Ok I few things I need to know, just 2 hrs spent on poser 5 and Im frustrated already G

Ive imported the figure of Victoria 3 so I need to know the following as the manual as you all probably know doesnt say much G

1. how do I import her head morph? (Ive got the head morph pak for her already)
2. how do I import the face? (Ive bought the classic faces for V3 from A_)

my first goal is to create a portrait as those Ive seen here so how do I go about doing it in poser 5? Do I just work on the face screen? Or do I use the head morph from scratch and ditch the whole body altogether since I wont be using it.

Im going to learn it, its not going to beat me, Im sure it will get easier once I get the hang of it, cant be any harder the photoshop or bryce right?

If you have installed V3 and the head morph pak, you should first go to the Figures library, look for a folder "DAZ People", select V3 from in there and hit the double check marks at the bottom of the screen to load her in. There's a very good reason to always use the double check marks, so my advice is to avoid the single check mark altogether. Once V3 is in your scene, go to the pose library and you should see a whole bunch of folders called !V3 Head INJ and similar. I recommend you go for the one called !V3 All Morphs INJ. In there you'll find an icon with V3's head, !V3 All Head Morphs. Double click that, and go make yourself a coffee while it loads. Once it's all loaded I recommend you save your V3 back out again with a different name, such as V3 head loaded or something like that. Now you can go to work on your morphing. Use the Main Camera (IMO, the others are best left alone unless you're animating or trying to position something) and set the focal length to At least 65 to avoid "fish eye" distortion. Oh, you'll also need a skin texture unless you bought one from DAZ. Well, I'm not gonna spam you, but... there are a number of us merchants who produce high quality realistic skin textures. :D As for ditching the body, no. Best keep it attached. You never know when it may come in useful. :)

You may want to get some hair, too. In fact there are a lot of free head and body textures and a lot of free hair sets available. Freestuff is a good place to start.

Not to make waves, because Sam is about a zillion times better and more experienced than I in the Poser realm - but I do find the face camera VERY useful. In fact, when working on face construction I use it exclusively - that way you can use your main camera to capture the overall scene and always have the face camera to do face shaping and emotions. On the advice of others here, I set the focal of the face camera to 80 most of the time, again to avoid the fish eye effect. Another thing to contemplate would be your lighting - there are many good free lighting sets available, especially for portrait work. Other people have beaten me over the head with it enough times for me to know lighting is one of the most important elements of your renders - so you may as well get in the habit of working lights as soon as possible. As in all things - start with the most simple thing possible and have patience, it does take some time to get satisfactory results. I'd say do a few practice poses and renders with the stock V3 and nothing else just to get the hang of it, get familiar with posing, lighting and cameras because those things you'll have to deal with for every figure, prop and render you ever do in Poser. Then move on to your morphing, textures, hair, etc... Unzipped

unzipped - you have a very valid point there. I don't use much except the main camera because I find it easier to stick with one. Your working method is perfectly fine, just one that I don't use.

Yeah, I tend to use all the cameras. Usually main is, well main - that's the one I intend to do my render with, I get it positioned where I want to capture the image from and then I do my adjustments using the other cameras, so that I don't have to reset main. You could of course also just use the camera dots, but I find it easier to use all the cameras to get myself different angles to work with. Some times I'll use aux as main2 if I want to capture the same scene from different angles. Sometimes I'll use dolly too. But for shaping, moving and posing I find the other cameras important. Face camera is great - I want to raise an eybrow a bit, change the mouth shape, select Face Camera and BAM! (think Elzar from Futurama) I'm right there. Same with the hand cameras - it's great to be able to rotate freely about the hands to get the poses right without messing with the main camera. For collision and location in space the orthogonal cameras are key. I use Top camera to position things very often. Getting a nice all encompassing overhead view can be a real help when you've got a somewhat busy scene. Pose camera can be good to snap to your target figure quickly if you've lost them somehow. Sometimes, I wish I had even more cameras or a more easy way to create my own cameras (hint for Poser 6 wish list)! But as Sam said, everybody's got their own work flow - mine involves all the cameras at some time or another. Unzipped

ok thanks for all that great advice guys! what about the face? from the classic faces pak? how do i go about loading that?

Look under the Expressions tab and you should find the face you want.

The poser 4 manual would be good for poser 5 users, it should be given free with poser 5 or at least be available to download at curious labs. I am used to using poser and some poser 5 stuff is still quite tricky, but for people who are using poser for the first time with version 5 it must be quite hard to use.

