Portrait backgrounds directly in Poser

Author: dorkati

Tools Needed

• Poser 4 or up
• Any paint program

I think most of people like portraits and make them in Poser. But it takes up a lot of time if you need to go to the paint program and make many postwork. If you prefer the work in Poser, do this for portrait backgrounds what I show you in this tutorial.

Sure, you need some work in any paint program, but only once. And later you need only the Poser if you want to make portraits!

Let's see how!

In Poser: posing your character for portrait.

Go to the Prop library, find the Primitives and load the square prop. Change the size, because it is too small for background. I set the dials this way: size 1000%, yTran 30, zTran -250. You can change this parameters, but I prefer this settings. This settings are very good for face camera if you make portrait, not a landscape picture.

Don't worry if you see this while you set the pose (I hope you use Posing or other camera for posing but not face camera!)

With the face camera you will see this or something similar.

In my opinion, a portrait background could be harmonious, nice, colorful, but not too conspicuous. If you use too many colors, the background will be too loud and distracts the eyes from portrait. So I think 3 color is enough. Sure you can use more colors if you like. So you need to load square props as much as colors want to use.

In case I loaded 3 squares. Adjust the dials like at first but one of them's zTrans could be -251. This square will be the base color and it must be behind others.

So apply several colors what you want to the squares. Make different colors, but notice that they harmonize with each other. I use similar colors, like dark red (RGB 165, 0, 75) as base color, light orange (RGB 274, 179, 0) and dark yellow (RGB 255, 255, 86).

Now you have 3 squares, but only see the closest. Yes, you need some transparency mapping. Here is the time for paint program

Sorry, but I haven't got Photoshop so I don't show you this in there. But here is a sample picture from my paint program.

Well, make transparency map. Create a dokument for example 800 x 800. We use square prop so this size will be fit. Turn to grayscale and set the background to black. Use layers, so you can change the layers transparency if you want. On the different layers paint some motifs with your airbrush. Use large size, 40-50 % transparency and medium-big feather. Make many different maps so you don't need to make others later. Export into your Poser- > Textures folder and go back to Poser.

If you haven't got any good paint programs, or you like my maps, you can save the 2 next maps which I used for this tutorial.

If you come back some days or weeks later, I hope you will find my Portrait Background Kit in DAZ's store what I'm working on. There will be 20 or more transparency maps, some bump-maps and some useful things for Portrait-making (props and MAT poses)

In Poser Material Room (Material Settings) set the squares transparencies. Use your maps in several ways. In this picture below you see some samples.

Only the first and second square have been transparency map. The square behind them will be the base with base color. It must be full visibility. Change the colors, variable the maps. And of course if you change the lightning set, the background will be different.

Save your background squares in Props Library (all 3 squares) and you can use it later.

And here is the final results with a portrait lightning set.

And what is the most important!

WITHOUT ANY POSTWORK!

If you have any question please feel to free contact me.

http://ghd-3D.uw.hu