Here I sit, scrolling through my library. Wondering how the new features are going to work with existing items. I look at the images of the future of poser. hmmm... a hairy square... what would that do to the old default hair items that no one hardly ever uses.... new life for forgotten items?

knowing nothing about highlight mapping here, what does it do? is it good? Rob

I'm hoping that the new strand based hair is ultra-flexible. I want to be able to control what body part(s) get "hairy". Brian

oooo, pores

A transmap decides which parts should be transparent and how transparent they should be. A highlight map is the same but it decides which parts (pixels) should be highlighted and how strong the highlight should be. Highlight maps are needed to make realistic figures. The model above uses a inverted and sharpened B/W version of the texture as a highlight map on my BM1mk2-ProTex model rendered in P4. The ProTex version of my BodyMorpher have additional texturing modes added to it through a hack so that i can do a lot of advanced texturing things to it that P4 shouldn't be capable of. The light, pose and model settings on both renders are the same, only the highlight map is added. The lips and eyes are not highlighted sins i added a top layer texture on them that are a set of 100% sized (the texture is only the size of the lip / eyes, there is no white space) mat textures. All the layers can be blended, i think there are 3 layers on the lip, but only the top one is showing. The model is finished but i haven't released it yet due to laziness, house renovation and other art projects.

it would be interesting to see this next to something done in poser5, gotta wait for that tho :( & the hairy square means not just hair, how about animated grass blowing in the wind as a figure walks through it moving the blades apart as they go, I'm thinking something like the bit in Gladiator where he's dying and imagining walking through a corn field and running his hand across the tops of the stalks, with collision detection that should be fairly easy to do. Rob

Gladiator? Corn field? CORN??? The Romans had wheat and other grains (mostly from Egypt), but corn/maize is a New World plant. Back to your regularly scheduled musings....

Clearly, Maximus had quite an imagination ....

The new hair system will be very flexible. We'll be using a grouping tool to determine where the hair grows on a figure or prop, and each group can have its own properties (colour, length, thickness, density, stiffness and other physics, etc.).

We'll probably have highlight mapping in Poser 5. It looks like the new version will support all manner of shaders.

brian71us, what I wonder about in regard to the hair is whether I'll be able to shape in into something that looks good. I don't want hair that just flies around like my characters stuck his finger in a light socket. I hope it can be styled. Melanie

from the screen shot I think that it can be, how easy it is to do is another thing.

Ah, but will the new hair handle braids?

hehehe it was wheat, I watched it again last night :) it was getting late here when I typed that :) Rob

Rob, That makes me feel better. (And I'm sort of glad that I'm not the only one who types when she ought to be sleeping.) Wheat would also grow low enough that brushing the tops of the heads with the hand wouldn't involve standing on tip-toes. ;^) Here in the US, corn grows so tall that many farmers turn their acreage into mazes after harvest. (Yes, I appreciate the pun as much as they appreciate the added income.) An interesting bit of trivia: corn is shown in LOTR, which ought to be an anachronism. However, in The Silmarillion, Tolkien specifially mentions that the Numenoreans brought corn to Middle Earth. He wasn't thinking of our corn, but of the generic word for domesticated grains, and the word stands as written. Carolly

I first read LOTR when I was 9 & I felt that age again when the first film finally arrived, hadn't been so excited about a film since the original star wars. I'm sure people will point out loads of mistakes/changes but to me it feels like the story in the book & that's the most important thing. They really have brought Middle Earth & all the characters to life. :)))) Rob

I have some quibbles about the film, but on the whole it is a masterpiece. Even at 48 viewings I am still seeing details I hadn't noticed before: it is a visually rich world and they got so many little things right that it feels REAL. I could easily live in Rivendell.... sigh. Oh, I've read the books far more times than I've seen the movie... was given them in '62. I've read much of his academic work, too.

gosh that makes me feel so young :) I wasn't even born till '68. Sorry if that makes you feel old. Rob

You are only as old as your mind and your knees. As long as I can crawl around on my knees and wind up my toys, I'm not going to consider myself "old". Experienced, maybe, but not old. ;^) This also means that I remember animating with 16 colors and 320X200 screen sizes... and was lucky to work on the first game with that high a resolution. Fewer than a dozen pixels for hair around the face of a 32 pixel high character. Now we get millions of colors and transparency maps... and I listen to folks complain about helmet hair. ::shake head:: Well, if we were ever satisfied, there'd be no innovation. Carolly

Attached Link: http://www.marquette.edu/library/collections/archives/tolkien.html