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SKYLAB CHAT

Terre

Renowned
Sky, it looks like the horses have their heads lower and neck stretched forward when at a full gallop and held more erect in the turns.
 

skylab

Esteemed
Hey everyone...I'm bright-eyed and busy-tailed again...haha. Terre, funny you should mention that horse's neck. I wrestled with that for half an hour. I was using this picture as my main reference, and at close inspection, you realize there's a big difference in the photo reference from the "clay you're modeling". Harry's neck is thick and long, and no matter where I placed it, to me, it just didn't look right. I'm using the HH mustang, and hoping I don't run into trouble trying to apply the pose later to the default horse....so I had both issues in my mind, that is, boy, if it doesn't look right now, just imaging how wrong it will look on the default horse...haha. I'll keep messing with it, but I agree, it was a problem area. Dawn's legs were a bit long, but I run into that a lot. In the photo reference there's loosely an alignment, if you draw a line diagonally, beginning at the large part of the hat, nose, lady's chin, elbows, knees, and her feet. Dawn tends to be like a grasshopper...so bending her legs up more causes them to stick out of alignment, bending them down cases the legs to fall too low on the horse. For a personal render, the answer would be dwarf her down to normal proportions, but for posing, I never know when that drastic of an adjustment will screw up the overall project. I discovered an unexpected error when I moved to my laptop to work...the gallop poses went completely wonky, so I have no idea if it was the laptop, or the fact that the pose was being applied to the mustang, of it was a Poser 11 issue. I'll have to retest all the poses that I've created on Poser 11 to be sure they are working properly. If it is P11, I'll have to return to Poser 2014 to do pose work, which would be extremely disappointing, since I'd be back to not being able to see what I'm doing. I decided it was best to just get some rest, and tackle the problem later. In the meantime, I'm starting with a freshly created gallop pose for the HH mustang....in other words, working backwards, and hoping it will work for the default Harry.

By the way, here are the available settings for Harry's neck....the reach forward is like the Ford Mustang logo pose, pulls the head down and forward. But remember, the farther you pull Harry's head forward, the more it impacts Dawn, the grasshopper...haha...it's a long string of compromises. If I was doing pencil sketch, I could pitch all that over my shoulder, and just draw what I see, but we're working within the constraints of 3D models. Ideally, probably the best human model for this project, proportionally, would have been Roxie. Her default size would be nearly perfect. But for this project I wanted to feature Hivewire stuff, since they have been generously supporting western themes. Anyway, here are the neck settings:

HH neck.jpg
 

skylab

Esteemed
Okay, here's the before and after....in the second image, I made Harry's head slightly smaller, with a reach forward adjustment in the neck, and the most drastic change, making the neck thinner. These are the types of changes that may or may not work on the default Harry. You may as well prepare to get the Hivewire Mustang if things go all weird.

Before and after pics:

DAWN-BARREL-RACING-TEST.jpg


DAWN-BARREL-RACING-TEST-adjustment1.jpg
 

Terre

Renowned
I guess it's like most other things. When you change media you will have to accept come compromises. :)
The second looks closer so if you can make it work that will probably have to do.
Perhaps release both with a note about which works best with what version of Harry?
 

skylab

Esteemed
I'll go with the new adjusted version, if you think it's an improvement. I've raised the tail some, to make it more like the mustang logo. I also made a slight adjustment in the neck to get rid of an awkward bend just under the reins. Working on Dawn's limbs on the other side, and bent her forward a little to adapt to the changes in Harry...will post a pic soon. Am trying to eat my dinner also...not forgetting to eat this time :)
 

skylab

Esteemed
If there are other suggestions, now's the time to make them...so let's hear them, while I'm eating :)
 

Seliah (Childe of Fyre)

Running with the wolves.
CV-BEE
Contributing Artist
Skylab,

Something I found that works for me when making poses for Harry, is to use a combination of the pose morphs and manually adjusting the different sections of his head, neck, tail and mane by hand.

A caveat on that : If you adjust the mane or tail sections by hand, you will need to also distribute a pose that is mane-only or tail-only, as the manual adjustments of those body parts will not be saved when saving a "harry" pose. I found this out the hard way with the horse poses I have for Nataani... LOL

As far as applying the pose to other breeds... the user will need to adjust to compensate for the breed they want to use. There is no way around that. Stockier, thicker breeds will provide different spacing than the sleeker, thinner breeds and such. The end user will simply have to adjust the poses manually according to the breed/shapes they use for the horse and Dawn.
 

skylab

Esteemed
Thanks Seliah...I had a feeling that was the case. Folks are accustomed to default model poses from me, which is limiting creatively for me, but is less of a pain for them. However, this time, I guess I'll have to make the HH Mustang a requirement, since there is no other way to do western poses. I didn't have this problem with the Mil Horse as the basic necessary morphs were built into the default model, and the user could make any adjustments they desired without affecting the pose. Folks can always use the Mil Horse sets if they are uncomfortable with adjusting Harry.

Here's a pic with the latest tweaks...still have a long ways to go. The mane has gotten a bit out of control with the neck adjustments, and I've yet to fine tune Dawn's limbs on the left side.

