This is my first LH attempt, now that I've managed to figure some stuff out with Poser. I'm doing Princess Garnet (a.k.a Dagger) from Final Fantasy IX as the leader for my Alexandria civ. The BG image I'm using is from the interior of Alexandria castle in FF IX, and is courtesey of ffonline.com.

Preview is below. Any comments/Poser help would be appreciated :)

I say raise the collars and lower the shoulders.

just broaden her shoulders a bit. And make her breasts a tad smaller (currently she looks like a teenage-boy's impression of a woman groucho :D )

Other than that, she looks nice :thumbsup: (especially her hair is great)

just broaden her shoulders a bit. And make her breasts a tad smaller (currently she looks like a teenage-boy's impression of a woman groucho :D )

Other than that, she looks nice :thumbsup: (especially her hair is great)

Aaglo, have you ever played any of the FF series of games? I guarantee that that the randy Japanese guys who program that series could probably teach Ghenghisfarb and Frenchman a thing or two about women with errrm... robust proportions (you know what I mean :blush: ). Garnet, however is one of the relative amomolies in the series (i.e. a more normal proportioned girl).

That's one of the reasons I asked for some Poser help. Right now I only understand about half of what I'm doing, and I haven't figured out how to reduce her bust size without making the rest of her chest too narrow (an making her look like a scarecrow). Also, the model is almost done, but not quite. I'm going to try finding/making a summoner's rod for her, so that when she's happy, the rod will be held accross the bottom of the picture, and when she's angry, she has the rod in position to start summoning Bahamut or casting Holy on your sorry butt. Or something to that effect.

Again, if any of the more experienced leaderhead creators (R8fxt, Unexisted, CivArmy s, Frenchman, etc) could give me some help with this, it would be much appreciated. I'm looking for a release date sometime within the next month (if I get my new ZIP drive and my internet service decides to allow me to use the file upload system).

Again, thanks for the comments and help. BTW, should I keep her tiara as is or look for one with a thicker chain that's easier to see?

As I said, I think you should raise the collars and bend the shoulders... I'm using Poser terms for that since, for some reason, shoulders refers to upper arms and the collars encompass what we consider shoulders.

She won't look nearly as weak in the shoulder area if you adjust this.

The best way to do it is to adjust the dials in the Properties window rather than doing it visually by hand.

In game, Garnet always wore Orange. The White dress makes her look like Renoe from Final Fantasy 8....no offense.

Hello Hikaro Takayama !!

Your leader looks good ... I'm not sure I have understood your problem ... But what I can say is that you should try to adjust the clothe with the 100% size adjsutment, normally it will adjust the clothe on the body ... For the rod, my advice is to make it in a second file... To save your finished rod under a .OBJ file and to add this .OBJ file to this leader ... After you adjust the rod to the hand and you declare the hand leader from the rod in the hierarchy editor ...
I'm not sure I'm clear ...

In game, Garnet always wore Orange. The White dress makes her look like Renoe from Final Fantasy 8....no offense.

Actually, she wore a dress similar to this when attending formal court functions (and for her coronation) If you'd remember correctly. That's why I chose this outfit. I don't think she'd be entertaining dignataries in her adventuring outfit, so no offense taken.

DPII: Thanks for the advice on her shoulders and such. I'm going to see if I can perform a successful bust reduction operation tomorrow (unless you or someone else who's had more experience with Poser could tell me how I can do that without messing everything up).

Dont mean to sound dead sarcastic or anything but...

Leaderheads are called leaderHEADS for a reason.

IE they are of the leaders HEAD.

Just do her head/shoulders - that way you dont have to worry about her boobs.

My apologys...Its been awile since I played FF9, so my memory is alittle foggy.... :crazyeye:

I'd say that if this was meant to fit in with the the other Civ leaderheads, it'd be a problem. But I think a leaderhead can pretty much be anything, and so as long as it fits in with the other leaderheads to be featured in the scenario, it's fine.

