Slipping and sliding on the greased learning curve of Poser 5. Discoveries so far - Clothing created in Poser 4 does not clothe Poser 5 figures; this is a known characteristic. There is a very nice evening gown among the Poser 4 presets that I would like to use for Luthan, but fitted to the Poser 5 figure I would like to use - because I can't map faces to Poser 4 figures - it looks like the character has spent 6 months on a desert island in her ballgown. If I try and add Poser 5 hair to a Poser 4 figure, it snuggles into the small of the back. Careful adjustment mounts it up to the head, but it'd be so useful if it could just go straight there.

The manual (ah yes, the manual) ... was it because I am reading it off-screen in PDF, I wondered. Then I found an amusing review by Gary Bradshaw on the Amazon site for a book called "Secrets of Figure Creation in Poser 5" that goes thus: Imagine you unwrapped your brand new Home Nuclear Power Plant and the user manual contained information like "The backcheck feedwater solenoid control can be used to trigger the backcheck feedwater solenoid." You might wonder what the backcheck feedwater solenoid did, and when it should be triggered, but such information was omitted from the manual. You probably even guessed (correctly) that the backcheck feedwater solenoid control had something to do with the backcheck feedwater solenoid, so the information that was provided was of almost no value ... and so he goes on to explain why Poser users are looking for a book that will really explain this program to them. Peachpit Press has had one coming out in perpetuo in the visual quickstart series. According to their website, the release date is 2020. I wonder if that is directed to the address of a deadline-defaulting author, or is simply what their database coughs up when books have been announced but not yet scheduled ...

So I've been messing around with the presets. This was meant to be Alivda (Ameron and Ayrium's second daughter, and a quite different proposition from her sister Amy; she shows up to make trouble for Erien in Avim Oath because, quite simply, she was expecting to get his job), in flight leathers, and I hope sooner or later she will be lounging in the archway of the crumbling heap on Barmi II (or what she would refer to the crumbling heap). Right now, Vue will not load her as a Poser object without crashing. It will load her in .3ds format, but she arrives 20 lbs overweight and bald, her fancy Poser 5 hair not having translated. Final resort is photoshop, once I figure out how to make the lighting consistent between the two programs. She looks OK from a distance, but the closeup (this is from presets) shows her older than I am imagining. Though that expression is right. It's the one that her cousins would describe as "Uh oh, somebody's going to get con-quered".


posted by Anonymous at 20:18   comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments