I see many textures for P4 Woman generously posted here in free stuff but my own experience is that putting one texture verus another on the same figure just only changes the skin and lip color. It doesn't seem to me the texture is able to change the apearance of a figure noticeably, its morph combinations that individualize the figure. What do you all think? do textures make a difference? Maybe someone could post good examples.

Well misha - making a new character is of course more than simply changes the texture ... the most changes will be made by morphs - then hair and some clothes also - textures are a very simple way to change the appearance of someones color but you can't make an african character by simply switching to a darker texture ... examples on what is possible with textures can be found at http://site.yahoo.com/happyworldland/ (however - site is down at the moment) at least it depends on some poses how a person will appear to you ... you can find many of them on my site ...

I think, on the contrary, that texture make the difference. I won't give you the example of my two latest textures because one is white and the other black :) But I'm working now on three new Michael maps, and without morphing anything on the figure, choosing a texture instead of another let you think that the figures are different from each others. Of course, a really new character can only be achieved by using MT. That is also right for Posette. Just try each Happy Wonderland texture... For me skin details, color tone, make-up, hairs, and so on... make a great difference. joelegecko :)

I think a texture alone will change the appearance.. Just look at 'real' people.. They have no such things as morphs yet through the application of make-up, hair colour and style and different clothing you can change yourself to look totally different.. I think the secret is in how 'good' the texture is.

Mr. Gekko: Your textures are most excellent. I have no Micheal but intended to try to cut and paste your first two textures to the P4 Man template. I would most apreciate even one texture for Poser 4 Man with the realism and detail of your Micheal maps. Have you created any? Would you maybe post your three new Micheal textures side by side on the same figure w/out morphs here so we can see the differences? I have tried the textures at HappyWorldLand and to be honest the only difference I can perceive between them is in the case of coloring, make up, and last but certainly not least, pubic hair shape... but I do wonder if somehow the defect is in my own application or perception. On the other hand, textures with color variation and pore detail like yours are amazing in giving realism to a figure, yours are matched only by Catharina Przezak I think. Can anyone else post an example of different textures on the same figure that are effective in their opinion? [BTW... I build my characters with face morphs from Momodot and body morphs from MorphWorld, I use P4 Man textures from JohnontheRun.]

Misha, thank you very much for your kind comments ( even though I think Catharina would kill many of us with just a finger concerning texturing stuff :) Of course, great characters have great morphs, but the texture is as important for me as the geometry. Just give me two or three weeks, the time for me to finish my many projects, and I'll will post a render. joelegecko

I think it has to be a combination of both to be most effective but there is a great deal that can be done with textures ...

speaking of Momodot--has anyone seen him here since his move to Canada??

Momodot stopped in a day or two ago. He didn't stay long, hopefully he'll be back. We told him that he was missed.

Paul Leatham had a very realistic p4 map posted at one time, at least I think it was p4 and not Michael. I know he did the head for Joe's Michael body also. I don't know if it's still in free stuff or not. Momodot made a post within the last week or so but other than that I haven't seen anything of him.

On this subject... I really need help to learn how to texture...I have been posting for help and I guess noone wants to point me to help but I don't know why. :( I have never textured anything and I want to make a Bearded Collie fur texture for the Poser 4 dog or wolf. Can anyone help me learn the right way to do this, even if it's just pointing me to step by step tutorials? So far I haven't found a tutorial that i understand. I must be an idiot! thanks for any help :)

Huri, I'm not sure of any tutorials, but how I learned to texture was opening the template of the model or animal I wished to texture in a 2D graphics program like PSP or PS or Photopaint. I would then make the default texture be a second layer above it and make it about 50% transparent. That way I could see how a texture fit that model. I did a Nubian goat using photographs that I may post above (a screen print of the texture at 50% above the template so you can see what I mean) and then the actual texture I did and the model with the texture applied. It turned out quite well as other animals I did worked out. I've found that you need to have a good handle on using cut/paste, clone (an absolute must) and then using normal post work to finesse the final texture. A lot of it is just practice IMO. My first ones were really frustrating, but it got better the more I did. I will post the little demo as 'animal texture demo' later this evening. Diane

thanks diane, I am sorry that I posted that here but noone was answering me elsewhere and you all seemed so interested in texturing in this thread! Anyway. I have a feeling that it's more than I can do yet, as I am fairly new to bryce and poser still. I did get a nice email from someone via 3d commune and he explained some things to me privately. The only thing I need to understand is how to get both sides of the model into the other program for painting. he said I need both sides. So, if I have the dog facing me on the screen, should I change that to a side view and export 2 images, one from each side view or should I keep it facing front and do something else that i don't know about? geeze, I must sound so thick!

Huribead, its not an image of the model that you need to paint your texture over it is something called a UVmap. If you do not find the "texture template" for your model on the CD it came on you can extract the "template" with a utility called UVmapper which is here in free stuff. The template is an image file showing both sides of the mesh of your model as well as detail areas seperated as "materials". You may benefit from look at a tutorial I saw some where on painting fur effects (anyone rember where that is?) and for that matter looking at Koziboro's woman's hair tutorial at a website called "DigitalBabes" or something like that. Picnic, I had no personal use for the goat you made but I was totally wowed by it, it was one of the most eyefooling pieces of Poser work I've seen. I was happy just to have gotten to have a look at it. Very good.

