Mortem Vetus: Templar Thank you for purchasing the Templar outfit for Michael4. We hope you enjoy using this product, and this User Guide is intended to just help you get the most out of your purchase. Mostly, this guide will be covering the basic operation of the items included in the pack. This pack is intended for use with Poser8 and above, although it will work with Poser6 and newer. For the purposes of this guide, we'll be using PoserPro 2010, but there is nothing we'll be doing that can't be done in Poser 6 and above.  And initially, pretty much everything is in default, except Render settings. Once you've installed the product, your new Templar outfit will be in Figures:MortemVetus:Templar. The first thing we need to do is load a Michael4. We find it's useful to turn IK off at this point as we've had it give some peculiar results when using clothing items. We're going to leave our Michael in his default loading pose, and we're going to dress him from the inside out, so that we see all the layers as they build up. The innermost layer is his Trousers, so we'll load them first and conform them to Michael. On the left of image1 below, we see Michael and the Trousers in their default loading positions. Make sure the Trousers are selected, go to Figure > Conform To... and a dialog will open. Select Michael4 from the dropdown  list and click 'ok'. And on the right of image1, we can see the trousers have conformed to Michael.

Image 1: Conforming Michael's Trousers

Image 2: Adding clothing items

In image2 above, we can see the various clothing items being added and conformed to Michael. From left to right we've added Boots, LegGuards, Greaves and MailShirt. But when we conform the MailShirt, we have poke-through. Don't panic! This is because Michael is slightly posed and the lower part of the MailShirt poses using body handles. Normally, we don't worry about this until we've got Michael in a pose, and then we pose the body handles to suit. For this though, we've made a minor adjustment to the right side body handle to eliminate that poke-through. We'll come back to using the body handles a bit further on, after we've got Michael fully dressed.

Image 3: Adding more clothing items

In image3 above, we've added and conformed (from left to right) Gloves, Tabard, Coif, ShoulderStrap and Belt. In image4 below, we've added SwordBelt and Pauldrons. For the last two items, we have a choice for each. We can either have the Helm or the Shemagh. In this case, we've gone with the Helm. and lastly we have a choice of two Scabbards, one with his sword in and one without. We've chosen Scabbard1, which is the one with the sword in. There is also a cloak, but since that is best viewed from the back, we'll come back to it a little further on.

Image 4: The rest of the outfit.

Now that we have all his clothing on, we have a couple more props we can add to him. These can be found in Props:MortemVetus:Templar: We have a selection of Lance, Shield and Sword, each with left and right versions. Because we added the Scabbard with the sword in, we're going to give him the Lance and Shield props. We'll load these in, and then we're ready to think about posing. These are smart props, so wherever Michael is posed, these will snap to the correct position, provided Michael is the selected object BEFORE you load the props.

Image5: Props loaded	Image 6: Prop Grasp Poses

In image5 above, we've loaded the Lance and Shield props, and put Michael into a fairly basic pose.  Straight away we can see a couple of problems...his left hand isn't gripping the shield strap, and we have some major poke-throughs around his right thigh. The hand we can take care of straight away, go to Pose:MortemVetus:Templar:HandPoses: and there are poses to grasp M4's hands to all the included props. Select Michael4, and then we apply the ShieldGrasp-LeftHand pose. In image6 above, we can see this in the library. To take care of the poke-through, let's turn the camera round a bit so we can see what's happening a bit better. In image7 below, we can see that the Trousers are coming through the MailShirt a bit, and the Tabard isn't quite clear of the MailShirt. Now, when Michael has the full outfit on, the Trousers can't actually be seen, so we can either hide them, or delete them. We're going to hide them, as shown in image8. Select the Body of the Trousers, and in the Properties tab, uncheck 'Visible'. Alternatively we can dial it out using the body handles in the same way as we're going to do with the Tabard, below.

Image 7: Posing issues	Image 8: Hiding the Trousers

Next, we'll select the Tabard, and we want bodypart 'RightFront'. Note, all Left and Right assignments are relative to Michaels Left and Right. So the RightFront body handle on the Tabard or the MailShirt corresponds to the front of Michaels Right Leg. In image9 below, we can see body part 'RightFront' selected and we've just adjusted it slightly on the 'Bend' dial so that it's clear of the MailShirt. We've also included a number of Pose Helper Morphs on the Tabard and the MailShirt, to assist in instances where the movement of the body handles is not entirely suitable to the pose.

Image 9: Adjusting Body Handles	Image 10: Additional Tabard Morphs

A little further back, we mentioned there's a Cloak as well., so let's take a look at that now. Because we want to look at Michael from the back now, we'll turn him round using the yRotate dial on 'Body'. The first thing we see when we conform the Cloak to our posed Michael is a couple of areas that are going to need a little adjustment, which we've circled in red in image11 below. In image12 below, we've selected the bodypart 'BackLeft' and applied a small amount of Bend to it.

Image11: Adjustment needed.	Image12: Adjustment using body handles

For the Scabbard, there is a specific morph to get around it. In image13 below, we can see the Body of the Cloak selected and the morph 'AvoidScabbard' dialled up to 0.900 which pulls the Cloak around the Scabbard. In Image14, we've dialled in some other morphs and applied a little posing on the left and right body handles. In addition, we've changed the material on the Cloak to 'Cloak1-Ripped2'. Note that the 'AvoidScabbard' morph is now only dialled to 0.212, this is because of effects of other morphs and posing the body handles.

Image13: Adjusting the Cloak to avoid Scabbard	Image14: Adding some interest

Please remember that this is heavy chain and plate armour, which weighs a lot, so anyone dressed in this armour would not be doing acrobatics. Movement in this kind of armour is severely restricted, and we've set this outfit up accordingly, to reasonable parameters for this kind of heavy duty armour. Ok, now we have our Michael posed, let's change his appearance up a bit. For now, we're going to change the look of his Tabard, since this is where the bulk of the MAT options are, because this is the item that there would be greatest variation on. If you go to Pose:MortemVetus:Templar:MAT: you'll find folders for each of the items that have multiple material options. Select the Tabard folder, make sure the Tabard is selected in the scene and apply the material you require. We're going to use 'Tabard8-Ripped2'. We've also swapped the Greaves and Pauldrons materials, for 'Greaves4' and 'Pauldrons4'. In image11 below, we've swapped the Helm for the Shemagh, and we've applied our Thane character to Michael...because default Michael is just so...ugh. We've changed up all the straps and the Lance as well as Boots and Gloves.

Image 15: Changing it up	Image 12: Changing most materials

There are also MAT poses for the included props. In order for these to work, there has to be a figure in your scene somewhere. As far as we've found, it can be any sort of figure as long as it's a .cr2. So it could be a building, and the prop doesn't need to be parented to it, just as long as there's a cr2 in the scene. With a figure in scene, select your prop, and apply the appropriate MAT pose in the same way as the clothing items. The Lance contains a number of morphs for shaping the pennant. We've dialled a bit of shape into it for when it loads just to make it a bit more interesting. We've included two sets of utility poses. The first of these is Hand Poses, and contains grasp poses for M4's hands for all the included props. Use these to correct hands after using library poses. The other set, Utility, contains poses for turning various bits of Michael4 on and off. This is useful to quickly eliminate poke-through.

We hope you enjoy using this product and we look forward to seeing what images you make with it. Happy Rendering Andrew and Tracey May 2014 :)