Some Tips on using Poser to make Units

Kinboat,
You indicated that you scaled Daz/Poser figures by 95% in y to help get them to (better) match the chunkier Civ3 style. I have played around with various options:

1. Scaling the figure in Y. This can cause issues when different body parts move and has to do with Poser arcana. There are work arounds (scaling individual body parts) that are too much work...

2. Scaling the Main Camera in Y only. This is quick an easy, but in death frames where the figure becomes horizontal becomes an issue. The work around here would be to change the camera scale frame by frame for the death flc.

3. Change the xOrbit value. Your standard value of -30 puts the camera at an elevation angle of 30 degrees (a straight down view would be -90) in Poser 5. Changing it to -35, causes perspective based foreshortening that makes for chunkier looking figures. This is the easiest, most consistent way to get that shorter, chunkier look.

Any thoughts on adjusting the perspective (elevation) camera angle? Do we know with any accuracy what angle was used for the original Civ3 figures?

Your figures/animations are fantastic!

Here is an easy way to rotate a poser figure for the different orientations, even when the figure rotates as part of the animation (based on Poser5):

1. Create a basic shape prop (I use the cylinder, which will be correctly centered.) Make it invisible and change the name to "Rotator".

2. Parent your animation figure to the "Rotator" prop.

3. To rotate the figure, select the Rotator prop and change its y-rotation value as desired.

This technique is especially useful for four legged critters like the DAZ elephant. Its shoulders are at the origin, but it rotates about its hip. Thus, rotating the figure moves it away from the origin Parenting it to the rotator prop and then rotating the prop serves to rotate the figure about the center of the prop/origin and everything works the way it should!

I haven't done anything with scaling original Poser figures for quite some time, since I made my own figures I guess. And it was never a perfect solution... Scaling the camera was out for the precise reason you posted. As for the angles I'm not really sure. It seems that early on people hit on the 30 degrees down and stuck with it... I don't know if someone from Firaxis mentioned it or if it was trial and error that struck upon it. But in my mind it makes sense... Why pick an odd number like 27.5 degrees when 30 will do just as well. I'm not sure if anyone has tried other angles recently but I would think you could go a few degrees off 30 before anyone would really notice a change and you might get some foreshortening effect giving you a stubbier figure.

I usually just leave the 'body' selection un-moved in every frame after the first so I can just rotate that 45 degrees to get the different views... Although for multifigure units I do use a prop (most of the time a sphere ) and parent the figures to it... I've also used this method on occasion for mounted units although I think the Poser horse rotates nicely around the center (not sure about the elephant model you mention) and doesn't need this. But I am rotating the 'Body' not the hips to get my directional views... But this method works just as well... it's a matter of preference at this point

I measured the length of the Civ3 Destroyer in S (120 pixels) and E (69 pixels) views. This gives a ratio of 0.575 and, using a little trigonometry (taking the arcsin(.575)) gives 35.1 degrees. Since being off on the measurement by one pixel only changes the result by a half degree, I am willing to bet that they used 35 degrees elevation as the camera angle.

Again, doing a little trig, using 35 vrs 30 will result in a relative apparent/foreshortening of 94.6%. Alternatively, if the figure is scaled to be the same apparent height, this would increase the apparent width of the figure by 105.7%. This is consistent with Kinboats early poser figure experience of changing the y scale by 5%.

This is of course all moot for anyone using custom models that give good results. For those of us using Daz models and wanting to avoid swizzle stick lookin legs, every little bit helps...

I've said it before... Everyone else puts far too much thought into this than I ever have I never really thought of putting my math skills to work here but it all sounds good.

Kinboat, since I didn't find anything in this thread about how I could solve this conundrum, I figured I might as well bring the subject up. Namely, how in the name of Sam Hill do you do the smoke/flash for your gun using units? I came accross this problem whilst doing my Mithra Ninja, and if I can't work my way around it, I may have to just drop the gun attack altogether.

This can be a rather involved answer... I'm sorry for not answering when I saw this post but I didn't have the time. I don't at the moment either. I will post an answer tomorrow (Monday) sometime.

Thanks. I can wait.

It's just that making smoky gunflashes in Bryce is about as easy as falling off a log, whereas doing any kind of textures in Poser is like trying to solve equations for Quantum Mechanics.

SO glad I found this thread. I am trying to get set up with all the necessary goodies to start playing with unit creation and this has been key (esp since my total experience is playing with the Poser5 demo last night instead of sleeping)!

