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seahorse for Harry

F

FreyrStrongart

Brilliant
Contributing Artist
I think it's time to show what I have been working on for Harry the seahorse. The set consists of two tails, one with side flippers, one without, two types of mane, two boned, one quick and dirty conforming, two sets of add- ons for the forelegs, one flippers, the other webbed feet instead of hooves. I put all the uvs on one sheet, but due to the necessity to have the mesh work with the horsebody, there is a lot of wasted space on the texture sheet.

In the pipeline are textures for a mandarin fish and a seadragon.

Currently I'm working on getting the seahorse into Poser. The DAZ version is basically finished.

FS_SH_Tail.tip.png


FS_SH_Tail_no_flippers.tip.png


FS_SH_Kelpmane.tip.png


FS_SH_Gills.tip.png


FS_SH_Webbed_feet.tip.png


FS_SH_Mane_boned.tip.png


FS_SH_Frontflippers.tip.png


kelpmane1.png
 
Dreamer

Dreamer

Dream Weaver Designs
Oh I love this! So glad you are looking at doing it for poser too, I hope you can as I would love to do some addon textures for it :)
 
Miss B

Miss B

Drawing Life 1 Pixel at a Time
CV-BEE
Oh, I hope you're successful in getting it into Poser, as that would be a great addition to a whole lot of Runtimes. ;)
 
Miss B

Miss B

Drawing Life 1 Pixel at a Time
CV-BEE
That may happen down the road Earl, and I could be wrong, but I think he wants to get more "new" characters in the store before he works on add-ons for already established characters.
 
StudioMartillo

StudioMartillo

Engaged
Very nice. So creative!
There is a way to replace body parts with props in Poser.
I'm not familiar with the DS tool that puts your extensions on the figure so I can only guess how they're made.
There have been some other hybrid characters posted not so long ago.
Comical but these have a great appeal.
In Poser, with Python you can use a method I think is called SetParentActor().
And when you do that, you have to do it on a part of a figure I think, it interrupts the hierarchy.
Plugs things together at the actor you designate, and knocks off the rest of the children.
Not like SetParent().
Haven't played with it but maybe that could be used.
Anyway, very cool, I like it.
 
F

FreyrStrongart

Brilliant
Contributing Artist
StudioMartillo said:
Very nice. So creative!
There is a way to replace body parts with props in Poser.
I'm not familiar with the DS tool that puts your extensions on the figure so I can only guess how they're made.
There have been some other hybrid characters posted not so long ago.
Comical but these have a great appeal.
In Poser, with Python you can use a method I think is called SetParentActor().
And when you do that, you have to do it on a part of a figure I think, it interrupts the hierarchy.
Plugs things together at the actor you designate, and knocks off the rest of the children.
Not like SetParent().
Haven't played with it but maybe that could be used.
Anyway, very cool, I like it.
Click to expand...
Hm... sounds interesting. Going to have a look at it. Since I have to make my way through the tutorials I will keep an eye on this, see if it pops up.
 
Faery_Light

Faery_Light

Dances with Bees
Contributing Artist
If the tails and the foot (fin-like) part are props, in Poser you can swap parts and parent them.
I have converted from and to DS and Poser if there is a cr2 file in Poser or a prop or object in DS.
My main problem is remembering the steps as I do tend to forget easy now. :laugh:
 
F

FreyrStrongart

Brilliant
Contributing Artist
Faery_Light said:
If the tails and the foot (fin-like) part are props, in Poser you can swap parts and parent them.
I have converted from and to DS and Poser if there is a cr2 file in Poser or a prop or object in DS.
My main problem is remembering the steps as I do tend to forget easy now. :laugh:
Click to expand...
it's supposed to be conforming... but Poser REALLY doesn't like to conform them. When I try to fit the fins to Harry in poser they explode. Possibly Harry has different bones in Poser? Does anyone know? in that case I will have to redo the whole rigging ... Can't say I'm looking forward to that! I just deleted by mistake my kelpmane and had to re-rig the whole thing! three hours work for - stupidity.
 
F

FreyrStrongart

Brilliant
Contributing Artist
Dreamer said:
Oh I love this! So glad you are looking at doing it for poser too, I hope you can as I would love to do some addon textures for it :)
Click to expand...
good luck with that one :p. You'll need to paint on the full set, trying to texture it in the templates won't work, I tried and it was impossible if you want to have the pattern run from the addon to the horsebody. I had to use C4D to paint across the seams and had to re-do the uvs to get everything on the (more or less) same scale. I tried Blacksmith but coudn't figure out how to use it as it didn't want to have the overlapping textures. In C4D I cut off the parts of the mesh from Harry that would be covered by the addons (rather made it invisible) so that worked ok.
 
F

FreyrStrongart

Brilliant
Contributing Artist
Faery_Light said:
Hmmm, that happens to me on items now and then so instead of conforming I just parent.
Click to expand...
The problem is that you then need to duplicate the pose to the parented item. It's a work around, but not really customer friendly and always has the risk that the seams are visible if things are not 100percent.
 
