Water Droplets, sprays and splash Rings For Poser And other Programs May 15, 2003 Copyright by forester. ____________________________________________________________________ This package contains 12 sets of water droplet strings, sprays and splash rings. The water droplets in each set are of different sizes and densities, but the sizes are distributed as they would be in nature. The densities are as they would occur in nature, given different velocities of the sprays and dropping water. (All the sprays and droplet strings here are relatively low velocity.) All the objects are in .OBJ format, so that you may easily "import" them into your program of choice. In Poser, each water object must be made semi-transparent, and all water objects need a pure white Highlight color, and a pure white Reflection color. For most scenes, realistic-looking water particles have a 50 percent highlight setting. A typical set of color, transparency, highlight and reflection settings for water particles are shown in the picture called "Catalogue Color Settings.jpg." You might want to print this picture or create a short cut to it on your desktop for reference when you're working with these water droplets and spray. However, keep in mind that your scen may require a different set of settings, particularly with respect to color and transparency. Human eyes always preceive water highlights and reflections as pure white, however. To make a complicated spray, such as water spraying from a hose, use two or more of these objects. You also can position a Spray Ring or other spray at the bottom on an object such as the curved Cascade to create interesting water objects of your own. In fact, while these objects are carefully sculpted to look like actual water droplets and sprays, you can apply other textures and colors to the particles, so that they look like molten gold, lava, shiny steel, or any objects represented by these kind of particles. The 25 files in this package are the following. Catalogue Color Settings.jpg (The color, transparency, highlight and reflection settings used for these pictures.) Catalogue Pic 1.jpg (A printable guide to the shapes of these water objects - page 1) Catalogue Pic 2.jpg (A printable guide to the shapes of these water objects - page 2) Catalogue Pic 3.jpg (A printable guide to the shapes of these water objects - page 3) Curved Cascade.mtl Curved Cascade.obj Dense Flat Spray.mtl Dense Flat Spray.obj Dense Tapered Spray.mtl Dense Tapered Spray.obj Droplet String1.mtl Droplet String1.obj Droplet String2.mtl Droplet String2.obj License.txt Light Density Spray.mtl Light Density Spray.obj Medium Density Spray.mtl Medium Density Spray.obj Outward Spray.mtl Outward Spray.obj Readme.txt (This file) Spray Ring1.mtl Spray Ring1.obj Spray Ring2.mtl Spray Ring2.obj Spray Ring3.mtl Spray Ring3.obj Spray Ring4.mtl Spray Ring4.obj How To Import The Spray Water Objects Into Poser And Assign Transparency, etc. To Them ________________________________________________________________________________ Create a directory (file folder) anywhere of your choice on your computer, and then unzip (or "extract") all these objects into that folder. You will only be using this folder to store these objects long enough to convert them into Poser props. Open / Run or Execute your Poser program. Normally, Poser opens with a default figure in the stage window. You probably should delete this guy and clear off your working window. To delete this guy, make sure that Figure 1 at the lower left bottom of the stage window is selected, and then pull down the second inward pull-down window to select "Body." When the whole body is selected, as opposed to a single body part, you can press the Delete key, and your figure will go away. No, go to FILE on the Main Menu and select IMPORT. This opens up a list of file types to import. Select "Wavefront OBJ..." Doing so will now open up a navigation window that allows you to located the Wavefront Object file to import. Locate the folder you put the spray objects into, and then select one of the objects to import. (Try Spray Ring 1 for your first example - its easy to see and to manipulate.) This brings the object onto your stage window, but it has no real color or other material assigned to it. Its just a plain solid object. Now, we want to assign a material to it, so you will need to return to the Main Menu and select RENDER. On the Render Menu, select MATERIALS. Now, look closely at the settings shown in the picture file called "Catalogue Color Settings.jpg" and try to assign these same setting to your water object. (The "Object Color" really can be any color you like.), The Highlight Color must be pure white, The Reflective Color should be pure white for most occassions, The Highlight Size should be 50%, The Transparency Minimum Percentage can be about anything you want, but 25% is not a bad value for this. The Transparency Maximum Percentage should be in the range of 80 - 90%. The last step is to add it to your set of Props so that it becomes a standard poser prop file. On the right hand size of your program window, you'll see a knurled vertical control. Or maybe all your libraries are already open. The knurled handled opens the Poser libraries when you click on it. Find the library called PROPS, and click on it to open it. At the bottom of this library, you should see a control with a broad "+" symbol on it. Just click on this "Plus Symbol" to add the water object to your props. When you click on the "Plus Symbol" to put the water object into your props library, a small window will open up asking for the name to use for the object. Just type in the name given ("Spray Ring 1"), or a name of your own choosing. The object will become a standard prop item, and it will have the colors and transparency and other material settings you assigned to it in the Render | Surface Materials window. Things You Need To Know About Object Files (".OBJ") In Poser ____________________________________________________________ An Object-type file (an ".OBJ file") contains coordinate information describing the 3D geometry of an object. Each .obj file has an associated ".MTL" file. The .MTL file tells the Poser program (or other 3D program) how to "map" color and any third, associated texture files onto the object. These files should always be grouped together in the same directory (or "folder"), unless you are a professional and have other reasons for splitting the files into separate directories. For example, to use these objects, you should first create a sub-directory on your computer and give it a name such as "Water Sprays." Then, you should extract or place all the files in this zip package within this new directory. When you import an object into Poser or another 3D program, your program will look for the associated .MTL and any texture files in the same directory. Once it finds these files, it should just instantly put the color or texture onto the object in the appropriate manner. Then, if your program is Poser, you should now be able to save the object as a "prop" into your Prop Library. The Prop Library will always know what color and texture you put on this object, where any relevant texture file can be found, and how that texture is supposed to be mapped onto the object. That's why, when you receive a 3D model into an .OBJ file, you should always have an associated .MTL file for the object with it, and possibly a third material file (an associated .jpg or other graphic file) for the object. In general, the .obj file and the .mtl file will share the same name, but the names of any texture files applied to the object will be almost anything. So, when materials don't map onto the objects as you were expecting, it may be because you're missing the relevant .MTL file, or you're missing the relevant .jpg or other graphic file. Or, the relevant .jpg or other graphic file is not in a location where the program expected to find them. All of this product's content was created by Forester. The texture material files are copyrighted independently of the models in this package and may be used only for application to these models. If you have any content-related or technical questions about this product, contact Forester at forester@mountainflight.us