Hi

What are the basic rules..
What are the MUST do things when making models for poser or Ds..
Some times you read " you must do this or that" ... "like split vertix to get sharp lines"
I read once you got to follow the basic modeling rules...
Im not looking for program specifics but the General rules...

Now can some of the "Pro's" help me and others  with these Rules...
So i can put them in a list..

Thnx Chris

Two simple rules to start with....
A) your render should mean something, say something, stand for something.  merely twisting dials and adjusting the lighting on your new Vicky may be enough for some people, but your work has to be more than pretty.  It has to have a story, meaning, depth.
B)  your render should reflect your character, your thoughts, your dreams, your desires.  this is, after all, your work, your art.
Having said this, I'm going to get into trouble with people who want you to concentrate on the technical aspects of the program, however (and there is always a however) you should use these tools as a story telling medium. 

euhmmm...

What are the basic rules..
What are the MUST do things when making models for poser or Ds..

Was i not clear ? ..or do i write it all wrong ... i was talking about MODELING...not RENDERING..

:}

sorry, when you said "I'm not looking for program specifics but the General rules" I thought you wanted info on the why of modelling,  misunderstanding there........
Rules?
Lighting has to be natural, shadows are a good thing...... the pose has to be comfortable, like a real person was in the scene.  forget what I said earlier, just make it pretty to start with.  practice practice practice.  try to emulate photographs. 
just play with the programs for a while, use all the special effects, get them out of your system (your system, not the computer's) and then just do your thing.
Check out Dr.Geep of Poser U for more down to earth info. 

barcode, sounds like you want whats and whys for the two to handshake, here are my musts:

1- you have to scale up from poser to bring into max, and the opposite is true when going back to poser. don't use max's enlarging, use objscaler (free).

2- you'll want to weld identical verts. get into the habit of welding everything from time to time as you model. stray verts are a killer.

3- you'll need to learn how to muti-map an object and create groups. groups are what poser uses for clothing, not for props per say. uv mapper is great for assigning materials.

those are the ones off of the top of my head. creating materials and maps are a must as well but poser does an okay job with that. learn good modeling skills and good luck.

I still think im unclear ...

I want to have some basic rule of MAKING 3D OBJECTS "modeling 3D" 
Contructing clothes walls chairs  cars ...etc etc ....

I hope this is clear now otherwise i give up on English and ask it all in dutch...

:}

Chris

It would depend on what you're making I think.

If you need sharp edges on a prop, then yes, you will have to do something for that. If you are going to split the verts, I recomend doing it in your modeling app and not using the option as UVMapper has it. (UVmapper splits every vert, which isn't always the best route to go) 

If you take a look at my Britta's Playhouse prop here in freebies, it started out as a box. I then selected all the faces for each side and detached them all and then grouped them all together. You do have to watch doing this for slightly more complicated props because it can cause weird shadows depending on how you've done it.

Another way is to put a very tight chamfer on the edges.

For clothing, I was always told that quads are better than tris when you take things into the setup room. Also, it can save you a great deal of time in said setup room if you cut your mesh before importing it into Poser. Make sure each section has the same internal name as Poser uses for the various body parts. 

For the above, I model the clothing, map it, then cut it around a copy of the figure taken out of the geometries folder. (or if you export your base mesh from poser, don't weld everything together so you have your body parts defined still)

Just woke up, so that's all I can think of off the top of my head for right now.

Bah, you guys type too fast for this girl... =P

Bar-Code - if needed, I can provide some screen grabs of some of what I do for certan types of props.

Bar-Code - if needed, I can provide some screen grabs of some of what I do for certan types of props.

I love to see screens ..for me 1 image can say more then 100 words ...

Chris

I'm not sure if there are any hard set rules for model construction. One ebjective is to get the best shape with the fewest poly count. What Darkedge mentioned about scaling is the closet to a rule. with Poser's size being very small the 10:1 ratio is what you have to get used to. This may not be much help but it's the only thing I've seen mentioned regardless of modelling app used.

BAR-CODE, it looks like you might get better responses asking in the 3D Modeling forum.
Have you checked with that forum yet?

Does that realy matter ... i think that the people who make stuff for poser read the 3D modeling forum aswell as the poser forum....
But i can allways repeat my question there if needed :}

But thnx for the tip..

