This is gonna sound REALLY picky, please try to resist the urge to throw things at me.

Ima lookin fer a pretty specific kinda chain-mail coif. Ive looked around and seen some beautiful items in retail sections, but they seem to be the style of a hood with a square cutout for the face. Ill include two pics that show what im looking for, one from an old movie, one from an image search that is much more clear.

If anyone knows of an item like this id appreciate being given a link to check it out :)

Thanks for reading,

Logan

Oh yeah, and to be yet MORE picky and encourage you to throw even heavier objects specificaly at vital zones...... Is this item gonna be able to work with existing armors without causing extreme pokethru of shoulder pieces etc? ducking Logan

Actually.. what comes to my mind is hair. a hairdo, mapped with a loose mail (and proper transmap) could probably work. It shouldn't be a hairdo in too many layers though. And a displacement map would probably be best to give the necessary thickness. What character do you need it for?

Hello again :) Im working with M3 with wedgecut hair 2 and the Gothic Armor, and I actually managed to do a texture .jpg from a .png in adobe without hurting myself, so that the character from the neck down has a chain texture (I was stunned!) When I looked at a close head cam perspective though, the link rings seemed a bit too large, so Im probably going to redo the texture. I really brute force newbied it, I basically took a 1950x1950 .png of chain, enlarged it to 4000x4000, cropped out a square of it, then pasted the square on a blank 3000x4000 canvas (to match the M3 high res tex map size) 4 times and lined up the links. It looks suprisingly good on the full body shot, but zoomed the links are just too big so I think Ill enlarge the .png to 2000x2000 and then paste 6 or 8 pieces on a 3000x4000 canvas. Would this be something you would want or is it something I can just apply to a coif on my end :) Thanks so much!! If you arent already a Guardian Angel in your primary occupation, you sure could be if you chose to :) Logan

:o) It's a bit hard to make it so that it fit any existing armour without having that armour. Just like you can't really make an overcoat that fits over some clothes you don't have. And I do not have that gothic armour. But I'll give it a try with a very basic model, you can probably putt it with some magnets then. Hang on while I see if I can model this at all LOL

here, I know you dont have the armor, but here is what the area between the shoulder pieces looks like ;)

I found a coif in Freestuff, for Mike..don't see a picture to compare it to, but I've used it, and it works..;)

Actually its all I can do to work 4.03 pro-pack without coughing up a lung.....

Can this be used at all in P4 or is it only to be opened in P5?

BTW the shape of this prop is AWESOME!! Here dig this, the new half sized chainmail link texture, plus ive given the Curt hairstyle a whirl, in emulation of the chap in the demo pic I first posted. It scaled and rotated itself into position really nicely to my newbie eye, but I cannot parent it to the dude. Its a prop and im afraid to try conforming after doing the tweaks I did.... Hope it moves with the char!! Getting ready to slap a goatee on the chump as we speak ;)

Logan

"I found a coif in Freestuff, for Mike..don't see a picture to compare it to, but I've used it, and it works..;)" my search for coif in freestuff only gives one hit, and its a fem hair 5 .obj download. dunno why my search never found it :/ Logan

Attached Link: Chainmail coif for M3

Thank you very much! Sweet Dreams :) Logan

The tex map I used is just a 3000x4000 pic of chain links, it worked ok for the M3 body but I think its not at all the correct dimensions for the coif!

Still it came out reasonably metallic and made for a nice preview of the coif :)

When time allows Id love it if you could let me know how to edit my chain links pic to be used for this prop.

Thanks so much again :)

Logan

Grrrl if your following this thread after getting some sleep....It required a bit of postwork to fix pokethru - please dont hurt me - but I think I like how this hangs off the character's head better!

Is there anyway I can apply my texture to this?

Thanks :)

Logan

Check this out!!! Pic shows initial render and postwork. This shape and this texture pretty much combine to EXACTLY what I saw in my minds eye when I started this thread :)

Cant thank you enough Grrrl!

Logan

She's our hero! That turned our real nice Logan, you could take that texture and make a transmap for it to make it see-through. I'm curious, where did you find pic 2 at? I gotta have that headpiece!

Actually.. the mapping on the two versions should be identical, since they're basically the same obj (but for some reason the morph didn't work on the dynamic version, I have no idea WHY) So you should be able to use the texture on the morphing version as well. It looks great with that texture, but I'm. with Ben, a transmap would make it even better. Oh and the dynamic one loads higher than the morphing one coz in order to use it as a dynamic cloth, you need to sorta let it fall down onto his head. And that's why it doesn't fit all that well, it's not really supposed to :o) As you can see from my ramblings, I got my sleep now, just arrived at work, 7 am yawn

Hello Ben,

Thank you for the compliment :)

Make a transmap? By giving how many cookies to whom??

I havent even had the nerve to check the news since I managed that incredible stroke of blind luck on the first try and got that texture on the headpiece as I did! Tell me, are cats and dogs living together now? Montana still standing? (im not optimsitic. I used up all my stored karma on that tex placement, I just KNOW it....)

