Just as a note -- the above image contains NO postwork. The lighting is the default P4 Rembrandt lighting. The camera is slightly rotated clockwise on Y and panned forward on Z, as the pose (one of them 3DCommune Ledi Poses) loads the figure up off onto the side.

Looking good. Would really like to see some sort of shirt on him but I know you said that isn't happening.

Dodger, I'm sorry, but those immortal words from The Two Towers movie come to mind... you know, when the archers were exhorted about weaknesses in orcish armor being in the neck and under the arms... and I look at that lovely exposure of ribs and wonder if he is ticklish! All kidding aside, this really is an excellent job. Carolly

Looks very good, but I agree with the others... some sort of under shirt would improve it tenfold. Mabye you could paint a cloth texture directly onto his skin, or make a texture for the body suit that will most likely come out? But apart from that, it looks fantastic!!

or make a texture for the body suit that will most likely come out Okay, I need you to really think about this... B^) Yes, a body suit of some sort will most likely come out. Of course, your guess is as good as mine, and if there is one on the way it's not done yet. B^) Once I do the yodare there won't be much exposed aside from that armpit, which often was from what I can see in the references (admittedly, they don't have many photos of Samurai on the field fighting in full yoroi).

Carolly: the neck is going to be covered by the yodare. As to the armpit -- yup, that's the weakest point in most yoroi . Of course, after the Genpi wars the back was far more open, too, since by then the code of bushido demanded that back armour was irrelevant except to a coward. Of course, that didn't mean everyone (not even all Samurai) ran around with no back plate of any sort, It was more of those stupid ideals that a society claims to live up to but knows are impractical, like the way the west believed sex to be evil for the longest time. Thank the Goddess we're over that. Huh? What? whisper whisper Oh, okay. Sorry. It appears that sex is still evil and bad and gives you diseases and sends you to Hell, which was what I was indicating above, of course, but my assistant pointed out that I may have phrased it badly. Don't do drugs, either. Burn the aspirin.

So, in order to kill a Samurai, you simply trip and disarm him, then tickle him mercilously before letting him go... at which point he picks up his sword and kills himself out of embarrassment! Pride. :shake head: Drugs? Oops! I'd better hide the evidence and drown this chocolate (Venezuelan, 70% dark cacao) with the last sip of coffee (Folger's Instant). ;^) Carolly

at which point he picks up his sword and kills himself out of embarrassment looks very serious They do that you know. Harry karry and all. B^) Venezuelan, 70% dark cacao Niice. That sounds like it would be excellent wrapped around raspberry syrup B^) - - - - - -

It's too bad the entire project is worthless and automatically hopelessly devalued because it isn't going to come with a shirt. I mean, without the shirt -- hell, I should scrap the whole damned project now. What am I wasting my time for finishing this? I don't have time or desire to make a shirt for it and the shirt of course, being a magickal armoured bulletproof shirt is thus a vital part of the armour which this package is. Everyone, when this thread gets cold and I start a new one, I would really appreciate it if you would not instantly mark that thread with an automatic devaluation of my Yoroi armour by pointing out that it doesn't include a shirt that it's not supposed to have anyway.

P.S.: Sithgoblin, if you're serious about the 'tenfold' thing, I can talk to Daniel about letting me bypass the DAZ exclusivity for a single case. I don't know what the price will be right now, but I'm estimating that it'll probably be in the $20 range like most clothing (don't quote me on that). So based on that, the with-shirt version would be $200, sound fair? It'll be some time after the without-a-shirt set is released, since I'd have to model the shirt and cloth is slow to make, maybe a week or two, but for tenfold improvement that small wait's fair, right? Should I put that into my projects list, then?

Hehe, ok so tenfold might have been a bit of an exaggeration. He looks great now and I'm sure the lack of underclothing will be much less noticeable once he gets his neck piece. :-)

Coolness. I'm working on that right now. It's one of the harder bits because it has to use a FIX morph to avoid Poser welding around a co-planared edge. Umm, concept here... WHen you have a cube in Poser, if it's a standard cube it gets all weird and tries to smooth around the edges. That's why there are so many menty things in Free Stuff (and occassionally in the marketplace, yeesh). The standard solution is to break each of those edges. In the cube, you would break all 12 edges so that each face was a square seperate from the rest, so that Poser doesn't try to smooth past. That's all well and good, but if something is posable, you have welds between the groups. Poser doesn't pay attention to whether the original OBJ welded there or not, it just welds all vertices that share the same spot. And of course, when that's also a border between two co-planared bits, they are welded and you're back to meltycrunchies. Yuck. So the solution I use is that I model as normal as if this didn't happen, then I make a copy where the edges are pulled well away from one another. The edges that SHOULD weld are left together, but the edges that aren't are given a decent-sized gap. Then I use THAT as the core OBJect and use the 'correct' object as a morph target and load in deltas to make a morph channel that, at 1, fixes the object. Then in the CR2 I hide the fix morph channel and set it's limits forced and min and max to 1 so that it's always on and you can't turn it off (because off is broken and weird). Oh, if you use this technique in anything, ye reader ye, don't go too far and accidentally set the 'unfixed' version so it falls outside of a JP zone -- Poser treats the vertices affected by joints based on where they start, not where they finish after morphing.

