After a long hiatus, I'm working on my fantasy armor again.

This is a preliminary shot of one of teh shoulder strap options.

Now the question is, those chain links. There's over 150 of them on the right side of the top alone. The polycount will be quite high, just because of those chains. The top as you see it weighs in at over 44,000 polygons, most of them due to those chains.
The top still needs some extra geometry, mostly nails and studs. I guesstimate that the total polycount of the top will approach 90,000 - if I keep those chains.

Is that too much? Should I go for fewer, larger chain links?

Edited to add a nudity tag. There's nothing really visible, but better safe than sorry

I really like it:) why dont you make 2 versions of it? one low res( less straps) and this one:) that way people can choose.

Bravo for the nice work looks very neat.

Wouldn't using a transmapped polygon strip be a better idea.
That'd drastically reduce the poly count, and make it much easier when you do morphs.

*"Wouldn't using a transmapped polygon strip be a better idea.
That'd drastically reduce the poly count, and make it much easier when you do morphs"

*nruddock : it will reduce the poly count but i think having individual straps is more realistic, if you use it in a movie. I think if you use a transmapped polygon strip it will look flatter and less realistic.

@necsehir: In a movie, the details aren't visible most of the time.

@svdl: What about distortions of the chainlink if the arms/shoulders are bend? Could you find a trick to manage this?

You might try linked plates instead.
DPH

Maybe you can reduce the chains? and than smooth them in uvmapper pro?

adp001: good point! I can handle shoulder and collar bends, using something I've called an internal IK chain with parented endpoints, but that won't work over an  IK chain of 50 bones long (the amount of links in the longest chain).

Another option would be to make them rigid decorated groups tied to an invisible strip of dynamic cloth.

Morphs is no problem, I do most of my morphs with magnets,

How many polys is each link? IMO if you're using more than about 8 rings of 6 polys each (48 per link) that's probably more than is required for something so small, and you can get away with less than that.

The transmap trick is okay for middle or longer shots, but will always look wonky in any kind of closeup.  50k polys IMO is fine for a Poser outfit with a lot of detail like you're modeling. 

ps that's really a great-looking model!

It's 48 quads per link, 12 rings of 4 polys each. They're basically twisted toruses.

Quote - I can handle shoulder and collar bends, using something I've called an internal IK chain with parented endpoints, but that won't work over an  IK chain of 50 bones long (the amount of links in the longest chain).

Times ago I did something with IK-chains for a very long chain. At the end, I used 4 or five parented parts of chains managed with a Python script. Maybe this will work here too.

Quote -
Another option would be to make them rigid decorated groups tied to an invisible strip of dynamic cloth.

Yes, I used this option before and it worked perfectly. Mutch easier as to deal with IK-chains, especially because heavy use of IK will need a lot of resources.

Really nice model, by the way.

Quote - It's 48 quads per link, 12 rings of 4 polys each. They're basically twisted toruses.

If you're OK with rings of 4 polys, see how you like 8x4 instead of 12x4, depending on how much you're twisting them it may look the same.

one idea, based on what DPHoadly mentioned above, might be to make them interlinked FLAT torus' and use displacement/normal maps to create depth.

Here's some previews of the full model. The cups will be a separate figure, to allow for interchangeable cups - or for the racier renders, to go cupless.

I reduced the links to 8 rings of 4 quads each, which certainly helps.

77544 faces as shown. That means about 40,000 polys, since most of the polys are quads (obviously, the sides of the pyramidal studs are tris. No use subdividing them into quads).

Front view:

And back:

AO screwed up a little here. Well, these are very simple renders, no light or material optimizations at all.

Here's a link to a larger version of the front view of the top. Shows off the fact that the holes in the belt are actual holes, modeled in. The stitches holding the top and bottom parts of the cups together are also modeled.

http://www.svdlinden.nl/webposerstuff/images/v4fantasyarmor/fetishtoplarge.jpg

What about breaking it up into 2 figures? The top as one and the collar piece with the chains as the second. Aery Soul did something similar with their Black Lotus set. It doesn't help your poly count issue, but it would give users with weaker machines more options and it would give you more control over the rigging.
Personally I prefer details like this to actually be modeled.
JT

Is anyone else unable to see any of the pictures?  For some reason, my anti-virus doesn't like svdl's link. 

jt411: actually, I was planning to break it up into 3 figures: shoulder straps, cups, bodice. That way you can mix and match, and there's different styles of bodices, shoulder straps and cups in the making. For now, I'm planning 4 sets of shoulder straps, 2 sets of cups, and 2 sets of bodices.

Winterclaw: the only reason I can think of why your antivirus doesn't like my site is the fact that I don't have a valid Web site certificate installed. I have a self-generated certificate, needed for SSL functionality, but I'm not planning to run my own web store on my personal server, so I'm not going to buy an expensive certificate.

