could be scary :-)

heyas; what, you mean it isn't conforming fur for the cat? now remind me again, is 30,000 polygons a lot? that's twice as many as victoria, right? (v1/v2).

Cant make it for the cat until daz releases it :P there will always be poser people who will say "30000?" any time a model is over that. if daz can make TEETH with ~13000 polys, certainly a fur clothing item can have 30000 if it truly benefits from them. The model will take what it takes in polys. I really am only guessing. It may take more, it may take less. I dont have vicky1 or 2 so I dont know what their poly count is... Poly count is not an issue. Texture size is not an issue because the textures are 512 x 512 (there are several)... Memory may become one with this, vicky3, some props and such all in one scene because this is a very computational intensive texture and that means RAM. I havent hit any problems yet and Im using windowsME (which is not mem management friendly). I will probably have to put some kind of RAM requirement on it tho. So when it goes to beta, I'll have to sniff around the forums for people with 128 and 256 mb RAM. The only issue currently that may surface is render time. Poser 4 at a full body shot of it at 1024 x 1024 res on my machine takes about 15 minutes to render this...larger renders (or closer renders like #2 above) take 30 minutes or so. I rendered a 4000 x 4000 closeup of it as a test and it took ~ 5 hours. At that size and that close, since the results were excellent..I dont really think that even render time will be an issue with P4 or PPP However, it may be with poser5. I guess I should really take this into Bryce and see how slow a raytracer will be. :) BT

Wow!!!

Looks like a lot of different things put together in that render. kinda like a mosaic. only animal I know of that's a mosaic is a duckbill platypuss.

Wow, it looks fantastic!

This would be great for a fur "coat" texture for the DAZ bear.

Anyone remember Cousin It from the Adams Family. Kind of like a hat on a pile of fur with sunglasses.

You've outdone yourself ! A bearskin rug?

This thread lists the polycounts for several Poser figures.

The render-time does sound prohibitive, especially for animation, but I can't deny that it looks great.

For those of us working primarily instill imasges, this looks fantastic. You've outdone yourself ... especailly if it can be imported to Bryce. Wow. Boni

heyas; no, i meant the p3 cat. of course i'm worried about polygon count if i'm going to be making conforming fur for... well, you know. things!

oh you mean that thing that passes for a cat that comes with poser4? lol..ok, nope its not for that. I dont know how practical it would be to make a full suit of fur this way. You know, a werewolf would be extremely cool to the max, but itd probably be painful...a full suit head, arms, hands, torso, legs and all would probably run close to 100000 polys I'm still learning tho...I learned a lot today and have the render times down about 1/2 while still having the same result (I had a material setting wrong so it was calculating transparency in an area that didnt need it) If you used the model as the base instead of making one separate, itd be about 2/3 that. What I mean is that you have the poly mapped hair over top of an mesh (like a jacket)..if you used the model (say vicky3) as the base instead of a separate jacket mesh..then youd have a smaller file size. (does that make sense?) I havent tried that yet (but Im going to) since vicky3 has all those cool material zones already set up for the arms, hands, body parts and such..I could put the base material on her rather than on a separate conforming mesh..and then put the fur mesh directly on top of her. It wont be practical for animations..well, at least for long animations. short clips would be cool..time consuming, but very cool. :) BT

heyas; nope, you lost me. :) how can victoria be smaller than her jacket??

lol its all in the setup of the fur, so I can see how it'd be confusing. the fur uses a combination of methods to achieve the effect. 1. It uses a fur texture (that is a render of the fur by itself) placed directly on an underlying mesh. 2. The fur is transmapped polys placed over the model. so you have 2 meshes making the one fur item...the underlying layer and the transmapped poly layer. so what I mean is if you dont use a separate underlying mesh (like a jacket mesh) but instead use the body of the model as the underlying mesh..you would effectively be removing the additional polys of the underlying mesh. the underlying mesh is necessary to add to the illusion. It needs the same texture on it so as to remove the 'bare' spots that may become visible at some angles... the fur can be thick, or sparse..just depends on the amount of hair trans lines used. today I learned that I may be using the wrong angle on the polys...the effect is wonderful at any angle from the poly mesh..however, straight on..there are tiny rows visible. Tho this is natural in some cases, it looks better if any repeating pattern is not visible. So the whole thing is to have a pattern that is random. Randomness in the pattern is what is making this so successful. Its very difficult to see a repeating pattern in the fur now... random pattern..what is that called? an oxymoron?..not sure I like the word 'moron' associated with me in any sense of the word..lol :P BT

So, could you offer a tutorial on how to achieve this effect?

when I figure out the majority of it..yes. I'll wait until I finish this item tho because by then I will have most of the quirks worked thru. I am now in the most difficult part so assuming I can whip that, its gonna be really cool. things like boots, capes, gloves, or even body fur..would be easy. But what Im making isnt. :) BT

heyas; okay, i see. you put the fur base texture on the model, and then just the trans-part on the conformer, is what you mean. rather than putting a flat and trans pieces on top of the base. hmmm... so, bt, did you figure out how to get the trans-mapped parts to use the same colour as the base mesh texture, but still be trans-ed? that's been driving me nuts. i hope the randomization is something lightwave can do. it isn't too spiffy in the scattering and randomizing departments :/

you'll have to do the randomization, Im doing this with amapi and after the intial setup, its easy to get just a tad of randomization with it by just stretching the mesh it can even be randomized a bit by using zbrush and squishing the mesh around a bit in there. actually, Im considering making some pre-fab meshes that are properly mapped and setup...along with shaping morphs so anyone can make their own stuff. it is still not possible to make a 'calico' because you need two different mappings for the same obj and thats not possible with poser (to my knowledge) :)