Chris

Alrighty, just did a plain box in Max to play with.

Box 1 - Just took what Max popped out. Can see with a mesh smooth in max in the second shot that it's not going to look like a straight edged box that way. But if I export the box without smoothing, it renders like a box in Poser, even with smooth polys turned on.

Box 2 - Took the same box as above, but detached the sides - basically like slapping a bunch of planes together. And renders like a box.

Box 3 - Same box as before, nothing detached, but this time, I put a very small chamfer on the top, bottom and side edges. First render in poser gave me a very puffy box, but if you go to the objects properties tab and turn off smooth polys on the prop itself...you get your normal box back - even with smooth poly option still on in render settings.

So what you are modeling is going to determine what you'll need to do.

Another important point has to do with holes or gaps.  Poser hates 
'concave' facets.  Many modeling apps leave very complicated facets,
including some concave facets, when you make a hole.

The hole will look fine in the modeler, and may be okay in
other rendering apps, but Poser will mess it up totally.

The solution isn't always easy.  Sometimes you can do it
by starting with a grid (checkerboard) as I did here; sometimes
you end up drawing the proper facets by hand!

It was clear to me the first time you said it.

Unfortunately, I've got nothing else technical to contribute. The Poser manual does have some sections on modelling poser figures as I recall. There are also a couple of books that are considered good to get. Do an Amazon search on Poser and you should find them. One is "Secrets of Poser Figure Creation" or something.

Another tip - if you are going to model human figures, it's probably a good idea to have experience working with the human figure in a traditional medium, either drawing or sculpting. I'd include drawing/sculpting from live models as a must-have. I can always tell the difference between artwork done by an artist who really knows human anatomy from practicing with live models, and one who is working exclusively form 2nd-hand material like photos or (even worse) other people's drawings.

From an economic perspective alone, you probably want to model for Poser and tweak for D|S. In the beginning, you shouldn't be doing anything sophisticated enough to break cross-compatibility. (I mean from a tech point of view, like joint-controlled morphs, etc. not the sophistication of your mesh design.)

Good luck! And let us know if you post any freebies! :laugh:

Tips for modeling for Poser: * You want to use quads over triangles. Really. I mean it. Make yourself familiar with the "Crease Angle" setting and smoothing group IDs in Poser. Consider taking advantage of them and stop worrying about splitting edges. * Make yourself familiar with the "Smooth Polygons" feature. Consider taking advantage of it and save lots of polyons (= precious RAM). * Displacement maps.

Thank you, stewer! :)  I was just about to make mention of quads over triangles - and n-gons.

• Try to keep your quads flat (planar).  This will avoid strange shading side-effects.  Not a hard rule, but may uncover why some areas look funny when all other checks fail.

• Make sure that your polygon normals all point in the proper directions - this one has caused many a modeler grief.  Also be aware of the difference in polygon winding.  Cinema 4D and Poser are opposite (Left and Right handed coord. systems), thus your normals should be inverted either before export from C4D or during import to Poser.

• As noted, for sharp edges either chamfer/bevel or split vertices along the hard edge.

• Watch out for fanning triangles - these tend to cause bad shading side-effects.  Sometimes the Phong angle helps (Model->Smooth in UV Mapper).

• Check your model for degenerate polygons, n-gons, unused points, unused polygons.  Weld vertices (as already noted) - except where you are explicitly using the duplicates for a hard edge.

• Quickie on UV Mapping: there are always two goals here - reduction of seams (where mated polygon edges are not touching in the UV map) and stretching (distortion of texture map when applied).

• As stewer alludes to, what is modeled and what is texture needs to be considered.  Too much detail in the model will cause the obj to be polygon heavy.  Most small surface details can be achieved with bump mapping.  Where you need to have surface details that are more prevalent but would be costly to model in polygons, use displacement maps (but they'll be of no use in Poser 4 ProPack and earlier).

Look :} this is what i was hoping for a LOT of tip and "rules" in one thread !!

Just one  question ... im not English and so are a lot others ... please keep the language "simple" a lot of the technical English is way off from our school books :}
So eummm chamfer is the same as Bevel ? ....

Thnx so far people ..when you have more just put em in here ;}

Chris

Ps the image is the very very very first thing i made ...  i only have the images left from it :{
and the decals from the wall ..