The chocolate was a Christmas present (there was a lot of chocolate in the box, plenty to share at Origins and to savor the rest). The current issue of Premiere (I got groceries tonight, so browzed the racks in passing) has a scrupulously clean white guy in Samurai armor on the cover. The Last Samurai? The armor looks pretty good. If the movie is realesed fairly soon, folks will get a chance to see how it moves around a body in action, which may help them in posing a guy in your suit. And, in exchange for some of my other posts, I promise to be good, if not virtuous, and not say anything at all about whether the wearer is ticklish. Carolly Carolly

The Last Samurai Oh shit! LOL I totally forgot about that Tom Cruise movie! Hmm, a Samurai movie coming out... this is going to sell even better than I had hoped, I'll bet! B^) Samurai can't be ticklish can they? They never smile...

And all the ticklish samurai have already committed seppuku.

Ack .. Didn't say anything about a shirt .. nope .. nothing about a $h!&#; Anyway, doubt this will help at this point but here is a link I just ran into http://www.sengokudaimyo.com/katchu/0.Katchu.html

Natural selection. Ticklish Samurai didn't get a chance to breed, and even if they did they'd probably be so sensative they...uh...(don't go there, Jimmy Boy). I'm not sure a shirt would work with this. It's armor, and a shirt as either a seperate item or part of the main mesh would really contribute to poke through. I'd rather use the M3 mapping and just turn the torso to a body suit of I have to give that undergarment effect. If M3 is mapped the way V3 is, we'll have a lot of bodysuit options built in on him. Besides, he's sorta sexy with that bit of skin coming through. Quick side note: The detail on this, especially the mempo, is bloody beautiful. For the $20 range it's going to be a great deal. Tom Cruise, eat your heart out.

For the $20 range it's going to be a great deal HEY! I said don't quote me on that, and there you go quoting me B^) With DAZ stuff we brokers don't just set a price. We set a price and Daniel says 'how about higher' or 'how about lower', and we add a few dollars or subtract a few dollars, and so on until we get to the price he was thinking B^) I was just guessing the $20 range because most clothing sets are about that. But I'm hoping it is a great value even if it gets upped to $30 or something, and of course if it goes down to $15 then I spose it'll be an even better value. Okay, I go shut up now and work.

Glad I could help sorta ...

Only problem I'm having -- one that may dissuade me from making it -- is I am not seeing anything that indicates HOW it's worn (and I don't just want to make it up). I mean, I can see that it's strapped over the opposite shoulder like a purse in the city with a short strap, but I can't se if it goes UNDER the do or OVER the do... if it goes UNDER, it'll be hard to make, if it goes OVER it'll look like a purse. Perhaps I should just include a sketch of this thingy for people to reference when making textures if it goes under, and refer them to LIttle_Dragon for Poser-ready Tinky-Winky teletubby accessories otherwise B^) J/K I think I should get my ass to work on the scabbard stuff and get the original scope completed, then decide if I want to add a prt I don't know enough about.

Good luck figuring it out. I sorta skimmed through the pages wehn I was lookign it over. Will definately have to get the set when finished.

To do list (it will be good to have this in a place that can't get coffee spilled on it):

• Sode morphs (thinner, taper bottom, taper top, bend, zaggy, curved)
• Kabuto morphs (smaller
• Katana scabbard texturing
• Wakizashi texturing
• Wakizashi scabbard texturing
• Katana Belt (wakizashi tucks into belt in the front)
• Smart-prop setting for katana, wakizashi for hand (I built them originally for M2, so there's a slight difference)
• Smart-prop setting for katana, wakizashi in scabbard
• Smart prop setting for katana scabbard, wakizashi scabbard tied/tucked in belt
• Gunsen texturing
• Smart prop setting for gunsen for hand
• Shigetou no yumi (bow) modelling
• Shigetou no yumi texturing
• Shigetou no yumi bend morphs
• Soya (Arrows) modelling and texturing
• Quarrel modelling and texturing

And the MAYBE if I have time and inclination list: - Wakibiki (L and R) modelling and texturing

• Maekusazuri (boxy leg stuff like big square haidate)
• Alternate lacing patterns (colours and actual lacing techniques)
• Alternate silk patterns
• Some MAT poses for alternate textures
• A few samurai Poses (though those aren't one of my fortes)

Heh. All within the week. Lucky I have the weapons modelled (the gunsen has posable ribbons, even!).

