I did the transparency maps. and the texture for the catsuit, in an oldish version of Paintshop Pro, starting with a large export of the texture template from UVmapper. Make sure the mesh is not in a colour you plan to use, so it can be easily distinguished and selectively erased. It's also worth adding index marks for the front and back centreline of the body.

You might also want to put some marker dots outside the mesh as a guide to key points. Colour is useful, even if you put all this on extra layers.

I then did the transparency map. Start with the boundaries. I used the line tool. several pixels wide, and removed less rather then more, flood-filling with black. And there was a lot of flicking between PSP and Poser, to judge just where the boundaries were on a 3D figure.

The lacing was added later, by drawing white lines.

In retrospect, it may have been better to make two layers containing the mesh template. The second would be the working layer. Convert to coloured mesh, flood-fill outside with black, and then colour-replace the mesh to white. But I'm not up to speed on using layers, and saving in a Poser-usable format could be awkward.

It is definitely better to work on a very large original, and reduce the final size to suit, but keep in mind how wide the lacing would be on the final transparency or texture. It's a bit of a waste to draw a 4-pixel line on a 4096x4096 master copy if your working copy is going to be 512x512.

Remember to check out fonts such as Wingdings for useful symbols. If your paint program doesn't let you rotate fonts, put it in a scratch image, rotate that, and cut-and-paste.

I recall hearing that he'd reached his announced last-issue number, a while back. Was that #300?

Was Cerebus the Aardvark the first to do the chainmail bikini joke?

Message edited on: 06/06/2004 02:14

As for the transmaps, start with a really huge template, a much bigger image of the mesh than you'd ever use for a texture. How big they need to be for the render, it depends. In discussion else-net, they've been described as over-dressed. Could be worse; have you ever tried disentangling fishnet stockings from your fur?

Somebody, somewhere, has never ridden a horse...

I suspect that the next versions of DAZ figures are going to be driven more by their DAZ Studio program than by Poser. However, remember that Poser 4 is still around, renamed Poser Artist. There may be a market for less sophisticated, less resource-heavy, models. Maybe the artists with material for the older figures should look through their back catalogue, and try selling to that market. Do a "Poser Artist" pack to show off their work. Do a little selling. Me, I've been re-arranging some Vicki textures to suit a Posette-derived figure. Maybe use smaller texture-maps -- it doesn't seem to ruin things. Price is not the only feature to consider, but maybe cutting the price of older items will revive sales. Now, I hear DAZ 3D are running a sale... Maybe I shall actually be using M2 next week.

A small example. There are similar catsuit meshes for both Posette and Vicky, and there is a Spacepilot texture available for the Vicky catsuit, from from DAX 3D. It is possible to re-arrange the Vicky texture to work with the Posette UV mapping. The free texture is sized at 3000x3000. To get the pixel size of the actual mesh surface to be the same, the Posette catsuit template (made with UVmapper), had to be 4050x4050. There's quite a few differences at the edges of the mesh, but the end result was OK.

I suspect that one reason why Poser stuff uses such detailed meshes and textures is that it can get used for closeups. That figure is maybe closer to the (now free) Lo-res Vicky-1. In a game, moving, you wouldn't notice the lower quality. For another example, a cine film projected from 35mm has a huge image from a smaller effective frame than a 35mm still camera. Because it's a moving picture, we don't get a chance to see the film grain.

There's a Free texture for the V3 Catsuit available from DAZ. Filename is ps_fr088_Spacepilot.exe but I don't have the full URL to hand.

Past of the problem with texture maps is that the key objects in Poser are 3D, and some parts can get very close to the camera. So a few pixels on the texture map can be covering a lot of pixels on the render. 512 pixels to map head to toe on a 6-foot man is about 7 pixels per inch. Do a Kitchener-style render of that man pointing at the camera/viewer, and it's not going to be enough. On the other hand, if it's right about memory allocation being in powers of 2, those 3000x3000 hi-res maps for Vicki are a bit silly.

If the size of the compressed file is significant, is a JPEG the best option every time? I'm thinking of transmaps for eyelashes -- how many colours do they use? I'm thinking they're greyscales, so they don't need 24-bit colour. One transmap I've been working on is plain black and white, and I saved it as a 2-colour PNG file. Which works fine in Poser 5. The other advantage over a JPEG for that file is that I don't get those blurred edges. But am I just saving disk space (or download time)? Or does it make rendering a bit less memory-hungry?

It is, however, worth looking at how materials are used. Different parts of the hat can be assigned to different materials, which can then be given a different colour without needing texture maps. And take the trouble to give them useful names, (Yes, I've had some frustrating times...)

Which version of Poser are you used? There are some big differences in how you go about changing texture maps in the different versions. Most tutorials I've seen focus on Poser 4. In Poser 5, it's done through the Materials room. The usual place to find textures is in the runtimetextures folder, and sub-folders.

Looks good. Might be worth mentioning how big your screen is. I use 1024x768, partly because I don't think my monitor is big enough to really use more pixels. Not with my eyes anyway. I reckon you're using a bigger screen in the examples. Also, instead of clicking on a figure, there are selection menues under the document window, and at the top of the properties/parameter window. They're a useful check, at least, that you have the right figure or body-part. And another Poser UI cock-up. Selection the element from the menu under the document window changes the properties/parameter window to match. But not the other way around.