*************************************************************************************************** Versatail Base By Achronicity *************************************************************************************************** Versatail Base is a fully morphable, poseable tail figure for use with Poser all figures. Geometrically, versatail Baseis composed of 45 nested layers of simulated fur created by transparency maps overlapping color or texture maps. Versatail Base is a fully rigged figure with twenty-five segment bones That allow permit precise posing with smooth deformation. ************************************** Body dials ************************************************** At the highest level, located in the body of the tail, are posing dials, fur morphs, and shape morphs. These dials are coupled to partial morphs and joints located throught the tail segments to give coordinated operation. These dials are grouped according to function, and include: Tail Pose: twisttail Twists the tail along it's entire length linsweep Linear sweep, Sweeps the tail side to side, all joints the same amount nlsweep Nonlinear sweep - Sweeps the tail joints strongly at the base, gradually decreasing strength out to the tip ssweep Sweeps the tail side to side, bending joints in one direction at the base, gradually transitioning to the opposite direction at the tip. tipsweep Sweeps the tail from side to side most strongly at the tip. basesweep Sweeps the tail from side to side most strongly at the base. nlbend Nonlinear bend - bends the tail joints up/down strongly at the base, gradually decreasing strength out to the tip. linbend Linear Bend, Bends the up/down, all joints the same amount. sbend Bends the tail up/down, bending joints in one direction at the base, gradually transitioning to the opposite direction at the tip. tipcurl Bends just the tip of the tail up/down, max strength at the tip. basecurl Bends the base of the tail up/down max strength at the base. TailDown Bends just a few joints at the base of the tail to raise or lower the entire tail. TailWag Side to side motion by bending just a few joints at the base of the tail. LongTail Increases or decreases the length of the tail. Wide Makes the tail wider. WideB Used with the wide morph to give a more blunt tip shape. Tall Like wide, but makes the tail thicker from top to bottom. TallB Like wideb, but used with the tall morph. Tail Fur: furOut Fluffs the fur out radially. furOut_Inner Fluffs out a few fur layers located inside of the tip. Nofur Flattens all of the fur layers. Feather Fluffs just the bottom of the tail. Feather_inner Fluffs the bottom of a few layers located inside of the tip. BaseTaper_Short Tapers down the fur only at the base. BaseTaper_Med Tapers down fur layers at the base, but extends farther than BaseTaper_Short. BaseTaper_Long Tapers down fur layers at the base, but extends farther than BaseTaper_Med. BaseTweak Pushes a fur out a bit at the base, useful when bending for some shapes. TipTaper_Short Tapers down the fur only at the tip TipTaper_MedShrt Tapers down the fur only at the tip, extends more toward base than TipTaper_Short. TipTaper_MedLng Tapers down the fur only at the tip, extends more toward base than TipTaper_MedShrt. TipTaper_Long Tapers down the fur only at the tip, extends more toward base than TipTaper_MedLng. Outertip Tips the outer fur layers inward or outward radially in the tip of the tail. Innertip Tips the inner fur layers inward or outward radially in the tip of the tail. Outertipx Tips the outer fur layers inward or outward radially in the tip of the tail, but only in the width direction. Innertipx Tips the inner fur layers inward or outward radially in the tip of the tail, but only in the width direction. Outertipy Tips the outer fur layers inward or outward radially in the tip of the tail, but only in the height direction. Innertipy Tips the inner fur layers inward or outward radially in the tip of the tail, but only in the height direction. Ruffled Distorts the fur layers into a scalloped shape to aid in breaking up layers for renders at some angles. Scalloped Distorts the fur layers into a ruffled shape to aid in breaking up layers for renders at some angles RandomMess Distorts the fur layers randomly to aid in breaking up layers for renders at some angles Tail Shapes: These morphs alter the overall shape and form of the tail. Use them to "tweak" shapes. Shape poses are also included in the "Versatail Base Shapes" pose folder which are intended to be starting points for the various tail styles. The "Versatail Base Shapes" poses have been tuned a bit more than the tail shape morph dials using some additional minor morphs at the base and tip of the tail along with some segment morphs. Mouse Gives the tail a mouselike shape Rat Gives the tail a ratlike shape , base of the tail is a bit heavier than the mouse shape Bushy Gives a foxlike canine shape Feathered Gives a foxlike canine shape with a feathered appearance along the bottom Tassled Gives a shape with a fluffy