1/12/10

Hi P3D! :) Things have surely progressed since I last saw a Brad thread. The mesh looks great, and the rig seems to be a quantum improvement over what is available with other figures. Congradulations and kudos.

How do the shoulders look with the arms over the head? This is a really challenging pose, and no other Poser-usable "human" figure does this well. The science of joint and muscle movement is kinesiology. If you are having trouble with ranges of motion, and natural looking joint movement, anatomy alone is not helpful enough. There are a lot of resources on the web about this. You can start with:

http://www.kinesiology.net

I have been anxious to see figures that make use of the improved rigging of Poser 8. It is kind of you to provide a rig that is backwards compatable with Poser 7 and before. It is like introducing Brad 1.0, and then providing Brad 0.5 to boot. It is also kind of dphoadley to offer to map Brad to M3's UV.

Seeing that the figure is free, maybe PhiC can be encouraged to provide Wardrobe Wizard 2 support for Brad (hint, hint). It would be more than worth the cost for a Brad module. I don't really know how to use them yet, but don't forget about Poser dynamic clothes. That might be the easiest way to provide clothing for Brad.

Computers will only get more powerful. The trend is toward 64bit operating systems, which need a lot of cores, memory, and hard disk space. Todays high-poly figures will seem small in just a few years. There is only one displacement, one bump, and one normal map channel for Poser. These can add a lot to a figure, and are under-used. But, they are no replacement for good morphs.

You are right that a full set of morphs cannot be provided if there are not enough polys. Remember that morphs can also be used to "dress" a figure. You could make  trousers, shirt, and shoe moprhs, for Brad. Then textures can be applied using Brad's UV mapping. Surprise, no poke through, and the cloths fit no matter how Brad is morphed or posed. Brad seems to have more than enough polys for that challenge.

I agree with the prevailing advice. Please yourself first. Of course, then put on your high-poly thick-skin armour mesh with a flame resistant texture. Isn't it amazing how demanding and critical a few people can be about the value and features of a free figure?

LMK

Probably edited for spelling, grammer, punctuation, or typos.