Ive reached a basic level of competance with poser. Im not ready to start posting artwork yet, but I can email renders of my fully clothed, hair bearing characters giving the bird to my roomate (he he....). Heres my trouble, I know Im going to have to build my own props for my purposes, and Id really rather not drop the obscene amount of money necessary for Lightwave or 3DS MAX, and lets not even talk about Maya (IT COSTS MORE THAN MY CAR!!) So this leaves me with not alot of options. Basically all thats out there is blender, which can output to .OBJ via some custom Python scripts. Im just wondering if theres a less dollar intensive method out there Im missing?

Wings3D would be my first suggestion. There's a forum for it here at R'osity.

Attached Link: http://www.wings3d.com

Absolutely wings3d. It is strictly a modeler, and on that basis, it is fully competitive with any other box modeling program out there today (read: it can do about 90% of what the ones you mentioned can do insofar as modelling. They all, however, do additional things -- things you can do in Poser 5 for the most part). Wings also has the most amazing price possible: 0.00 Free Gratis nuttin Some of the best orgnaic modelers available today have switched over to wings for the actual modelling

There's Wings3D. Used by many pros who own Max, Lightwave, Maya, C4D and XSI as their starting tool beause of its ease of use. Dr Geep just recently showed here on this forum how to create morphs for poser in it. Then there's Silo. Costs a bit, but has a brlliant future. Sometimes the "biggies" have a free version on some CDs of some magazines. But when you really "know" how to work with Wings or Silo you'll be able to create many, many props for Poser. A hint (if you don't mind): download freebies and open the .obj file in, say, Wings. It'll tell you a lot on how to create wht you are looking for.

If you go to the Modeling Forum, near the top of the page you will see a number of links to free modeling applications, IMHO Anim8tor is a good one.

Wow thanks for all the suggestions, Im dowloading the Wings 3d client as we speak....er...type.. Anyways thanks for the tip, reverse engineering is a surprisingly good way to learn these sorts of applications!

I almost forgot to ask, but does anyone know of a good tutorial for the creation of semi-rigid props like holsters or flak vests? Ive seen many tutorials on how to create conforming spandex like clothes, but Im going to need to create some baggier stuff, as well as things that dont bend very well (The aforementioned flak vest). THanks again! This is the most supportive and helpful communities Ive ever taken part in on the web!

"Semi-rigid" is tough. That's my big complaint with conforming clothing; it is sort of an all-or-nothing issue. Either an item stretches like rubber, or it doesn't. That said, I've been toying with something called "conformal" clothing; using ERC, morphs, body handles, phantom parts, in an effort to have clothing that moves partially or stiffly. You can of course do a lot with joint parameters, particularly fall-off zones. That and careful grouping, of course. For instance, for a holster I'd suggest making the belt part an ordinary conforming clothing, but the holster itself an additional body part with "Bending" switched off.

I see, so the belt would have the same spandex-esque properties as the conforming clothing, while the holster proper would be more like an attached prop. I think this is how alot of the armor plates Ive seen in some of the fantasy compostions work. Anyone know for sure?

Lot of people don't seem to want to go that route; instead they do a single conforming clothing item as an armor base then smart-prop all the little bits.

Ahhh... Ok please excuse my ignorance here, but what is the differance between a prop and a smart prop?

Heh. If you parent a prop to a body part THEN save it to the props library, it will remember its parent. Works very cute for stuff like swords -- no matter what pose the figure has, when you import the sword it will snap over to where that right hand currently is. I'd have to open a file or my copy of "Secrets of Figure Creation with Poser 5" (the single greatest book a Poser content creator can buy) to tell you what the code lines are. I dislike props for a lot of reasons, but for this application my real dislike is that they are "messy." I prefer a single .obj file with proper body parts, and I'll do the trickery within that.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12402&Form.ShowMessage=1853720

They moved this link that was here in the Poser forum... You are not supposed to talk about other 3D modeling apps in the Poser Forum!!!

Attached Link: http://www.dsmith.gmaxsupport.com/Essential_Tools.htm

Again- I'm not a modeler, but if you are interested in MAX but don't want to spend the bucks, you can always get GMAX, its MAX Lite (and has no renderer) but its free! I've played with it and it looks just like MAX to me, minus the bells and whistles. GMAX comes with a number of games, and if you follow the link you can get lots of export modules to take your GMAX models out and into other apps like Poser, etc. Best results are obtained using 3D Explorer as an intermediary step...

What didn't get mentioned (and ought to be obvious) is that the conforming clothing is a sort of character, So you smart-prop the rigid panel to the clothing. Another snearky trick I've seen, which should be applicable, is that a figure can be saved with the attached smart-props. I've mostly seen it with some old Poser 3 stuff (and the Poser 3/4 hair is a form of smart-prop). (After quick check) Looks like it has to be done as a .pz3 file, but that does contain all the objects. It might be possible to use the same sorts of editing as create a MAT file, but I don't know how to do that.

I wish I hadn't mentioned the smart-prop technique. I find it ugly and annoying when used for something like armor. For a pistol in a holster, tho, it is the obvious choice; that way the end-user can re-parent the item to character's hand and actually draw it. I've had no problem switching off "bend" for various parts. Trouble is you have to isolate them; a non-bending part will tear if welded to a bending part (usually). And the exact following Poser imposes on conforming clothing is often not what a piece of armor or a scabard would do.

Im starting to see why there are so many tutorials out there....

Heh. Pick up the Bloodsong book -- you won't be sorry.

Message edited on: 07/19/2004 10:46