I've been messing with the P4 horse the last couple of hours. I added another group to the neck and did some regrouping of the existing neck and chest areas. I was trying to get the neck reworked enough to get the head down to the ground. Didn't totally succeed, but I think I did make some progress. I also made the ears poseable, although they don't pose very well right yet. If anyone is interested in it, I'll zip it up and put it on my site. I'll have to use Objaction Mover since I altered the existing mesh. Ed

Looks great! Keep going! hehe Make his head touch the ground... It would be nice to see them rework all the animals! How bout a Mill-Wolf ;) Dagar

Looks great! Keep going! hehe Make his head touch the ground... It would be nice to see them rework all the animals! How bout a Mill-Wolf ;) Dagar

Just a little update... Ed

The ears work now too. Ed

Now....to couple it with http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1185246 And we have a winner!!! WOOT! Way to go. You are very good Dagar

cool work looks great :-)

I agree all the base animals need fixing. I like what you've done with the horse's neck. Much better.

Yes, there is a need in better animals. Not all people like to ride a dragon ;-)

Nor do all dragons like to be ridden. :

LOL A Little "Dragon" Humor! hehe

ok finally someone is working on this...I have attached your image with some aspects that I usually fix in post and a very simple bone structure if it helps...the morphs should fix the lump at the top of the neck and smooth out the area where the head hooks to the neck ....the horse's neck is very important for balancing and it telegraphs the horse's motion...(if you ride the muscles right behind the ears...)....if you can fix this on the p4 horse that would be sooo cool....

Good luck on the quest to make the Poser horse look like a horse! I had a go at making the horse lower its head, and lift its head, but only using morphs not reworking the entire geometry. Unfortunately, the fixes for lowering the head don't work in the opposite direction to fix things when raising the head, so your method might well be the best. I never got very far on it anyway.

This one was my effort- original and morphed in the same pose for comparison. As far as getting it's head down, it looks better but it's actually made it further from the ground, not closer! If you'd like those morphs to include in your own work, let me know I'd be happy to send them, but I don't consider them finished and they might not be terribly useful if you've regrouped the neck anyway.

So, all the best, because the poor beast badly needs the help.

More work on some of the problems that Lorraine mentioned- on the left, three stages of working shown side on, the last isn't too bad at all. You can see the difference in the shape of the topline and the curve under the jaw. Horses have a very distinctive outline, so if you can manage to put that right you'll have some ecstatic Poser horse artists!

Then on the right, look! I tweaked the joint parameters and it can reach! Except it doesn't look so good without a dark texture to hide the flaws, and oops, I now have a horse that can't lift its head back up again. Which is pretty much why I stopped, because I looked as if I'd have two modified horses, one only for head-up poses and one for head-down poses. Not too good if you're playing with a scene and suddenly decide you want a head-up horse not a head-down horse after you've posed the rider and everything. :p

Thanks for the comments and suggestions. Lorraine... I raised and showed quarter horses for years before moving to CA. Moving the joint centers down was the first thing I did when I decided to try this. This model is set up more like a human than an animal. I'm still deciding on whether to add another group or two to the neck. With the way this mesh is I don't know that it would make much difference. I was working on a morph to slim the neck when the head is down, but the power decided to go out just as I hit "Save" to save the morph. I'll have to redo it. HaiGan... I tried morphs just like you and came to the same conclusion. That's why I added the group to the neck and regrouped the other neck and chest areas. BTW... this horse can almost raise his head without a problem. Ed

Great work all of you, now keep it up please! :0) Seriously I wondered if a combination of reworked joints and morph targets as in JMC would get any nearer? I'd really love to have a horse that can graze without any postwork. BTW HaiGan, is that Black one of Moonrose's textures? The dappling is georgeous! Alla

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Cool...I am morph challenged...well in fact modeling challenged....I like the improvements believe me!...I have relied on post work to re-structure the neck when needed......glad to meet another "show" person, I did show quarter horses myself, as well as arabians, appaloosas, other color breeds...paints, pintos, palominos...I love all the cool morphs that have been developed.....EdW I really like the changes in the neck...the poor p4 horse has been neglected...I have the Heavy horse and it has nice additions......I am so happy to see people working on the horse....

