Attached Link: http://www.daz3d.com

Daz are offering $15 off Michael for a limited period with every purchase of Syyd's 'Kane'. If you don't have Michael, now is your chance. You get a great model and an amazing texture too.

Awesome texture... watch out Final Fantasy here comes Michael! Just one thing... Eyelashes look almost nonexistant. I think he needs thicker eyelashes to look real. But otherwise that is one kick *ss texture!

I agree, it is just great! Syyd does great work on all her characters, but I really like this one! Darrin

Colm, did you render that in LW? Looks awfully good!!

Colm, what did you render it in? I would love to know aswell hehehe. My guess is Max. He looks great btw, I am waiting for a cheque to clear so I can go and get him :)

Thanks all. This is the kind of thing I have been looking to do for ages. I guess the still images published of the characters in Final Fantasy have inspired, awed and pushed us on to higher goals. This was rendered in Max 3.1. I have been a Max user for quite a while now but I have never got into multi materials very much. My main reason for getting the Poser Pro pack was the ability to load Poser .pz3 scene files into Max. This I did on the first day, but was sadly dissapoined by the lack of solid documentation on accessing the various textures and model groups in the Poser figure and the Poser scene within the Max interface. After seeing the FF promo head shots (this was at the time Syyd was putting the Kane texture together), I decided that this was what I wanted to get out of Poser. I did loads of renders of Kane in the preproduction process but I was never satisfied due to the lack of dynamics within the Poser render engine. So I loaded up Kane in max and started fiddleing, trying to find a way to access the various textured groups. The Max manual is pretty thorough but a little confusing and it certainly doesn't discuss the PPP .pz3 plugin. So I decided to contact Curious Labs tech/support division and didn't get very much help and was told that they intend to put up a tutorial on their site soon. This is the kind of stuff that actually spurs me on. So I decided 'not' to wait for the tutorial and go it alone and find out for myself. So I loaded up the scene in max and clicked on buttons, crashed Max, opened it up, crashed it again, but after a few hours I had the whole process pretty sussed. It is actually a simple procedure but does involve a process of clicking through buttons on the texture interface a fair few times for each material group. What Max enables the Poser user to do when accessing the multi material groups, is to add multiple combinations of maps and texture FX to each Poser group. For example in the above image you may notice that the figure is not so squeeky clean as he would be in a Poser render. That is due to a nifty little texture pluggin called 'Dirt'. The eyes have differing kinds of speculatity added, as well as transparency and glossiness. Notice how the highlights are not anything like the glowing blobs that Poser produces. The way the highlights in the eyes spread from the eyewhite into the pupil with varying degrees of streaking. The iris has a look of depth to it. This is done with varrying degrees of transparency. Then of course the lighting and rendering system of Max is far superior to Poser. The bump mapping control is much better too. All I used for the bump on this was the original textures, not bump maps. I just copied them to the bump map slot in the material editor. The only post production on the image that was done in Photoshop was to add the depth of field effects, the blurred background and some levels to make the whites and blacks more punchy. Last of all it was cropped. The only thing that I am a little dissapinted with are the lashes. I noticed in the Final Fantasy head shots, the same problem. I will try to work on this in future images. It may mean a custom transmap just for lashes in Max. If I have time today, I will do a quick tutorial on how to set this up in Max for the Max/Poser users who are asking the same questions.

Thanks for the tutorial it'll save time. And it's really very nice...so nice I'm going over to DAZ and buy the texture. If MAX can do that so can Lightwave s

Colm, I find the same problem with the lashes. I have not used Max as much either, still trying to get my head around the manual, but the max renders do look a hell of a lot better than posers hehehe. I did learn quite quickly how to import the textures one by one into max without a problem but the lashes always look like they are dissapearing somewhat. The options you have with materials is great. Anyways looking good there :)

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/~syyd/pntuts/posermax/

Ok all, Ive done a tutorial for accessing the 'Multi Sub Object' textures of a Poser scene in 3D studio max. Advanced Texturing Of Poser Scenes In 3D Studio Max 3.1 With The Poser Pro Pack Plugin. You can get to it here: http://www.renderosity.com/~syyd/pntuts/posermax/ It's actually very easy once you have done it once. They're is a lot more that can be done. I have only just scratched the surface. I hope that some people who further this will get intouch with me and share the info and their technique. Taura, Are you using the 'Pro pack'. if you are, you don't have to import the textures one by one. They are already there. This tutorial shows you where. Hope you like it. Colm...:)

alas no, I am using just straight poser 4. Do you think its worth the upgrade? I am just waiting to see what is released in poser 5 before I make any moves I think. Also heard there are a few probs with importing into max still.

