https://www.posetteforever.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=4165&p=45986#p45986 ----------------------------------- Endosphere Thursday, 11 December 2025, 04:59 PM Re: Notable Posettes Of Yesteryear ----------------------------------- Yamatoverse Crossover: Circe by meegja There were three basic categories of female figures used by Poser hobbyists in the Poser 4 days. We've earlier considered two of those, P4NW (Posette) and Evolution Eve/P4WWG. The third major category of female figures using or related to P4NW geometry was the branch of Posettes developed by Japanese artists Yamato and Kozaburo (he of very most excellent Posette hairstyling fame). There was a whole series of these figures, including Nene, Mimi, RanRan, CanCan, and LinLin. Yamato was an intrepid Posette engineer; each figure in the series built on previous advances and added even more. For convenience here I'll call them the LinLin line, because LinLin was the last of the Yamato P4NWs built in the Poser 4 era, and therefore LinLin represented the apex of that whole series in relation to P4 and Posette. Unlike Evolution Eve, the Yamato models were true P4NWs. Most of Yamato's developments were concerned with morph work and fine-tuning of joint parameters, in order to improve the way polygons warp smoothly into shape when one poses Posette's major limbs. Evolution Eve sought to address that issue by throwing Posette's whole anatomy out the window and coming up with an entirely new limb arrangement. On the other hand Yamato's system retained the original P4NW poseable model but made improvements by adjusting blend zones and developing developing what we now call Joint Controlled Morphs (JCMs). I don't feel particularly comfortable discussing the Yamato line of Posettes, because I never used them. I don't want to give wrong details or idly speculate on unfamiliar topics, even though that's one of the main purposes of the internet. :) If anyone else has experienced perspectives on working with the Yamato models, by all means tell us more about them. Yet I have occasionally perused most of the LinLin line (they were all free downloads), and thus I have formed a few cursory opinions about them. In general, I'll say that I respect the engineering which went into the Yamato Posettes. But I have never found the joint problems they were designed to address to be sufficiently serious to need any therapy other than careful posing techniques of the standard P4NW (and perhaps an occasional bit of quick postwork). I also didn't care for the general aesthetics of the Yamato models. That's a highly subjective point, and I'm not claiming there is anything [i]wrong[/i] with the appearance of the models. I just prefer the way a standard Posette's figure looks and works, and didn't care for the outcomes of Yamato's favored morphs. Broadly speaking and perhaps more importantly, I also don't care for anime-style characters and aesthetics of any sort, and the Posettes in the LinLin line inexorably drove in that aesthetic direction. Finally, I objected to the texturing philosophy of all the Yamato models. They were all textured by default in a way that incorporated (required) aggressive use of ambient object lighting in their bodies, and I don't care for the way that style renders and detracts from realism. As well, none of them by default made any use of bump mapping, likely as a consequence of their anime-style appearance (which emphasizes smooth surfaces). The LinLin line of Posettes were all Notable Posettes of Yesteryear, widely used with fondness by Poser artists. But I never used any of them beyond a few glances, and thus despite their relevance to the topic of the moment, I simply don't have much more to say about them. An exception was a character called Circe, made in the late 1990s by an artist named meegja. Way back when in Poser 4 days, I recall there was a period when I regularly used Circe in more than a few renders. Nor was I the only one who enjoyed Circe-- though we shouldn't call her 'popular' in same way superstar Posettes like Lara Croft and Druuna were featured in every third or fourth render at hobbyist galleries, Circe did sometimes appear in on-line Poser venues toward the end of the Poser 3/4 era. Circe was a sort of cousin to the Yamato Posettes. She was based on Mimi-- the Yamato Posette after Nene, but before the dramatic turn toward anime aesthetics the Yamato line took with RanRan, CanCan, and LinLin. For a freebie derivative character, Circe was a quite well crafted Posette, and lovely to look at as well (of course the last is a subjective conclusion). [img]https://www.posetteforever.com/files/posted_images/5475/circe_linlin.jpg[/img] In matters of texturing, Circe abandoned the Yamato approach, and was far more in the direction of the way I was back then learning to best use materials. I have trouble remembering what precisely I may have been up to twenty-five years ago, but working with the Circe figure