Think I'm about there... Made a morph to thin the neck. Wanted to go a little farther, but the mess didn't seem to like being thinned down, so this is where I quit. The only way I have been able to stretch the neck is to use the zscale on the neck groups. Let me know what you think Ed

Oookay, lesson wasn't needed, very cool to have someone good at the mechanics of Poser figures who also really knows horses. :) I think the horse simply has too few polygons in the neck to ever acheive perfection, but what you've got there is looking very promising, especially if you've managed to come up with something that has a full range of movement. Kudos! So... are you going to try solving the problem with the weird kink in the neck when moving the head from side to side too? Pretty please?

HaiGan... Does this look any better? I did a little adjusting on the falloff zones for the joints for the head. Also the head was moving side to side and twisting too much, so I set the limits smaller. Ed

OH yes this is looking much better....wow knowing the anatomy of the horse really helps...most excellent improvments!...now are these going to be available to us poor mesh challanged persons....?...love the neck shape that you are getting....

on the lowered head, the head seems to be attached in front of where it needs to be on the neck....don't you think....?...

Lorraine....I plan on making this available on my site in the next day or two. It won't be in freestuff. I'll include the new cr2, a couple of poses and a pcf to recode the new obj file. As far as the head..... I tried moving the joint centers and it seems to make it worse not better, so I would say this is about as good as I can get it. Ed

The improvement around the chest and withers is amazing! And the pic with the head to the side... wow! No weird kinks! Very nice work, Ed. Thank you for the effort you're putting in. :)

I agree the improvements are amazing!...all the effort really is appreciated!...

looks very cool cant wait til this is available

very cool thanks...now to get those horses to the fields to graze and fatten up some! :) Dagar

thankyou so much for this I am very much looking forward to trying this new horse out :0)

ok I've run itno a prblem I load the pcf into mover and the correct seed file but when I try to decode I get a range check error, I'm running P4PP by the way

hmmm looks like I need to turn my spell checker back on as well ;0)

I just downloaded the file and checked it myself... seems to work fine for me. The only thing I can think of is to make sure the horseHiP3.obj in the same folder as the reworkedhorse.pcf. I used the Animals folder since the files were already there. One other thing... are you using Mover 1.01? Ed

yup I'm using 1.01 and they are both in the same folder this is very weird...never normally have problems with pcf's

Rte Encoder gives me the error 'The key file CRC does not match the key file that was used to encode the import file' Just to varify my copy of horseHiP3.obj is Size - 927 KB (949,958 bytes) Size on Disk - 928 KB (950,272 bytes) and the CRC is E0B56471

I don't have any problems with either file. Don't know why or what the problem is. I can't fix something that's not broken on my end. Since you and a few others seem to be having problems, I am taking the download down. I don't know of any other way to distribute the new obj file. Ed

how about a UVS file that might work becuase it doesnt depend on the size of the original file

Don't know if that will work.... the mapping never changed so I don't think that would make any difference. Ed

:0( I'm not sure there is another alternative in that case

EdW, thanks for your efforts on this. Perhaps you could try encoding against a different file, say the dogHiP3.obj, in case your copy of horseHiP3.obj got changed during the update process? AFAIK Mover just wants a file to encode against to confirm possesion of an identical file, the actual contents of that file are less improtant.

I think I have the problem solved, but I'm waiting for a few people to let me know if the files work before I reactivate the link to the download. Ed

any news?

The download is available at my site. Ed

Errr...forgive this dummy, EdW...but what's the URL for your site ? I seem to be having an attack of the stupids today..can't find link to your site ?

Attached Link: The file is here

You can get it at the link above Ed

thanks a lot...

Thanks a lot, can't wait to try it out