I am probably going to kick myself afterwards but I can't figure what I am doing wrong or missing. I am trying to create a new custom and separate head texture map for the P4 female (ALA Victoria style). Using the grouping tool I selected the existing head of the p4 fem, spawned a prop and exported it in obj. form. I opened it in Steve Cox's UV mapper, resized the map to 2048x2048, selected the various materials resized them, moved them around etc. Then I saved the model and new UV map. (I did this because I want a separate tex map just for the head withouth the body parts). Re-imported the head back into poser (texture map works fine) and positioned the new head exactly over the existing p4 fem head and saved it as a prop. I then applied the new head prop to the p4 fem and used "replace body part with prop", everything morphs etc work fine except "bend". As you can see from the above. When I use the "bend" slider a gap appears in the mesh and this does not happen with the "side to side" slider. What am I doing wrong? BTW I have the latest patch installed. Thanks

In a Poser model, all parts are unwelded from each other. They are re-welded afterwards by the Weld instructions in the CR2 file. But this welding only works where the vertexes coincide exactly along the border. Hence the gaps.

Thank you both for your help. Two further questions arise, Allerleirauh how do I alter the cr2 file to get it to point to the new figure? And Anthony, if I manage to line up the vertexes exactly (ruining my eyes in the process) will what I am doing work, is it even possible? Would it be possible to use the grouping tool to spawn a head prop, withouth moving it, save it as a prop so it repositions exactly, export the prop, remap it, then replace the prop file in the library with the remapped one. Would this remapped prop then - when applied - line up exactly with the P4 Fem head allowing a "replace body part with prop" command to work withouth gaps in the mesh? Would this work? Where are the positioning co-ordinates stored in Poser for library props etc? Thanks

heya; storm, when you replace a body part with a prop, the prop does not become an integral part of the figure. if you stuck a peg leg in for the shin, for example, you'd get the same break at the knee. even though your 'prop' really IS a body part, it still won't work. what i think you want to do, if i understand you correctly, is open the original figure in uvmapper, select everything but the head and HIDE it (the newest version does this with the [ or ] key, to hide and unhide.) then all you have visible is the head pieces. select and map those however you wish, even take up the whole are of the map, cross over the other parts, blah blah blah. save this new model. now you have a head that uses your new map, but it is still attatched to its old body that uses the old map. see? the only trick is, when you export the texture map from uvmapper, it exports all the info. you can't, for example, hide the body and export a template for just the head, then hide the head and export a template for just the body. (where are ya steve, i think we need this feature! :) ) you can change the groups to different colours, then try to select only the 'head' colour and delete the rest for a pretty accurate, semi-clean map. now, after all that... pop open the original figure cr2, and change the two lines that point to the obj to point to your new obj. then you'll have your whole figure, your newly mapped head, AND everything will still be welded, and all your morphs will still be in place, etc etc. oh, then in render:materials, turn on 'texture applies to whole figure,' load the body texture you want to use. then, select the head parts, turn OFF 'texture applies to whole figure' and load the new head map for them. hmmm... okay, this would be a problem with the 'skin' material, so when you are in uvmapper, you will need to assign the 'skin' portions of the head to a new material, 'face' perhaps. (but don't hide the body and select by material, because it will still select the hidden body skin. try selecting the eyeball/eyebrow/teeth/etc materials and hide them, THEN marquee select the leftover head skin and assign it to a new material.) that's what i'd do, anyway. :)

Thank you bloodsong you have answered my questions (for now - there are bound to be more!) and have provided a great tutorial-like response to the issue. I am sure many others will benefit as well. And yes, if you are reading this Steve Cox, being able to export templates for sections of models, as bloodsong suggests, would be the single most useful new improvement to your wonderful UV mapping utility that I can think of. BTW Steve you do not get half the thanks you deserve for this utility, it has been an integral part of almost every new non-Metacreations development for Poser to date and is crucial to all of us. Thanks again to all of you, I'm off to try this out. STORM

heya; YES STEVE YOU RULE! :) also the thought occurs to me, you can tell the cr2 to use the regular obj for all the body parts, but manually stick the pointer to the new head obj in where the head sections are. i'm not sure exactly how to do this, though. if you do, i think they will still be welded.