DAWN-BARREL-RACING-TEST-adjustment2.jpg
 

skylab

Esteemed
Oh, I forgot to mention, I never include mane and tail poses for Harry, I leave that up to the user. My nerves can't deal with the mane flying all over the place...haha :) I just pat it down best I can for a promo render and move on :)
 

Seliah (Childe of Fyre)

Running with the wolves.
CV-BEE
Contributing Artist
Oh, I forgot to mention, I never include mane and tail poses for Harry, I leave that up to the user. My nerves can't deal with the mane flying all over the place...haha :) I just pat it down best I can for a promo render and move on :)

LOL, you are the opposite of me in that regard. ;) If I'm doing a pose that would have the mane flying all willy-nilly, I'm just not happy with it until I have the mane flying around. (Just ask Lorraine... I don't know how many times I re-made that silly mane pose on Nataani's #9 until we had it working....LOL)

Personally, I think many people use poses as just a starting point anyhow. It's a way to get them started, and then they adjust from there for what they want. To me, that's what poses are regardless of what figure or animal they are made for. They are very helpful, but they are just starting points to build on. :)

I like the way these are shaping up, though. It's coming along nicely.
 

skylab

Esteemed
That's the function of poses for me too, starters usually. However some users have gotten used to not only a perfect fit, but complete reference links to free products used when creating the sets...some won't google or search Rendo or ShareCG themselves, they wait for the info to be supplied.

The types of errors in the poses that I encountered on my laptop were beyond tweaking....the gallop pose caused Harry to almost fold in half, his front legs folded up under him and sticking through parts of the mesh. I can't release stuff like that, that's more than a need for a tweak. Unfortunately that's part of the woes of using morphs. I remember when we had a ERC version of Slon released to make posing his ears, neck and truck easier....and I eagerly used it for the next pose set I created, and I thought to apply the pose as a test to the default Slon before uploading, and the pose went wonky. That was my first experience with modified models. I've stuck to default models ever since. Even after the work I'm doing on this adjusted version of Harry, I'll be uneasy until it's tested on default Harry on a computer other than my main workstation. If it is limited to to HH Mustang, I may just do Mil Horse default equivalents, since I'd be back to dealing with Harry's delicate default legs and build, which doesn't satisfy western users.

I'm developing a theory about this morph pack deal. It goes something like: Release a western, stocky version of Harry, and an elegant, dressage build Harry. Same with Dawn, grasshopper Dawn for folks who want to do fashion art and whatever else people do with unclothed, pumped, everything jiggles, wiggles, and hits you in the face....haha....and then release normal Dawn, with average proportions for folks who do non-arousal art. It's no different than one model with a ga-zillion morph packs, but at least they would work with poses and content created for the specific model types. Same for the male models....if you announce you're creating a new male model, folks come out of the wood work, wanting yet another androgenous, gender neutral model with huge privates...then the body builders come stampeding in, wanting muscles in everything but his nose....when the average male is neither. Ever wonder why the DAZ males are so successful....because they are neither of those things, making them more useful, easier to create clothing for, and frankly more attractive. We need to learn from what works, instead of listening to a noisy minority on that one....but even so, a super-dooper, biggest privates you ever saw, with muscles that bulge everywhere version could be released for that crowd, and then a normal male model version, with detachable privates, for folks who like clothes on their models. This is basically what Poser does...they just don't spend the extra time to get the rigging and bends just right, nor focus on the facial features as much as folks have become accustomed to. They release raw materials type models with the expectation that the user will create their own character....but they're playing to a crowd who has become DAZ-zled in their expectations. So now we approach model creation like shanty shack building....add this, reduce that, and tack on something here and there with morph packs....and after we finally get it near right, a new model is released and we start the process all over again. Just some thoughts.
 
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skylab

Esteemed
One thing I forgot, could somebody test this on your system, using Harry default, and Harry Mustang if you have it. It's the horse pose as is so far. Here's what I'm getting with Harry default on my workstation...the pose is okay, though he has an elongated neck...haha. Also, when I saved the Mustang, here's what I checked in the save box, usually I leave this blank when doing defaults. Want to make sure I'm saving EULA-friendly information :)

Thanks to anybody who can help :)

HARRY DEFAULT.jpg


POSE MORPHS.jpg
 

Attachments

  • HIVEWIRE MUSTANG GALLOP TEST.zip
    19.3 KB · Views: 266

skylab

Esteemed
Thanks Miss B. I'll go offline now, and leave this in the hands of others to test...you're welcome to try if you don't mind. At least I'll know when I return to the project if this is going to work, or if I need to do something differently. Good night :)
 

skylab

Esteemed
I can see this is gonna be one of those nights where I have to circle the airport several times before I finally come in for a landing...haha. Can't turn off the busy mind. I looked at the gallop test pose on my laptop, applied it to the Hivewire Mustang successfully, and tweaked it a little in the backside with the saddle off...so here's the new test pose. Thanks for your help :)
 

Attachments

  • HIVEWIRE MUSTANG GALLOP.zip
    13.9 KB · Views: 219

Miss B

Drawing Life 1 Pixel at a Time
CV-BEE
I can see this is gonna be one of those nights where I have to circle the airport several times before I finally come in for a landing...haha.
Oh I know the name of that game, but I'm never provoked enough to get out of bed again. ~LOL~

As for testing, I don't have the mustang, or I would.
 
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