Unit Making Tutorial by utahjazz7 (May 9, 2005)

It's interesting that it doesn't actually tell me which file...





Edit: And yes, I tried to redownload them, and tried to restart my computer...
 
nvm, I got it to work. I realised that the only "corrupt" files were in the folder MACOSX, which I don't need.

Now I have a question regarding the tutorial. It tells me to make that texture map for the kilt. I made it, and tried to use it on the kilt, but it doesn't work as it should, I think.

I made something like this, is anything wrong with this texture map for the kilt? The instructions are pretty vague here...
 
thats the exported map, yes?
open it in your painting program and what i do is wipe out all but the outline of the kilt and draw on your design. once the design is done, finish off wiping out the outline and save the image, and load it in poser.

now i dont know if this is the "conventional" method or anything, but it works for me quite well, so far.
 
The grids are only a reference. Do not color the grids. You paint over them.
They are so you can map a design or logo to some part of a OBJ. Notice how the checks are smaller at the edges? So if you wanted it to be stripes, you would use the grid as a guide for how large the strips should be as you approach the edge, to better create the illusion of a 3d object. But, your final image that is loaded into Poser should not have the grid.
 
for a spear/pike, i'd do it like this:

attach the spear to the right hand and attach the lef habd to the spear. that way the weight is on the right hand and the left follows.
 
During rendering, changing the yrotate value of the rotate ball as instructed in the tutorial doesn't seem to change the figure's angle in the .bmp's produced. All the bmp's are taken from the angle of the main camera. Am I missing something? It would seem to make more sense to adjust the angle of the main camera.
 
Question: How much time does an average unit take to be made?

Because I just finished the fortify animation and I can't believe how far I am from a final result, and I'm kinda disappointed. I never thought unit making was something easy, and I'm not disappointed at the tutorial, but I can't believe how long and complicated it is to make just one unit!
 
[Iron Beagle] The reason the ball rotates rather than having the camera move is so that the lighting stays the same - you wouldn't want the direction of the unit's shadow to change when it changes direction. I think that you have either (a) parented the camera to the rotate ball (unlikely) or (b) not parented the unit to the rotate ball (more likely).

[Mirc] I completed one in a day once. That was a very quick one to render. It does take a long time. You'll find that after you've done a couple it gets much quicker, though, since you know what to do.
 
Thanks for the answer, I am a bit more confident now.

I really hope it will get quicker, but I think it is true, because I really don't understand a lot of concepts right now (like why I have to do different things with different clothes, what are keyframes for and why do I have to add them in that order, why I can't use the translate/pull tool as the tutorial tells me, and many others)
 
Well I can help you with key frames at least. Say your character has his arm straight out in frame 1. And then you go to frame 10 and make his arm stick up in the air. The program will automatically "fill in" all the frames in between - so from 1 to 10 he will raise his arm. Now a key frame is simply a frame that won't be automatically "filled in" like this. Say that you make frame 10 a key frame. And then you go to frame 20 and put his arm back to how it was in frame 1. The program will now "fill in" from 10 to 20 - result, he raises his arm and then lowers it again. If frame 10 were not a key frame, then there would be no movement at all, because the program would "fill in" from 1 to 20.

Note that a frame can be a key frame for one object or body part but not for another. In the above example, you might make frames 1, 10, and 20 key frames for his arm, but not for the rest of him.

Also note that if you move anything, the program automatically makes that frame a key frame for that body part. Thus, moving the figure's arm in frame 10 means that frame 10 is automatically a key frame for his arm. So you can then go straight to frame 20 and move it again, knowing that the position in frame 10 is "saved". You can make other frames key frames as well by selecting on them in the animation window (that thing with all the green squares) and clicking the plus sign. Key frames are shown in brighter green. As you can see, the frames are ordered from left to right, and the objects in the scene from top to bottom, creating a grid. Each square represents an object in a frame, and it can be key or not.

If an animation over many frames is a journey, then the key frames are the waystations along the way. If you see what I mean.
 
Since I covered the 1st 1/3 of the tutorial, and the last 1/3 isn`t Poser work, I think I can say I`m halfway there :)

Of course, I always screw up when scrolling in .pdf and end up doing some old things that strangely look familiar and then I get a mess :cool:

Thanks guys for the help with the UV mapper, special thanks to Mirc!

Oh, one thing that may help someone who has a poltergheist computor like me:

When I save the kilt as the .tif thingy in the UVmapper, and then try to open it in Paintshop, it says its not a valid .tif file. So I opened it in Irfanview (I just love that program, its so handy for everything!) and it says its an incorrectly named .bmp file? WTF? So I convert it to a proper .bmp with Irfanview (it asks you if you want to), and then I save it as a .tif, and then it works :)
 
Um, guys? :help:

Page 23, section (11)12:
"Check the box next to the Right Arm under the PDM figure.. "

I don`t see a Right Arm in there? Right Shoulder, Hand, etc. yes, but no Right Arm. Also, which box? There is the " - ", the "eye" and one other, I forgot what it looks like..
 
hold on a sec while i fire up Poser. i'll edit this with the answer hopefully...

okay, the eye makes it invisible and the - just closes the list under the are (i'm presuming arm is forearm) and the hand opens up the parameters for whatever you select. there should be a box labeled create IK chain, and its there for me, just greyed out..
i'm afraid i dont know!
 
Iron Beagle said:
During rendering, changing the yrotate value of the rotate ball as instructed in the tutorial doesn't seem to change the figure's angle in the .bmp's produced. All the bmp's are taken from the angle of the main camera. Am I missing something? It would seem to make more sense to adjust the angle of the main camera.

What Plot said about the lighting is the reason why you don't rotate the camera.....

I have, however, found a way to get the unit to rotate WITHOUT the ball.... All Poser files have a default ground plain (which you need to have visible anyways so that your unit will have shadows and not appear to be floating in mid-air), which I just parent the main figure to... That saves a small amount of rendering time, because although the ball is transparent, the program has to load the textures for it when rendering, and transparent/texturemapped objects slow rendering down.

Once the Base figure is parented to the Ground prop, all you have to do is change the Rotate attribute of the ground prop. I also usually set the ground's scale to 1000% before parenting the base figure to it, so that the ground will completely fill a 240x240 frame at the propler Civ III camera set-up. The best part is that if you have multi-unit animations you're making, you can still parent all the base figures to the ground prop, and they will rotate properly.

Just another bit of time-saving advice for all the folks out there.
 
Top Bottom