Hey Guys n Girls

Whats the best programme for building clothes, and figures for Poser7.
Bare in mind I use an Intel Mac, and OS 10.4.10

I really fancy having a go at it myself. Despite the amount of content out there.. there's always something not quite what I want. Know what I mean?

At moment a really nice guy from these forums is working on some stuff for me (an outfit for V4), but how hard can it be? And what do I need?

Cheers
Drky xxx

The best program is the one you feel most comfortable working with....I know people that can do great things with Wings, Blender and Anim8tor...and those three still confuse the heck of out me.

Then there's Lightwave, Hexagon, Silo, 3dsmax, Maya, and a slew of others I can't think of right now.

Your best bet would be download the free modelers and all the various demos out there and see which one works best for you and that you can afford. Find some tutorials and just experiment. Figure out the basics and anything is possible from there.

Once you get the hang of it, things become easier...but it can take some time to get to a point where you're making really good stuff. I started modeling 3 years ago....and while I've made some decent freebies in that time, I'm just now starting to feel like I know what I'm doing....and I'm still learning how to do it better. 

Quote - The best program is the one you feel most comfortable working with

That pretty much sums it up. If you have never done 'any' 3D modeling before, you should start with one of the freeware modelers Realmling just mentioned (Wings, Blender, Anim8or). Get to know what modeling is all about. Then if you feel you have the knack for it, you can look into buying a commercial app. But the free ones can still produce some top notch results in capable hands.

I've seen some great models built in Wings, Anim8or etc. by talented artists and some real trash done in Maya simply because the person using it didn't know squat about modeling in general.

Hi the "how hard can it be" made me smile. I went to collage to lean modeling, and seriously once you get the basics of what everything in the modeling program does, modeling can be as easy or as hard as you want to make it, mostly it can be very time consuming. Making the clothes that you make work in Poser cam be a REAL pain in the a**.  I made a bondage outfit for G2 Sydney, and it probably took me 30 - 40 hours of banging my head on the wall to get it to fit right, but that was the first clothing that I tried. I dont think the next one will be so bad now that I have some idea of what I need to do. I made a pair of thigh boots next and still havent gotten them to conform in anything but a standing pose. I see people here that seem to be able to crank out conforming clothes almost daily, and that does make me think that there must be a relativly easy way to go about it, that I have`nt stumbled on to yet. So good luck, modeling for me anyway is fun, gettig clothing to conform is still frustrating to do , but very satisfing once you finally see it work.

Most often it's not the program, it's the user behind the program that makes thigs happen.
Usually it takes several programs to create a piece. Main modelling program, and few supporting and converting applets.

Also, there seems to be as many program and applet combinations as there are modellers.

To create a piece one needs to get handy at subdivision modelling (or 3D modelling in general), UV mapping, texturing, and rigging for poser.
The more experience one has, the easier it gets, but even when you get pretty decent at it, it can be time consuming.

Without prior experience modeling in 3d or is extremely talented, creating quality conforming clothing pieces or characters for Poser is not what I would call easy. For someone with couple of years of 3d modeling and poser technical experience under their belt, it is much easier.

Photoshop, Photoshop, and more Photoshop(with Matmatic)

On that last post by Angelouscultry,,, huh! ???

The rest of you guys many thanks. I'm really pleased I post here before jumping in at the deep end. So often I think, "yeah i can do that" and then spend ££££s finding out it aint that easy after all.

I didnt mean to in any way demean the obvious skill required in modelling. I guess its like the deep intricasies of Photoshop, one practiced and and learnt... its maybe just incremental steps to perfection after that.

Saying all that. I still fancy a go at V4s wardrobe myself.  I guess what I wanted to know was of the mid to high end packages available which was best for the job.  What do other Poser content creators use?   Then again, with Poser Pro just announced by e-frontier, its supposed to make character and content easier and all under one roof as it were. Maybe that is the road I need to go down.

Ahhhhh decisions, decisions.  Life is never simple. But you guys have certrainly pointed me in the right direction. Many thanks

Drky xxx

Quote - Photoshop, Photoshop, and more Photoshop(with Matmatic)

So a few open instances of Photoshop and Matmatic (is there a photoshop version now?) are all you need to model clothes???  In the context of the original posters question, your post was just as useful as mine here!!! 

And to add something in line with the original question, I started my 3D experience with Truespace way back in early 90's...  it was really easy to start modelling in.  I've since moved to MAX but my level of skill is 100% box modelling so I've never tried clothes or anything organic.  A program that does nurbs or even metaballs can be good to start out it as it allows you to sort of sculpt your model from primative shapes and meld them all together to make (hopefully) what you envisioned. 

Gerard

Quote -   my level of skill is 100% box modelling so I've never tried clothes or anything organic.  

???? Box modeling is a perfectly valid method of doing organics. (Using Subdivision Surfaces.)

Quote - > Quote -   my level of skill is 100% box modelling so I've never tried clothes or anything organic.  

???? Box modeling is a perfectly valid method of doing organics. (Using Subdivision Surfaces.)

Really???  Then I suck WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more than I thought I did!!!!!  Total hobby user...  buying MAX was a fairly wastelul endevour as I never used it for what I meant to...  trying to make up for that now though....  gonna dig out some tuts & books on it now...... 