Misha: What I would add is, don't forget bump maps. They work like textures but act like (wimpy) morphs. huribead@charm.net: in another thread Wyrwulf just posted a link to http://www.kzin.org/poser/index.htm where there is an FAQ that explains UV maps (UV is not XY) Wyrwulf: that's two good links today. Thanks.

thanks so much and if anyone remembers the tutorial, please post it... I did download UV Mapper thinking I would need it! :)

whoa! took a look at the cr2 faq you posted! Thats way too much information for me at the moment. it succeded in making my head spin...LOL! Thanks though :)

Huri, I would still suggest you open a template (or for that matter, just a texture) for the dog or some other model in some 2D graphics program. You will see immediately what they are referring to--to simplify it quite a lot, imagine a can as a model. Now--think about the label that wraps around the can. That's sort of how a texture works. If you take the label off and straighten and flatten it out, that represents a texture map more or less smile. Thanks so much Misha. Nice of you to say. Diane

Oh yes! I intend to do that...I just meant that that little faq was a bit too much. I went to the hair tutorial at Kozuburos site and it helped me quite a bit. I guess i need to hunker down and stop trying to theorize how it's done and just try it. I still wish there was a step by step somewhere from importing into UV mapper to exporting to photoshop to painting in photoshop to placing on character/model but I guess I can't have everything unless i enroll in a course at the local university! :) Thanks so much for all your help...I really appreciate it.

Huri: A 3d model is mapped to a 2d plan Thus it is called UV. Since we can only paint in 2 dimentions the 3d model must be transformed into a 2d flat version also. Inside a 3dEditing software the mesh is flattened out and pulled and streched until all the faces are flat (2D) Since the model has both original mesh coordinates and UV mesh coordinates the map can be deformed back to its original 3d shape. It is the same as taking a cardboard box and undoing all the flaps until it is flat, then you paint on it and then fold it back to the original box form. Hope this help explain UV maps. Any UV mapped object has 2 sets of coordinates one for the 3d mesh faces and the other for the flat map. To the original Poster on the importance of texture. For me it has a lot to do with how close you are to the mesh. If the image you are making has figures in the background these can have little or no texure at all and the figures appearance is almost totally the mesh contour. However the closer you get to the mesh the more important the texture map becomes until the point that you do extreme close ups and it is almost all texture and very little mesh profile. Good post by the way. Paul Hafeli

Personally I think that the right choice for a texture map can dramatically change the "character' of your actors/actresses. The lighting is the other factor that seems to make a big difference. We can see that in the variations of "characters". I bumped into this difference using one of the "natural" texture maps, the character was not working with the standard texture, but once I changed the texture map, the whole character 'came to life". Also I think the textures help with the final "style" of the work, in other words, the anime style textures as opposed to the more photorealistic textures. I think after reaching a certain stage of "learning" a texture map becomes very very important to the end image. My own progress was to first learn what it was that changed if I diddled with different parts of the set up. I then looked at what others were able to do and tried to get the same effect, this forum as well as the others have been a wealth of information in that regard. I still think the main ingredient is patience...:-)

Like so many things, much depends on what you want it to do. [I'm from the South and most folks do this sort of debating over which calibre of firearms is the best for shooting varmits and such, etc.] My answer is the same. Morphs, textures, Vicky, Posette, etc., are just tools. What do you want to do with them? Obiviously if you stick a really cool looking texture of a super model on a Posette someone morphed to look large, twisted, and deformed the texture is not going to help make the figure look like a supermodel. Maybe a fashion monster, but not a super model. :o) Same works in reverse. Try a gory looking texture on a super model shaped figure...yipes. Now if you morph the figure to look like someone so that the general physical proportions are right, and add a really good texture made from a pic of the person, it stands to reason you will end up with a figure that looks a lot like that person...even more so than if you just pasted the same texture onto the default figure. Since generally the closer you get the more detail shows, this is when high res figures, morphs, and textures are best appreciated as less in the way of unwanted and unnatural flaws - like seems in the mesh or gaps in the texture - show up. Just my 2 cents. PS. Paul, killer close up shot!!!!! I think I can almost count the nose hairs. Remarkable detail. :o)

In answer to the original post, the pic shown here is the before and after changing only the texture. The left pic is the Poser dude with the default texture and the pic on the right is the same P4 nude man with a photorealistic texture. No morph targets were used for either example and no post work was done and by simply using a different texture you can get some pretty good results for your characters.

Marybeth, good sample. Paul, great close up. I agree that a good texture can give great realism, but still I found that a photo of a face mapped on a figure was useless for a likeness, which is how my "face mask" developed, I saw Paul's photo mapped to a deformed flat mesh and realized the less detail in the mesh the closer the liknes from the map, so I made a mask by spawning a prop from the Poser 4 LowRes figure and planear mapping it. Above the only post work is blending the mask to the skull. The mask works across about 170 degrees POV. On the other hand I find the geometry of the regullar poser face defeat my attempts to map photos to it, and if I attempt to smooth it with morphs there is too much disortion of the mesh.

here's image...