tassle at the tip like a lion or giraffe Skunk Gives a fluffy, wide tail shape Tuft Changes the shape of the tail tip to give it a tassled shape Tuft1 Changes the shape of the tail tip to give it a second tassled shape ************************************ Tail segment dials ******************************************* There are nearly a thousand minor morphs located throughout the tail segments which modify the tail geometry with very fine control. These morphs were used in combination to create all of the major shapes included with Versatail Base. Located in each tail segment are a dozens of dials. Some dials, Those prefixed with "PBM_" are remotely controlled by dials in the body, and their names usually correspond to the main dial which operates them. Within each tail segment are three to six groups of "Ring Morphs" of several different types. These ring morphs act on rings of verticies at discrete distances along the length of the tail. These morphs allow you to expand, shift, change the width or height,and compress or expand the fur, and feathering on a row by row basis along the entire length of the tail. Most tail segments have 5 rings, numbered X = 1-5. Tail segment 0 has six rings numbered X = 0-5. Segment 23 has only three rings numbered X = 1-3. Tail segments 17-22 have some inner and outer ring morphs. Inner morphs are for layers within the core of the base geometry. Ring morph numbers within each segment increase toward the tip e.g. EXP1 or EXP0 is at the base end of the segment, EXP5 is at the tip end of the segment. The ring morph at the base of each child segment is remote controlled by the tipmost ring morph in it's parent segment e.g. EXP5 in Tail5 controls EXP1 in Tail6. Turning the dial on the low number ring morph such as EXP1, will not have much any immediate effect because it's verticies are welded to the parent segment. Doing this will mostly just mess up your render. The ring morphs are useful for making entirely new shapes, or to tweak shapes slightly, such as at segment boundaries to correct minor rendering inconsistencies. The ring morphs Generally fall into the following categories with minor variations for ring count, inner and outer, etcetera: EXPX Expands a ring radially ShiftX Shifts a ring veriically TallX Stretches a ring vertically WideX Stretches a ring horizontally NohairX Presses the fur layers in a ring together ********************* Installing Versatail Base on your computer ********************************** Installing Versatail Base is simple, just extract the two versatail Base zipfiles to the folder containing your runtime folder. Because of the size, the product was split into two files, Versatail_Base_Part1.zip, and Versatail_Base_Part2.zip. You will need to download and unzip both files in order to use Versatail Base. If you use winzip, check the "use folder names" option when extracting. The files are already arranged within the zipfiles in the proper folders. If you want to remove Versatail Base, you can locate all of the files using the included FileList.txt file. ***************************** Using Versatail Base ************************************************ The versatailBase figure is located in your runtime folder at: Figures-->Achronicity-->Versatail Shape Poses are located at: Pose-->Achronicity-->Versatail Base Shapes Matfiles are located at: Pose-->Achronicity-->Versatail Base Mats To use versatail Base in your scene: 1) load the Versatail figure from your library Versatail will load in it's basic cylindrical shape, white, with only the transmaps applied 2) Apply a shape from the versatail Shapes folder under poses A) There are several preset shapes available, pick one that is fairly close to the final shape you desire B) Applying the shape will apply morphs in a coordinated manner to get the desired shape. C) Tweak the shape using the morph dials on the body to get shape exactly the way you want it. D) You may want to do very fine adjustments using the ring morphs to smooth out any rough spots or abrupt transitions E) Using the outline preview mode (Ctrl-2) along with side and top cameras will allow you to visualize the fur layers in order to position them properly 3) Apply textures from the Mat_Versatail folder under poses - There are a large number of colors and markings to choose from. Most of them use the same set of transmaps. 4) Position Versatail using it's Body--> yTran and zTran dials to move it into place on the parent figure 5) Attach Versatail to the parent figure by selecting Versatail Base, then using Figure-->Set Figure Parent in Poser. Set the figure you want to attach versatail Base to as the new parent. ***************************** Important Note on shadows and lighting ******************************* Versatail Base renders best using ray traced shadows. Poser 7 does not always cast shadows correctly to the inner layers of transmapped objects like Versatail base, and depth mapped shadows can make Versatail look blotchy. Here are some recommendations to help you get a good render: Make the following settings in the "parameter Dials" window for each light in your scene: 1) Turn off shadows on all lights in the scene that you do not want casting shadows. 