I have to admit, I never figured out how to unzip and install from an unzip program like WinZip or whatever. So I have always manually installed everything.

But when the Poser 11 content was released in all those folders, I got overwhelmed and never installed all of it. This weekend I am going to rectify that. Wish me luck.

But in the meantime, I was messing around and getting these projects out of my system. After I finish the install, I will go back to LaFemme and see what I can come up with.

Sydney Sith Cyborg

Miki 4 as Chun Li from Street Fighter

M4 as Lion-O

I still have a lot of things that I made for LaFemme that I never posted. So once I get off my butt and finish installing everything, I'll post some more stuff.

Very nice!

Thanks!

Great looking stuff.

Looking good. And good luck installing everything

@RedPhantom:

I have less than a third of it installed, and it's been that way since I got the upgrade. I may just do it a folder at a time until it's done. There are a lot of duplicates in the folders now because I wasn't watching what I was doing. I'll delete those first and then install the rest.

@hborre:

Thank you!

Ok, So I have a few issues with missing texture files and a butt load of duplicates.

Can anyone point me to the link where I can download the Runtime files again? I will just delete the darn thing and start over. I figured out how to use my unzipping app now, so I figured that would be the best option. Like an idiot, I was moving the folders instead of just copying them.

Sometimes I am may own worst enemy...

I found it...

So I got the entire thing installed. It was less painful than I thought it would be. I didn't know that Poser 11 had the install from zip file option. I just did everything that way, with the option to overwrite. Worked great, and now I am playing with things that I couldn't before. It's pretty cool to see everything I didn't even know I had!

Yeah, I've been using my Poser 9 and 10 runtimes quite a lot since I mucked up the 11 install. But there is enough new content I haven't seen yet to make me want to play with it more.

This is going to be interesting when I finish it...

So I used LF's Donor rig for the helmet. It's not UV mapped or anything yet, but I wanted to see how it would look. The materials will change, but not the color scheme. I kind of like it. I kept the bodysuit as a dynamic so that I could take advantage of her morphs without having to attempt to transfer them (never works out for me because the topology differences).

I have to decide how I am going to proceed. I haven't made a template for her body suit yet. I might not.

I modeled the helmet in two pieces to rig it to open, and have the visor draw back and up. But I'll be darned if I can remember how to do it.

Anybody know of a good tutorial for that?

I just watched a Poser video where they went into the setup room and created bones and grouped the different moving parts to that.

But I know there was a simpler way to do it, and I used it in Poser 9, but I don't remember all the steps and when I try to group my helmet and create a new figure, I get issues where the parts are no longer separated, and even though they are grouped, they move as one single unit.

I'm lost. I hope someone can see this, I don't really want to start a new thread, but I will if I have to.

Maybe this is what you are looking for. I've used it alot and it is alot easier than using the setup room.
https://www.renderosity.com/rr/mod/bcs/hierarchy-builder/87368

Would it work for hard edge stuff?

I can show you how to do it if you have a few hours to wait. I'm at work but I can throw together a demo this evening. As conforming figure and articulated prop varieties for a helmet with face plate... Your call

Sure. I can wait. I have deleted my 4th modeling attempt already, and I am looking for good references for what I am seeing in my head but can't seem to make work in Wings.

Ok. When I get home I'll quick model a simple helmet and visor, nothing fancy, basically primitives, and throw together a demo for the set up room and joint editor. It'll be a nice break from the tedium of my current project. I'll share the working files also so you can look at those...

There's 2 models, a conforming figure and an articulated prop... they're designed to fit the Antonia figure by odf. The conformer was set up using a blank Antonia 1.3 cr2.

Antonia_BasicHelmet Runtime

How I set up the articulated prop version.

I modeled a basic helmet and visor in Wings3D. It's basically a subdivided cube with some extrusions, some cuts, a couple of intrude operations, and some control edges added. Some tweaking and shaping/fitting was done in Mudbox. If I had used Blender for this it could have all been done there without a trip to a sculpting app. I model a bit quicker in Wings.

In the above images the basic model is 2 separate objects. One I named FacePlate (the visor) and the Helmet body named head. When I export these models separately the resulting obj files will have poly groups established and named as I named them in the Geometry Graph. For the prop version I want 2 objects so I export each individually... here's the 2 objs in a text editor showing the groups (g) and materials (usemtl) definitions. I named the helmet part group head (lower case, matching internal name of Antonias head actor) in preparation for a step that will come during figure creation in the setup room. Such a naming convention isn't a concern, at the moment, for setting up the prop version....

