I absolutely agree with Miss B and movida!

The part about how to fill a round hole with quads was a revelation.

Thank you very much @Caisson!

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Though, this is not quite finished yet :)

I replaced the shin strap with a better version, and at higher resolution too.

The cap's body (headband) was again modified slightly, everything is UV mapped now, the texture map is made (ad least for staff officers, see render).

Looks how I forgot tu UV map the small buttons for the chin strap, and also the cover needs some morphs to make it look more "used" and "individualized"...

Currently working on different peak sizes for junior officers (shorter) and admirals (longer) Also need different texture maps for these peaks.

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"Achtung! Stillgestanden! Meldung an den Kapitaen!" .

Sorry for not responding earlier, but I was away from home and could watch this interesting discussion from mobile only!

I've learned quite a lot from your tips, so thank you all!

I also think the base mesh is FUBAR; maybe that's why it was released as a freebie... So I decided to cut it short and made a new hat cover from one of our Poser primitives (the rounded cone). Then made some more adjustments to fit the cover to the cap body, again split the props into halves. Exported the whole bunch as another .obj Re-imported and mirrored them, and voilà: All is fine - no more rifts, everything is perfectly symmetrical!

I then added the accessories, and now it looks like this:

Still some UV mapping to do because I want different textures for the peak to make it change from a normal troup officer, to admirals (which need different textures as well as different peak lengths to accommodate the extra gold leaf... (This is also the reason why the peak isn't welded to the cap: It makes resizing easier) The side buttons and the centre cockade (the "Sniper's Target" XD) may also need some reshaping and retexturing.

As soon as this is ready for release, I'll publish it as a freebie, for you all who helped me!

Karina

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P.S.:

I selected a contemporary German Navy cap as my prototype because I consider it has the most versatility in both shape and texturing. A Russian cap couldn't do because of the "helicopter landing deck" on top - same goes for the US Navy. But with a bit of texturing, and some morphing, this can even be made to pass as Army/Airforce caps, from WWI to present. Texture groups are included a-plenty; you can easily transform this cap to a British General's with the red band and the appropriate badge texture.

Tried this today, and if I make it a Poser prop everything is fine.

BUTT (tm): Whenever I export the geometry and then re-import it (both as .OBJ), the tris in the centre of the cap are missing, leaving a circular gap.

• Maybe there's a clandestine group of officers sabotageing this because they like the idea of that extra ventilation?
• Maybe it's just another Poser glitch?
• I can't tell...

I've tried all and sundry today to fix this - all to no avail.

So I guess this is either a glitch of Poser, or the base mesh is actually FUBAR.

Funny thing is that it loads fine in Poser with embedded geometry. But whenever I want to convert the embedded "customGeom" to an external geometry file, the rift reappears.

This is useless because I still have to add the chin straps, the badge, and the cockade to the original mesh in order to make this a full object.

Any suggestions welcome!

K

EClark1894 posted at 8:42AM Wed, 29 April 2020 - #4387649

That would probably take too much time.

:D :D :D

Done and replied :)

OK - I just noticed that I can't upload one of the most basic Poser files (.Wavefront Object) to this site dedicated to Poser... Looks a bit like if I couldn't upload .txt files to Windows native applications?!

But hey - this site uses "markdown" and supports "emojis"! This makes it all good for all of us!

Thank you Renderosity... (NOT!) Your forum is a real PITA, to be frank!

Currently I'm very tempted to move over to the HiveWire forum for good.

K

This was the most useful explanation of "normal maps" I've ever read!

I've read a lot of mumbo-jumbo in the past, but never it was made this clear (probably because the posters hadn't an idea either).

Thank you@BagginsBill for making this clear in a way that even dummies can understand it,

AND:

an extra "Thank You!" @Kalypso for reposting this!

K

.

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Therefore the only logical thing to do is just use bump maps.

Thank you Spock ;)

false1 posted at 3:35PM Sun, 26 April 2020 - #4387455

This request seems more a “quality of life” feature than a functionality issue.

Sorry but I must DISagree with this part!

The "quality of life" does matter a lot to me because this is a mere hobby and I don't want to have to get a degree in computer science before I can use a program for fun. That's one of the things that still make me stick with Poser:

• It's interface is quite intuitive and easy to use.

• Neither does it have side-panels and sub-sub-tabs where I need to go hunting for what I want (like some other program).

• Nor does it need "never-can-remember" keyboard shortcuts, or cryptic names for simple functions.

If I had wanted all that, I would have migrated to Dza or Blender years ago already, when the going was tough with Poser...

Glad I didn't!

I just fire up Poser, create a prop, make some texturing, load a scene, add a figure, pose, and render it. And guess what? All this I do within Poser, without ever needing any other program than (occasionally) UVmapper!

At the end of the day I have a render which I can enjoy.

And that's what this is all about!

_

It’s why some programs are efficient and even pleasurable when trying to get work done and some make you grit your teeth as you work. Unfortunately new functions are easier to market and it takes forward thinking developers to get it done.

It’s not just the hierarchy window either, I have the same problem in the cloth room when selecting what objects the cloth should drape over. There are numerous inefficiencies in Poser that addon makers have addressed but they should be in the core program.

_

Full d'accord on this one!!

K

@ Chanc: Glad we could help!

