Die Orc Scum (WIP)

[Bjornlo]

Thanks for the tips. I'm sure my use of high res textures had alot to do with render speeds. But, I doubt it impacted my load times. I just did a properties on my Poser catalog. Was shockingly large... I've owned poser closing in on 2 years... I just never used it until a couple of weeks ago because I was satisfied with Bryce. But, I'd been dl'ing junk for it occasionally scoreing a huge stash from someone not who decided 3d wasn't for them... and the results are:

I suspect this might be part of the boot times and maybe part of the stabilty issues... of course the rest of you are mostly using P5 too...

I'm trying to order a new book on Poser which amongst other things includes tips on how to organize files and folders within Poser. I tried the simple way but all it did was lose those files. (no longer available in the library)

 

[Plotinus]

That is a lot of stuff...

Poser works fine on my feeble laptop, so maybe that's it. It certainly multitasks without much difficulty, although when rendering it will slow other things down a bit.

 

[Vuldacon]

Slowness for renders also has to do with the Computer and hardware used besides Textures requiring more time due to more information to process. Top AMD Processors are really fast with Rendering for example. Poser 4 renders are so fast I cannot see them and Poser 6 renders with textures only take seconds. Render time is directly related to the Computer Hardware used for the Program rather than the Program itself. True, there are older programs that will run faster if one does not have the "Top of the line" expensive hardware to process faster but that has always been true for everything concerning computers and programs...including Game play performance.

Concerning the "Fade to Grey" desired. One way this can be accomplished is to use the Completed Storyboard with game palette applied. Replace the Background Magenta color with Black. Replace all shadow, smoke and fog shades with Black so they will not be affected...same concerning Civ Specific colors IF you do not want them affected. Save this palette for any other storyboards you want to fade. Change the storyboard to 16 Million Colors. Copy one row of frames (all directions) and paste it as a new image then reduce the Color saturation in a second. Paste the results back onto the Storyboard. Do this in a Graduated way for all frames using one frame from all eight directions at a time (an entire Row up and down from the Storyboard). A 15 frame animation would require 15 copy and paste procedures and this would not take much time. Although it would be accomplished manually, it certainly would be faster than the other procedures mentioned for some people.

A New Palette would then be made for the Changed Storyboard. Since the Magenta background is Black and there are no Civ Specific colors or shadow, smoke and fog shades in your new Storyboard, you can simply reduce the Colors to 161 Colors. This will leave room for the 96 Civ Specific Colors and the shadow, smoke and fog shades on the game palette as long as when you add the new colors using Pedit you do not select the pure Black color because it is already on the "essential color" game palette. Otherwise you would reduce to 160 colors and use all. This "essential Color" palette should be a saved palette that your unit uses for other flcs. Just replace the Colors between the Civ Specific Colors (top 4 Rows in PSP) and the Shadow, smoke and fog shades (bottom 2 Rows in PSP). IF I have explained this where it is understandable, it is easier to do than say.

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

Yowzers!! I thought my 7.2 Gigs of stuff for poser was a lot, but that's only a little over 1/4 of what you have! What you have is about half my entire HD's capacity (I know, laugh all you want, but I built this system myself from parts I bought in Japan during July of 2002, so this system is almost 4 and a half years old).

 

[mmmrrrr]

Since he's so big, a death anim could be to have him more fall and thud into the ground. That way you could remove any problems with feet looking as if they slide by having his feet leave the ground as his head hits it and then they'd fall back down limp.

 

[Bjornlo]

Vuldacon,
You're brilliant! What a simple work around......
And, extending you idea futher....
I load the storyboard cut the background and shadow into another layer... I might do the same with this equipment. Leaving the green skin... which I can fade to grey by using 6-7 additional photoshop layers and never mind with learning to make Poser learn Bryce tricks! Thanks buddy!

Of course now I have to make a new death where he stops short of his collapse... rocks don't bend their arms, do they???

hehe, I am so excited to finally get the death I wanted!!

mmrrrr, I already fixed his feet, but thanks for the tip. I just had to to id manually.

Hikaro,
you spoiled sailors.... in the Marines were were estatic if got actual coffee, let alone had a PC within a 100 miles of us.
I built my system out of this and that several times too. Not since my Amiga and x286 days have I bought an off the shelf system.
My Bryce stuff is maybe 5-10times as much as my Poser stuff. I just have a big internet connection and big disks are really cheap. So in my render box I have 4 x 250gb HDs in a pair of mirrors. About 80% of the available space was used by 3d junk one way or another. And, I keep many incremental copies of everything I make. Mostly because I can. This way, when I make a mistake, I can more quickly roll back. So, when I model something I tend to keep every part of it saved seperately so I build a spare parts bin of stuff to combine later. With Poser, I did install alot of JUNK. I have 3 friend who were in to Poser briefly. One stopped with Poser 4 (upgraded from 3), another with 4 + ProserPack and the last upgraded to 6 but never even used 5. So, I bought all the stuff they had bought even the free DLs... Now I have to see if I can find those CD/DVDs back because this morning during breakfast my youngest son (only 18 months) somehow managed to escape from his high chair, walk down a flight of stairs through two supposedly locked child gates, open two doors and delete the archive. 53gb gone. During the few moments I was in the shower.... That is if I am to believe my 6yr old. Somehow I suspect the truth is closer to him getting curious to see if he could get Oblivion to start on his own. I'm not too upset. Somewhere in a box I have the disks with around 1/3rd of the content (the commercial stuff) and the rest was a mixture of self made and free content. I can make it again, DL it again, etc.... nothing priceless lost.
I lost alot more Bryce stuff than poser stuff.... oh well. Normal for anyone that has little kids, I suppose. Either way, I am certain the source for the files being all those different generations of Poser.. So I ended up installing 3-4 micheals, 7+ vickies, etc... It seems the Zygote, Metacreations, CuriousLabs, Daz, etc... every few months (years?) would release a new package of the same model... but they would not be nice and use the same directory... In fact I found the same file had installed (from different sources) as NAME_NAME and NAME NAME (no underscore) And also NAME VERSIONNUMBER, NAME TYPE etc... in trying to organize these, was when I noticed that Poser does not easily let you do this manually and if you move stuff around, you will lose them out of the library.. and until (unless??) I find the source disks I am stuck with the mess since I can not un-install the whole mess and sort it first and install it later because I (for now at least) don't have the install files... On the plus side I now have all this empty disk space to fill with fun stuff

