I'm a big fan of the parent to a prop approach.  I generally just use a box and parent everything to it, then I can move, rotate or scale everything all at once with tremendous ease using the box, just shut off the visibility for the box for rendering purposes.

Quote - ^^ they don't have V4 support yet, and their external-to-poser scripts won't work under Windows 64-bit according to one of their FAQs.  Aside from that I don't know that I like the results I've seen of applying freckles via shader, I think the distribution is too random - typically you get freckles on patches of skin that are exposed to light, and none or sparse/faint on parts that are not.

The distribution is another reason I opted for the map file approach. Nothing against the real skin shader system mind you, it's a quality product I'm sure, but I wanted a bit more control over the final product.

I read through a website on some of those techniques, I believe the freckle effect he acheives through a combination of sub-surface scatter and a color ramp.   I thought about this approach and while it does have several advantages I opted for the map file instead with a simple blender node for ease of use.

I had hoped to be able to take advantage of ERC channels to make it even easier, but sadly the shader nodes just aren't setup that way, but if folks aren't adverse to using the settings in the material room the blender node should work just fine, and I think a well written explanation in the read me file should suffice. 

I suppose I'll get around to playing with some of the math functions at some point, my calculus is a bit rusty (been about 20 years since I really used it in earnest), but the tutorial I read through did give me some interesting ideas on how to make use of some of the various nodes available in the material room.

Believe it or not the biggest challenge thus far has been getting all the textures lined up properly, I don't have a seam guide to work with so I've been having to use a trial and error method.. lol...    It's been a whole lot of render, adjust, render adjust..   But I think the final product will be worth it.

All in all I'd have to say I rather like V4, in fact I appreciated the setup dials on V4 so much I hacked my V3 CR2 file so she now has a similar drill down menu system in her body just like V4 did.  Makes it so much easier to use them both.

The blender is working great, just need to jazz up the freckles map a bit is all.   I've been doing some experimenting to see what sort of freckle effects I can get without altering the base skin tone too much - takes a bit of tweaking but I'm confident it will be worth it.

Only drawback I see to this method is that you'll have to go into the material room to make precise adjustments to the freckle "level", for lack of a better term.  Each of the various body parts with skin can be adjusted up or down with a blender setting (Yes, you can even vary the amount of freckles on here feet.. lol...) - but because this is a shader node I don't know of anyway to hack this into the main CR2 file for a single dial setting on the parameter dials under the body section.

I can include a few mat poses for quick changes, but for precision work you'll still be stuck going into the material room and adjusting the blender setting on any/all appropriate body parts.

Let me check through the archives here, I don't have it on the drive currently (already looked) but it might be stored on DVD somewhere. 

Easy enough to fix really, just need to do a bit of map editing.  I hadn't worked with the blender nodes before so I was rather curious to see what the overall effect would be, truth be told I spent more time playing with the settings on those than I did concentrating on the map files themselves.. lol..

Personally I've taken to using a CR2 editor myself, works wonderfully and keeps everything organized neatly so it's very easy to navigate the file.

The one I use is called CR2 Editor 1.51 by John Stallings.  I don't know if the program is still being supported or not but it works wonderfully and it's a free download, you can get a copy here.

http://www.morphography.uk.vu/dl.php?file=Cr2Editor151.zip

Thanks,

With any luck it should be available in the marketplace soon :)

Quote - If I may suggest - add a MAT pose with freckles mixed in with a Blender node.  I wish more people would do that.  In fact I'd kill for a variety of freckle maps mixed in with Blender nodes (currently painting freckles onto a texture and I'm not very good at it).

Ok, I think I just might have the freckles maps ironed out now, the first render is with the blender for the face set to zero:

And the second with a blender setting of 0.6

Still have quite a bit of work to do on specular maps, bump maps and of course I haven't even started on the lips yet, but so far I think it's coming along nicely.

Quote - If I may suggest - add a MAT pose with freckles mixed in with a Blender node.  I wish more people would do that.  In fact I'd kill for a variety of freckle maps mixed in with Blender nodes (currently painting freckles onto a texture and I'm not very good at it).

Hmm... freckles... well, I once dated a red head who had lots of freckles, and a pretty serious temper.. lol.. but that's another story.

Let me see what I can come up with in the freckle dept, I spent the last 4-5 hours working on the bump map for the head texture but it's coming along nicely.