@ an0malaus: I don't really understand what's your point here?

1. you can always adjust the sensitivity of any dial by double-clicking the dial (knob).
2. Even with SASHA's eye rotation dial sensitivity set to 0.1, I can still point her eyes to exactly hit the eyeball of another SASHA standing 10 metres away from her.
3. Of course it becomes problematic if the other figure would be a kilometre away... but then the first figure wouldn't be able to look exactly at her eyeballs because she wouldn't even see them from that distance.

I'm writing this because I noticed that you advocate the method of Poser's "point at" feature, which I gave up using because it's an "all or nothing" method. This is what made me invent "The Looks" some years ago, and it served my needs to adjust the eye axes in all those years.

an0malaus posted at 8:24PM Wed, 22 April 2020 - #4386119

Just an observation on Point At, the pointAt dials can themselves be controlled by valueOperations (ERC) and will take intermediate settings between 0 and 1, where they act accordingly: at 0, rotation dials are in full control, at 0.5, rotation and pointAt have equal, reduced influence, and at 1.0, pointAt operates along.

The PointAt feature really is missing some required functionality, as in actually adding its influence to the actor's rotation dials, as though it were another form of ERC/valueOperation. In such a scenario, pointAt strength could then be dialled back when an eyeball reaches the end of its rotation limits (if applied).

^^^THAT!!

Plus, my method even works when saving poses/expressions to the library, which isn't the case with the "point at".

Don't get me wrong here: I don't think that automation is bad per se! It is surely helpful in some situations. However, the best automation is the one which can be turned OFF if needed (a feature which becomes more and more rare in today's software, unfortunately...)

K

Unfortunately this will eliminate all your custom UI setup! So basically you're back to Poser5 interface...

I'd rather suggest to try to fix your problem by manually editing the poser.ini file or some such.

Too tired this early morning to look which file and which parameter you need to edit, but I hope some others will chime in with a solution.

K

Thank you all for your feedback and the hints.

However, after re-visiting this thread, I think there's no need for a second part of this tutorial.

Instead, I've had some new ideas for SASHA-16.

I started work on a new (2020 Edition) to incorporate a better version of the "Eye Axis" (now becoming an integral body part instead of the former parented props), and also some more improvements like further improved weight maps, morphs, and what more I made since last year.

So I consider this issue as solved.

If you have any questions, use PM (or whatever it's called here)

Thank you all, and LL&P

K

It's quite simple, and it's a thing which I had to manually fix with .cr2 files over and over again!

Whenever you use the Group Editor to modify any groups in your figure (even if only temporarily, like a temp group to limit the Morph Brush range, or to assign a material) Poser will notice this and thus save a new figure .obj in the same folder as where the .cr2 file is.

So far, not a bad idea... BUTT(tm)!

You'll inevitably run into problems once you copy files across your runtimes, because all the custom geometry paths become invalid once you move your files into another folder!

Hitherto I did fix this by manually editing the .cr2 files, but that's a tedious process, and you need to know what you're doing.

My advise would be to use the second option (using the original figure geometry file)

This is the best bet.

Sometimes it's only temporary groups you've created along with your work, so ignoring them won't make any change. But it's still a trial&error thing...

To get a fallback, save your current scene! Then open a new scene, load your saved character .cr2 and check if your custom changes ported over.

K

I never visit the DAZ forums, but do visit other forums, and there it's no problem to:

• format code so it gets displayed with indents, special characters & all
• have line breaks where you want them to be instead of having to edit your code 20 times to change that
• have features like underlined text in the menu already

Also allow f or different font size without needing the big stick like the "=" sign underneath a line

. - AND: finally get rid of those ridiculous "Emojis" and introduce some old-fashioned smilies instead of this kindergarden-like Japanese crap.

Aw come on Rendo - this is just pathethic!

K

**Thank you for the hint @bwldrd, but I've never done this before **.

Any hints of where I could do this, what format I need to use etc? To be frank, this forum software is the most annoying I ever encountered, and it has so many quirks and hoops to jump through that I actually spend half an hour just to get a simple formatted text like in my last post - posted.

Add to that the limitation of a very narrow time frame to edit format errors or spelling, and you'll guess how difficult it is to get an organized post up on this "Bondware" (a Web Developer COMPANY!) forum.

PLUS this forum is almost unsearchable, and the multitude of unorganized subforums, and the fact that the notification system still doesn't work after almost ten(10) years after they crapped up the forums by a new innovative design just adds woe to misery.

**Rant finished. **

(But, in an effort to make at least one positive comment: __"It now supports Emojis!" hiphip - - - hooray...??? __

Rendo/Bondware? Do you hear me???

This is one of the last places where Poser users can gather! So PLEASE make your forums less annoying to use. PLEASE!

K

In case there's enough feedback and demand, I'll write the second part of this tutorial

• How to add two new ghost bones to control each eye individually while keeping the general synch.

But I don't want to waste my time if no one is interested (sorry if that sounds blunt!)

Writing such tutorials in a way that I hope anybody can understand needs a lot of time, and then add to that the time to posting it to this to this forum with it's weird formatting, is very time-consuming!

Because I have a couple of other projects in the queue that need completion, I'd rather continue with those than with writing something that no one will ever care for.

(You're right! Today I had a busy yet frustrating day, and I'm grumpy) :/

K