I have a Runtime folder structure already set up. I export the 2 seperate objects to a named Geometries folder and also export a single object which is the 2 parts combined (which I'll need later)

I import both separate objects into Poser...

In the Hierarchy I grab the FacePlate and drag/drop it onto the Helmet which parents the Plate to the Helmet.

I change my camera to side view orthographic and change the visor display style to outline. Having the camera in side orthographic view will constrain translations to only y and z axis. This will be important when manipulating the objects origins with joint editor. I want everything to remain 0 center on the x axis...

I open the joint editor and select the visor prop, displaying its origin and end point...

The origin is the green crosshair, the endpoint is red. I'll want to change the position of the origin ( green) so that it rotates x axis in a proper manner for this visor. As it is now it won't rotate as I want it...

I select the translate tool and hover the cursor over the center of the green cross hair. Doing so changes the tool to a tiny bullseye icon (not shown but you'll know it when you see it).

Sometimes the little Bullseye won't appear when you hover it over the origin center. To fix this try reselecting the actor you are working on or clicking at the header of the Poser workspace and reselecting the translate tool.

I grab the green crosshair and drag it closer to the center of the helmet. With the parameters open for the visor I turn the x rotate dial to test the rotations. I make gradual position adjustments of the crosshair until it rotates in a manner that I want and the visor doesn't clip against the helmet in it's arc of rotation...

Satisfied with the rotation I close the joint editor.

Next I'll want to do some dial manipulations. The primary rotation I'm concerned with is the x rotation of the FacePlate. The opening rotation is -90° and fully closed is 0.

I double click the x rotation dial and this brings up the dial's settings.

I want the dial to only operate at a range from 0 (closed) to -90 (open) so I make the relevant changes to the minimum and maximum limits values and check the force limits checkbox.

I also change the external name of the dial to Visor_Open-Close and tweak the dial sensitivity ( tracking scale) to something a bit more snappy for a rotation like this.

After a bit of testing I save the prop to the library that I already have set up.

When I save it I choose the select subset option and choose the Helmet and FacePlate together.

When saving a prop to the library it will have embedded geometry. It's not a big deal but it's a bit tedious to chop out the embedded obj data fro the pp2 and re-point at an external obj(s) in Geometries. I just use Netherwork's Creator's Toybox scripts to automate this and some file path tasks etc.

When I return from eating something I'll cover creating a conforming figure using the dreaded set up room in part 2...

Part 2

On to the set up room...

You might remember that I had exported a combined version of the FacePlate and Hemet model. I need this in order to create a conforming figure version. The prop needs to be one object with any relevant groups named to match the target conformer actor in the target figure, internal name/case sensitive. In this instance that group is the head actor: head.

Here's the combined obj in a text editor showing the g definitions...

I import the model into Poser.

It's groups...

I switch to side camera to constrain translations and switch to outline to see what's going on...

I open the Setup room.

I open the library and navigate to my donor rig. In this case it's a blank cr2 I made using the Creator's Toybox. If you're working with LF and dont have her "Pro" version than you won't have the dev rig. You'll want to use a blank to avoid a bunch of headaches. I can whip you up a blank LF if you need one.

I load my blank into the set up room. I'm prompted to choose the actors I want to transfer over for the rig. For a helmet it's easiest to just choose the hierarchy from the hip to the head and leave everything else out. I tend to just use a prepped solo head bone donor but sometimes that can be tricky. Using the hip to head hierarchy is best for your purposes. I don't choose copy morphs or auto group. There's no morphs, I created the simple groups already.

The bones are transferred over to the model and it's now a figure. The bones from the neck down have no associated geometry, they're ghosts basically. The head bone is what's going to be relevant to conforming. The model was already grouped with a poly group named head which matches the internal name of the relevant group in the figure, head. The polys of the helmet ( head) are bound to the donor head bone. Next I'll want to ADD a bone for the visor articulation...

This part's a bit tricky but it's important.

I need to use the Bone tool and create a new bone that controls the visor.

I select the head bone and choose the Bone tool. It's important that the parent is selected before drawing out a child bone. 

The easiest way, and least likely to cause disasters is to select the parent actor in the Hierarchy Editor, Select the bone tool, hover the tool in the position you want to draw the bone out and simply draw it out. Sometimes the Bone tool can be finicky. Clicking the top of the work space or the bone tool or the parent again can clear things up. When you have the Bone tool selected don't click about in the preview screen aimlessly, always be very deliberate. If you mess up drawing out a bone you can use undo but make sure to reselect the parent before drawing out a bone.