Well, so far the only custom leader heads I have are Frenchman's Rikku (which he graciously did for me) and Embryodead's High-elf. This leaderhead should fall somwhere in between those two on how much of the body is actually shown. Personally, I like Frenchman's style, since it allows for more "charachter" in your leaderheads (i.e. prepping to cast holy when mad :D). I haven't had the time to mess with it yet. I used the few hours of my meager free time to finish up the Makou Cannon unit (which had a higher priority on my to do list). Now that the cannon's finished, I'll see about making a few adjustments and maybe an alternate version (in case any body would prefer to have her in her adventuring outfit as opposed to formal court dress. Once I get that done, I'll post a picture of both alternatives and let you guys vote on it. In the meantime, I got a Makou Cannon to upload....

Well, here's the latest update on the leaderhead progress. I couldn't come up with any outfit even remotely resembling her adventuring gear, but I did (ahem) adjust her proportions, and I changed her dress to a robin egg blue. I also built an object that is a fiarly good fascimilie of one of her summoner's rods, but i haven't incorperated it yet. I'm posting a before and after picture for comparisson.

Dom Pedro, I tried to do what you said, but there isn't any control for xyz translation of the collars or shoulders. All I can do is taper and scale, and after messing around with that a bit, and not getting any kind of good results, I set them back to their original setting. Anyways, here's the preview of the new outfit and the Mage rod.

Looks great, Hikaro!

However, the ceiling behind her dark hair could be very slightly less dark to pronounce her hair. Anyway, great work, and I cannot wait to get the final version (I take it that she can also smile?).

Looks great, Hikaro!

However, the ceiling behind her dark hair could be very slightly less dark to pronounce her hair. Anyway, great work, and I cannot wait to get the final version (I take it that she can also smile?).

I'll have to see about adjusting the contrast on the background pic to try and lighten it up a bit. Yes, she will be able to smile when I get the animations done.

I'll have to see about adjusting the contrast on the background pic to try and lighten it up a bit. Yes, she will be able to smile when I get the animations done.

She looks good Hikaro Takayama ... and the rod too ...

Well, here's the latest update. I finally figured out how to add the staff, and get her hand around it. I also set the staff under the Right Hand in the heirarch, so that when the hand moves, the staff also moves. I should be ready to begin animating soon. First, I'll need to go to the ol' tutorial forum, and and walk through the process step by step (I'm thinking it might be a good idea to download the whole thread and edit it into one easy to read word document, which I'll make available later). Of course, until my next port visit (which I have no clue when it is) to gain access to an internet cafe to upload this when I'm done (the ship's internet is way too slow to use the file uploads feature).

Frenchman, thanks for all the compliments and support. You were one of the inspirations for me to try making my own leaderhead (well, that and after making two units I figured that making a single era leaderhead wouldn't be too bad...).

Well, here's the final preview. I'll start working on the animation within the next few days.

Hikaro, listen to Dom Pedro ;) His remark was very accurate. The pose is very unnatural, I'd say quite impossible for a human. Raise the collars back to 0, and bend the shoulders. That's how human's bones behave.

Other things:
- boobies look somewhat strange... maybe it's the dress
- get Victoria, at least version 2.0 if you can. it's 10x better model than Poser4 default one, and has plenty of clothing and props both free and commercial

Well, here's the latest update. I finally figured out how to add the staff, and get her hand around it. I also set the staff under the Right Hand in the heirarch, so that when the hand moves, the staff also moves. I should be ready to begin animating soon. First, I'll need to go to the ol' tutorial forum, and and walk through the process step by step (I'm thinking it might be a good idea to download the whole thread and edit it into one easy to read word document, which I'll make available later). Of course, until my next port visit (which I have no clue when it is) to gain access to an internet cafe to upload this when I'm done (the ship's internet is way too slow to use the file uploads feature).

Frenchman, thanks for all the compliments and support. You were one of the inspirations for me to try making my own leaderhead (well, that and after making two units I figured that making a single era leaderhead wouldn't be too bad...).

Well, here's the final preview. I'll start working on the animation within the next few days.