Thnx 
Chris

Chamfer and Bevel are pretty much interchangable (hehe - both refer to a small edge of about 45 degrees between two surfaces meeting at a greater angle).

Hard to be too non-technical here.  A normal is the appropriate (and only) term for a vector perpendicular to a plane).  You want to talk 3D modeling, you're talking 3D mathematics. :)

Point - a point in space defined by one or more numbers along basic axes (X,Y,Z defined by (0.0,1.0,0.0) for instance).

Vector - a point or a direction from some origin.

Vertex - a point belonging to a polygon or other surface.

Normal - a vector perpendicular (at 90 degrees) to a plane (a polygon is usually a plane surface).

Unit Vector - a vector 'normalized' so that it is within the distance range of 0.0 to 1.0.  Note the wordplay with 'normal' and 'normallized' - normals are normally normalized. ;P

Edge - a line segment that is part of the polygon boundary defined between two consecutive points in the vertex array (see Polygon vertex winding order below).

Polygon - the space enclosed by a set of points.

Triangle - a polygon of three sides.

Quad (Quadrangle) - a polygon of four sides.

N-gon - a polygon of more than four sides.  This is a 3D computer graphics term invented to distinguish between triangle-quads and polygons having more than four sides.  A polygon can't have less then three sides - this is a degenerate polygon.  Most 3D computer programs and games work best with triangles and quads.

Polygon vertex winding order - this is the order of the points (in an array, from first to last) that make up the polygon when viewed from the side of the polygon that is the same as the normal.

Convex - bulging out.

Concave - indented or pushed in.

It'd probably be more instructional to do some images, but I don't have time for a tutorial on this.  Maybe some can illustrate these definitions (or you can find something on Google - there should be tons of stuff either related to basic 3D mathematics or graphics that will define and illustrate these concepts).

well most of those words i know from manuals ..yeah i read manuals ;}
its words like "perpendicular "  ...those words in a line makes me mad.
So when you can kill those words .... im a happy camper..

Chris "who hope his English is good enough, so you understand his point"

To quickly illustrate 'perpendicular', take a pen and place one end on a table so that the pen is standing up.  The table surface is the polygon.  The long dimension of the pen is perpendicular to the table's surface and could be used to represent the table surface's normal. :)

AH ! those "red" lines upward that points out the normals way out .. ?

If its not well it was a good gues no :}

Chris

aahhh, the old "how do you model in 3 steps" thread.
easy.

besides all of the above suggestions learning how to use splines+cross section+surface has been a life save for me.
modifiers are very much a key.
keeping your stack intact allows you to easily tweak settings and such.

"Unit Vector - a vector 'normalized' so that it is within the distance range of 0.0 to 1.0.  Note the wordplay with 'normal' and 'normallized' - normals are normally normalized. ;P"

One slight correction here... a "normalized" vector has the distinctive property that it's distance (from 0/0/0) is exactly 1.0 (or should be).  So a normalized vector contains only direction information... this allows you to multiply it by some scalar value in order to produce a new point some exact distance from some other point, along some specific direction vector.

destination_point = origin_point + ( desired_distance * direction_vector )

...of course for the 'distance' of the vector to be 1.0 (no more, no less), then the 3 axis elements of the vector are in fact between 0.0 and 1.0 (I think that's what you meant).

BAR-CODE, the above is probably more than you cared to know, but if you understand what a Vertex Normal or a Face Normal is, it helps explain why and how some features of the modeller you use works.

Basically, when you see the word "Normal" in the menus somewhere in the modelling app, it's refering to the 'direction' that a polygon or vertex faces.  So if you extrude/move/scale something along it's normal, it extrudes/moves/scales along the direction it faces.

If this was mentioned, I apologize.  Any object where you will see both sides of a surface must have thickness.  Poser 4 for was very forgiving, but P6 hates backsides or flipped normals.  No double-sided materials.  P6 hates that also.  Actual thickness.

John

If this was mentioned, I apologize. 

Dont Apologize for helping out :} 
No matter if it was already mentioned, it better to read it twice then not at all ...

