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Um.... Well, first I started making new UVMaps for the Lion and Wolf, and then did the Frog, too. After doing that, naturally, I needed to paint some Poison Arrow frogs. And Tree Frogs. A Bullfrog, a Leopard Frog, a bump map, some joint scaling and parameter tweaking for the various species.... Oh, and new materials for the frog's belly and ears, and, um... OH! Silly me, of course I also added a tongue so the poor thing could catch some snacks! And what good was a neat render of the new bullfrog if it didn't have a picture to live in?
UV Mapper; Ray Dream Studio 5 ; Photoshop 4; Poser 4; Paint Shop Pro 3; Kai's Power Tools 3; Flaming Pear's Blade Pro
TEXTURE:
First, messing around with UV Mapper. I first did
this seriously for a new cat skin, the "Big Face Cat" (available at
PoserWorld). I preferred the
head to be head-on, and the skin to be laid out like a bearskin rug (cylindrical
mapping mode), rather than the standard side view.
The frog map was top-down, just one side, with eyes and
inner mouth split apart. I took the ears off the head and gave them
their own material and place on the map. Then I split the belly and
underside from the top. I assigned a new material to the belly, too
(a new feature in UV Mapper, gotta love it!). The back skin and legs
are on a cylindrical map, but still, part of the side curves under, and leaves
stretched pixels down the frog's flank. I still found it workable,
and after 12 new texture maps, I'm not inclined to change it :/
Yes, a dozen maps. There are 7 Poison Arrow tree frogs, 1 Harlequin frog, 2 Tree Frogs, a Bullfrog and a Leopard Frog (Southern). Plus a bump map that looks nice with the latter two. Well, I started and just couldn't stop. Painting frog skins is very addicting! (Gotta love those Poison Arrow species!)
MORPHS
The tongue is a prop, created in RDD, similar to my Horse Mouth Parts v 2.0 (see the Incredible Tack Pack). The tongue arc and zing morphs were constructed exactly like the posable rein props in that pack.
Not only that, but I began messing with the proportions
and scaling of the various body parts, to create the body type of a tree
frog, and poison arrow frogs. Ever wish Poser would size things like
cartoon characters, without distorting the rest of the body? Sheesh!
Joint Parameters were liberally wrestled around (and there are still
some weird anomalies).
Besides that, the front toes are all articulated. Some
flattening there made great sucker toes for treefrogs, but the hind toes
were all one piece. Thus I had an excuse to do, not only sucker toe
morphs for them, but another morph I discovered the frog needed: a webbing
spread morph.
These were all done in RDD. The sucker toes were
easy: grab the tips and resize 175% on the X and Y axes. The spreading
part was a bit more involved. I had to select each toe (and attached
webbing), then rotate it out and reposition it correctly.
CRITTERS:
Posed in Poser. This is my New, Improved, Zygote Frog, sporting the bullfrog texture, and his nifty new tongue. Zinging out at a hapless dragonfly. (Also a Zygote Poser model, as I recall mentioning.) This is a test render of the frog, mainly, with it in mind as an 'ad' shot for posting to PoserForum when my Frog Pack is done. (It still needs some mouth morphs. Can't believe Zygote didn't include a "ribbet" morph!)
BACKGROUND:
Well, it would look good in a nice picture, like my friend Lyne's frogs and critters. But this was just a quickie, and I wasn't about to muck around in Bryce to make a pond-scape. So I thought of what photos I could possibly use.. maybe the cattails like I used for the Deluxe Multi-Species Swan ad. On that PhotoCD was also this shot. It's a quarry, but will do for a nice autumn pond.
PSP 3 read the cd image and translated it into something 'Shop could read. I loaded the Poser rendering I had saved, and checked the alpha channel. Yes, the mask showed the dragonfly's wing transparency correctly. Cool! Load selection, copy and paste!
There was nothing for the frog to launch from. So.... off to another directory of old projects for a lily pad image I had created for a Bryce scene. Copy, Paste, Free Transform the layer to make it lie down on the surface of the water.... Tada! (okay, it looks flattened. I did smear up the edges a little to give it some proper perspective.)
It just wouldn't look realistic without the water vibrating
from the frog's powerful launch off the pad. Now this took some trickery,
because it is a ZigZag (Pond Ripples version) filter, but the centering of
the effect.... I used and elliptical selection, drawn from the center,
starting in the middle. But it ended up being crooked. (As you
may know, the filters tend to center themselves in the center of the selection,
not what YOU want to be the center. See Sunrise
Warrior.) This can be handled by expanding the canvas to hold your
entire elliptical selection while you run the filter.
This is set to maximum rippleness with a dozen ripples.
(The really cool center ones are covered by the lily pad.)
BACKGROUND:
The rock in the left background was way too white, so I airbrushed it back with some dark water colour. The sky was too white, so I selected it and airbrushed some blue. I created a vertical gradient mask to blur the far background for some depth of field. I also ran the KPT sharpen intensity on the background image. (Man, I miss my KPT2!) There were also some distracting leaves still floating around in the midground; I blurred them into the water.
CRITTERS:
I created a fancy alpha channel to make a circular selection
around the dragonfly's wings, but blocked the middle of the dragonfly's body,
and the frog's tongue. All to add a Radial Motion Blur (Spin mode)
to make the wings flap.
I copied the critter layer to lay on some motion blurring
without messing anything up (see From the Cry of
Hounds.). I blurred the dragonfly back (and used the smear tool
to give it a slight blue arc), and pieces of the frog's exterior edges, with
Motion Blurs.
I also touched up the frog's mouth, to make it lighter,
and more visible.
FRAME:
I expanded the canvas, with some dark water colour from
the background of the image. Then selected it and used Blade Pro on
it. This started out as a water drop preset I had saved, but.... turned
into a kinda black with gold bamboo inlay thing.
I didn't have a title in mind..... (I still don't!),
but I DID make the frame to put the text on! So.... with a little skinny
font, I put the text on the front of the frame.
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