Anyhow ;)

google image search on this page:

http://images.google.com/images?q=coif&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&start=160&sa=N

second pic of the third row, clicking it allows you to view it in thumb and at full size, but the orig-page link provided by google is dead for it.

www.uniquewear.com

is the top-level domain homepage and I poked around the links from there but didnt see any reference to the coif. Lots of belly dancing stuff and strong political opinions though! Hopefully you can use the contact info there to inquire about the item.

Good Luck :)

Good Morning Grrl,

I tried to respond once but it didnt seem to post. Sorry if it appears late and becomes a redundant post.

I cant find anything online for creating transmaps. Can you point me to a tutorial or give me a pointer or two when youve time?

Thanks much,

Logan

Creating a transmap can be easy - or hard, depending on what it is L For something like this I would try a high-contrasted, desaturated (black and white) version of the texture, and possibly invert it. On a transmap, everything that is white is visible and everything pure black is transparent. Grey tones are something inbetween. For this I would make it a 2 bit bitmap, to ensure it was purely black and white. In case you're in doubt, you should set transparency to 100% and the falloff to 0 (there are 2 sliders in PPP, it's called Transparency edge in P5, right now I can't remember what it is in PPP, but both should be at max. Then you use the transmap as a texture map in the transparency channel (sorry I'm talking p5'ish but it very easy in PPP, I just can't remember the settings there anymore without seeing it)

is the creation of a transmap done in poser or in a graphics program like adobe or both? Ive never made one before im afraid. It sounds to me like you are describing steps to be taken in both progs above? Logan

That's PhotoShop, or the image-editing program of your choice (making a black-and-white image shouldn't strain even the freeware paint programs!)

Hello Nomuse :) im in photoshop 6.0.1 and ive opened the texture.jpg I made for the coif. I did an invert on it, but I cant seem to find any way of making it 2-bit. Ive set it from Mode>RGB to Greyscale and then Duotone only selecting black and white as defined colors, but ive still got 8-bit and a bunch of grey. Any way I can fix this? Thank you, Logan

Not a problem. Just take that greyscale and run the Contrast adjustment on it (second or third menu from the left, I think). Run it all the way. Or, if you are a little more daring, use the Levels adjustment instead and bring the black and white points towards the middle. That way, you can adjust just how big the "holes" are. Save this the thing as an 8-bit JPG -- it'll be close enough for Poser to deal with it.

OK ive followed these instructions, using the Adjust>Contrast option, moving the slider to 100%. saved the file, went to poser opened the Render>Materials, and loaded transmap. Ive rendered and there seems to be no visible difference to the prop. Have I missed a step? Thanks again, Logan

I think it depends on your transmap. On your previous pic the chainmail lookd pretty dense. There has to be some black (transparent) areas on it to make transparent bits. Could you try posting the transmap? When applied, the coif should more or less dissapear from the unrendered preview. If it's still fully visible, you haven't made it transparent. But let's have a look at the transmap first :o) (hehe this is much more fun than work)

Im sure I blew the transparency stage, the coff did NOT dissapear....

unfortunately, the trans.jpg is like 944Kb so I cant post it here.

My filesizes have all been outrageous: the original 1950x1950 .png was 4.66M. when I enlarged that to 4000x4000 and pasted 4 crops of it and merged them onto a blank 3000x4000 canvass, I got a 9.83M .jpg, and when I just used the unresized 1950x1950 .png and pasted and merged squares of it onto a blank 3000x4000 canvas saved from adobe as .jpg, ive now got a whomping 14.1M small link chain texture that ive worked with, and used to make the tex and trans map for the coif.

You want I should zip and email to you the transmap I made or is there a way I can reduce its size to post here?

Logan

EDIT Im definately doin something wrong...I made a 1024x1024 all black file called test-trans.jpg, loaded it and the coif did not dissapear! does this help diagnose?

Message edited on: 07/05/2004 03:36

First of all, use Adobe's Save for Web feature, it makes much smaller and much better jpg's.

My guess is you somehow didn't get the transparency at 100%

I downloaded the demo of Pro Pack so that I could make a screen shot for you :o) (Ain't I NICE? GG)

and this is how the settings should be (of course not the casual man's texture as texture map but he's the only one included in the demo.

Message edited on: 07/05/2004 05:09

its now 4am my time, and I just got this, I had NOT adjusted the tranparency min and max sliders. Id say there is a bit of a difference now.....

I cant believe the difference this transmap has made. WOW!! thank you so much for letting me know this was an option and walking me thru it, I appreciate everyones help over the last two days :)

Would now the final step be to make a "gothic-armor specific" transmap where I paint away the bottoms of the front corners to eliminate the pokethru?

Thanks again!

Logan

It occours to me now that I could spend many hours going over the verticle edges of this transmap and painting out the half rings created by pasting the texture image over the texture map and getting a really nice edge, but I think im going to try another round of sleep first!!

