Forum: Poser - OFFICIAL


Subject: How do I? Making my first prop problems.

Shoshanna opened this issue on Feb 21, 2003 ยท 22 posts


maclean posted Fri, 21 February 2003 at 7:04 PM

OK At the risk of repeating myself, for anyone else who has spare hair to tear out and wants to try making figures from poser props, here's a copy of a reply I made to a post some months ago. The subject was 'making your own figures from existing poser props'. Part of this is what I told shanna, but here's the full version for those who don't have their own props. >>>>>> starts here >>>>>> Yes, what you're asking is possible, but it would be easier if the props were combined to make a figure, rather than a prop. It's not THAT difficult to do. I'll try to run through the basic steps of making a simple box figure with lid. 1. Open the poser box prop and scale it to the length of your box, using the X and Y scale dials. Reduce the Zscale (thickness or depth) to about 5%. Do this with 4 boxes for front, back, top and bottom. 2. Do the same again with another 2 boxes for the sides. 3. Position all the boxes so they form a cube, and if possible, make a note of the box numbers and where they are. This will help you later to know which ones are which. 4. Go to Menu/File/Export/Wavefront OBJ and in the 1st dialog box, click OK for single frame, then in the 2nd (the hierarchy box), make sure your 6 boxes are all checked. Hit OK, type in a name for your obj, then in the last dialog box, UNCHECK EVERYTHING EXCEPT THE 1ST OPTION (include body part names in polygon groups). You now have your box obj saved. This file needs to be stored somewhere in Runtime/Geometries/Whatever folder. Poser now needs a PHI file to create a figure. If you don't have PHI Builder (free app in Utilities), you can easily make a PHI file in notepad. This is what you type. objFile :Runtime:Geometries:YourFolder:YourFilename.obj 1 box_1 xyz 1 box_2 xyz 1 box_3 xyz 1 box_4 xyz 1 box_5 xyz 1 box_6 xyz Save that with a name and the extension .PHI. like box.PHI, then open poser and go to Menu/File/Convert Hier File. Poser will ask you to name the new figure and a new entry will be added to New Figures in the library. NOTHING WILL APPEAR IN THE DOCUMENT WINDOW. Don't panic! Double-click on the new entry and it will open. You should now have a box with a BODY and 6 body parts (boxes 1 - 6). All you need to do now is select each body part and turn off the 'bend' option. You can also rename them to front, back, lid, sides, etc. To make the lid posable. 1. Select the 'lid' body part and go to Menu/Window/Joint Editor. 2. You'll see 2 crosses on the lid, a green and a red one. Use the different cameras (especially Top) to get the correct view, and either use the mouse to move the center of the green cross (the cursor turns to a circle), or type the values into the Joint Editor. What you want to do is move the green cross in line with the back of the lid. Then use the Xrotate dial to raise the lid. You may have to mess around to get it perfect, but it's not difficult. Once you've done all that, resave your figure (in Characters, remember) with it's new joints and it's done. You can also turn it sideways to have an upright box with opening door. The box will accept simple textures because the poser boxes are already texture-mapped, so you don't need to bother mapping it. If you have uv mapper (free - www.uvmapper.com), you can make more complex maps, or even assign different materials to each side of the box. Whew! OK. Those are the basic steps. It sounds a lot written out like this, but it's actually very easy once you've done it a few times. And from there on, you can get into more complicated things. Any poser props can be combined to make interesting things if you take the time to learn the basic steps. Also, try www.anim8or.com for a great, free 3d model maker. I use it almost every day for making morphs for furniture and things. It's very useful. Steve Shanks had a good tutorial on morph-making in anim8or. mac