Chris

Yes, that's what I meant, Spanki.  A normalized vector will have a length of 1.0, the components will have values (distance ranges) between 0.0 and 1.0.  Didn't notice that I missed that. ;)

This is one of those areas where I think anyone who works with 3D should be given a basic beginners tutorial on things like 'vectors' and 'normals'.  You should have seen the reaction when, I as a computer programmer, admitted that I wasn't very well versed in Calculus (esp. things like partial derivatives, multiple integrals, divs and curls).  Hey, not all of us are fortunate enough to go to MIT or Harvard to receive a PhD in computer science, software engineering, and the mathematics courses related. :p  I don't see how Calculus is a prerequisite for computer programming - maybe for algorithm development where Calculus provides better methods through numerical analysis for good iterative designs.  But I seemed to have survived without invoking Calculus for every problem for nearly twenty years!  I'll let the PhDs do the derivations and algorithm design and gladly use them without understanding the full mathematical derivation - as long as I understand the principles involved.  Anyway, some of the best algorithms have been based on looking at the problem differently and usually with respect to how computers work rather than by purely mathematical solutions.  Sorry for the derail. :D

"Secrets of Figure Creation with Poser 5" has been mentioned before in this thread. http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Figure-Creation-Poser-5/dp/0240519299/sr=8-1/qid=1168909770/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-7311033-8714536?ie=UTF8&s=books It has several short but good comments on designing a mesh for use in Poser. These days, with more and more people migrating to Poser 6 and above, the advice about edges is starting to change. Poser 6, for instance, allows you to set the smoothing angle on a per-object basis. Basically, with Poser 6 or 7 you don't have to worry about the edges any more. However, a small bevel/chamfer still makes a nicer-looking edge; it looks more natural, it takes light better -- and it will work properly in Poser 5 or below. Firefly goes beyond smoothing on certain objects; on long thin cylinders it tends to create the "Goodyear Blimp" effect. Smoothing angle won't fix this. Turning off smoothing will, but at the expense of making all your curved surfaces look faceted. Running up the render quality to the highest settings also sometimes fixes it. The best all-around strategy is, unfortunately, to not be an efficient modeler. Instead of cylinders that are one or two polys long in the extruded direction, go with a lot more; trying to never create a cylinder that is more than 10:1 length to diameter. More general advice: For inorganic objects, keep the total polygon count down as low as is reasonable. Especially for mechanical props, you may end up duplicating something like a bolt head or a toggle switch dozens of times -- and a hundred extra polys per bolt can add up quick. That said, SPEND polys on curved surfaces, especially if they are going to be able to cast a shadow or sit in front of another object. Smoothing does pretty well for surfaces but it doesn't always do well for edges. Use a regular polygon scheme so you don't have too many large, oddly shaped ones. Avoid "star points" -- where dozens of lines all merge at one vertex. These can render odd. And of course watch out for n-gons, detached edges, reversed normals, and all of that. Think ahead and you can do a lot towards duplicating smaller objects to build up larger. Think ahead, too, towards materials and UV mapping. UV map and assign materials BEFORE you duplicate things! It is much too much work to so the same dozen steps on each and every one of a dozen duplicates. For organic modeling, plan for movement and morphing. Use quads and look for edge loops; this is where you can trace a line or a row of polygons all the way around an object. Edge loops are good. Put lots of them at joints, around mouths and eyes, and other places where you will be wanting movement. And I've got no more time. Work is calling. Have fun!

Well, there's simple looping and then there's edge looping. Edge looping is a bit different than just simple looping. Edge looping attempts to follow the form of the character (defining the mouth/cheek connection, etc.), where simple looping doesn't (ie. extra loops at joints). A good example of edge looping (Forgive me for posting someone else's work please):

Bookmark

Bookmark!

This is a good thread, and I'm afraid I have to use/learn another modeller. For years I 've used Rhino3D, but it isn't very good at mesh handling. The latest upgrade finally improved a lot of things but I have to find out if it's suitable for making meshes like Tuyon describes otherwise I'll have hexagon, but I haven't used that a lot.