Hello Hikaro Takayama,

Because I know how it's difficult to create a good leader with the classic Poser 4 model, I say that your leader works good... It's right that there is something strange in the clothe ...But I think you can correct this ... The staff you created totally looks good too . I like the "leaderbody", I suggest we keep the name, because like you said, we can put more originality in the leaders, add weapons, create moves and hands attitudes ...It's clear that a Victoria model is an easier way to obtain a more realistic leader...but it costs money... Even if you take a Victoria model , I hope you will continue to add originality and creativity in this forum ( I'm thinking to your great units and wonders too...)... :goodjob:

Hikaro, listen to Dom Pedro ;) His remark was very accurate. The pose is very unnatural, I'd say quite impossible for a human. Raise the collars back to 0, and bend the shoulders. That's how human's bones behave.

Other things:
- boobies look somewhat strange... maybe it's the dress
- get Victoria, at least version 2.0 if you can. it's 10x better model than Poser4 default one, and has plenty of clothing and props both free and commercial

Embryodead, I'm not quite sure what you're referring to, since all that I can do with the transform menu is taper, scale, twist, front-back movement and bend the collars. There is no option for Xtran, Ytran, or Ztran. Besides, this LH is based on a charachter in an Anime-style RPG, and the proportions are about right for both the charachter I'm basing this off of as well as anime in general (although the eyes need to be a bit bigger, but I haven't figured out how to get anime eyes yet). As for getting Victoria, the ol' bank account is a bit lean right now, with car payments, phone bills and sinking $150 on a new zip drive. Besides, I've registered at renderosity, but do to the extreme retardeness of my internet service, I can't download a damn thing. And you're probably right about the dress. The original texture looked like plastic, so I mapped the Green velvet (but changed the color) over top of the original to get something close to satin. If you know how to create new texture files for Poser from standard images (pcx, bmp, jpg, gif, etc), feel free to enlighten me. Or better yet, if you could tell me how I could import textures from other 3d programs (particularly Bryce, since I already have it, and it's super-duper easy to create custom textures with it).

Frenchman: Thanks for the moral support. You're defininetly right about it being a royal pain in the a$$ to do anything with the default Poser 4 figures. I would've used one of the default Poser 5 charachters, but then the program would run so slow that I wouldn't be able to do anything and I wouldn't have even got this far. I aggree that Victoria would be more realistic, but (a) like you said she costs money, and (b) this mod (and leaderhead) is based on an anime style game, so I acutally like the sorta cartooney look (goes perfect with the background that was "borrowed" from said game).

[QUOTE=Hikaro Takayama
Frenchman: QUOTE]

Hello Hikaro Takayama !

You have my total support !! I was dreaming to all what I could do with a Victoria model ...

Perhaps I could give you a little tip to export Bryce Textures .. I don't know how we can do that in a normal way but when I want to export one, I make a cube, I increase the size of this cube in order that the rending take all the space ( i.e. 1024 x 768 ) I render and I have an image with the textures that I use in Poser ...
To add a texture in Poser is very simple ( I'm not sure I understood your problem ) go to the "Render(ing)" window, open "material" and you have the list of your object just load the file...

@Hikaro Takayama
Collars have Up-Down dial, which is what I mean. They should be at 0, while Shoulders should be Bend.

@frenchman
simple? no details? I'm furious :< Hey, I make stuff for scenario's only, I don't need my dwarf in modern era :rolleyes:

@Hikaro Takayama
Collars have Up-Down dial, which is what I mean. They should be at 0, while Shoulders should be Bend.


Well, in that case, the collars up/down are already set at 0, and the shoulders are bent, slightly, so I don't see what the problem is, except maybe with the model itself, but as they say, beggars can't be choosers. :(

If only the dumbass internet service I had would let me download some of the cool free stuff from renderosity. :(

Oh, and E.D, Frenchman, behave yourselves. I won't have a flame war started in my preview thread, mmmkay?