Well If you intend to render in Max on a regular basis, i would say that it is definately worth the upgrade. I doubt that Poser Five will come out untill 2002, although i could be right off the beam, but I remember Steve Cooper saying in his spotlight here, that it was still a way off. I have never used the PPP plugin to import large scenes into Max. I don't really do stuff like that anymore anyway. I had a little trouble with it in the beginning but I think that was my own fault. Unlike exporting .obj's from Poser and importing them into max, PPP imports the whole scene, as if it where still inside Poser. Everything is textured and apart from setting up lights and cameras it is pretty much ready to go. You don't have to smooth the figures either. Although, because my scenes usually only consist of one figure, I tend to sub divide my figure just prior to rendering in order to remove the polygon shapes from parts of the figure such as the outline of the head. Unless you have a 'MONSTER' machine, I wouldn't say that this would be very advisable with more than one figure as it will bring a standard machine to a crawl. The tutorial that I wrote, is basically a 'How to' get deeper into the Poser scene in Max. You could actually set the same thing up with an imported .obj, but it would take a lot more time. The problems that I have with the lashes are really not a problem as they are set up correctly on import. The lashes are there and rendering complete with transparency. It's just that they are not very visible. I noticed the same on the Final Fantasy portraits, so maybe it is a quirk of higher end renderers. I really only use the PPP for specificic work. Like stuff done in the setup room, as I find it a fair bit slower than Poser 4.03. You don't actually have to use PPP to import into max. You just need to install the Max plugin. Maybe CL should have given an option to purchase the plugin seperately. Hope this rambling stuff helps you somewhat. Colm...

yes it does, thankyou it gives me more to consider as by the time I import all the textures and such my machine isn't looking so good. Then again my machine is kinda chocked up at the moment so that doesn't help either, even poser is stalling and crashing on me with simple renders after a while, so I think I might need to clean a few things up, such a hassle though. A plugin would have been a great option too.

I managed to find out why the lashes don't render right in Max. In the 'Material Editor', Advanced parameters roll out. There is an advanced transparency check box. Change 'Falloff' to 'Out'... This applies to transmapped hair too.

hey thats great, thankyou! big s :D actually I was just thinking about the eyes, how earlier in another thread we were saying the eyes are what seems to be different in Final Fantasy and Poser(max). Something I might try myself when I get the chance is to give the eyewhites an extrememely slight amount of self illumination, cause when I look at my eyes in quite a few different lighting situations the eye whites dont have that much shadow. I mean there is still shadow but it is very faint and has quite a bit of falloff and they are very moist looking. Just something I might try out and see.

Colm, I played around with the eyelashes more, but now they look pretty jaggy and for the life of me I can't seem to make them smoother looking. But I did play around with the luminocity settings with the eyeballs.

Those eyes are great. Any chance of a hint as to how??? I'm not sure what is going on with the lashes though. I have found that all you have to do is change the 'falloff' to out. That should make them about the same as Poser.

actually I think that I might have an answer to the lashes, I will have to try it this afternoon when I get home. With the eyes, I set the eyewhites to a very dark grey in the self illumination setting I think it was 23 or 24 something like that,and on the eyeballs I put opacity to 0 then upped the spec factor and lowered the gloss a fraction until I was happy with the moistness of it. I think it could use a fraction more pinky veins in the eyes towards the lacrimals (which could also go a shade or two darker aswell) yet. I will check tonight. I also played around with shadows last night using one spotlight and found that the lacrimals tend to stick out a bit too much. Anyway gotta go to work, I will try more this afternoon :)