CrystalDragon: You can find Micheal's Armor at Daz. The pauldrons actually have a cutout so they can lap down over the arm plates. It does sort of make it look like it is cutting into the arm. They take some effort to pose well, but they don't intersect.

igohigh: I think this one is a lot easier to use than Micheal's version. I think you will like this setup better. I may have to revisit Micheal's armor and do some kind of update.

igohigh: Those HD crashes suck. I get a windows protection error ever fourth or fifth time I boot up, but after a shutdown everything comes up fine. I haven't figured it out yet. And yes, skimpy can be good, just not when the swords are swinging and the arrows are flying.

nu-be: I did a quick render of the back side of the model, so you can see that she should actually be able to sit down. The other image still didn't give a good idea of what the back looked like.

I updated the image, so she is now holding her sword:

hauksdottir: Thanks for the comments. Normally I would agree with you on several points you've made. However, I decided to make a few comprimises in the interest of making the armor more feminine. The breasts on the breastplate for example. You are correct that one would wear padding and chainmail underneath. By the time you had the plates over all that you'd have no indication that it was a woman wearing the stuff. The narrow waist is a compromise to make the design feminine. The leg bands are lapped correctly however. The design is loosely based on North west European curiassier armor circa 1600 (while that isn't the 15th Century, I titled it that because it is meant as a companion piece for Micheals version of the same name) I have studied a great many photos of armor and in all of them the leg bands overlap in the fashion I have modeled. They generally fit together much tighter, but the larger gap is there to accentuate the fact that it is made up of plates. nu-be: The gorget (collar piece) is based on a photograph of a suit of embossed armor attributed to Lucio Piccinino of Milan c. 1590. This suit of armor has an articulated neck piece that extends up the neck as I have modeled. You can find many examples of suits that utilize pauldrons (shoulder plates) as I have depicted. Also, you can't see in this rendering, but the leg plates only cover the front and outside of the legs. The inner thigh, back of the legs, and her bum are not covered with articulated plate, so she wouldn't sit on them. Anyway, I did make some compromises in the design, but they were deliberate. This is meant to be a fantasy suit of armor, not an exercise in complete and utter accuracy. I wanted it to be obvious that the wearer was female, so I went with a more form fitting look. This is my answer to the chainmail bikini so often seen in fantasy art. In fact, I have yet to find a photo of a suit of plate armor that was intended for a woman, so there goes the realism right there.

hmatienzo: Thanks. This one is four figures. The chainmail pants underneath the leg plates are one figure, each gauntlet is a seperate figure, and the rest is included in a single figure. It is a lot easier to set up than Micheal's version. I keep learning how to do things better. The elbow and knee joints are set up as Joint Controlled Joints, so that they position themselves when you move the shin or the forearm. For some reason that doesn't work when the figure is conformed to Vicky though--it's strange.

I bombed the Navy flight physical because of color blindness too. The Civilian Medical Examiner said it was only a "Color Deficiency" and gave me my medical certificate so I could get a civilian Private Pilot's Certificate though, so if "Color Deficient" counts, then I'm in.

I used to be a civil war reenactor--it was a lot of fun. I think people will reenact pretty much anything these days. I've seen WWII, Revolutionary War, and even Louis and Clark expedition reenactors. It's a lot of fun, but to be really authentic takes a lot of research and either time to make your own stuff, or money to pay someone else to make it for you.

Too cool. . . and here I was thinking I was the only one obsessed with historical accuracy.

Since everyone seems to be interested in Legionnaire trivia, there was an interesting reason for the construction of the pilum as well. As you can see, about the last three feet or so of the spear is a mild iron, which was supposed to stick in an enemy shield and bend. The iron shaft kept them from hacking the shaft off, so the shield would become useless. They would have to discard it, or the Legionnaire would step on the shaft of the pilum, pulling the shield down and opening them up for a blow from the sword.

Well, I've seperated my tunic out so that the whole skirt section is named hip. The left and right thigh sections are in the CR2 as "phantom" or "ghost" parts and cause the skirt to deform when the legs move. Unfortunately, once the movement goes beyond a certain point the legs start to poke through, so it looks like I'm going to have to use the magnets to spin off a few morph targets -- and then try to remember how to do the joint controled morphing bit. . . PhilC: that looks great! I think I'm on the right track now, but if I come up against the wall again you may hear from me. . . Thanks

WOO HOOOO!!! Bloodsong, that did the trick! Last night I had eliminated the toe group altogether, leaving it's parameters in the CR2, which worked for the toe, but then caused the shin-foot joint to crack (The model isn't really a sandal, but a type of boot worn by Roman Legionnaires called a Caliga, which is made up of a bunch of sandal-like straps). I guess I was headed in the right direction, but no telling how much time you have saved me! Anyway, I ploped in a few triangle polys in the shin and toe areas, named everything else "rFoot" and it worked like a charm. Thank you so much for the help! Thanks to everone in fact. . .

It is Poser's welding engine--if that is the proper name for it. When It loads a Figure file the CR2 has several weld commands to "stitch" the seams between body parts together. Its seems that in this instance, the weld is failing to connect the right verts, thus creating the funky surface shading. This explains why the imported object renders corectly, while it botches it up when loaded as a figure. I have already manually detached the straps in my modeler to no avail. I think I'm going to try to pick a different line to split the toe from the foot and see if that makes any difference.

I also went into the Cr2 and deleted the bit at the end that welds the Toe to the Foot. After that it renders correctly--like the top picture in the image above. Of course, if you try to bend the figure the seam then cracks open. It would seem that it is a problem with the way Poser is trying to weld these vertices as it creates the figure. Now to figure out how to make it do this right .. . ARRRRRRRRRRGH!!

Okay .. . update: I tried using Split Vertices on a version of the OBJ that I exported from Poser with Weld Identical Vertices checked. That ended up spliting every single polygon edge in the model, so it shows up in Poser looking faceted. Another thing exporting from Poser with Weld Identical Vertices did was weld the verts across this problematic seam--so they are in fact identical, or at least Poser thinks they are when exporting. Next I tried subdividing the heck out of the area where this is happening, thinking that perhaps there was some angle threshold for the CR2 to actually weld the edges like any other body part seam. Even with like a gabillion polys making the transition very smooth I get the same problem. I's Confused . . . :(