may have been an important development in what has years later become my own steady artistic style in Poser work. In relation to most other freebie Posettes at the time, Circe was one of the very few figures apart from the Ultramorph Woman series (by Confusius) to make prominent use of bump mapping in coordination with her texture mapping. By contrast, the Mimi figure upon which Circe was based made no use of bump mapping. I seem to recall observing details of how all that turned out at render time as really opening up my own horizons about the importance and proper use of bump mapping in Poser 4. As well unlike her cousin Mimi, Circe made no use at all of ambient object lighting; to make her look good, one must illuminate Circe with satisfactory studio lighting. Shown on the right in the image above is LinLin by Yamato, whose appearance I've altered only by putting a P4 Bikini bottom on her and posing her. LinLin appears here both because she was the ultimate development of her kind, and as well because my old files related to Mimi somehow got corrupted, and I no longer have access to that character from my archives (not that I ever used her for anything anyway). On the left is Circe by meegja, who arrived as a download already wearing a bikini bottom (but nothing else) and standing in the pose depicted, and thus has not been modified in any way. Circe is a solid P4NW character effort, and came packed with all sorts of quality-enhancing goodies for a freebie. She bears what was for her own day a good quality texture map, which is a slightly altered version of the old Happyworldland 'Real' texture. The skin hue has been lightened a bit in comparison with 'Real,' and some freckles have been painted onto the face around the nose and eyes. As idle speculation, I'll guess the general lightening of the texture map was necessary because Circe eschewed use of ambient object lighting, which most of the Happyworldland textures required in order to avoid an excessively dark or grey appearance. I can't be certain, but Circe's bump map also looks to have been generally derived from Happyworldland Real. Probably as a consequence of starting out as Mimi, Circe bears a full load of Yamato P4NW morphs circulating in that era, and one can never have too many morphs. The bikini bottom she wears is the standard P4 model. Circe's hair was a somewhat popular hairstyle at the time. I don't know its proper name, but it was made by someone called Eric Westray, and was used by several free P4 characters of both sexes in the P4 era. For example, the same hair was used by John Malis for his Luke Skywalker (Star Wars) P4NM figure, and also by the 'Lady Jaye' (GI Joe) Posette. I'm not a fan of this hair model, at least for Posettes (it looks okay on Dork), and when using Circe as a model I usually replaced it with something else, but that's neither here nor there. I've never seen this hair textured (nor have I ever tried to texture it myself), but it would probably look better with some kind of map. However, it's one of clunky old style P4 hairs, a thick solid block which makes applying a transparency map tricky, so I doubt attempting to so do is worthwhile. In additon to working on Posettes, apparently author meegja also had an interest in mythology, and in the documentation for the Circe model he included a few lines of homage to the ancient Greek origins of the name he chose for the character. In all Circe was a fine Posette for her time. She was at least somewhat visible and embraced by artists posting in on-line galleries of that era, making occasional appearances. More importantly as a shared figure, she was easy to deploy and use despite her relative complexity (particularly in material usage) compared to the many bare-bones Posettes circulating in those years. I think Circe's true significance was in the technicals of her crafting. At the time Circe appeared, Confusius and his Ultramorph characters were amongst the few commonly used P4NM/P4NW characters who set aside the Yamato approach to materials utilization. The Yamato approach was the standard artistic practice of the wider community in those days, and thus figures like Circe bucked a general trend of their own times. The Eve-related figures circulating at the time were a mixed bag in this regard-- some figures and popular textures needed ambient figure lighting, while others did not use it at all. Lady Vethril (a P4WWG by Vethril) was an example of the former, while Latexa by HR3D was an example of the latter. As well, very few Eve-related figures exhibited any acquaintance with bump mapping (at least not by default). In terms of general aesthetics, by utilizing the older and more realistic Mimi figure as a base in a time when Yamato figures were increasingly exhibiting anime-style features, Circe also offered those with an interest in experimenting with Yamato-type Posettes an opportunity to so do with a Posette who otherwise remained standard in aesthetics.