sexygreeneyes121 opened this issue on Jul 18, 2008 · 20 posts
ssgbryan posted Sat, 19 July 2008 at 4:49 PM
As a follow up to Yadi's quesitons:
Have you visited Philc's site (www.philc.net). There is a really neat tool in his "Poser Tool Box" called Face Putty that can move the character's face all about. It puts a "cage" on the face & then you can move the "cage" about & change the shape of the head.
To Glolla:
A "*.rar" file is like a zip file. However, it uses a different compression algorithm. Winzip should be able to handle it just fine.
V4 isn't free. However through the end of this month, you can get "V4 complete bundle" for 9.99. It has the V4 Base, the ++Morphs (which you will need if you actually want to do anything with V4), Amarasa Hair & V4 basic wear. The package has about $80 worth of stuff in it & is well worth the price.
There are free base DAZ characters available. Go to www.download.com & search for the Poser/Daz Studio 3D models pack 1. This will get you the base meshes for Victoria 3, Michael 3, Aiko 3, & Hiro 3. Doesn't come with morphs, but they can be gotten at DAZ.
The state of the art male figure is Apollo Maximus. He is free & (and there is lots of free stuff available for him) he can be downloaded from: www.antonkisieldesigns.com He absolutely ROCKS!
My advice is free and worth what you pay for it.
There are many rooms in poser, learn what can be done in each. You may not use the room (Dynamic hair brings my system to it's knees) but the more you know, the easier it is to get great art. (Once I understood the cloth room I started kicking myself for what I had missed.)
Start building external runtimes for each of your characters now. It is much easier when you do not have very much. It is much more difficult when you have 60 - 70 gigs of "stuff".
Read the Poser forums. There is an incredible amount of information available here. It can be hard to find however. But, if you persevere, you will discover the forums are a goldmine. For example, a lot of folks have written free pythons scripts, IBL stuff etc - all free - & very, very useful.
This hobby can get real expensive, real quick. Whereas most of the base meshes in Poserdom are free, the morphs are not. Figure to spend between $20 - 80 per mesh for morphs.
For example, the G2 series of figures (that come with poser) do have body & head morphs available. They are not sold at Content Paradise. They are sold at www.runtimedna.com. They are called the Ultimate Body & Head Morphs. They run about $19 each & are worth every penny.
There are a number of add-on programs available that really extend the power of poser. Some are free, some are inexpensive & some are expensive & worth every penny. Before you spend money, visit the freebie areas first. It can save you quite a bit of money
My view of "Must Have's"
Free! At Renderosity, no less:
Dimension 3d, sdvl and a number of other folks have a number of free python scripts & utilites that do quite a bit. Get them & see what they do before you start to buy scripts & such.
www.philc.net
Wardrobe Wizard 2.0 - Converts clothing from 1 character type to another. Can also add morphs from characters to clothing. And a whole lot more, I am still learning the ins & outs of the product. It is 59.95 for the base product & then there are add-on packs. I spent about $100 total. On the one hand that is a lot of money. On the other hand, if it had been available when I started out, I would not have spent 20% of what I have spent on clothes. WW2 allows me to purchase 1 outfit & then convert it to every character I own male or female. As an example, at www.xurge3d.com there is a free SciFi suit for the Freak (A DAZ product). With WW2, any and every character I own (From V4 to Sydney, to M3, to Apollo, to the Mil3 Baby) now has that outfit in their runtime.
All major characters are supported, plus quite a few I have never seen or heard of. Also includes the fabled "Make Art" button.
There is a competing product at www.evilinnocence.com called XDresser. It is a windows only product, so I can't really speak of it one way or another. It has lots of fans however. From what I have seen, it does a better job at batch processing than WW2. The base product is free, the character licenses are $10. They sell a separate program for adding morphs. It is also ala cart. Cost-wise, it is 6 of one, a half dozen on the other.
Poser Tool Box - This has more tools in it than I can shake a stick at Stuff for lights, morphs, "Face Putty", magnets, a real useful hand movement tool & more. I don't get a commission I just really like his stuff. $39.95.
www.runtimedna.com
Search under 3rd party scripts. semideiu's python scripts do so much & they are only $5 each. They rock!
Here at renderosity, there are some great products by face_off. The realism kits are just fantastic & well worth the money. Currently there is an issue with SR3 (SM updated the Tkinter file, & it is causing some issues.) However, based on past support, I am sure this will be fixed soon.
Render Studio & Ulitimate IBL's are on my "must buy list"
Oh, and 1 last thing....
Learn lighting. It is the difference between great 3d art & most of what can be seen in the galleries. Most of what I see in the galleries is not a good as it could be because the artist hasn't figured out how to light the scene in a way that really brings forth what the artist intended.