A wakibiki? In case my fingers do a walking bitty? Hmm... I'm never going to achieve sainthood at this rate! But maybe I can make it up a little. I do have about 8 books on Japanese armor and weapons, and at least one of them has the order in which the armor was donned. Let me warm up the scanner....

well, somebody is going to reach for his wakizashi because of this image width, but the details were already suffering from being scanned, made black and white, and then squished into jpgs. It is a 2 page spread....

Anyway, that last illo on the lower right shows him tying on the wakibikis. They go UNDER the Do, whixh is why they aren't often seen. Also, since generals and other flashy types wore surcoats of various sorts, most of my sources have the area completely covered. Stephen Turnball doesn't mention this pieces of armor in either "Ninja Warrior" or "Samurai Warrior"... perhaps because it might be considered unmanly (he does say that they were expected to have enough skill to protect their underarms). These images are from "Weapons and Castles of the Orient" by Matthew Balent. About now, you are wondering why a pacifistic artist of sweet and gentle mien would have all these weapons resources?

a pacifistic artist of sweet and gentle mien Where? looks around B^)

Psst, since they are only black and white, GIFs would be smaller and you wouldn't have image loss.

I think I am going to bug Daniel to get the UVs for M3 so's I can just make this a texture map and maybe an un-ribbing morph, since they go underneath everything.

Status: Osode, Kote, and Kabuto morphs done (as well as some little morphs to flip up the tassels on the domaru). Also made the Wakizashi (odd, as I thought I has already made it) from the katana, and the wakizashi scabbard form the katana scabbard, which means they'll share UVs making texturing them to match a snap. And I made some tsuba and pommel shape morphs for the katana (which deltas will also be usable on the wakizashi to that kills two birds with one stone).

We really do need to be able to edit these posts! The last illo on the FIRST page shows the wakibiki. That book also talked about the padding and inner knots holding everything together. I can't put Stone on the scanner (too heavy). Stone's "Glossary" is my main resource for anything of this sort since he has photographs of the real stuff in museums. The full title is: "A Glossary of the Construction, Decoration and Use of Arms and Armor in All Countries and in All Times"... subtitled: "Together with Some Closely Related Subjects". The book is bigger than the title... about 10,000 items worth in 700 pages... give or take a couple. He has an exceedingly strong emphasis upon oriental materials. It was $50 new, but I got it for $10 remaindered about 30 years ago? He shows 6 examples of waki-biki as little pads, covered with metal bits, laced neatly. Worn under the armor. The padding of them is pretty obvious, perhaps because it would hurt to be jabbed in your own ribs by your own stuff just because you needed to reach for an arrow. The 7th photo is a small vest(!) made of multiple pieces. "The waki-biki is either an armored garment like a short vest, fig. 842, or two pieces fitting under and around the arms. In either case, it was worn under the corselet. It is often made of mail, kusari-wakibiki; or brigadine, or jazerant. Waki-biki are also classified according to the method of fastening, as botan-gake, with buttons, kohaze-gake, with hooks, and himo-tsuki, with cords." He then cites HIS sources. :) Anyway, it is worth checking your local library for a copy when you need authentic photos of museum pieces as well as the detailed drawings of obscure or exotic things. He is also fun to read despite all attempts at being a severe scholar, because his passion for this stuff comes through. An example from the article on Nodowa... first he talks about the fastenings, then: "Its usefulness is attested by the following taken from the Chuku Kachu Seisakuben: "In 1564 (Yeiroku V), on the seventh day of the first month, two battles took place at Konodai, in Shimoza, between Hojo Ujiyasu and Satomi Yoshihiro, assisted by Ota Sukemasa Niudo Sanrakusai, in which the Hojo forces were victorious. Ota fought desperately and had received two wounds, when Shimazu Tarozayemon, a man noted for his strength, threw down the now weary Ota, and tried in vain to cut off his head. At this Ota cried out 'Are you flurried, sir? My neck is protected by a nodowa. Remove it and cut off my head..' Shimazu replied with a bow, 'How kind of you to tell me! You die a noble death! You have my admiration!' But just as he was about to remove the nodowa, two young squires of Ota rushed up, and throwing down Shimazu enabled their master to decapitate him." (Followed by citation, of course.) You know, I have to admire someone who uses even more commas than I do! Anyway, my typing fingers are tired. I hope this helps. Carolly

OK, I've pulled the images out so that this is back to normal width, and we don't have to reach for the scroll bar just to read the posts. Some day when I'm rich and notorious, I'll get a nice widescreen monitor. ;^) Carolly