For any Star trek fan artists out there, you can now depict the Gorn as depicted in the classic episode "Arena" thanks in majority to Tony "XCalpro" Oliveira.  Some time ago, Tony was kind enough to share with me a "work in progress" of a Gorn head he had sculpted.  I puttered with it occasionally, tweaking it with Poser "magnets" to get it ever so slightly closer to the iconic Wah Chang design.  Tony requested I limit its distribution as he was hoping to eventually release a dedicated Gorn figure.  Alas, various real life concerns diverted his attentions to more important matters, so he placed that project on hold.  Also, the "WiP" was rather polygon intensive for what it was, some 60,000 polygons, denser than many commercial figures.

However, the other evening I had a breakthrough.  I imported my morphed .OBJ file into Hexagon and fumbled with the "decimation" tool.  Basically, that function reduces the number of polygons in a model by fusing them in regions of smooth topography into larger faces.  I had tried this in TrueSpace, but it averaged all the polygons, resulting in a nasty jaggy surface.  But Hex'fused polygons only in areas like the "forehead and the sides of the skull while maintaining faces in regions like the brows, lips, nostrils and spines so they held their shapes.  Even so, I was able to reduce the ploygon count by 75 percent, bringing 60K down to a more reasonabled 15K.  Viewed in wireframe, the model looks rather haphazard, but I used UV Mapper to "smooth" the crease angle to 120 degrees.

I told Tony of my experiments and asked if he would mind its distribution.  Since he had "shelved" his Gorn figure project until better times, he welcomed the idea.  This morning he uploaded the zip compressed prop to his general download section.

The zip has the standard Poser directory structure so the external .OBJ and the associated .PP2 prop should install to their proper locations.

Please read the instructions listed in the "read me" file.  The prop will load at a position more or less suited for the "average" Poser based figure, but adjustments will likewly be needed.  Use a prop like a torus or a tube to serve as a "collar" to hide the nasty gap that will no doubt exist between the prop and the figure's shoulders.  (That's why the actual costume had a collar, the mask simply sat upon the shoulders with a gap.  You'll just be making it that more authentic.)

The prop is geared for Poser 5+ because it employs procedural "nodes" to achieve the leathery skin and the iconic "segmented" eyes.  It also uses the "displacement" channel.  Sadly, DAZ studio won't recognize those features.  But it should be able to use the .OBJ file.  If any intrepid DAZ users work up some equivalent material settings, be sure to let Tony know.  He's set up s section of DAZ specific downloads so I'm sure he'd appreciate a DAZ friendly version.

To blend the look of the head and the body, just copy the material settings of "skin" and apply them to your base figure.

Reptilian hands and feet?  Well, you're kinda' on your own.  If you have Poser 8 or newer, the feet of the "Creech" are a great solution.  I think the creators finally made the figure free.

I'm sure someone will develop a more elegant solution, maybe a really kick-a$$ morph or a more cleanly modeled prop, but until that item arrives, hopefully this mesh will serve as a stop-gap.

Now, if someone would just model a reasonable recreation of the famous Vasquez rocks where "Arena" and several other Trek episodes were filmed, we'd have the complete package!

Sincerely,

Bill

Tempt the Hand of Fate and it'll give you the "finger"!