@ Hikaro Takayama : I'm sorry I didn't want to be at the origin of a war !! I will stop any comment from now ...

@ Embryodead : I apologize I didn't want to hurt you .. I said your leaders are great .. ( My english is not perfect ...) And a lot of others players say the same so no problem ...continue to offer us your great leaders ...and perhaps if you have time you could create one with all the eras it will be very kind and very useful ... :thanx:

My previous post was edited and the sentence deleted....

Uh sorry if that sounded like an argument, I don't think anyone of us "behaved" so to speak ;) Should have added a different emoticon ;)

Well, I figured out how to get the dress material to look like blue satin, among other things. As I'm typing this out, what should be the final version of the animation is rendering. Since I started animating las night, this project has been plagued by a series of lighitng bugs (flickering during the animation), animation foul-ups and general fumbling and bumbling around. I was wondering why this was, since animating in Poser is not much different than Bryce. As I was looking at my watch, to keep track of rendering time, it hit me. The date said 8-13, FR; Friday the thirteenth. Normally I'm not superstitious, but this is too ridiculous to be a mere coincidence (I don't believe in coincidences anyways, in my book it's either divine intervention or demonic meddling). Anyways, after hours of fixing, poking and prodding, I've finally got a working basic animation. Now all I need is a working, animation that blinks occasionally, rather than trying to win a staring contest. When the rendering is done, I'll post an animation preview. I'll try to make the PCX files sometime tomorrow.

If all goes well, and I can actually USE the upload service (they supposedly "upgraded" the internet service around here), I should have this done by Sunday. :D

If not, you'll unfortunately have to wait until I get a port visit and I can use the CD-Rom of a computer at an internet cafe. If I have to go this option, don't hold your breath, since it looks like the next port visit will be sometime around when Hell freezes over... :(

Edit: Animations finished :D Preview posted below.

Images Left to right: Happy, Neutral, and Prepare to take 9999 points of Non-elemental damage when she siccs Bahamut on your a$$ :D

Looks good, Hikaro! When can we expect the final results?

Excellent leader head she would be nice as a sorceress in my mod :goodjob:

One point: could her hand be a bit smaller? I realise that it is projected towards the "camera lens", but it could still be a bit smaller, perhaps... A small, lithe woman should have small, lithe hands...

Looks good, Hikaro! When can we expect the final results?

Well, the whole thing's done, PCX's and all. The only problem is that I don't have the ability to transfer the files to a computer that's hooked up to the internet right now. The files, even when using maximum RAR compression are 10kb too large to fit onto a floppy disc, and my external zip drive is OOC, and I'm still waiting on one I ordered online 2 weeks ago to arrive (probably going to take another week, give or take). I don't have any blank CD-R's, either, and haven't been able to find anyone onboard who has any that I could bum/buy off of.

So that would limit me to packing both FLC's into a spanned RAR archive, and uploading the three files onto the site. Of course, that would then require you to download all three files onto separate FD's, rename the files so that they have the same name, and use WinRAR to extract the files from the FD's.

I'm sure that none of you want to go through all that hassle, though. Another potential problem, is that since the ship's been at sea, I've not been able to use the file upload feature, probably because of the horrendous sattlite uplink (official communications have bandwidth priority, leaving just enough for internet connections to get approximately 5.6k modem performance), so I might have to wait until the next port visit so I can take my zip and CD-Rom to a High-speed internet cafe and upload the files there (providing they allow that).

Well, all the technical BS aside, I've tested this LH in game, and she looks sweet. I'm also planning to make a unit off the same figure for use as a king unit for the regicide short game variation, or for anyone else making a fantasy mod, I'll give her some kind of fireball attack so she can also be used as a sorceress.

I'm sorry about the delays and such due to technical crap. I can't wait until I'm out of the Navy, and can get my own place with a T-1 line, and just hook my laptop right up to the internet, not to mention have enough space for my bada$$ desktop (which has twice the memory and processing power, four times the graphics handling capabilities and a bigger hard drive to boot).

This leader looks very good !! :goodjob: