Lesson 5 — Basic Scene Character Creation

The Assignment:

Create a scene in Poser using at least two characters physically interacting in some way. Use existing poses, or make your own from scratch. Render the setup characters, and the final scene. Postwork to taste.

The Scene

It's spring, at least for a few days, here in the Northeast. The trees have put out their leaves, the undergrowth has stopped being brown, and the Jerusalem artichokes have begun to become edible. Our intrepid heroine ventures forth into the woods behind the old abbey in search of them. She is accompanied by her trusty bull-mastiff, Custos. She carries with her a trowel, hoping to dig up some of the tender, tasty roots, and (of course) the pail.

Custos is at attention; his sensitive nose tells him that the vixen who lives nearby has dropped her litter. He stays close, knowing that the old fox is protective of her pups.

The ground is still wet, and despite the low cover of myrtle, Aramantha's sneakers have gotten muddy as she trod through the soggy soil behind her. She knows that she's going to get that new pair of pants dirty at the knees, but she hasn't had to kneel yet to gather the tasty comestibles. There's a slight chill in the air, but she won't surrender to it, choosing the short-sleeved, cable-knit sweater that Father Mattimeo, her friend at the abbey, gave her for Christmas. She knows that hat doesn't really go with the outfit, but it's the only one she could find in the early morning and it will protect her long hair from the helicopters the maples like to launch this time of year.

It's early in the season yet, but she hopes that maybe she'll find some of the fiddlehead ferns her teacher Lyrra so enjoys, steamed with a melted butter sauce with just a hint of garlic and lemon herbs.

The Work

Good Lord, people! Gathering all the materials was quite the adventure. The pail, the trowel, the texture for the sweater, the backdrop, the hat, the hair, the earring. Getting the clothes to conform to the body. Fitting the bucket and trowel into the hands (especially weird when one forgets there's a whole array of hand presets that could have been used to get the fingers close to the starting point: that's something I won't forget again!).

Examining over two dozen light sets, trying to find the one that works just right and not really succeeding.

Posing a dog, of all things! Who looks at dog postures?

The Problems

I'm not at all happy with her skin texture. I'm not in control of Render>Materials>Textures, but I'll get there. Maybe another two or three readings of the lessons will reveal that I've just overlooked that part. I know I'm clueless about MATs and they're in there, so I'm going to have to go back and pay closer attention.

There were some problems getting the clothes to conform. By adjusting the X-scale of the sweater, I was able to cover up the fact that the seam at the left shoulder had given out. Adjusting that feature for the pants, though, was not equal to the task of covering the small split in the crotch of the pants: that had to be post-processed with the clone stamp tool — and it's still obvious that she could use a little less time sitting in front of the computer and more time walking through the woods. Look at those hips!

The Post-Processing

Despite the time spent trying to find the right light, I still had to adjust Levels in the TIF so that the scene looked more like the Northeast and less like the Black Forest. I've already mentioned the inside leg problem with the pants, but it was only six or seven pixels. The major post-processing was done to relieve the dog of his plastic body. I discovered that exporting the TIF does in fact include an alpha channel, but I also learned that when you use a prop as a backdrop (as I did), it's no help at all. So, select the dog, add a new layer, add some Gaussian noise, blur it, play with the (new to Photoshop CS) layer modes, play with the (new to Photoshop CS) filters, play with the (refreshingly familiar) Hue-Saturation-Lightness — voila! — almost a bull mastiff!

Her expression. I probably needed to spend about 13 more hours working on her expression, but there were other things I needed to do. (Did I mention that I spent about 10 hours last week practicing the wrong anthem to accompany the choir on Easter Sunday?)

The Reward

I feel like I'm getting this! In another six or eight months of hard work, I might actually be able to put Poser on my resumé. Thank you, Lyrra, for your patience in answering my seemingly-endless questions. It's a good thing that Ann was on vacation and it wasn't a large class! And thank you, Ann, for asking your questions: I now know that there is such a thing as Unimesh — and that I haven't a clue what that's about.

The End of the Day

Well, it's past midnight. I started this day at 4:30 a.m., so I'm going to head upstairs and catch a few before the alarm goes off. I'm looking forward to Lesson 6, even though I won't have Saturday to work on it. I'm

goin' down to Old Woodstock, see the water flowin', way beneath the bridge.

See ya next week.

Home