What application is best for making character graphics?
I am having seriously big trouble in drawing my characters so has anyone any tips?
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Pilky
(url="http://"http://www.mcubed.cjb.net")M cubed homepage(/url)
Cheesiest film line of all time "Flash I love you but we only have 14 hours to save the earth" from Flash Gorden
Poser is speciffically geared towards making people, and therefore is the best app for the job. Poser 4 is out now, but is a Classic app, a Carbon version, Poser 5, will be out very soon.
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hardkor_games) HardKOR Games, my Coldstone
Game Site!
If you are creating with poser, remember to check the camera angle (top down direction).
Assuming you use a 3d program to create your scenery, the top dwon angle of the camera you use in poser has to match the angle you use while rendering your scenery.
About 50 or 60 degrees will do. 40 could also be used.
Iff you render your character and you use an 8 directional animation in coldstone you need to render:
0 (facing you = south) 45 (SW) 90 (W) 135 (NW) 180 (N) 225 (NE) 270 (E) 315 (SE)
When inserting the resulting images in CS, you can best drop them one by one in the animation window from the finder, in the order you need to put them there. (North, North East etc, if i remember correctly). If you simply grab them all and drop them all, they will be inserted in a very random order.
An animation can be 8 frames long for example to give a smooth effect. You could use more, but that will increase loading times (especially when using a large image as i do). I believe POG uses about 6 frames. Using less will probably result in a less smooth animation.
Allways use an even number, otherwise you might end with a strange animation with 4 frames for the right leg and 5 for the left (did that once)
Make sure that the first frame of your anim is a standing pose - taken using the same camera position and scale.
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A modeling software application program is what you would need, like Ray Dream Studio 5. You would create your models there and transfer them into Poser. Poser takes more than RDS5, but I don't remember what. But what Poser takes is limited.
That is, if you want to, of course. This is just what works for me.
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-- Debra
Danillitphil Productions
(url="http://"http://www.danillitphil.com/graphics/index.html")www.danillitphil.com(/url)
Quote
Originally posted by Gyptal-IV:
**hey, poser sounds quite powerfull, but, what if i dont want to make neither people nor animals, but saay, goblins ?
**
You could do two things:
- deform a poser character of - lets say - a child to the desired proportions. and then work on his face to make him look more like a goblin. Youprobably want a big nose and ears. That could be a problem there, because I believe ears and most noses can not be deformed sepeerately in poser 4. Poser 5 iss probably a bit better.
- deform a poser character, export the head as .obj or .dxf (or any of the other formats). Import it into a 3d app, deform it the way you want it (most 3d apps have some sort of magnet to stretch certain elements). Import the head as a prop and position it over the head of your character. Choose 'replace body part with prop' from the object menu.
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what apps does poser accept models from?
Also does it atomatically add IK to models?
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Pilky
(url="http://"http://www.mcubed.cjb.net")M cubed homepage(/url)
Cheesiest film line of all time "Flash I love you but we only have 14 hours to save the earth" from Flash Gorden
it accepts dxf, 3ds, dmf, Wavefront object. I think Wavefront Obj is the best. So any app who does that is ok. Carrara, Lightwave, etc But i guess most apps doe at least dxf.
Unfortunately i do not know what you mean by your last remark, sorry. 
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Quote
Originally posted by Pilky:
**Also does it atomatically add IK to models?
**
I doubt it - adding IK (inverse kinematics) to a model is a very complex task, as you undoubtedly know if you've ever tried it yourself. I don't see how a piece of software could be "smart" enough to do even a half-decent job.
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'You can either be on the stage, just a performer, just going through the lines...or you can be outside it, and know how the script works, where the scenery hangs, and where the trapdoors are. Isn't that better?'
-- T. Pratchett
Poser does inverse kinematics to the model. Seems fine to me, but I'm not an expert.
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-- Debra
Danillitphil Productions
(url="http://"http://www.danillitphil.com/graphics/index.html")www.danillitphil.com(/url)
Quote
Originally posted by Debra:
**Poser does inverse kinematics to the model. Seems fine to me, but I'm not an expert.
**
If you import a model or mesh from another application, Poser automatically adds IK to it?! Do I understand you correctly?
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'You can either be on the stage, just a performer, just going through the lines...or you can be outside it, and know how the script works, where the scenery hangs, and where the trapdoors are. Isn't that better?'
-- T. Pratchett
I am new to Coldstone, but am not new to Poser. This is what I know about the proggi after several years of use...
Poser can do inverse kinematics on any figure created within the app. This means using the posette figures, or installing Victoria or Michael from Daz. Those models are already constructed with the necessary "bones" to make inverse kinematics possible.
If you import a figure into poser, like say a dxf, I believe it is possible to make IK work with it, but you have to take the model into another often overlooked section of poser to add the bones yourself.
As for the IK quality, its not absolutely picture perfect representation of a human walking, but then so far I have never seen a truly perfect recreation of human movement in CG. It does a fair job, good enough for game animation at least...
My two cents...
- Gryff
