Horseshoe for the DAZ MilHorse

A memory-savvy but still detailed horseshoe: all in all 135 KB (246 surfaces / 248 vertices) the mesh and 123 KB the textures.

The fine sculpting details - nailheads, grooves, engraved manufacturer's name, etc. - are committed to a single, discrete, Poser-compatible displacement texture that provides the necessary relief data.

Need:
Poser 6+
DS 3+
PC/Mac

In DAZ Studio a fairly acceptable set of displacement parameters (I'll be damned if I know in what units) is:
Strength: 100%
Minimum: 0
Maximum: 32

• NOTE 1: the displacement parameters aren't stored in the .cr2 and thus shall be added by hand. However, you'll need to do that only once as they will be saved with your scene.
• NOTE 2: the displacement parameters are ABSOLUTE - if you scale your model you'll have to scale also those parameters accordingly.

In Poser, there's no minimum (a surface can only grow towards the normal) but with a bit of luck, the rest should match. If it doesn't you'll have to roll up your sleeves and experiment for a while.

All textures and the template are in the enclosed "Template & Textures.psd" (in the zip), on their own separate layers.

Though this is meant for you to tamper with them, please pay a modicum of attention:

- to avoid mesh explosion and other nasty effects the UV mapping is DAMN CRITICAL, thus you'll better leave the displacement texture alone or anyway be very careful with what you do with it.

- feel free to fiddle with the materials as you please. Basic material and nailheads are on separate layers and thus can be altered individually. No change here may affect the shape and the model's general appearance - but for Heaven's sake avoid e.g. pink horseshoes with sky-blue nailheads or else no one will take you seriously

The horseshoe thickness can be altered at will without affecting the surface appearance (courtesy of the displacement texture).

When the thickness is changed the shoe sticks to the hoof, not to the ground.

The MilFoal has smaller and slightly different hooves than the MilHorse but with a few minor adjustments, it too can be properly shoed if required.

The pivot point (the point around which the whole mesh rotates as well as the positional reference) is placed at the top front end of the shoe for easier adjustment - just position that point where it belongs and then fiddle at leisure with angles and sizes.

Once a shoe is properly fit DON'T FORGET TO PARENT IT to its own hoof (sorry for stating the obvious), I once did it.

For non-millennial equines, there's a dial to open/close slightly the rear ends of the shoe. That dial and the size controls should make it easy enough to fit the shoe to just anything short of a camel

Happy shoeing!

Chiron

P.S.: This model is free for personal and commercial use, and may be changed/improved, and redistributed without the author's permission AS LONG AS IT STAYS FREE.

The Snowfall tool

It’s just a very simple gadget aimed at simulating realistically a nice Christmas snowfall, those that happen way more often in the fairy tales books than in real life. But who cares? Dreaming, though frowned upon by serious people as little productive, is still permitted by the law.

Back to the point: this Snowfall Tool is a HUGE object, larger than the average landscape pic and more than trice as high, composed of 6 vertical layers, partially transparent, adequately spaced along with the depth (or the z-axis, as you prefer). The layer's width increases along the x-axis to ensure that the sides are properly covered even at a distance; nonetheless, a proper UV mapping keeps the density of snowflakes constant along the whole 3D field like in a real snowfall.

In this way, as the Snowfall Tool gets slowly lowered the nearest flakes look larger and move faster, and the farthest ones look smaller and slower, thus achieving an impressive degree of realism. And yes, the height of the tool grants a pretty good duration of animation (over 60 sec.).

Of course, decent camera positioning helps a lot to get the best results.

It’s a good idea to get started by looking at the scene from the top (the layers will be still clearly visible as they are sort of  ‘crumpled’ in order to achieve better randomness. Place the camera before the smallest layer but not outside the ‘layer triangle’ (have a look at fig. 1) lest the left and right margins aren’t covered well enough.

Now switch to ‘camera view’ and get closer with the camera (or play with the focal length) until the nearest flakes look visibly larger.

Done: you can now add a 3D scene - or just a background, according to your taste - and start planning your animation. If you consider moving the point of view during the animation you should parent the Snowfall Tool to the camera so that it keeps snowing on the whole visible scene no matter where you look; of course then in order for the snow to fall, you’ll better remember to lower the tool with respect to the camera (and not the whole set camera-tool ).

