https://www.posetteforever.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=4165&p=45987#p45987 ----------------------------------- Endosphere Saturday, 13 December 2025, 06:45 PM Re: Notable Posettes Of Yesteryear ----------------------------------- Dark-skinned Posettes: 'Inez' by Confusius and 'Naomi' by Al Nicosia By default, Poser 4 installed with a generous variety of ethnic and racial Posettes and Dorks, though their differences were somewhat heavy-handed in relying on simple face morphs only, and none of them offered much in terms of refined aesthetics at render time, as their skin hues were wholly facilitated by direct object coloring rather than any texture mapping. Yet caucasian Posettes predominated in public galleries of the Poser 4 era, and for several important reasons beyond the basic observation that most Poser hobbyists at the time tended to be caucasians. The Poser 4 rendering engine was not a fancy raytracer, but instead was a custom slapdash whose primary purpose was speed rather than realism or versatility. As a result, Poser 4 had difficulty accurately rendering dark hues, as well as troubles with lighting contrast and the effects of shadow. The subtlety of dark, highly saturated skin-tones don't present well in Poser 4 output without advanced tinkering. To make a realistic appearing character with dark skin in Poser 4 requires a stage of technical savvy, both in lighting and in model design, that was still largely untapped when the Poser 3/4 and Posette heydays ended. Therefore, if there weren't many dark-skinned characters available in those days, we shouldn't overlook as a nontrivial cause that such characters didn't render well in that software engine, and at the time the average hobbyist hadn't the slightest idea how to address that issue from a technical or crafting perspective. Yet there were some notable attempts at diverse P4NW characters around the turn of the century, near the tail end of Poser 4 days. To my knowledge the best of these was by Confusius, a famous name in that era, chiefly known for making the Ultramorph Woman series of P3 and P4 Posettes. Around 1998 or 1999, Confusius also released a freebie three-pack of dusky-hued Posettes called 'Black Beauty.' In my opinion the aesthetic best of that trio was the lady called 'Inez' (pictured below at left). Another effort in this direction was by Al Nicosia, who offered a free character called 'Naomi' (middle) sometime around the year 2000. [img]https://www.posetteforever.com/files/posted_images/5475/dark_skin_tones.jpg[/img] For purposes of comparison with the traditional P4 era tech under consideration, I've shown above at right a P4NW character I made several years ago. She was constructed from a general blend of free morphs circulating in Poser 4 times. More importantly, I also made use of modern approaches to texturing techniques, and thus we can see here what a dark-skinned Posette might have looked like in the actual Poser 4 era, in light of later advances in texturing. We shouldn't too harshly criticize hobbyists in the late 1990s for not doing things nobody had invented yet, and therefore we shouldn't think Inez or Naomi too deficient in relation to my own more recent character. Confusius and Nicosia were both using accepted best texturing principles for their own times. Inez by Confusius is a solid character offering, who comes with her own texture map, bump map, and unique hairstyle. As one would expect from the old morphmaster himself, the morph work is top-notch, particularly around the face. The included bump map is notably aggressive for the late 1990s era, when few Poser artists used them at all, and appears to be the same map (but at lower resolution) Confusius used in his then-flagship character Ultramorph Woman 2. Producing realistic textures for dark-skinned P4 people is an obscure matter from a technical perspective, requiring specialized approaches one might never consider when making textures for caucasian figures. A favorite approach of texturers in P4 days was to work from photographic samples. That's not likely to be fruitful in the case of dark skin tones, which will almost certainly have to be painted/procedurally generated rather than culled from photo samples. Looking at the Black Beauty texture made by Confusius for Inez, I can see clearly that he originally started the map with photo samples and later switched over (probably in frustration) to heavy painting methods, which further confirms my own observations in such matters. As can be seen in my sample image, Confusius' Inez texture looks pretty good when rendered, with the only uneven spots a bit of hue mismatch on the feet (a [i]very[/i] common problem in P4 days), as well as the odd color of Inez's nipples. Apart from the specific character morph included, Inez is a standard Posette, though in the documentation Confusius refers anyone looking for further customizations to his freebie Ultramorph figures. The original Ultramorph Woman was a Poser 3 figure, not compatible with P4NW. But Ultramorph 2 and Ultramorph 3 were both P4NWs, each loaded with morph targets (easily swappable to other Posettes using the Morph Manager program by Mr. X), as well as other goodies. At the time of Poser 4, I can't recall a more aesthetically pleasing Posette with dark skin than Inez, so she should probably be considered the apex of freebie characters of this variety from that era. The only real problem with Inez is her custom hairstyle, also made by Confusius. It frankly looks very bad, comprised of long ribbons of thin polygons with no texturing. Yet it's actually lovely in comparison to the even worse hair (also made by Confusius) worn by another of Inez' sisters in the trio character pack. In fairness, the hair design was innovative and advanced for its own day, and is probably best considered an experiment that ultimately didn't work. I think anyone using Inez today would delete the hair right off, as she'd look much better with a modern transmapped hair model, or by comparison, even bald-headed. Of the trio included in the BB pack, the one called Monisha has the best hair, but is also the least interesting overall as a distinctive morph character. Though not attributed in the documentation, Monisha uses a hair model called ModHair by JeffH. JeffH was a popular Posette hair stylist of those days, and ModHair was yet another of his morph adaptations of the standard P4 Female Hair 5. Perhaps some other time we'll consider the nostalgia of JeffH hair as a separate topic, as his styles were both numerous and popular in the 1990s: OmniHair, New5, ModHair, and many others. Al Nicosia's 'Naomi' was reportedly inspired by a real supermodel of the same name, called Naomi Occiverdi (though I don't recall ever hearing that name anywhere else). Naomi may be slightly eccentric in appearance, but as a Poser model she has many virtues. Naomi is positively loaded with all manner of morph targets, only a few of which are actually used in her default appearance. Though sorting morphs is abstruse, many of these appear to be custom work by Nicosia. Therefore in her own day, she would likely have been considered as a rare morph bonanza and gold-mine, a figure mostly useful as a resource for further customizing other Posettes. The cavernous belly button is a bit odd, but that could easily be fixed by dialing back the morph. In addition to her character morphs, Naomi comes with a custom texture map (but no bump map). I think the sample image above shows hers as the weakest of the three textures depicted, mostly due to lack of saturation (rather than hue issues, erratic seams, or blotty patterns). Naomi did not include any hair, so for the sample render I put the standard P4 Female Hair 4 on her (in addition to the P4 bikini bottom I added to all three characters for these examples). Apart from nostalgia and lore value, I'm not certain Inez or Naomi have retained much artistic relevance for modern audiences when considered as Poser characters. Anyone today looking to make ethnic or racial variants of Posette would, in my opinion, be better off starting from scratch with a basic P4NW, and doing the texturing and morph work themselves. That's what I did in several past cases when I made various dark-skinned Posettes (such as [url=http://www.posetteforever.com/album_showpage.php?pic_id=5214&user_id=5475]the lady shown in this old gallery image ). Looking at the texture maps for Inez and Naomi, I can only say the methods I used to more realistically texture dark-skinned Posettes my were radically different, and could not be derived from the P4-era methods used to make the first two textures. No discussion of non-caucasian P4NWs would be complete without mentioning a lovely face morph called HW_Kenyah, made in 2002 by someone called HackWorthless. As it's simply a face morph only (rather than a full character set), I didn't picture it here, but it's worth taking a look at if you ever see it anywhere (doubtful these days, I suppose). The face has a slight anime-style shape (though not as exaggerated as Yamato's LinLin line of Japanese Posettes), but that can be dialed back when applying the morph if it's an undesired embellishment.