Dreamer

Dreamer

Dream Weaver Designs
FreyrStrongart said:
good luck with that one :p. You'll need to paint on the full set, trying to texture it in the templates won't work, I tried and it was impossible if you want to have the pattern run from the addon to the horsebody. I had to use C4D to paint across the seams and had to re-do the uvs to get everything on the (more or less) same scale. I tried Blacksmith but coudn't figure out how to use it as it didn't want to have the overlapping textures. In C4D I cut off the parts of the mesh from Harry that would be covered by the addons (rather made it invisible) so that worked ok.
Click to expand...
No worse than some of the things I have textured then ;) I still want to give it a go lol.
Wish I could offer some help with the conforming issues but that is a bit above me, though I did just think of one thing that could cause the explosions. Have a look at your group names, if the ones that are meant to match up with Harry don't have the exact same name, spelling, capitalization etc, poser will have a fit so that could be it. I think its the internal names you have to match but not sure.
 
StudioMartillo

StudioMartillo

Engaged
Dreamer said:
I think its the internal names you have to match.
Click to expand...
Right!

Hope I'm not being a dweeb here, but I kind of got fascinated with what you're doing.
For the mane, it seems like it could be conforming to the horse.
For the tail, it would almost be impossible.
There have to be matching, and very closely located polygon groups.
So for the mane: neck, neck1, neck2 etc.
But you don't want it rigged in any way.
Just have those properly named polygon groups, and the geometry right where it goes.
Then you load the HiveWire Horse, and you load the mane prop that is going to be rigged and go into the fitting room.
Set up a fitting session, maybe call it dodamane , whatever.
For Object select Props>'themaneprop', for Goal select the horse. Click OK
Then, don't initiate any of the fitting procedures.
Just click on the 'Create Figure' button.
You then are prompted to give it a figure name.
Name the mane figure and click OK.
You are then prompted to select body parts.
So first click on 'body' which knocks everything off.
Then, click whatever body part (polygon group) that the mane ends at.
Maybe it's the head.
Go back to the Pose room, and you're done.
Just delete the mane Prop from the scene and save the mane figure to your Poser Figure Library Seahorse Folder,
or what ever it is.
Now you should have a Mane Figure that will conform to the Horse, no problem.
Works for me anyway. Try it, you'll buy it.
The tail? I need to know more about it to play with the SetParentActor() idea.
You have probably already said.
OK, I'll review the thread, see what I can find out, make a similar piece and play with some scripting.
Oh yeah.
The Poser version of HiveWire Horse is Weight Mapped and maybe the DS version is not 'cause I think I've heard that DS does not support Weight Mapping.
Anybody know if that's true?
 
F

FreyrStrongart

Brilliant
Contributing Artist
StudioMartillo said:
Right!

Hope I'm not being a dweeb here, but I kind of got fascinated with what you're doing.
For the mane, it seems like it could be conforming to the horse.
For the tail, it would almost be impossible.
There have to be matching, and very closely located polygon groups.
So for the mane: neck, neck1, neck2 etc.
But you don't want it rigged in any way.
Just have those properly named polygon groups, and the geometry right where it goes.
Then you load the HiveWire Horse, and you load the mane prop that is going to be rigged and go into the fitting room.
Set up a fitting session, maybe call it dodamane , whatever.
For Object select Props>'themaneprop', for Goal select the horse. Click OK
Then, don't initiate any of the fitting procedures.
Just click on the 'Create Figure' button.
You then are prompted to give it a figure name.
Name the mane figure and click OK.
You are then prompted to select body parts.
So first click on 'body' which knocks everything off.
Then, click whatever body part (polygon group) that the mane ends at.
Maybe it's the head.
Go back to the Pose room, and you're done.
Just delete the mane Prop from the scene and save the mane figure to your Poser Figure Library Seahorse Folder,
or what ever it is.
Now you should have a Mane Figure that will conform to the Horse, no problem.
Works for me anyway. Try it, you'll buy it.
The tail? I need to know more about it to play with the SetParentActor() idea.
You have probably already said.
OK, I'll review the thread, see what I can find out, make a similar piece and play with some scripting.
Oh yeah.
The Poser version of HiveWire Horse is Weight Mapped and maybe the DS version is not 'cause I think I've heard that DS does not support Weight Mapping.
Anybody know if that's true?
Click to expand...
That worked as far as it went... because the mane has regions that branch to the side of the neck regions they don't get the same weightmaps so to make the whole thing work extensive weightmap painting is needed to make it even remotely acceptable. And I find Poser terribly clunky, at least at the moment. I don't seem to have figured out the right way to work quickly. And having three weightmaps for a simple element is one heck of a bother! Isn't there a way to have one single weightmap to accomodate all movements? my bodythingies aren't that complicated and three weightmaps is too complicated for an almost rigid thing... I also miss a filling tool to just give everything within a selection the same weight. all that fiddling with vertexes and fall offs and stuff is much too complicated for what I need with my manes. At the moment I am mainly frustrated because DAZ seems so much easier to use.
 
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