Attached Link: http://curiouslabs.com/

Message edited on: 06/24/2004 20:37

The poser 5 manual doesn`t have all the basic poser stuff in it. The poser 4 one does and the propack one has how to use the setup room in it. I already have all the manuals I was just suggesting that poser 5 users should try and get and read the older manuals too.

i've got the P5 manual, but it doesnt tell you much, i want the manual or something that tells me exactly how to do stuff, i'm going thru the tutorials section and printing out stuff that is helpful to me.

Is there a place we can download the Poser 4 manual? I have the Poser5 manual since I bought the box version but, hey! that's a joke and if I hadn't paid almost 100$ for delivery, I would even find it funny. France

1 - The P5 manual sucks. Everyone knows it. If I have anything to say about it, such won't be the case for a P6 manual. I should note that the same writer of that manual now works for DAZ, since I'm an evil lassie... (hey, you knew it was coming, hon...) 2 - The bulk of the P5 help system is "live" and is annoying as heck becuause it opens up in each room until you set your prefs for them (ie -- you set your prefs for all the rooms at once). 3 - CL's site actually has some very good tutorials online for using the set up room and other features of Poser. In the interim, and in the interest of getting traffic (I'll not be coy about it, lol), if anyone asks a question about using Poser 5 in the RuntimeDNA Poser 5 forum, I'll ALWAYS make sure you get an answer. That's not a promise. That's a threat :) Now to ask another question...

ok - antoher question then - what is the address for CL'S site? :-)

Attached Link: http://www.curiouslabs.com

right sorry i wasnt looking at possible abbreviations.

adding to the topic on cameras: I also like the Pose Camera a lot as it always is focused on the figure, and not on the studio. main and Auxiliary may easily lose your figure, and it can be difficult to get it back. Pose camera is good for posing, etc. also: re-saving V3 with morphs is not done by choosing File>Save, but by saving her as a character by adding her as a new character to the library. Or am I wrong here? (I'm not that experienced myself).

Aeneas, you are correct.

And yet more on cameras: don't overlook the shadow cams, associated with each light. Looking thru that cam while adjusting the position of the associated light in its properties panel makes it MUCH easier to adjust the lighting.... (especially for global lights, where, for me, the "circle+arrows" in the preview just confuses me lots) Oh, and just BTW, something I only found out a couple of days ago: Spot lights can have a "Start angle" greater than the "End angle". (Wierd???) I'm still experimenting with that, but it has possibilities.. Cheers, Diolma

Daz have quite a few beginner tutorials too.

got something new for you - and thankyou to all who are posting info for me to learn, it is much appreciated. ok how does one go about adding eyebrows? the shadow is there - i've finally figured out how to change the iris color. is this (eyebrows) done in photoshop?

If you have a vic3 head texture the eyebrows should be on it. If you want to make your own you can use photoshop or paint shop pro etc.

Don't add eyebrows. The stock eyebrows on Victoria make her look like a neandrethol that forgot to pluck. They are oversized, in the wrong place, and just ugly. In fact the most usefull Victoria face morph is BrowsGone, set it to one, usually the first thing I do after loading Vicky. (actually I've saved her that way.) Most of the textures you find for vicky do not use her standard brows anyway, so they really just become an annoyance.

I forgot to mention setting browsgone to 1, you do that and then the head textures eyebrows appear it is these that you can alter in a paint program if you want to. Vially the "brows gone eyebrows" are actually made to be used with a transmap to make the eyebrows look more 3 dimensional (it does work).

Message edited on: 06/26/2004 12:44

Xantor, Yeah I know what they are supposed to do... I've just never seen any that actually look good when doing it. Might be some out there, I've just never seen them, and my own attempts are horrid enough to make me give up ;

Hmmm... Just a thought but how about displacement to fix the 3D aspects of eyebrows? Start>Programs>Graphics>Poser... Be back in a bit :)

i've downloaded a texture called Faith - i think A_ offered it as a freebie. and she's got really nice eyebrows, the shadow of the default eyebrows are there but in the materials room i managed to make them dissapear. i'll be back too, i'm going to look for new hair and textures. thanks all for your answers - they help me a bunch!!

The P5 manual sucks. Everyone knows it. [...] I should note that the same writer of that manual now works for DAZ Writing those WONDERFUL readmes and excellently worded Friday afternoon announcements, right? (Evil? Moi?) bonni

bonni... mais non voyons! I read those Friday afternoon announcements just to see what the freebie of the week is! OR to get free coupons while I'm waiting for them to announce the announcement of a certain announcement to be announced at a certain time! loll France