These are test renders of the rebuilt Ghostbuster proton pack and jumpsuit.  The geometry is leaner and n-gons have been removed, and the old "box" UV mapping has been replaced by unwrapping, so that the texture surface is contiguous with only a minimum of discreetly placed UV seams.

     The jumpsuit fits snugly and survives fairly radical posing.  The suit is partially dynamic, partially constrained.  The cargo pocket flaps need better definition (particularly the ones over her derriere).  I may also make a conforming version.

     The luminous parts of the pack have unseen IDL emitters so that those parts cast light.  The gun cable is "EZ-posed" using Phil Cooke's All Tied Up.  I made an EZ-posed Special effects beam (actually with a second conformed beam serving as the unseen IDL emitter) for the gun, but with 128 sections it bogged the computer down terribly.  So, I'll make a couple of variants of the beam, but as Props (maybe a morph or two would be feasible, in lieu of EZ-posed rigging).

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Faeryl face & body morph for Aiko 3 by Thorne

Kirite' hair by Fabiana (FK Designs)

ghost prop by TrekkieGrrrl

Cool!

I have a quick question about your EZPose set up using 'all tied up'. Did you rig the beam yourself and then apply the script to add the EZPose dials or did you do the whole rigging process with the scripts? The reason I asked is that I have ATU but have had mixed results with the resulting .cr2 from original model when I run the script to do the whole process. The problem being inconsistent, uneven groups for each bone being created by the script which results in tearing of the mesh at part seams when the figure is posed (not being a result of insufficient polys). Kind of like the scattershot results of auto-grouping... could probably be fixed by regrouping polys to each bone for cleanup I guess.

Anyway I'm working on some poseable antenna figures right now and the models are done, grouped, UV'd, and ready for rigging and after the rigging and joint adjustments are done I would like to add EP to the figures using ATU, which has the option of adding EP dials to an existing figure (as long as the figure is a straight tentacle or tail-like figure). I assume that I won't have the previous problem with ATU as I'm doing all of the rigging and grouping myself and simply using ATU as a means to add the ERC to the figure (as I am a Mac user I can't use Cr2edit or EZPose underground to add EPDials and have to rely on PoserPython for the task).

(I've contacted PhilC about this but there seems to be some mixup and he's not recieved my example meshes that I e-mailed him and I don't really feel like playing e-mail tag over this.)

Any thoughts or observations about your experiences with ATU? I apologize for the OT but you seem to be pretty helpful to folks here on the forum so I figured I'd ask. In any case, damned nice work on the ghostbusters themed attire and accessories!

     The beam was rigged solely with ATU.  I had to make two beam figures, one which would show on camera and an unseen IDL emitter.  The emitter beam was conformed to the visible beam.  Each figure had 128 sections.

     My experience has been that you can only use a modest number of sections (the gun cable has 32), or the figure will hog system resources and make Poser respond very slowly.

Very cool! :)

So none of the problems that I mentioned? Ah well, the figures I'm working on only have about 15 or so bones so I'm not really worried about the resources issue... Just can't seem to figure out why ATU doesn't seem to work for me properly even though I've done countless tests with it and followed the documenatation to the letter. Hopefully better results with using it to just add ERC. Thanks for your reply and again nice work.

Well, I haven't had any spiky distortions from the models rigged with ATU, although the old Ghostbuster jumpsuit suffered from spikiness and it was auto-rigged with OBJ-CR2.  I'm hoping the new jumpsuit will fare better, since it has space between the thighs at the crotch.  Then again, the old jumpsuit even produced spikes (upon posing) at the calf area.

     I did notice -with some irritation- that the ATU-rigged beam had lots of new UV seams in weird places.  The concentric seams I could understand -if not like- but why did new UV seams appear along lengthwise edges?   Puzzling.

     You should be fine with a few 15-section pieces.  My beam assembly was two 128-section figures, one conformed to the other.

Yeah, the body part groups that it creates are pretty sloppy, think that's why the tears in the mesh are occuring. I'll be doing some more experimenting with it in combination with pre-rigged and pre-grouped figures/models. Crossing fingers.

I remember BionicRooster commenting that some really long lengths of chain (50') that he created with ATU caused some serious lag problems in Poser...

You can check gbfans.com for reference of the actual gear.

We actually have uniforms and gear in real life for costumed events.

Quote - I remember BionicRooster commenting that some really long lengths of chain (50') that he created with ATU caused some serious lag problems in Poser...

It's not the length that slows Poser down, it's the 300 bones that does it :o)

Bruce - stunning work as ever!

     Thank you, Monkeycloud and MrSparky!  ^^

(Gareee) 

Quote -   *You can check gbfans.com for reference of the actual gear.**We actually have uniforms and gear in real life for costumed events. *

     Thanks, Gareee;  I downloaded their reference images.  I can see discrepancies in my model, but I was working from just a few screen captures when I modeled it.

     I noticed that the aura wasn't showing for the beam, and that the IDL illumination was stronger than I expected.  Turns out I had switched the emitter and aura meshes.  Had to go back about six production steps and re-assign the meshes.  I also didn't like the material;  the beam didn't look "streamy" enough.  Here is the revision (the jumpsuit cloth material still needs work):

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Faeryl face & body morph (for Aiko 3) by Thorne

Kirite' hair by FK Designs (Fabiana)

ghost by TrekkieGrrrl