Here's a little trick. If you're creating a child bone at some distance from the parent bone, the child will invariably yank the parent out of it's default orientation after you draw it out. To solve this you'll want to create a temporary anchor bone...

I select the head bone, and with the bone tool click the very endpoint of the head bone and drag out a tiny bone... bone 1, a child of the larger head bone. This is an anchor bone.

Now I select the head bone again and draw out another bone that will control the visor. It's at some distance from the head bone. If I were to draw this bone out without the tiny anchor bone 1 it would yank the head bone out of orientation... the visor bone (bone 2) is the new large bone in orange, the anchor is barely visible here

I position the visor bone similar to how I positioned the origin for the articulated prop, the fat end of the bone is the origin (center) and the pointy end is the endpoint. I can use the joint editor to fine tune this after I leave the Setup room, for now I just need to get the bones created in roughly the right positions. (compare this bone orientation with the green and red crosshairs in the prop demo).

At the moment the visor bone (bone 2) is not influencing the polygons of the visor as it should. With bone 2 selected I open the parameters palette properties tab and rename the internal name of the bone to faceplate to match the group name established for the visor. Doing this binds the polys of the visor to the bone's influence. I also take a moment to rename the external name of the bone to FacePlate (not critical but for neatness and user clarity)...

Now that the visor is part of the rig it's safe to delete the anchor bone, the visor bone is set in place...

I right click bone 1 in the Hierarchy and choose delete selected. This deletes the now unnecessary bone.

Time to exit the Setup room to the Pose room

At this point I make some minor adjustments to the origin(center) of the Faceplate bone. Before I do this I turn off bends, located in the properties tab, in the FacePlate and Head actors of the figure. It's mechanical motions for the Faceplate and I don't want any unexpected influence from the head bone about the neck of the Helmet.

I went over adjusting origins(centers) in part 1 of this demo.

When everything is working as expected I rename the figure from Antonia 1.3 to BasicHelmet_Figure in the Hierarchy. I force limits on all rotations and translations on the visor except for the x Rotate. This stops the visor from being dragged out of whack when you grab the figure.

I create a master parameter in the Body actor and create a convenient controller for the visor in the body via the Dependency Editor. It's a master that drives the x rotate in the FacePlate.

I zero and memorize the figure.

When I save it to the Library I just choose create New Geometry. I trash this file and repoint the cr2 to the original obj in Geometries by editing 2 references near the very start of the cr2...

I load the conformer into a new scene and conform it to my Custom Antonia 1.3, Svetlanka. Works pretty good! Nothing fancy, just a demo...

Thank you. I will work on this when my current attempt is finished. It's going to a bit more complicated than this, and I will need to create parameters for the face shield x rotation and the jawline opening up.

Sounds doable... once you get the rotations nailed down setting up the parameters is as easy as

Create New Master

Start Teaching

Set master dial to 1

Set desired rotation to full value

Set master to 0

Set rotation to least value

Stop Teaching

Set limits to min/max value of desired rotation.

Let me know if you're stumped by something.

...as an aside I would avoid high valence vertex arrangements (poles) if possible. On the ear part for instance. They subdivide, morph, and render terribly. If you need a spherical area try gradual insets or extrusions and circularize/tighten to taste.

Sounds good. I'll post here if I run into problems.

So I deal with roadblocks by doing something simple. I used Ghostship's Superfly shaders:

I will work on my helmet in a bit.

I need some better reference images for what I am trying to do...

I really need to quit messing around and get that helmet done. The last one turned into Batgirl's cowl...

So I used LF's Donor rig for the helmet. It's not UV mapped or anything yet, but I wanted to see how it would look. The materials will change, but not the color scheme. I kind of like it. I kept the bodysuit as a dynamic so that I could take advantage of her morphs without having to attempt to transfer them (never works out for me because the topology differences).

I have to decide how I am going to proceed. I haven't made a template for her body suit yet. I might not.

Inspired_Art posted at 9:05 PM Mon, 30 January 2023 - #4455041

Super nice butt... they just don't make them like that anymore!

rokket posted at 4:05 PM Thu, 5 January 2023 - #4453159

So I used LF's Donor rig for the helmet. It's not UV mapped or anything yet, but I wanted to see how it would look. The materials will change, but not the color scheme. I kind of like it. I kept the bodysuit as a dynamic so that I could take advantage of her morphs without having to attempt to transfer them (never works out for me because the topology differences).

I have to decide how I am going to proceed. I haven't made a template for her body suit yet. I might not.

Your name is Eddy?

I'm Eddie. Given name...