THanks for the heads up there!!!!!

Gerard

Quote -  Really???  Then I suck WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more than I thought I did!!!!!  Total hobby user...  buying MAX was a fairly wastelul endevour as I never used it for what I meant to...  trying to make up for that now though....  gonna dig out some tuts & books on it now...... 

THanks for the heads up there!!!!!

Certainly welcome - and that doesn't necessarily mean you "suck" at modeling. Just unaware of certain aspects. (We, meaning all of us,  never stop learning new things in some capacity.)

I hope I'm not about to go on, here, about photoshop; when you guys do'nt even like the idea.  Your responses kinda have me baffled, but mayber that's how I made you feel.  So, let's reiterate.

All of the Female(V3) clothing in all of these links, and through my gallery, is actually her skin(surface.)  There is no additional Geometry from clothing, all is done from the Material Room(even the Matmatic Chainmail stuff,) with V3's "Skin..." Material Zones, and sets of Black and White Transparency/Displacemnt Maps that I made in Photoshop.  I ca'nt just post theMaps, becasue I may like to sell these, but with enough interest Id wet your whistle.

Cothing is a really tough hurdle; be it with additional geometry, or from a Figures UV Map.  With an endless possibility of body shapes you almost always need to create or recreate an outfit just suit(no pun intended) your character very well.

This was especially true for my V3 figure.  I used alot of many Musle morphs that most other Creators hardly use at all.  Then I used a lot of magnets that hardly anybody has(Wymmaster's.)  And then I added several of my own magents  I spent so much time detailing her body that trying on different vendors clothes was a let down.  EIther the clothes did'nt fit, because there was always Poke; or the clothes then hid all of the work I'd done to her Body.

The solution wasto develop a skin tight clothing set, that could be manipulated with Bump and Dissplacement, and Materials..  Basically, to get started; I needed to Layer V3's UV Map, over her skin texture, make it somewhat Transparent, and then start painting on her texture map..

This works nice, but then it has limits; I could'nt switch the skin texture if I painted directly on it, and if the clothing was painted on in color using my efforts to drive the DIssplacement and/or Bump, would'nt fly.

So, what I did was create a third Photoshop Layer, between the UV, and Map.  On this layer I painted my clothes on, in white, and filled the rest in with black.  This made a function V3 Transparency, and DIssplacement Maps.

2ndSKin.exe is a program that you can load a figure into, and what it will do is export an almost exact duplicate of your figure(with material zone, joints etc) except that the new figure is a skin's thickness larger.  The idea is to Conform this new figure over your original figure, then give it a fabric material, apply the the Transparency Map you'd Map, and then plug that map into the DIssplacement node s well.

2nd SKin is really nice, but then I realized this layering of skins could be done right in the Material room, with the Blender node(See my first link)

My second link was just anotehr outfit I made with Photoshop, and the Material Room.

The third link....I'd asked bagginsbill(The author of Matmatic) if he had a chainmail script(matmatic material,) so I could make an Extra Halos line of clothing for my Angel.  After he wrote the script, and then I tweaked the rings to my Size, and thicknes; I just inserted my V3 Transparency nodes between his Chanmail Material Nodes, and the PoserSurface node of my V3, with the technique of my first link. Then the Transparency Map stoped the ChainmailMaterial from covering her whole body, and made it just over the areas I wanted clothed.

Just like Geometry Based Clothes, UV based clothes do'nt always fit other characters, of the same figure.  If you look in my second link you'll see the same Texture, and Transparency Maps applied to two different V3s.  THe less endowed V3 is the figure I made the suit for(A client's.)  This is why it looks to fit her a little better, than when I applied it to my V3.

So either way you're looking a recreation, but at least from Photoshop you're never covering anything up!

For example:

You're not limited to just one Transparency Map, mind you.  For this image I'd prepared 2; one for a White Lace material, and then another for the Gold Trim.  But just because I stopped at two Transparency Maps does'nt mean there is any limit; you can have as many sections of a Figure's skin squared off, and with a seperate Material/Dissplacement as you want!

Doing clothing ala clothim and clother as Angelouscuitry states can work out for some types of clothing. Of course, for cinderella skirts and so on, it is not that feasible.

But my main question here is:

What are the two spikes -er- thingies below the feet in the angel picture?

Renderosity has a limit of one gallery upload per day.  I've been busy updating my gallery each day this week, and will remain busy for several more days.  Within a week or so, though, I'll have this image(Which is just linked from my gallery) touched up somewhat!

I just thought it was a good example of how you can make layers of Skin, with the Material Room, and Photoshop.

The Sky is actually a spherical sky dome prop(which is where the reflections come into play), by Ajax; but it's not a sphere on the bottom half.  The illusion of the bottom half of the sky is actually generated by a Mirror Material, that I applied to  the sky dome's ground plane.  The spikies are the reflection of her heels, becasue I either did'nt have either the YTrans of her and the camera right, r I udged the cameras xRoate by acident.

Another reason this image is destined to be reuploaded or deleted, and reuploaded.  I accidentally left my Max. Texture Size at 1024, instead of 4048...