War Geisha - Help and Preview Thread

[The Slayer]

Hello everybody. I want to share my first attempt to do a new unit, using Poser 4 and all the free stuff I could get.

A friend of mine asked my for a Geisha unit, but I couldn't be able to found a kimono, but I found this cloth, and I said "well, let's do this one as a first try, and for fun".

So, here is she, a War Geisha. She have a Fan and a Dagger in one hand. Why?. Because the fan hiddens the dagger she can be used as a princess ("flag") or King unit. But, if you want her for fighting, she can take the dagger with the other hand and fight. Or at least, that's the idea .

Ok, enough words for now, look at this:



This is how she looks at Poser, but....



This is how she looks at Flicster. As you can see, the fan as become a "black thing". Also, she have a lot of light there, but, the problem is with the palette, I think. I have made my own palette for her with PEdit.

And seems that there're some other problems that right now I don't know how to call them.

So, grat unit maker, how I can fix her?.

I'm using Kinboat's default setup file. Btw, Kinboat... by the "work light" that we have to put off.. which one do you mean? Light 1, 2, 3 or I missed something?.

I can post my Poser file if you want.

Anyway, some ideas?, some help?.



Edit: sorry, is I couldn't find a kimono, not I could.. so I have no kimono for her...

 

[spincrus]

The problem is actually the "isometrics" or whatever you call it. I mean, the angle that you look at her is wrong.

She needs a kimono and a whiter skin

By the way; the problem is not with the palet, it's with the model. It's too detailed for a graphic that's going to be shrunk so small.

 

[Gogf]

Pretty good. You have completely changed it since the last time I saw it though .

 

[embryodead]

- As Spincrus said, the angles are totally wrong. You were to use Kinboats setup (which means use it as is - don't move the camera - you did and perspective is all messed up).

- I think I already said that in the other thread - turn ON "anti-aliasing" in Render Options.

- for the black fan problem, it's probably the material settings. try to remove specular completly (set it to black), while lightening up the diffuse color.

 

[The Slayer]

I use Kinboats default file, but still it's the same (an error option like : "this file is from a newer version of Poser, but this program will read it anyways" - perhaps this is messing the configurations.)

Anyway, I doing the camera thing "by hand", moving here and there, and comparing with the civ3 units.

I have make it more "undetailed" to avoid problems. Also I have reduced the light intensity, changed her skin color and the position of the light so the shadow appers on left instead of right.

And anti-aliasing is turned on .

I think I have done everything you said.. sorry if my poor mind don't understand something that you could already said.

Here are the new Default and Run preview animations:



Questions:

Why she stops one frame in the run?

Are the clothes kind of messed?

Are the clothes, props and skin colors ok?
Is the shadow/light intensity ok ?

It's the main camera on the right position? (I rotated it -17 degrees on the x Orbit)

Thank you for your help and patience.

 

[embryodead]

camera is wrong. if kinboat's setup doesn't work for you, here are the settings:

perspective/focal: 100 mm
zOrbit: 0'
xOrbit: -30'
yOrbit: 0'

using DollyX/Y/Z try to give more "space" in all directions - or will be stuck when making death animation... just render to larger frames ie. 140x140.

she stops one frame, because walkdesigner makes the last frame identical to the firtt. simply remove the last frame. the best way is to have 10-frame run anims (since they will sync with civ3 sounds), so just make a 11-frame run animation, and delete the last frame (in poser).

the clothes/props are indeed messed. actually, they look simply as if anti-alias was off, that's why I kept repeating it light intensity seems still too strong, but I suspect this may be actually materials fault. if you set them right, clothes should look much better.
there are 3 main things in material room:
diffuse color - the material color, should be the blue you use right now.
specular color - the color of reflection - it should be black in most cases, unless the material is shiny etc.
ambient color - use only if you want to "pump" the minimal brightness. normally, this should be black, and from the picture, it actually looks as if you used blue/red here.
summing up - use diffuse color for setting colors, leave the rest black, unless you have some special needs mentioned.

shadow intensity is ok, though how it will look actually depends on the palette. it's too sharp though, but again, the only thing that comes to my mind is anti-aliasing...

 

[The Slayer]

Ok, I have just make the camera changes, and yes, it lok nice now

And, here's and screen for your peace of mind

There's something wrong on it?

And, thanks for the run and extra frame info

 

[The Slayer]

And here is how my work space looks... and the camera settings.