I hope you keep posting helpful tips here for us new students of your art ;p

Welcome to the thread Aeon221. If you have any questions just ask.

Well... There are two different methods; Gun Flash, and Gun Smoke. The first one I use for more modern weapons, the second one I use for primitive guns before the development of smokless powder. Gun Flash is by far the easier of the two. Basicly I've made up a simple prop that I parent to the gun object and then shrink it to about .1%. Then I just bring it back to 100% when I have the need of it (for one frame only). I usually make this prop a bright yellow with a bright white highlight color. This gives the illusion of a flash of light in the final render. I have in the past placed a spotlight at the barrel to give it an extra flash... I'd recomend this method only for very large guns (look at my Gattling Mecha for an example) as this can mess with the color of the ground and cause problems with civ-color.

Gun Smoke is a far more difficult and tricky issue. What I've finally gotten it down to is this. I parent a sphere to the end of the gun. I then parent 9 rectangular panels to the sphere. I apply a transparency map to each of those panels and then hide the sphere (making sure to turn off shadows for the sphere as well). Now the Maps I use are from a 9 frame explosion animation. Now comes the tricky part... Animating it. For the first frame I'll have all 9 panels shrunk down to .1%. This way nothing will show up. I want to make the second frame the frame where the gun actually fires so I enlarge only the first panel. Then in the next frame I shrink the first panel and enlarge the second... Then shrink the second and enlarge the third etc until I've gone through all 9 of my panels and then shrink them all back to .1%. So my attack animation is going to be at least 10 frames long. I'm currently going for 15 frames each so I have a few extra to get the gun back up into a firing position. In the final render this gives a decent smoke cloud effect which if placed right looks like it comes from the barrel of the gun.

Now the sphere comes in. When you want to rotate the unit to render all the directions you need to rotate the sphere in the opposite direction so that the panels are always facing the camera. It takes a little trial and error to get the sphere positioned correctly so it's still in front of the gun even when you rotate it.

I'll post the props and textures I have for the Smoke setup as soon as I can (later tonight).

I was just about to ask you if you'd mind posting these as I was reading along, and then I saw the last line. I'd greatly appreciate this. It'll come in handy while I'm working on the Gnoll Gunman.

Thanks a billion, Kinboat, this is just what I need to get my Mithra Ninja back on track!

I've posted them here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=1397395#post1397395

Thanks again Kinboat.
But I'm sure I'll still probably have a couple questions for you since I've never animated with guns before.

I have a question about how you make the animations for the 8 movement and attack directions. Do you set up seperate paths for each, or just have him run one way, rotate, the run again?

EDIT:Also, does anyone know the exact color you need to have for it to be civ-specific?

I generally make all the animations in a row (Default, Run, Fortify, Attacks, Victory, Fidget, Death) and then turn the body once in the first frame and render... Turn and Render... Repeat as nessecary (make sure that you don't use the 'Body' in any frame but the first or else you may run into problems with this method.)

I'm not sure of the 'exact' color, although I've heard people mention it before. The color I use for blue is 58, 100, 255... It's close to the middle of the first two rows in the palette.

I think that might drive me nuts, but to each his own.
I come up with a Default stance (single frame) and a Fortified stance (single frame), use them as bookends for the appropriate animations, and create the movements in between. I'd be too afraid I'd mess up a frame and have to start all the way over... but maybe that's just because I'm not a pro like you KB.

EDIT: and you don't have to have an exact color for it to be civ-color. If you're working with blue (default), any blue in the unit will become a shade of the civ-color. I will try out that 58, 100, 255 though, I've just been using 0, 0, 255 so far.

Oh I don't render it one frame at a time... I didn't explain that too well. I set it up so I can render the whole sequence at once (after I've got all the animations done and everything the way I want it.) I just have to turn the 'Body' 45 degrees in the first frame and since I haven't fiddled with the 'Body' in any of the frames later on it stays turned... Then I render the whole thing. Then turn it another 45 degrees and Render.

This is a question about after you have the animations rendered and the .PCX file, ready to cut and paste. What is the order in which you paste them? I have the individual images from the frames, I just need to know where to begin.

Not sure if it would matter what order they are pasted in. I try to set them up so I can use Steph's SBB program to combine the different sets into storyboards that I can then paste into the FLICster storyboards. Not sure if that's what you were asking or not.