INFO FOR NAPOLEONIC CUIRASSIER'S OUTFIT FOR DAZ' MICHAEL - WHAT IS IT, AND HOW DO I USE IT?

WHAT IS IT?

A cuirassier is a french heavy cavalryman from Napoleon's Grand Army (ca. 1800-1815). "Cuirasse" is french for the heavy breast- & backplate armor he wears when in full combat gear. The Republican Horse Guards of modern-day France carry a slightly modernized version of the classic cuirassier's uniform, although without the cuirass. The outfit comes with separate clothes and props, so that you can choose to use all or just some of them in any given pic. And yes, they did wear those silly-looking diaper-like pants, don't blame ME ;-)

The complete outfit requires the two zip files called MikeCrsrCLOTHES.zip and MikeCrsrPROPS.zip. The thip4Mike contains the conforming clothes (jacket, pants & boots), and the MikeNapoleonic contains the gear (helmet, cuirass, weapons, etc.). No saddle and harness available yet, but planned (several kinds of saddle and harness are available in Freestuff on the Poser forums on the www).

HOW DO I USE IT?

After installation (see the ReadMe files in the zips mentioned above), you'll have a uniform jacket, pants and boots in the Figures library, and helmet, cuirass etc. in the Props library.

To dress up Mike, first load the jacket, pants and boots, and conform them to Mike. Then switch to props, and add them alphabetically. You don't have to add all of them (you may want to make a pic with a soldier without a cuirass) - but the order in which you add them is important. Why?

Some props are dependent on others for correct placement. You can add them without adhering to the correct order, but they won't appear in the right place.

- The Xbelt is a "smart prop" which expects a cuirass to be there to attach to

- The "swordanchor" (the green ball) expects the jacket's sash/belt to be there, the swordsheath expects the anchor, and the sword expects the sheath. The SwordAnchor is only there for posing of the sword and sheath. Before rendering, set the anchor to invisible.

The "SashBelt" (part of the jacket) must be set to invisible when using the cuirass - this is done by going to Render - Materials and setting all materials for the "SashBelt" object to invisible EXCEPT for the "Hook".

...and you must re-parent the SwordAnchor to the Cuirass when using the Cuirass. If you think this too much of a hassle, you might want to save a new smart prop for this, such as SwordAnchorForCuirass. But in this case you'll have to save new smart props for sheath and sword as well, as they expect the old SwordAnchor prop to be there for them when they're loaded (it is to avoid this duplication of props that the Cuirassier's outfit is supplied with only one set of anchor, sheath and sword).

Posing/movement will be somewhat limited, partly because of my limited skill in creating the outfit, partly because of Poser's lack of collision detection - but mostly because of the simple fact that wearing all that gear DOES actually limit movement. Try watching news footage of a modern-day trooper wearing helmet, bullet-proof vest & all the assorted gear strapped to his body - he won't be doing ballet ;-)

The uniform has no textures - you create varations simply by changing colors and visibility in Render - Materials. You can also change the type of jacket and boots by setting shoulder tabs and "gongs", and knee flaps on the boots, to invisible (set color, ambient etc. to all black, highlight size to 1% and transparency min and max to 100%).

To add a bit of quick-and-easy "rough" to any object, such as the helmet's FurBand and Plume, simply set texture to Poser's Default Ground Texture in addition to whatever color the object has.

If you want to make some more general material groups, or create your own textures, bring the obj files for the clothes/props into a UVmapping tool (Steve Cox' free UVmapper is heartily recommended - see www.uvmapper.com ). When mapped, save the obj's back to the same folder and name - be sure to make a backup first, though. If you want to share your tex's with others, be sure to supply the remapped obj as well - you're welcome to do this, as the obj's are ©-free except for resale as-is (see the ReadMe's in the zips for details).

Have fun ;-)