A question:

How I can make the unit smaller..? .. ok, I know about the scale, but when I use it, the props and clothes just become a disaster . There's a way to select all in the scene and reduce them at the same time?. And also, when I thought that my scaling was going well, the unit was levitating, so I sed to tool put it on floor, but the boots became a disaster again.

I hope I'm clear enough, thank you again.


Edit: I forgot to add that I have my own palette now.. now that's easier for me than the unit making!

 

[embryodead]

ok. for the materials/anti-aliasing issue - well, indeed it seems ok from the settings, but the picture doesn't say so Well, I suppose the last thing to investigate are the lights. Can you tell me how many lights do you have, and what are their settings? Intensity, position (I included the positions I use, a bit modified Kinboat's setup), spot/infinite? Your pic looks really strange with the model being almost completly black and the render being so bright.

How to make unit smaller - leave the unit be and move the camera farther away instead. DollyZ dial (seen in the above picture) will move the camera "back" from the model, so it will become smaller.

If you want to scale for some reason, scale the Body. Assuming that all clothes/props are conformed/parented to the human figure, they will scale accordingly. But it's only good if you want to scale on one axis ie. Y to make the unit wider (as most civ3 units are). For uniform scale, camera's DollyZ is safer.

Your boots went nuts because of Inverse Kinematics I guess. If you move hip up and down, you have to move the feet accordingly. Or you can move whole body, so that the feet and boots move as well.

 

[The Slayer]

Surely, here's an attach with the lights config. and positions.

There're 5 lights as you can see.
Lights: 1-2-3 are Spot and 4-5 are Infinite

I use only light 2, but it position was originally the inverse of the actuals. (xRotate: 57' yRotate: -17' zRotate: 16'). I made this because I saw that the civ unit have their shadow at left and not right like my unit had.

In other point, lights 4 and 5 are unknown for me I don't understand them. They're supposed to be infinite lights.. that's the reason they have no intensity controls and the like?

 

[embryodead]

The lights from the pic above don't look at all like Kinboat's setup. They look totally messed up actually. What poser version do you have? If 4, have you installed the latest patch? If not, that's the reason the setup didn't load properly.

Did you turn off the lights by just lowering their intensity? To turn off a light, go to properties, and uncheck On. Lights works sort of mysteriously to me, but generally if you don't turn them off, they will still lit even if intensity is zero. But that's just a side-note.

I'll give you some settings here. If you still can't load that setup properly, delete all lights, and put them up from scratch. It is very probable that they're messed up because of a failed load. It's easier for me to put them as text. If something is not included, just leave the default setting. All colors set to (1) of course, so that the lights are gray.

- Main Light (infinite, shadows ON), x(-65), y(65), z(0), Intensity(80%), Shadow(0,5), MapSize(128)
- Secondary Light (infinite, shadows OFF), x(-60), y(20), z(0), Intensity(20%)
- Tertiary Light 1 (infinite, shadows OFF), x(-0), y(-55), z(0), Intensity(50%)
- Tertiary Light 2 (infinite, shadows OFF), x(-0), y(-55), z(0), Intensity(50%)
- the 5th light is irrelevant, not used for rendering

Intensities differ from original Kinboat's setup since I use different renderer (P5), but that will be no problem for you to adjust them by 10-20% if needed. Same for the shadow - set it to (1) if it's too light.

 

[The Slayer]

:jump: :jump:

At last! now she looks very good IMHO.

Yes, that lights were totally a mess, now they're fine.

I'll bookmark or download this thread as a tutorial.


Everybody : all hail embryodead!

Now I'll start to do the walk anim, and if it look without problems, I'll start with the rest, death, attack1, attack2, fidget.

Thank you again for your great patience, and if there's something else that I need to fix, please, tell me.

 

[embryodead]

I'm glad I could help. Indeed the lighting/shades look good now The unit is a bit dark, but that's fault of my settings, since I prefer to render units darker and apply +15 to +20 contrast to storyboard PCX in Photoshop. Either do that, or just add some intensity until it looks close to civ3 unit (I often put my units next to civ3 ones, by making screenshots from flicster, to see if they're right height and brightness). Also, maybe make the fan brighter, which can be done safely now.

 

[The Slayer]

No, it's ok. The only thing now I think is to make her skin more.. asian .

Thank you for your comments, here's the run anim preview.

 

[ShiroKobbure]

she doesnt look like a geisha, she looks chinese, I would give her a more traditional hair cut, and a kimono, I dont think you should use geisha for this type. she is just a female warrior