I keep seeing people talk about Victoria and Michael. How do you create these characters in Poser? At least, how do you modify them to create creatures that you want such as adding more arms, legs, eyes (ie, Cyclops, Centaur, etc). Do you need another program to do this? If so, what do people use?

Victoria and Micheal are completely seperate models sole at Daz3d version 2 is cheaper and easier on the computer than version 3 and the low resolution models of versions 2 and 3 are most economical. Some centaurs etc. are sold at Daz and the various on-line stores but modeling requires expertise in 3D software and writing the Poser files to make them posable. The easest work around is to make parts of figures invisible... parent these partial figures to a main figure and save as a figure group. Morph Manager (a free program available here and elsewhere) can save memory by letting you delete morphs from the non-visible body parts. You will have to blend the seams between the figures in such composit figures in "post-work" with a program such as Photoshop using the smudge and healing tools. It also helps with these primative composits to use a minimum of textures and to texture in post-work by burnig overlay and hard light or somesuch of texture samples using the patern stamp. For animation? I don't know... you need real figures I imagine.

There are tutorials on how to use the setup room to add heads, arms etc. Then you can sometimes still use pose files, if you hav'nt just made apart invisible and then parented..

Any idea where these tutorials are? I have not found them on my own yet. Thanks :)

Dr. Jeep, or Little Dragon should be of Help!

If you're new to Poser the 3D Starter Bundle from Daz is worth getting -- be quick and you'll still catch the sale price -- which includes the reduced resolution versions of Michael and Victoria. But the package is a huge download, even though there sub-packs which can be downloaded one at a time rather than the whole thing at once.

It sounds like you want to do mesh editing, which can quickly get complicated. There are some good free programs such as Wings3D and Anim8or, but getting a grip on them takes time. Start with some simple props; you can make morphs for a character or prop which can be very useful, and let you see how the basics work.

I'm getting comfortable working with simple props. Actual characters are a good deal more complicated.

But consider the fingertip on a figure. A morph can change the shape, but it can't remove any polygons, neither can it change the materials. You could make the fingernail very small, but you couldn't remove it. And its colouring would be set as a fingernail.

And if you just made the fingertip invisible, you wouldn't have the stump of a finger (as one of my neighbours has). You'd need something to fill the gap at the end (which could be a prop). And the same for the fingernail material.

Message edited on: 11/22/2004 08:46