There’s an auxiliary object in the tool, START, to help you trim its initial vertical position: even if you aren’t planning to use the whole height of the tool you’ll find it useful to raise the Snowfall until START shows in front of the camera and then lower it until all the lower edges of the planes disappear down the bottom of the screen: this way you know you start with your scene fully covered and still you have the whole height of the tool to work with.

Once you’re done with START it should never show up in the field of view again (still making it invisible is an option).

A few things to remember:
• Real snow seldom (if ever) falls exactly vertically: a slight horizontal movement (maybe 1/10 or 1/20 of the vertical one) will add to your animation a nice touch of realism.
• The more keyframes you add, the smoother and more regular your snowfall will be. The critical points are the beginning and the end, where the automatic interpolation between keyframes adds a smooth unwelcome acceleration. If that is a problem consider making the clip some 20-40 frames longer and then cutting the head and the tail.
• Depending on the depth of your scene, playing with the tool’s Z-scale and Z-position allows you to modulate the size distribution of the snowflakes: too deep will get you large flakes in the foreground and only dots elsewhere, too flat will make the flakes fall all together at the same speed thus spoiling the effect. But somewhere in between, it will look excruciatingly nice.
• If possible let the hardware do the job: rendering in OpenGL or in anything working close enough to the video-card hardware may take half an hour rather than overnight. It may pay off to render this way the snowfall alone (small format, output in .png transparency) and then to superimpose (in Photoshop, using an action) each frame onto your snowless scene rendered separately in high detail: snowflakes don’t need to be sharp and detailed, quite the opposite.
Rendering directly in any video format would take a considerable part of eternity.
• If you want to make your animation cyclic you’ll need a bit of patience: the snowflakes spatial distribution is as random as it can be – the way Mother Nature makes them - thus you’ll have to look for two contiguous frames looking alike enough, take the first one and all the frames in between, and discard the rest.

Read the enclosed read-me for more info.

You may use this tool for personal and/or commercial purposes, modify it, swallow it whole without even having to credit me.

Chiron

This is supposed to be a scary item to be used in connection with Halloween, therefore there are a few traditional sinister themes (a few bones, some tentacles, a couple of rats...) but the really scary stuff lies in the right section of the sink, as everyone who was ever confronted with a sink full of seasoned dirty dishes knows all too well.

In the .cr2 version the hatches are rigged and can be opened in case you want to add more scary material down there (e.g. a rubbish bin loaded with maggots or human bones or whatever else your perverse fantasy may suggest).

The tap can be turned and its lever controlled to some extent - don't have it in with me if the tilt is less than perfect, I've been working in a hurry. I didn't lock any control in case you wish to take the hatches off their hinges or bust any other item - but be careful, centering them again can be a PITA.

Needed:
Poser 9+
Daz 4+ [may work in DS 3]
PC/Mac


Non-DAZ-Poser users will find a folder 'OBJ 3DS' where each item of the sink and its macabre content is available both in .obj and .3ds format for free use, abuse and misuse.

Copies of the textures are already here so that your 3D software can find them where they are expected to be. Here the kitchen tiles (Bgnd) are a separate item to be merged with the Sink (yeah, I'm lazy ).

Have fun!

                                                        LEGAL NOISE

I'm not a lawyer and at the moment have no time to consult one about how to cover my ass, thus I must resort to common sense alone and put it down in humanly readable form:

1 - I am NOT to be held responsible for any havoc the items contained in this zipped file may wreak: should the sink water leak into your CPU, or the rats gnaw at the power supply wires of your computer, or a splinter from a broken dish severs your radial artery or whatever else, you can blame only yourself. Just between us, it would take quite some ingenuity to use this stuff for malicious purposes, but better safe than sorry.

2 - You may use this material, as a whole or its single parts, in any way you like - for personal or commercial purposes, as a present, to line the bird's cage, you name it. If you pass it on to someone else you're expected to leave this ignoreme.txt with it.

But you may NOT sell this stuff as it is or claim that it is yours (you wouldn't be such a bastard, would you?)

3 - I don't have any obligation to support this material in any way. Yet if you ask me kindly enough I'll be happy to lend you a hand if you're in trouble and I'm not.

Enjoy your Halloween - and don't do the dishes!