Perhaps I can add my two cents to the discussion to simplify some things by making a short resumé and adding some of my comment:

In object in Poser and many other 3d-applications (but not Rhino!) is built of one or more meshes which define the outside/surface of the object.
Meshes are made of "faces" or "surfaces" (vlakken) of minimal 3 points or vertices.A 2-point face cannot exist and is also degenerate. 4.point faces are preferable but not always flat. (with 3 points you can define a plane, if the fourth point is outside that plane, the face is  folded) n-gons  (surfaces made of multiple points) are even more difficult to keep flat.
Objects that totally surrounded by meshes, are sometimes called solids. But sheet-like objects like clothes can be made of an open mesh. Dynamic clothes are like this.
A normal or normal vector is a vector which is perpendicular (haaks, loodrecht) to the  face, Normals define what the inside or the outside of a model is, or in case of sheets the front or the backside.  When you import an object with the normals pointing inwards, it will be shown inside-out (which can look very strange)
The nature of meshes is, that you can't make curved objects with it, so most modellers make an approach to this by breaking up a curved surface in multiple flat surfaces. Poser use  smoothing to make it look curved again. The crease-angle setting defines if the angle between two faces is sharp or curved  (if that angle is smaller than, lets say, 80 degrees it is displayed as sharp if it's bigger it is displayed as curved, again: with normals you can define the angle between two faces) If you don't want the object to be displayed as curved, you can uncheck the smoothbox in the properties.
Normals are also very important for rendering and displaying. The backside of faces are not visible in poser!

Perhaps can someone else tell something about welding of meshes and the reason, because that's not completely clear to me.

well, I'm not going to be much help, but these explanations are going a long way towards explaining some of the problems I've had with modeling Poser props in the past.

Only 1 question. How do you know which way polygon normals faces are actually facing?

Welding...
In general, without welding separate faces, or separate unwelded parts, a mesh can be seen as completely separate pieces by an application. Smoothing may not carry over from one mesh to another, past the unwelded seam. So, instead of a smooth piece, you can get a sharp edge, or severl faces that just won't smooth out, even if the angle is within tolerance.... and you can apply smoothing factors till you're blue in the face, the mesh won't smooth...
(BTDT in max....)  

I'm sure there are other reasons for welding...This is just one example that threw me for a loop in my beginner days (not that long ago) ;)

Pakled... the answer to your question may depend on the application...  Often the bottomd of triangles or quads are shaded a bit darker, or not seen at all, as if there is a hole in the mesh.
Max (and I guess other more advanced apps) can actually show you an little icon on each face.The icon tells you which way is up/down... Then you have a tool to go and flip faces as needed.  HTH!

I don't know if this has been mentioned in the thread, but Poser doesn't read the
list of normals (vn lines) generated by the modeler.  Poser only pays attention
to the winding order. 

In this picture I've labeled the vertice indexes, and the facet statements (the "f lines")
as they'd appear in the OBJ file.  The forward-facing facet has a counter-clockwise
winding order (1,2,5,6) and the rear-facing facet has a clockwise winding
order (2,5,4,3).  The winding order given by the "f lines" is what Poser reads, 
regardless of the normal statements ("vn lines") in the OBJ.

Oops, for proper grammar I should have said "vertex indices", not "vertice indexes".

Quote - To quickly illustrate 'perpendicular', take a pen and place one end on a table so that the pen is standing up.  The table surface is the polygon.  The long dimension of the pen is perpendicular to the table's surface and could be used to represent the table surface's normal. :)

or...just drink beer and fall on the floor, look at the wall in front of you...it is perpendicular to you body. lol!

bookmark that! :biggrin:

I REALY LIKE THIS ...end of shout ..
So many tips and helpfull things ...
Maybe some one who is realy good in the know how department of 3D building
Can make a "list" of things 
soemthing like 
Dont forget to :
1 check normals
2 check non planar etc etc
3 
4
5
....

You get me ?
That when your done and checked the list a obj should be realy fixed and ready for poser/ds

anybody ??

Thnx so far all.

Chris

I realize we got a little off in the discussion of flow trying to nail down the dictionary definition of "edge loop." In the case of rigging for Poser, limbs bend less cleanly if there are y-intersections in the mesh (bad mesh flow) and better if they have clean rows going around the limb. Same goes for cloth, basically. Triangles don't crush well. Quads distort more easily.

yeah..that happened with a Morion (Conquistador-type) helmet I had posted at Traugs.com. The thing looked like someone left the grilled cheese sandwich in the microwave too long..;) I've since redone it, and UVMapped it for good measure..;) but now I have a technical explanation of where I went wrong..;)
I'll have to reread the above, but eventually I'll get it..;) we are not smart, but we are persistent..;)