Over there in the distance .. Is that smoke rising from the chimneys of mordikar's forge? .. And the pale orange glow of fire from the furnace? Is he even still alive!?!?!?!?!

Yes folks I am still alive, though i've not had time for much.
My precious posette started wimpering to me this morning (she does that you know) about how she has no nice plate3mail like vicky does... You'd think the fantasy armour I made for her, and the fully modled scalemail would be anough for her. I mean not even that systen resource gold digger Victoria has fully modled scale mail... but alas no. And not only oes she want platemail.. but she wants a chainmail hauberk under it. She got told flat out the hauberk was being texture maped .. i'm NOT modling real chainmail!!!

Anyhow i stoked the fires of my forge and set to work on some initial pieces, and so far things are starting to come along. This is definately going to be rough to poserize. I hate grouping with a passion. And I know i'm the only person left probably that uses poser 4 and posette ... but what can I say. I can't justify loading a superhi-res figure like vicky only to cover her in hi-res armour... and besides posette is cuter anyhow :)

Looks like a very good start! And you're absolutely right not modeling the chain mail - I shudder at the thought of the polycount!

considering how it's put together, all those little rings, tracking all that, n' bonin', etc..too much..;)

Looks like a Rhino model.

yes Dan it's a rhino model .... for now. :) I told you guys I got Rhino mainly or doing props and stuff for poser :)

Itsa lookin good!

progress continues .. the breast plate is done and one leg is mostly done ... Posette should have had a very very small group called knee cap... something just big enough to parrent a prop to. :( It's hard to difure out how i'm going to do those Knee cops with the neat wing things ... i'll probably have to do them as smart props cause they really can't ben orthey'll mess up the sides... however i'm trying to fidure if i should parent them to the thigh or to the shin ..... decisions decisions ...

just so you can see how things are progressing so far ... Heres a peek. I did two renderes and did a side by side so you can see the leg details under the hauberk that simply won't be seen other wise :) for those of you that are paying very very close attention yes those are indeed rivets connecting the straps to the armour... you have good eyes.

and heres a multi directional look at the completed left leg ... (i think .. you know me i might go back and re tweak stuff .. or add more details in...

Is the top supposed to be metal? If it is, you should remove the pull lines between her breasts. Cloth does it but metal doesn't. Metal is solid. Breastplating would either be hammered out to allow for breasts (which means more form fitting), or flat and squish 'em.

umfortunately i can't find any way to pull it out more other than completely rebuilding the breastplate. I might be able to clean it up once it's meshed. I tried to get it as smooth as I could.

Looks great, Mordikar! Long live Posette! Keep the forge a-blazin'!!!

Looking good :) With the legs..how far down her leg does the lower leg reach ? If it comes too close to her ankle..you may find she can't bend her foot without the lower edge digging in..very painful :) And what happens to the entire leg when she bends her knee ? Does the knee cop buckle up ?

good questions frey. The lower leg extends to about half way fown her shin, giving her plenty of bending room for the boot.. (i wear armour, so i know all too well what you're talking about with the digging into the foot .... fribbin bruised and tender for a week and a half!!!!) The knee cop is going to be a smart prop. Attacks at the knee will be comming from the top so i'm going to parent it to the thigh where it would logically provide best protection. Were it real armour i'd actually split the shin and thigh and rivit it to the knee cop... but alass poser won't let me do that.... The one thing i have always hated about poser bone set up is the lack of ability to do knees and elbows properly... By the way the arms are comming out VERRY VERY nice ... once i work out the shoulders i'll have another screenie.

Yes..been there, done that, Mordikar..thats why it occured to me to ask :)Plate armour is definately a 'made to measure' affair..half an inch too long in parts, and it's un-wearable :)

Message edited on: 01/26/2006 22:44

Message edited on: 01/26/2006 22:51

Bloody shoulders ... I can't for the life of my find a good way to do a realistic shoulder... It just keeps coming out looking ... wrong to me. Cruised the galleries for a bit but all the shoulders i've seen in here are either really fakey looking, really fantasy, or would work well if made of leather... I guess it's just me ,and the way real metal shoulder armour works really can't be done in poser ... but still.

ok, after a couple of housr sleep this is what i came up with for the shoulders. I'm still not certain it's what i want .. but it IS a lot closer than what i was getting before.... Like I said i think the arms came out very nice. Now i'm headed back to be for more sleep.

Off the wall idea: is there any reason why a conforming item can't have extra bones/groups? Think of the thigh becoming the equivalent of a two-fingered hand, one finger being the rest of the leg and the other being the holder for the kneecap. There's techniques like ERC which would let the normal knee-joint movement control this extra bend. So the conformer mechanism drives the normal knee joint, while the extra bone moves at a slower rate. And that group, the rigid plate, would be set not to bend. All I can say is that it sounds plausible to me. But all I've rigged has been nice, simple, mechanical devices.

well i have no clue :) however posette doesn't have a normal knee joist. she has a thigh and a shin and the line between them runs right thru the knee. :( .. Even with just a knee joint if it was just 1 set of polygons wide i could at least parent a smart pro to it so the prop could be stationary and not bend up. Unformtunately i know less about rigging than you do. I normally use the cr2 for posette or her clothes to do make my cr2's.

Well i didn't get much time to work over the weekend. Started a new schedule at work that sucks and so i spendevery spare moment i had with my family .. :) This morning however i didmanage to finnish anothe piece of the armour ... Optional coif will be a conforming figure as well. Unfortunately, given the fact that i modled the shoulder pads first, i was having to try and fit the coif between the breast plate and the shoulder pads. So unless i can morph it, the coif will require the shoulder pads be in place beacuse the breastplate pokes thru in the shoulders. who knows maybe a magnet morph will help out.