Of course Vuldacon certainly rescued my mood with his outside the box thinking... Doh! I was so fixated on that it was a 3d process and needed a 3d solution I completely ignored the fact that the target file is a series of 2 frames.

 

[Plotinus]

Damned clever. In fact, you can do an awful lot with post-work (manually messing with the storyboards after rendering). Sometimes this is unavoidable (I've just spent half the evening removing unwanted pixels of civ-colour from seven storyboards) but it can be a good way to add special effects. With my Asian magic-users, I created their lightning attacks within Poser using flat primitives with bitmaps applied, but then when rendered I went over them in the storyboards with white just to add contrast (they were too thin to come out really well from Poser alone).

 

[mrtn]

Plotinus, do you use the three rows just above (Photoshop)/below (PSP) the civ colour row in the palette? I've found that you can remove some potential problems by just ignoring them, i e fill them with an unused colour.
A trick I learnt from embryodead.

 

[Plotinus]

I leave them alone completely, so I think the units generally use them. I was under the impression that those rows shouldn't be touched. Although I've never been entirely sure why...

 

[mrtn]

They are resistant to change in some way. When I've tried to colour convert the warrior, there was colours that I changed in the pallette (in those rows), but continued to be unchanged in the game. So if you want the option of changing your unit's pallette after you've finished it, it might be better to not use those rows.
As you probably know every other colour in those rows are civ coloured, and the rest are the ones that are problematic.

@Bjornlo: Sorry if we're veering off topic.

 

[Vuldacon]

Just Checking in to see how your Great Unit is coming along Bjornlo. I am looking forward to that Awesome Dude.
Glad the "off thinking" manual procedure can help. I had to use PSP to make and correct many units when I first started dealing with units so when I got Poser4 and 6 I continued to use some techniques that are just faster or easier to perform with PSP than with them.
The M1 Mech Beam Transport I made a long while back for bhiita's Unit was made with PSP only with many layers to gain the look I wanted of the Mech appearing within the Translucent Beam while the Beam was operating.
Some procedures are just faster and easier to do manually and also have better results.
The Details you have in your unit and his Shield are absolutely Stunning.

Concerning the Palettes...the game has them indexed for use and the Civ Specific colors as well as the Shadow, Fog and Smoke shades are in areas indexed specifically for them. Best to use the pixels inbetween for Basic Unit Colors unless one desires to use the others for what they will do.

 

[Bjornlo]

The unit is done except for 1 animtion I wish to re-render... There is a twitch in two of the facings. Minor fix. Should be done tonight.
That and the sounds.

I had to stop working on it for nearly a month.

However, I did 3 versions of the death... I expect I'll just release all 3 and let the user pick which one they prefer.
There is the fall down (stays green).
There is the falls most of the way down and turns to stone (fades to gray)
There is a grabs wound and reaches forward and then freezes in place as he turns to stone.
Thanks again for the really clever idea that made this death possible to achieve the desired results so simply and quickly.

I am actually considering dropping some of the detailing on thwe sheild and re-rendering all animations with the sheild a little simpler and in pure black. As I am a little worried about how the unit will look in game with the shield including very dark civ coloration.
Alternately, I can just color the chest armor red and let the shield remain the dark blue and black it is...

I have started on the sounds, but I am not that far along. The reason is that the cause of the delay was a worm and a disk which didn't survive the extensive repairs needed (IDE (ATA, SATA, etc) disks don't deal well heavy sustained use the way a SCSI disk does. I didn't lose much work. I didn't really lose much except 2 disks and alot of time (reinstalling everything, etc)

 

[Vuldacon]

Sorry you had the problem and loss but glad you are back at it now.
IF the Civ Specific Colored Shield does not look as you want it to in the game, I agree that using Non Civ Specific colors for it would be a Good Way to Go. As you said, the Chest Armor can have the Civ Specific Colors. I would keep the Shield Details though. Even when details are thought to be lost at Civ Scale, they remain enough to add better quality to units and the Size of your Unit should allow more detail to show.

 

[Darque]

Can we see a sample of the unit with and without civ colors on the shield? I am interested in seeing how much of a quality difference it would make.