Quote - Files and working our what names are whos when poser is looking for say a texture, is a real nightmare.

This is a suggestion, why can't every provider use the same name for all items in all folders ie the same name used in character should also be used in geometries, textures, pose and so on why can't this be.

Or why can't we do away with folders altogether and just stuff every texture without the folders into textures folders, or I guess there may be textures called the same name?? which would cause problems.

We may find it easyer to remember item names rather than the creators names, no offence to them in anyway intended here.

Anyhow my first suggestion seems real enough.

Rowlando

Well, part of the problem would be if everyone used a standardized or near standardized way of naming installing the files would become a real pain.

Imagine, for example, the pool table someone mentioned earlier.   If it's a figure it would perhaps go into a folder under characters called "Game Room" and then the pool table.cr2 file would be in that folder.

Under textures another folder called game room with some easy to recognize texture names like felt, wood, etc...

Sounds great?  Sure, until the next time your out and about and find another model of a pool table you like.  You download it and install it, and because it uses similar names in similar folder it overwrites some if not all of your original pool table.   So as long as you'd be happy only having one pool table figure or spending a ton of time renaming everything in the download file before installing it or run the risk of overwriting some other files used by some other prop/figure/character.

So most artists/vendors generally go out of their way to make their directory names at least somewhat unique, thus avoiding the potential risk of overwriting something else the customer may have installed that they want to keep.

Sure, that does make it a little more difficult to find certain items like texture files and the like, but just imagine how hacked off you'd get if you had some custom textures or tweaks stored under fairly common, common sense file names only to have them overwritten by installilng someone elses distributed file?  I know the artist or vendor in question would get quite the tounge lashing over something like that.

So really your suggestion is a double edged sword, it would be great if they could implement something like that but due to the way the software works it makes installing new items a bit impractical.

Just my 2 cents worth.. :)

Quote - This is getting annoying....  this has not been the first time people post supposedly images I can see nor  find links to..    where is the image please...

Tom, sorry to hear about the trouble you seem to be having, if you still can't access the image after changing your settings here you can pull it up directly from the following URL:

http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r167/trobbins2/Render4.jpg

Quote - Tom-

Check your forum settings and see if you have forum attachments (or whatever they call 'em) switched off.  
The picture should appear right below the text in the original post.

Great looking character, BTW! Can't wait to see how she progresses. Is this a custom morph or simple dial-twiddling?

A bit of both actually, but the morphs are quite small and mostly used just to smooth out a few rough edges.  The next big hurdle I'm working on is the textures, I haven't quite decided what sort of detail I need to add just yet to get the right overall effect.  I've got the basic textures done but there just not quite right, a bit too bland for lack of a better term.  Boy, this art stuff is hard work.. lol..

Anyway, thanks for the words of encouragement, nice to know I'm not completely off base with this one.  This is only my second attempt at full blown character design, the first was a project done for a friend who wanted a digital clone of a character called Dawn X from a comic book of some sort, I'd never seen the comic myself but she provided me with some pictures and we went from there.

She was pretty happy with it and told me I should be doing this professionally, and while personally I still think she is off her rocker I thought I just might give it a try and see what I could come up with for V4.  If I can get it to the point where I think it's worthy of marketing (i.e. worth other people spending there hard earned money on) I'll put it up in the marketplace.

Well, you can click on the value listed next to the dial and type in a number directly, but to my knowledge that's about it as far as keyboard manipulation of posers parameter dials.

The only other "keyboard" responses of note here are the up and down arrow keys, they will allow you to cycle through the chosen parameter for your parameter dial, IE, if you have the Body of a figure selected and hit your down arrow key, it will go to the next body part listed in the heirarchy (such as hip, abdomen, etc..) and you can keep cycling through till you get to the desired selection on the parameter dial screen.

Works for lights and cameras as well, BTW.

Not sure about a magnet package, but I've seen quite a few people talking about clothes converters for this purpose.  PhilC's wardrobe wizard seems to be very highly recommended in this regard, though I don't have a copy personally (I rarely if ever use A3 or SP3 and haven't really found much of a need for such a converter) I can tell you that everything I've seen put out by PhilC is first rate stuff, particularly anything to do with morphs or conversions.  

Hope that helps!