The D-rings along the center of the chest need to lie flat - actually it would be ideal if they could rotate, maybe by a morph, although since you have lots of D-rings that's probably a lot of extra work that few people will really care about.

The polys at the end of the center strap is "blowing out", looks like due to Poser's polygon smoothing.  Need a few more polys there to stop that, probably just a bevel on the end polys.

Great model!

I noticed those blown out polys at the end of the straps (it's not only the center strap). Setting an additional smoothing group will fix that.

As for the D-rings: they'll be posable. Not by a morph, no, by their own bones. All of them.
Morphs aren't any good for rotations, since they're linear by their very nature. So - bones.

svdl, I wouldn't know because all I'm getting from your link is a message saying that the picture is forbidden.  It's not mentioning the certificate.  BTW, if you posted any pictures on this thread I'm not seeing them either.

I did post pictures in this thread.

Can you download any of my freestuff? It's on the same server.

Yep, I just DLed your spawn character script with no problems.

It's just the pictures it doesn't seem to like.  :

EDIT: just found out the problem... looks like my anti-virus's parental controls got turned on accidentally.

Any chance of getting this is versions for P5 Judy, P4 Posette, or my remapped Vicky2?
DPH

Any chance of getting this is versions for P5 Judy, P4 Posette, or my remapped Vicky2?
DPH

"Any chance of getting this in versions for P5 Judy, Posette, or Vicki 2/"

Maybe. This is V4, and there is a lot of competition in the fetish/fantasy department for V4.
I'm planning to make this, or a very similar suit, for other figures too. V3 comes to mind, she's still quite popular, SP3, Jessi/Glamorous Jessi.
For Posette, V2 and P5 Judy/Eternal Judy? Maybe a lower resolution version.
Nothing in the near future though. This top is part of a set, I want to complete the set first.

"...fetish/fantasy..."

Exactly!  And since I'M interested in those very same fields, this is something that could be quite useful!  -Especially since both PosetteV3wg and P5JudyV3 have built in female genitalia, they're a natural for use in this kind of 'Art.'
DPH

If you reduce the poly count on the links you could add an advisory to your read me file that indicates the chain requires Smooth Polygons to attain realism. Then again "smoothing" would decrees performance in rendering which is exactly what you're trying to avoid. Oh well, I suggest a metallic rope chain, instead. Unfortunately, I think people prefer links to rope chain when it come to fantasy clothing. I guess I'm not much help, sorry :(

If you were to replace the chain altogether with a narrow multi-studded strap, you could avoid the extremes to polygon count that chain links induce, while still retaining the armor effect.
DPH

Here's a test image whith shoulder bends. The top isn't even a figure yet, I just smartpropped it to V4's chest, with inherit bends set to On.
The chain links are holding up pretty well, I'd say!

Well, it's back to 3DS Max, to fix the blown out strap ends, and do some more straps.

I'm sold, when is it for sale? lol.  Oh, yeah, a V3 version would be great eventually, but I'll pay for this even for V4.  Excellent work and detail.

wonderful
luv all the modeled details.
v3 version too please
netta

Update on the project: I've increased the scale of the chain links and moved the chain about Sadly (:sneaky:) the cups won't fit over the chain anymore...

V4 Lana and V4 Amy showing off. Amy is wearing the full bodice with shoulder harness, Lana wears the short bodice with the chained collar.
I've exaggerated the stitches that hold the upper and lower part of the cups together. Nobody in their right mind would use a 2 mm thick cable for stitchwork in real life, but I think it looks better than "realistic" stitches.

Very quick rigging here. Grouping hasn't been optimized, and I haven't even started on the joints. Some quickie materials too.

Rendered in Poser Pro with gamma correction turned off and the supplied HDR Albany Nights shader (no AO). Full size render was 1800x1800, rendered in 10 minutes, took up 6.5 GB (!) of memory to render. Those Elite textures are nice, but they sure are resource hogs!

The full size image can be viewed here

Looking good :) it's a shame the first design did not work out the way you wanted, I liked it.

You probably don't really want to hear this, but I think if I were you I would have beveled the edges of the pyramidal studs a little bit, they look just a little too perfect.  That would add a lot of polys though.  If I remember correctly Bagginsbill has some "miter" shader that can make those corners look a bit less sharp, might want to ask him about it - unless you actually want them to look razor sharp, which you might.

There's something else I don't like: the distortion of the buckle on the side, and the elongation of the D-ring in front.

For the D-ring, the fix isn't that hard - it just needs two extra bones, one for the D-ring itself (with bend turned off), and one between the abdomen and the D-ring for a smooth transition (bend turned on).

I'm considering replacing the pyramids by rounded studs. Not that I don't like the sharp look - I do - but rounded studs will probably suffer less from distortion when V4 bends.
In theory, it would be possible to use a non-bending bone for each individual stud and use ERC to move them into place, but in reality that would be a ridiculously complex job. I'm so NOT going there.