Thanks again everyone, I cant belive how much Ive learned working with Grrrl's great custom prop and everyones kind help and advice :)

Logan (oh crap its 5am....)

To make this appear even better, use your transmap as a bumpmap as well. (or better yet, a displacement map in P5), it'll really give the impression of a real mail. I'm still not 100% sure why you're using the P5 version of the coif and not the morphing one. The mapping should be identical and you won't have to erase the corners since they should flow much better sround the shoulders. It looks really great with your new map though. Sleep tight.

Im slow to crawl into bed sometimes :)

actually the maps arent identical! the non morphing has a straight-edged bottom, the morphing map has a rough "V" shaped area gone from the bottom of each edge. (see pic)

I also noted that over the characters right collarbone with the morphing coif, that the texture image became distorted. I didnt notice this distortion on the non-morphing

annnnnd finally, to my eye, the way the non morphing item hung straight down off his face seemed to me to look more like a realistic heavy chain coif :)

Anyhow thats my story and im sticking to it! Talk to you soon I hope :)

Logan

Well, I can see what you mean. I'm a little puzzled as to why the morphing map looks like it does, in it's unmorphed version it is identical to the other one, so anyway you should be able to exchange textures. I'll have a look, now that I've come home again from work :o) Now you go get some sleep! G

Hey y'all don't know me but Logan was in hyper bouncing mode and had to share how good y'all were being to him and kept asking me (every ten seconds) if i'd read the thread yet lol (teasing Logan) Had to let you know he was right. Grrrl it's nice to see that someone else goes above and beyond the call of duty when helping out !! I may have to actually hang around more and learn stuff if y'all are going to be that good grins p.s. Grrrl when he starts reeeeaallllly getting hyper making him sleep is a GOOD idea. lol he's a worse insomniac then I am !

Awake again!! (three day weekend so no guarentee how long its gonna last) HIYA SPECKERS!! OK, wanna continue this project, so............ Grrrl, The texture map for coif1 that I displayed in the last pic was created by loading your coif1.obj into UV Mapper. Ill run the morphing.obj thru it and see if it produces a map with the V notches or not on my system. Then Ill apply the transmap I made to coif1 as a bump map and check that out. Then ill apply the coif1 tex and trans maps to the morphing coif and see what happens. Heck I may even get some breakfast!! Logan

I applied the GA transmap as a bumpmap and it looks dramatically better!

I then used the morphing coif with the P5 coif textmap, and the non customized p5 coif transmap for transparency and bump. Unfortunately the distortion of the tex image over the collarbones is still present, and the coif still tends to hang to the left off of each side of the characters face regardless of adjustment of the Fit dial.

However the P5 coif is lookin better than ever with the bump map defined and im really happy!

Logan

Ernyoka you are the bestest Grrrl in town. I've been wanting one of these for M3 too and you come to the rescue again, thank you. 8) Catlin

i have to say, its so damned nice that someone is tackling this, my father does real chainmail for medieval re-enactment perposes, and has made several coifs! i have always wondered if someone was going to make do, even tackle doing this, as i have been looking myself for coifs, and proper chainmail gloves! how about making a Gorget (chainmail neck thing), or at leas some one tackiling that one! what would be great is yes a morphing one, so it can fit all poser peeps! shame i dont have P5 still using PPP! but anyhoo, if anyone wants detailed images of how chail mail is, im sure i can ask my dear ole dad if he gets some pics,, as they vary in size, the rings that is, from 5millemeter to 1 centimeter and maybe a bit bigger!

Some scans of REAL chain mail would be great, I m sure a lot of peole would love that - myself included :o) If you have a pic of this Gorget I could try to make one. And the morphs to fit various people shouldn't be that hard to make... perhaps I should finish this and upload it properly...

Havent run screaming from this thread yet??? Yer a trooper!

I would love to see a version 2 of this coif :)

I just noticed something the other day but I didnt post on it: Look carefully at the character on our left in the first pic I posted, then look carefully at the second pic with the retail coif promo pic.

Look closer...........
closer.......................
stare at thier FOREHEADS..............

Do you see what I did? I posted pictures of two VERY different open coff styles, one with full-brow coverage and one with a completely exposed face!

Im a friggin moron! Anyhow, attached is a series of transmaps I made to cover some of the possible ranges of coverage for a coif like this for differend armor and helm needs (last three on right are only different by one row of chain links each).

Im curious, had anyone else caught the difference in these example pics id posted?

Logan

I noticed they weren't alike so I used the second pic as a reference.. more or less... I thought it looked best :o) Your transmaps look great :o)

and GG it takes a LOT to scare me off a thread ;o)

Thank you for the compliment :) Im very glad you chose the second pic style, as only it could allow me to make this series of transmaps by removing the rows and columns of links as I did. Cant wait for your next coif to texture and transmap :) Logan