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''Down ! Down !!''

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''Down ! Down !!''

''Down ! Down !!''


Poster:	Nik
Image:	''Down ! Down !!''
Image Details:	ID: 8541 - Image Type: JPG - Size: 490 x 572 (31KB)
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Posted:	16 Aug 2022 12:30
Views:	46
Pic Description:	This is the Reptiloid from free ''Serious Sam 4'' enemies set kindly ported by Stefano96. https://www.deviantart.com/stefano96/art/DL-Serious-Sam-4-Kleer-Ragdoll-879198942 It is a hefty pack, the dozen foes plus their vivid textures come as a ~90 MB RAR. They''re SFM format, so I used free Noesis in batch-mode to port VTF to JPG, MDL to FBX. Yes, Poser often has problems with rigged FBX import but, if figure arrives as less than a dozen or so sub-rigs, I can manage. Another issue is that an ex-SFM FBX may have materials without texture calls. Think bare ''OBJ'' without complementary ''MTL''. Fortunately, the mapped textures were well-named, rather than poly-chromatic alphabet soup. Kudos, S96 !! This model only had two (2) sub-rigs, the second being ''junior'' to the first, which was the ''master'' sub-rig for positioning and posing. Some iteration found that, unless I wanted a ''godzilla'', default 100% import scale would look good. Other models in pack may need different scaling, eg the ''Drone Kamikase'' was 250%... I applied the vivid mapped textures to diffuse and normal for each sub-rig''s single material, found and masked the eyes to make them gleam using ''super-ambient'' rather than Cycles'' emission. Sadly, this tweak was a waste of time, as gleam was swamped when I had to turn up the scene lighting to do justice to the figure colours. Reptiloid has ''Good Bones''. Warily navigating the ''master'' sub-rig''s ''tree'', I was able to pose head, upper and lower arms, even the tail without disaster... The free pole-arm is by Banzoku on BowlRoll. bowlroll.net/file/283045 Technically, a 1940s bayonet -on- pipe ''pike'', as issued to UK ''Home Guard'' aka ''Dads Army'' before frantic factories, convoys etc could replace enough guns lost at Dunkirk. Adequate to greet descending parachutists or unwary open-top kubelwagon drivers... I un-packed its Zip using free version of Bandizip to conserve glyph names, converted PMX to OBJ+MTL using free PMX Editor or, in this case, ($$) 3DOC, copied + re-named the metal textures to ''English''. I scaled ''import'' to ''figure height'' as default, eventually z-scaled it (length) to ~130%. Posing the pike with LaFemme took a long, lonnng time. This is NOT the correct posture, as shown in various on-line resources, just as good as I could manage. My quick trial renders threw up a weird issue: the Reptiloid''s mapped textures were reasonably bright, scene looked okay in preview, but figure rendered dark. I tried a bunch of fixes, including dialling scene lights unto ''Fry Eggs'' yet, while LaFemme was getting a virtual tan, the Reptiloid stayed dark and dull. Was not interference from textures'' alpha channels, JPG format does not support such. Took me a while to spot the culprit(s): While loading ''normal'' map to the materials, I''d automatically ticked the ''Displacement'' option to enhance the figure surface. For reasons beyond my wit, this attached that ''normal'' map to ''Gradient Bump'' instead of ''Displacement''. I do not know how ''GB'' is supposed to be used, but it was wrong for here. Two minutes re-arranging material links so both ''Bump'' and ''Displacement'' fields called the ''normal'' map, dialling back the now-unnecessary extra lights and all was well. Weird, or what ?? I changed render options to 96 pixel-samples, Superfly, progressive, 96 vols+buckets for CPU-only, sent job to my networked ''Box''. This had all LaF''s textures from a previous render, the set''s gruesome ''Drone Kamikase'', which saved several minutes during set-up / file-transfer phase. Job ran in about half-an-hour. Reptiloid''s eyes'' finder map and too-gruesome ''Drone'' thumb-nail in comments...

Pictures Navigation

The Lady In White

When Render-Queue won''t play nice-- REBOOT ''BOX'' !!

''Down ! Down !!''

Moira

Armoured glass, not a Houdini tank...

Comments

Poster	Message
Nik Power User Offline Private Message Joined: December 2003 Posts: 728	16 Aug 2022 12:38 Reptiloid texture, eyes and the too-gruesome 'Drone'... _______________

Maelstromme Not Too Shy To Talk Offline Private Message Joined: April 2006 Posts: 39 Location: Texas	17 Aug 2022 15:28 Hey! I need one of those! Awesome character! _______________ I am smiling.

Nik Power User Offline Private Message Joined: December 2003 Posts: 728	17 Aug 2022 15:56 The files are modest sizes, there's just so many. The RAR is ~90 MB but, by time is un-packed, the VTF and MDL converted to JPG and FBX, a few PZ3 scenes saved, you're talking ~700 MB. Yes, I could probably delete the VTF and MDL files, saving ~250 MB, but I keep learning new things about these file formats, going back to try different options... Noesis can do them one-by one, just select each file in turn, select export option. This is handy for export of static props to OBJ. No MTL so, as for FBX, apply textures manually after import to Poser... FWIW, if using Noesis in batch format, you'll need *two* passes, one for VTF, the other for MDL. For each, I recommend you change output path from the default to shorter... $inpath$\$inname$.$outext$ ...and remember to tick 'recursive'. Then you can drag all the ported files up to a common folder, save digging around among the originals... _______________

Nex Frequent User Offline Private Message Joined: June 2004 Posts: 207 Location: Ohio	26 Aug 2022 06:18 Hands Up! _______________ "the brite good morning voice, whose heard but never seen"

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