I've known about the existance of MetaCreations's Poser figure
modeling software package for some time, but only recently have I had an
opportunity to learn more about it and be able to actually get some
'hands-on' time.
Of course, the first thing that came to my mind was to try to render some Elfquest-related scenes.
...But, in order to do that, I'd first have to design an elf. Building an elf figure turned out to be considerably more difficult that I originally guessed. For the basic form, I started with the standard P4 Female Nude from the built-in library. However, since I didn't have access to a general purpose 3D design/rendering package, I was limited to the built-in deformer tools in Poser.
While I think the pointed ears and general head shape aren't too bad, and the basic body proportions are OK, there were some features that I really couldn't seem to do much about. For instance, the nose (and to a lesser extent the mouth) is really too big. ...And while I could seem to get the angle of the eyes to look reasonably elfin, I couldn't get the eye openings any larger without throwing off another part of the face. Perhaps worst of all, I couldn't convincingly free the hands and feet from the dreaded "five-finger disease." As you may notice, I merely 'amputated' one finger from the otherwise normal human hands, and left the feet as-is.
After all this, I finally had a (naked) female elf. Sort of. Now I needed to find some clothes and hair for her. No problem, I figured-- for now I'll just use some of the human clothing in the built-in library or from the web; I could even make some texture maps to make them look more like Wolfrider clothes, and I'd be all set.
Well, not quite. Since my elf has significantly different body proportions from the basic human form, it turned out that most clothing wouldn't conform or track properly with the figure-- no matter how I rescaled the clothing items, there'd be large gaps around some parts, and/or other areas where the skin showed through the clothing. Sometimes I could get something to look OK in one pose, but would start to fall out of place as soon as I repositioned the figure.
Likewise, hair turned out to be a bit of a problem as well, but in part this was because too many of the human hairstyles completely covered up the elf ears I spent too much time working on. :-)
I originally planned on my first Poser elf character to be Nightfall, but after failing to get a reasonable costume together so she'd look the part, I decided just to go with what I had and make an original character instead.
So, meet Posy! (now there's a clever name... eh...)
Or, as I started to call her, "Red Posy", as you'll understand once you see her outfit. You see, uh, it's a bit embarrassing, but one of the few clothing items I could find that could be made to work reasonably well with my elf (and that didn't have an entirely human look) was a Poser-format chain-mail bikini that I found on a web site. I downloaded it thinking I'd use it for a one-off 'joke' render, but... Anyway, I'll certainly consider any offers of more practical-looking Poser clothing that will fit Posy.
Anyway, what you see here is really more of a "proof of concept" piece than anything else. I haven't seen any computer-generated EQ fan art elsewhere on the 'net, and after spending all this time playing with Poser, I thought I'd share some of the results. Granted, they're not great by any means, but perhaps you'll find it a bit interesting to see what sorts of things can be done.
Enjoy!
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Posy walks through the forest with her wolf-friend.
[JPEG, about 136k]
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A closer view of the same scene shown above.
[JPEG, about 109k]
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Posy readies her bow.
[JPEG, about 160k]
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Eh, forget that stupid chain-mail bikini...
[JPEG, about 125k]
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I've made two (one-and-a-half, actually) brief animation clips so far, but hopefully I'll do more later. Again, this is really more of a "proof of concept" piece than anything else.
At this point, I'm offering video in two formats-- take your choice. On the one hand is a simple .avi file such as used by the venerable Microsoft Video. This should play on a wide variety of computers and is of relatively high quality, but results in a rather large file size. Alternatively, you may download it in MPEG4 fomat. This offers very high compression but poorer quality.
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Posy balances on one leg as she welcomes the viewer. This clip is
only 10 seconds in length, but consider as a seed to what a full
'elfin dance' animation could look like. Resolution is 320 x 240. Download: MS Video AVI (3.7 MB) or MPEG4 (260 KB)
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Posy walks towards the viewer and nuzzles her wolf-friend. This
14 second clip is the first part of what will be a longer (30 second)
animation. This segment is now fully rendered (like the thumbnail
picture), but I'm also offering a simpler shaded-polygon version
of the animation (like the above video) for comparison purposes.
You'll note that the background is still a bare set, though.
Resolution of both versions is 320 x 240. I'm not including
a regular AVI, since the fully rendered AVI file works out to about
7 megs in size. Download: MPEG4 (shaded polygon version) (350 KB) or MPEG4 (fully rendered version) (255 KB)
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These scenes wouldn't have been possible without some props made by some very talented people. These props were found on Poser-related web sites and were allowed for non-commercial use by others.
Posy the elf was crafted by me (Marty Kuhn) using the standard P4 Female Nude library character provided with the Poser software package.
Posy's hair is also from the standard Poser library (though I've recolored it).
The wolf is also (surprisingly enough) part of the standard Poser 4 library, and was used as-is.
The chain mail Bra and Bottom were originally designed by Paul Hafeli and converted to Poser conforming clothing by Mason (Nerd). BTW, I must say that this outfit is very well designed in terms of conforming to a variety of figures.
Nerd also created the trees (Shade Tree and Sequoia) that I used to create the set. These trees-- with their associated texture/transparency/bump maps-- are just plain great. Extremely well done, I must say. Without these props, Posy wouldn't have a forest to hunt and howl in, that's for sure.
The bow and arrow are both works of Bushi (www.spiritone.com/~bushi).
Oh, and I made the ground texture and bump maps that I used for the forest floor.