Poseable Tail User Manual
For Hai Gan's Poseable Tail Prop
Advanced techniques
This part of the manual describes colour-matching to suit your horse texture, the use of multiple morphs in combination, and the use of multiple copies of the tail to produce a thicker tail or a bicoloured tail.
Colour matching
The tail prop package includes several different textures, but some fine-tuning will probably be needed to match the tail colour to that of the horse's hide.
First pick neutral lighting. Very important! Coloured lights make it hard to judge the exact colour of the model, particularly clustered spotlights that throw different hues onto different parts of the scene. Poser 2 default lighting is okay if you don't want to set all the lights up individually:

Select the tail colour that is closest to the one you want. If there are two possibilities, pick the lighter shade.

Compare the tail with the coat colour, judging the shade and the hue. In this instance one of the grey textures looks nice, but is a little too light. The coat of the horse is also not a pure grey, but has hints of red and a little yellow:

Open the Render Materials window:

If the tail colour is too light, set the object colour for the tail to a light grey. If the tail colour is the wrong hue, set the object colour to match the hide of the horse, keeping it to a light shade if the tail is already close to the correct shade, and picking a darker colour if the tail is too light. In this instance the tail is only a little lighter than needed, and the shade needs a touch of red:

n this example, the colour chosen was too dark and too red:

A lighter, less saturated shade gives a much better result:


Here's the original (white base colour) for comparison:

Once you've got your colours matched you can set your lights to suit your scene, and the tail should blend properly with the rest of the horse.
Using multiple morphs:
As a general rule, morphs ending with a 1 work as their names suggest with the tail pointing out behind. Those ending in 2 work as their names suggest with the tail hanging down vertically. Using them the other way around will produce effects that are not what the morph name might say:

splaytail1 used with the tail pointing out backwards

splaytail1 used with the tail pointing downwards

frontlong2 used on a horizontal tail
Some morphs look best when used in combination. For example, the 'banner' morph looks best if one of the 'ripple' morphs is also used, and the length morph dials may be used to further shape the tail:

'banner' morph; 'banner' with 'ripple3'; 'banner' with 'ripple3' and 'backlong1' plus negative 'frontlong1'.
Morphs that move the tail left and right will generally work in combination with any of the other morphs, including each other:

The first image has swishdown and swishleft both at 1.000; the second has swishdown, swishleft, swayleft and tipright all at 1.000.
Some morphs will have their action reversed when used in combination with certain other morphs:

splaytip1 is set to 0.000 in the first image, and to 1.000 in the second image- instead of splaying the tail tip, when used together with the other morphs it bunches the tip instead.

The first image has swishleft set to 1.000. In the second image, the swayright dial is also set to 1.000. The curve of the tail is increased, not decreased- the tail still goes towards the right of the horse, rather than reversing the curve of the tail.

Here's the same two morphs, swishleft and swayright, from another angle. In the second image, lengthen1 is set to 1.000, and in the third image lengthen1 is set to -1.000. the lengthen morphs ending in 1 extend the tail out from the back of the horse, so work in reverse if the tail tip is pointing forwards.
Note that most of the morphs will not work well if set to values less than -1.00 or greater than 1.00.
Two sample combinations to illustrate how multiple morphs may be used to acheive a particular effect:

bunchtip1 1.000
shortdownb 0.500
tailfull 1.000
lengthen2 1.000
backlong 1.000
banner 1.000

swishup 0.500
swishleft 1.000
swayright 1.000
tipforward1 1.000
splaytail1 1.000
splaytail2 1.000
shortdownb 0.500
backlong1 -1.000
banner 1.000
flick 0.500
ripple2 1.000
Using two instances of the prop to produce a thicker tail:

The first image shows one instance of the tail prop, the second image uses two instances.
Two copies of the tail on the same horse can give the tail more volume and make it look thicker, as in the example above.
When using the tail this way, scale one copy slightly smaller on the X and Y axes (90-95% ).

When posing the tail, pick values for the scaled tail that are very slighly less extreme than the unscaled tail. For example, if the unscaled tail has 'Flick' set to 1.000, set the scaled tail to 0.950 or 0.900.

Touches of other morphs may help to give the desired effect, such as setting 'splaytail' on the unscaled tail to a low-to-medium value (0.100 to 0.500).
Using two instances of the tail for a bicoloured effect:

Many horses with broken-coloured coats (Paint, Appaloosa, etc.) have two colours in their tail where the skin over the tailbone is also spotted or patched, giving a very distinctive bicolour effect. A similar effect can sometimes be seen on dun (buckskin) horses with a dorsal stripe, where the outter hairs of the tail grow cream-coloured, sandy or pale grey and the inner hairs grow black or dark grey/brown. This can be reproduced by using two instances of the tail prop and setting different textures for each. Set up the tail as for 'using two instances of the prop to produce a thicker tail', then apply different MAT pose files to the two different props (the second tail prop may need the texture applying manually in render materials instead).
The illustration above used the following settings:
Tail 1:
tucktags 2.00
swishdown 0.100
tipback 0.600
splaytail1 0.500
shortdownb 0.100
frontlong1 -0.500
backlong1 1.00
banner 0.600
ripple3 1.00
texture: white
Tail 2:
tucktags 2.00
swishdown 0.200
tipback 0.500
frontlong -0.500
backlong 0.500
banner 0.500
ripple3 1.00
x scale 90%
y scale 90%
texture: chestnut
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