STORM wrote And Anthony, if I manage to line up the vertexes exactly (ruining my eyes in the process) will what I am doing work, is it even possible? The only vertexes that need to be moved are along the loose bottom edge of the head and/or top edge of the neck. STORM's eyes need not be disturbed. Try combining the bottom part of the body's neck with the top part of the neck that came with the head. Don't delete or create or weld any vertexes in the head, or you will mess up its morphs. When I was helping Sixpackwolf to make his Grey (Zeta Reticuli alien) from the Poser 3 Nude Child with a replacement head, I used my MAKEOBJ program, a feature that can move "selected vertex" and "vertex nearest to mouse" to their average without welding them.

Well bloodsong I can report complete success using your method with one or two alterations. After UV mapping is complete and the new geometry saved, firstly load up the original model (in my case the P4 Nude Woman) in Poser. Save this figure back to the Library calling it "P4 WomanNew" or something like this that reflects the stage one is at and to distinguish it from the original. Shut down Poser and then open up the cr2 file of this new Library figure with a text editor and get it to point at the new Geometry saved in the P4 Woman folder from UV Mapper. In my case I called this new geometry "P4NudeWo1". The next stage is to start up Poser again and load up the "P4 WomanNew" Library figure in Poser. Now there is no way it seems that one can play with selecting and deselecting the "texture applies to whole figure" applying the original texture to the body and the new one to the head because of the "skin" definition problem as you spotted. Here is what I did. With the "P4 WomanNew" figure up in Poser I selected the head and then opened the group editor. Then I selected all the head mesh and created a new material called "SkinHead" to distinguish it from the body skin. But one could call it anything really. I then applied the new head map to the head i.e. the "SkinHead" material and the original P4 map to the body and it worked like a dream. I saved this figure back to the Library overwriting the earlier "P4WomanNew" figure. The next stage was to see if another part of the body could be remapped and this new map be applied to the same figure in addition to the new head map. This time I used UV Mapper to open up the new geometry in the runtime folder, i.e. "P4NudeWo1". I decided to re-map the nipples using exactly same method you outlined for the head. I saved the remapped model back to the runtime geometry folder, calling it "P4NudeWo2". Closed poser, opened up the cr2 file of "P4 WomanNew" (the one with the re-mapped head) and changed it from pointing to the "P4NudeWo1" geometry to the "P4NudeWo2" geometry. Opened poser, loaded my "P4 WomanNew" figure, selected the chest, opened the group editor and selected the nipples. I then created a new material calling it "NewNipples" and resaved this figure replacing my "P4 WomanNew" figure in the Library with it. I now have a P4 Fem figure with a head map 2048x2048, a nipples map of 500x500 and any original texture map I care to use for the rest of the figure. It seems that the only limitation on this is: 1) the amount of memory one's computer has and 2) the increasing complexity of the templates UV Mapper exports and the problems of distinguishing the new maps from earlier ones. I am so excited about all of this I might even write a proper tutorial with step by step screen shots. We will see. So far I have only been mapping the templates onto the figures but now I am off to play with creating textures and bumps. Who knows the P4 woman might give Vicky a run for her money yet! Thanks again to all of you.

Anthony that sounds very interesting, I think I am going to try it as soon as I get finished with texturmapping etc. Thank you very much.

heyas; btw, i cant take ALL the credit, because allie said the same thing i did, though more concisely. :) it just happens i was doing a similar mapping job, making eye materials take up the whole texture map, so had more details on how to do it. good call allie! :) i also considered taking a screen shot of the uvmapper template with the various parts hidden/unhidden, but i worry that the placements and ratios will be off.