2) Enable shadows and Ray traced shadows on the light(s) you desire to cast shadows. 3) Adjust the Shadow Min Bias dial on each light that is casting shadows to 0.1 - the default of 0.8 value does not work well. 4) You may want to increase the shadow blur radius a bit if you want more natural looking shadows. Try values around 2.0 to start, or go smaller to sharpen the shadows. ********* Making your own texture maps *************** Versatail Base consists of 45 nested layers of transmapped fur. Five material groups named GROUP1, GROUP2, GROUP3, GROUP4, and GROUP5 are defined so that all 45 layers can be mapped uniquely. There is one transmap and one texture map for each material group, for a total of ten images used to define each texture. Up to ten patches of fur are defined in each texture map image. The UV coordinates are mapped with seams aligned to the bottom side of the tail. On each UV map, progressing from bottom to top of the texture image corresponds to distance progressing respectively from base to tip of the tail. The texture maps are split into left and right halves which correspond to inner and outer layer pairs at differing distances from the base of the tail. The five transmap/ texture image pairs defining each full texture can thusly provide up to ten overlapping, uniquely defined layers of fur at each point along the entire length of the tail. Templates for the texturemaps are provided for each material group. It would probably be easiest to just use the transmaps provided, and paint or render new textures to use with them. If you apply the template images to the figure in the material room, you can see the arrangement of the layers quite easily by hiding other layers temporarily in Poser. To do this, you can just set them totally transparent temporarily. The individual images are labled on the template images, so you can identify them during preview or rendering. You will note that a few layer images repeat near the tip of the tail where there are more than ten layers of fur. This was a design tradeoff to prevent needing even more images/material groups to texture this area. If you wanted to, you could assign more materials in Poser using the group editor, but I have not seen any render issues with the groups as they are currently defined. A Mat pose, MatTemplate.pz2 and color template/seam guide is also included with the versatail mat poses to assist you in figuring out how the images align to the geometries. The seam guides and group templates are in the Runtime\Textures\Achronicity\VTail_Base\Template folder. Why are there five material groups you may ask? This is because Versatil consists, along much of its length of ten or more overlapping layers of fur. If a single transmapped image is atacked ten or more deep, the features in this image will align when viewed normal (90 degrees) to the images. This would give a less natural looking render. The UV's in Versatail are arranged so that alternating layers are mapped to opposite halves of the image plane. This gives ten image layers that can be stacked using 5 material groups. The downside of this is that it takes a lot of image memory at render time. ********* Things to consider if your renders are taking way too slow *************** If you don't have the latest hardware with lots of RAM, or you are having trouble rendering, you may want to reduce image resources required to render Versatail, here are two ways you can do this: 1) You can use an image editor such as photoshop or Gimp to make the texture and transmap images smaller. Be sure to backup the original images somewhere - when you make them smaller, they lose detail that cannot be recovered. You can reduce the images to twice the rendered size of the tail without affecting quality much. For example, if versatail renders 256 pixels long on the screen, you might downsize the images to 512 X 512 pixels. Obce the downsized images are created you may want to rename the images when you save them. Then Apply the new smaller images to the five material groups in the material room and save the materials so that you can use them again later. 2) You can edit a single texture image to define the colors or markings for the whole tail from base to tip (use the included Texture guide), then apply this single texture image to the diffuse channel for all five material groups. The downside of this is that there will be alignment of features on alternating layers as you view the layers along the normal direction. You will want to still use all five transparency maps. You might also combine this method with downsized images to further reduce the image RAM resources needed. *************** legal stuff ************************** All of this product's content was created by Achronicity, aka James E. Nelson. This product is copyrighted 2009 by by Achronicity, aka James E. Nelson.