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Daio decided to sponsor a "Rakes, Rogues & Rascals" contest at 3D Commune, and I thought it was a great incentive to finally get down to work trying to build Dirk Blackpool in Poser. Prince Blackpool is a character from a little-known (but well-loved) TV series called "Wizards & Warriors."
Poser 4, Vue d'Esprit 4.01, Photoshop 4, Fractal Design Painter 5, Rhino beta2, Ray Dream Designer/Studio 5.2
Dirk: P4 male with morph settings by me and Wizzard, with morphs from
Traveller, Syyd, and R_Kane.
Skin texture by Dreamspinner (modified by me). Nerd's
RealEyes. MorphHair1 from Traveller (with more morphs by me).
Tunic & Cape: created in Rhino by me. Textures painted by
me. Poserized by me.
Boots: Captain America boots by
Props: Dirk's sword, scabbard, and dagger (not shown) and glove cuffs
built in Rhino and textured by me (multi-talented, ain't I?)
Falcon: DAZ eagle morphed, remapped
and textured by me.
Horse: Heavy Horse and Barding Pack I from
3D Menagerie (that'd be me, too
;) )
DIRK:
Well, first I had to make his face look like Duncan Regehr, the actor who portrays Dirk Blackpool. This is no mean feat, and I have NO experience/skill in sculpting faces. Fortunately, the P4NM version came out closer than the Michael version, so the wise and wonderful Wizzard (my personal purveyor of the black arts ;) ), was able to also work on him and spiff him up. Wizz also added Nerd's real eyes and the Morph Hair 1.
Then I had to build his clothes, and make them conform.
I was a bit worried, because his outfit has very puffy sleeves, but
everything went rather smoothly. The cape/drape bit was easy to make
by sweeping some squiggles on a rail. I converted the clothing to mesh
and finished them up in RDD. I did the mirroring and mesh splitting
there, and I also added the details such as the belt buckle and whatever
those tie thingies are on the front.
The tunic was built on the P4NM base and conforms. The
cape was built on the tunic and is just posable, it does not conform. It
has the two half-loops that hang down in back, and the two side drape bits.
I didn't build new boots; I used the ones from Jon's
Conan, which are the Captain America boots. I shrank the shin bits
down. They conform to the figure.
The "gloves" are just cuffs. With the skin texture of the hand
painted black, they blend into the wrist to create the whole glove.
I also built Dirk's sword and dagger in Rhino. They're not completely accurate, I need to adjust them. The sword needed a scabbard as well, so I made that.
I settled on using Dreamspinners' new hi-res male texture. I went and painted the hands and legs all black for his gloves and pants. I painted all the accessories textures and bumps myself.
HORSE:
This is fairly simple; loaded up the Friesian Heavy Horse, and put on the saddle and bridle. The reins are from the Barding Pack I, they are posable. Positioned them. Then I put on the chest and hip strap props from the BPI. I made a quickie silver diamond texture for the straps, and for the reins, to match the bridle (sorta). I added the round deco thingie from the Jousting Thingies pack on the side of the bridle to make it more cool-looking. (I only put one on one side, because I knew I wouldn't see the other side.)
Once the saddle was in place, I had to put Dirk in it, and pose him, put the stirrups on his feet, etc.
FALCON:
This uses my new Big Wing Eagle remapping, and I painted
individual head/neck/body feathers and sprayed them on the template with
an image hose in FDP. The wing cover feathers are done similarly, and
the wing and tail flight feathers are all individually painted. Well,
1/4 of them are, then copied and flipped.... Then copied and lowered and
lightened for the undersides.
I morphed the wings and had to do new joints for them.
Some morphs on the head, and some scaling down of the talons. I
posed the falcon by itself in one file, then imported it into my scene after
Dirk and the horse were done. Then I just fine-tuned the position on
his hand.
This is Vue 4. It's only a ground plane with my
"Complex Ground Cover" material, some Plum trees sunk into the ground as
bushes, a few mountains with a dark rock material, and a couple of those
new Castle2 models shoved together for some towers.
The sky is (once again) my Dark
Dominion sky. That thing is rather handy. :)
Then I imported the PZ3 I had and positioned it. No
muss, no fuss. Well, there's a bit of a fuss; you have to change the
trans mapped items to 100% transparency. The interlaced gif trans maps
for the horse's hair actually didn't load. :/ There's something a bit
strange about the bridle bump map (I think I used the wrong one.) But
no major hangups.
In fact, Vue made the silver deco bits, which had a
reflection map in Poser, into reflective silver. That was cool. (You
can actually see most of the scene reflected in the round deco thingy on
the bridle. Cool!)
Some touching up of the hair, and blurring of the background elements. Nothing major needed reworking.
However, before I got to Vue, I decided to try out some Poser sketching. I had wanted to do this image for a very long time, but as a coloured pencil drawing on black paper. So I did some experimenting....
This is how the colour version turned out, using my
Swan Silk sketch settings. Unfortunately,
I couldn't get it to render any bigger and give me any details in the face.
In fact, most of this face is painted on. They features barely
showed at all.
The horse has white hair bits, and the mane is 'combed
over the other side,' because the sketch renderer doesn't quite do transparencies
correctly. It is applying the colour of the objects (or background)
behind the transparency-mapped items. It looks pretty cool that way.
There was an alpha channel in the Poser export as well, which, inverted, came out pretty cool, too.
This is what it looked like, with some adjustments. After messing with these in 'Shop, I added a canvas texture (colour) and a sandstone texture (b&w) paper texture to 'em. Which, naturally, you can't see at this size and compression. :)
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