Like many Poser/DAZ Studio users, I’ve longed for a straightforward (and inexpensive) method of making my own meshes to clothe and equip the characters I use.

While Wings3D is great on the price front (it’s free), I’ve never found it particularly easy to do anything complex with, especially combined with Poser’s scaling issues. I know that’s a failing of mine, because I’ve seen from very nice Poser clothing made with it (adh3d, who brokers his stuff through Renderosity, uses Wings). Nor do its tutorials help much – they seem more aimed at helping you master the program, then letting you figure out how to do what you want with it.

Hexagon is nice, but has a slightly strange workflow, a whole bunch of functions labelled with jargon and (although I picked it up on Daz’s $2 introductory deal some years ago), it currently retails for $150. I’ve never really progressed far up its learning curve.

As you can imagine, if I find Hexagon rather complex, I’m not touching Blender with a bargepole. And price rules out cool-looking utilities like Z-Brush, Rhino and the like.

Enter Marckus Dunn’s Pegasus 2.0, available from DAZ. Marckus has made some nice utilities for Poser in the past, including Morph Designer and Clothes Converter, both of which help you modify a mesh. With Pegasus, you get to make one.

I’d managed to miss the very existence of Pegasus 1.0, so the utility is new to me with the new version.

It’s a simple, intuitive subdivision modeller designed to work at Poser’s scale, and takes you right through the essential steps of making a Poser-compatible mesh: modelling, refining, tweaking, grouping, UV mapping and setting up material zones.

There aren’t many bells and whistles, but you don’t need many with a subdivisional modeller. You start out with a cube and divide, move, cut connect and extrude it until it’s the shape you want (think of it like working with clay or putty).

And at $39.95, it does it at a fraction of the price of most lower-end modellers.

In a series of excellent video tutorials which come with the download, Marckus talks you through the basic use of Pegasus, modelling a shirt for Vicky 4 as an example – torso, sleeves and a collar, then UV mapping it and setting material zones. The tutorials are good enough that I now understand more about modelling for Poser in general.

Tutorials watched, it was time to put Pegasus through its paces.

I decided to start with something I’ve always wanted: an 11th-12th century Norman-style mail hauberk accurate enough to satisfy my exacting historical standards. Nobody’s made a really good one yet (Poserworld and adh3d come closest).

It didn’t take long to rough out the basic shape. Pegasus recommends a symmetrical modelling method, wherein you make half the item (left or right), and the software mirrors it on the other side. You then weld the two halves together. It’s a common modelling technique,  so it’s nice to see Pegasus supporting it.

Refining and tweaking the mesh is going to take time. That’s the nature of the beast. But I’m amazed at how quickly and easily it’s helped me produce the rough. I’m not playing with gazillions of tools to find out which is the one I want. I’m not scratching my head over whether I should start with a primitive or a path, because you just don’t get those options.

All in all, a great little product at a very reasonable price.

Pros:

A simple, easy-to-use modeller optimised to creating meshes for Poser/DAZ Studio. Fun to use, and inexpensive. Great tutorials.

Cons:

Windows only. Disables Aero automatically on my Win7/64-bit machine when opened and restarts it when closed (I find this annoying as I’ve got used to working with Aero).  Prone to crashing if stressed – save regularly and don’t spam the tool buttons. Requires a 3-button mouse to pan (zoom and rotate can be done with 2 buttons or a typical laptop mousepad).