Hi all I'm making a new figure that is gonna be (hopefully) the most realistic one of its type anywhere on the web. To make this as realistic as possible, it will require multiple joints and layers of joints. Nope, not telling what it is...:P (dont want people to get excited and then not have it work) Annnnnneeeewhoooo My question is, when do you thing the number of body parts is extreme? For instance, sure I can make it with 10 body parts, but it will not be as realistic as if it had 20..and that wouldnt be as realistic if it had 30..and that wouldnt be as...etc Actually, I could probably make 300 or so (really..not kidding), but obviously..even tho the model would be extremely realistic in that case, it would be an absolute devil to work with. So in the interest in helping me get an idea on what people use and consider a good number vs an extreme number, I thought I'd ask. Id actually prefer a number and a reason as to why you feel this way. tia :) BT

Not that I am any bit a professional regarding this but I have found with models, that when there are too many joints that contribute little to the pose I prefer fewer joints. Example, braided hair, maybe a foot in length from the top of the head, having 24 joints is way to much, doesn't really add to the posing just complicates it. That is my opionion, like I said I am not involved with lots of jointed action, but I do have lots of models that have way to much going on to add to my final picture. Sharen

i that case you'll have to say what you're working with. if it's gonna be human, i could deal easily with lots of parts (never thought of how many is lot) but if you want to make a, let's say bug, 12 would be enough. :) so, don't be shy ;) what are you working on?

Yikes! It really depends on the charater you're making. A snake can have a lot of joints, but a robot very few. For an animal or human type figure, I wouldn't go much more than the number with Mike of V2. Although I would like to see a character with a more flexable backbone (like a cat). I personally prefer using joints for posing rather than morphs, so I'd opt for more joints and less morphs whenever possible.

waist length hair ok... now you can tell more :)

straight hair- I'd say about 9- over the shoulder is another matter altogether.

It depends on how the joints are controlled... an EasyPose figure with lots of body parts is a reasonable proposition, whereas having to tinker with them individually is not. For example - I tend not to use the finger joints much on a human model, and only get into it if the hand's grasp and spread dials aren't good enough. So for Mr. Impatient, more than 4 or 5 might get frustrating. :-) But do consider EasyPose as a good control method for everyday use, with individual parts reserved for those special occasions.

Why not include a set of Several "Hair Poses" with your creation :) That way you will cover all areas and make everyone happy! ladynimue

No more than 10 for each long piece going down. If you have it in 3 pieces (front right, left, and back) then 30. 5 pieces then 50. Sounds neat, especially if you use the same method you did on the great boa. One favor, a Mike fit too please. Now, when is it going to be done? Hurry up! (just kidding).

An Aiko fit too please. :)

I'd say that if it had ERC, I wouldn't care if it had 100 pieces. As long as it can be worked with, it's fine by me.

The biggest problem with the hair out there now is that it's like working with shellac and winds up looking that way. To get your hair to flow properly, you're gonna need a lot of joints, clearly, and to get the right sense of density, it's gonna need multiple layers. In all honesty, I don't think 25 joints per layer is too extreme, not if you want it to really flow. It might be a pain to pose, but the reality factor would be right up there when you're done.

How wonderful it would be to have some tendrils of hair by the face that would really pose! And that might be used separately with other hair models as well. :-) Sounds like what you have planned will be awesome.

Hair :-) I like to apply my own colors. Some hair lets you do it easily. Some just gives me the finger and says use MY colors or else.

I have to agree with EnglishBob that if you use ERC, you could easily have 50-100 parts, otherwise I would likely keep is below 20. The idea of some independently posable bangs or hair tendrils would do a lot for realism. I've always thought it would be cool to have morphs or the ability to go from neat to mussy. Good luck on your project. i am aleays impresed by good hair.

I agree with Valandar and the others in favor of ERC-type joints. DAZ' VersaHair (which was my first experience of this sort of complexity) is fantastic for control, although I've never counted the joints. Frankly, I found it daunting at first, and was very grateful for the canned poses included with the set (a friendly hint...oops, ladynimue already said that.) I think it's clear that "realism" is a hot item in the Poser community at this point. Without knowing more, 300 sounds like a bit much to me, but maybe around 100 would be cool. Best of luck with this item!

At least 20 per "piece". I have longer than waist-length hair, so know exactly how fluidly it ought to move. If you are going to do this, do it right... so we can also pose it realistically. Many thanks for even attempting it! Carolly

Just popping in with an FYI you should be aware of. The more bodyparts coming off of one group, the more Poser chokes. The hair may not be able to move in Poser without lurching or having to use Bounding box preview mode only. It may crash poser for a few reasons. Example 1)Say you have a snake with 300 body parts in a row. The snake should pose very quickly and be responsive 2)And say you have a spider with 300 legs of the body The spider likely would lock or freeze in Poser because Poser has to calculate the overlaping joints, scales, and taper parameters for all the legs on the main body. So with your hair model the probem is the number of strands coming off the scalp. anything more than 15 and you might start seeing "lurching" while you are trying to pose. This is made worse by resolution and morphs. Just some things to look out for that will drive you insane. Consider using curve joints with fewer segments and delete all the scale dials and parameters from the cr2. This may be a work around for the Poser management issue. Anton

thanx for everyones input. As carolly has said, long hair is very fluid and dynamic. To limit the entire model to a small number (like 30) would severely limit the way you can pose it. Currently, you get a hair model and what you get is what you get (with very small adjustments possible) I want (and actually need..I need this model for personal use) a hair model that is so dynamic that you can make hair sweep all the way around the head and dangle over the chest... flyaways that are realistic in the way they behave (and look) and stranded instead of 'meshed' in layers. Long hair, unless very clean and newly groomed, appears in streaky strands instead of a flat mesh surface. Ya dont see many images of the fantasy women genre (drawing...not computer generated) where the woman has short hair or is bald. You see a few, but not as many. The long hair can make such a statement in the image...indicating wind, exhaustion, frustration, the end of a battle, (or at the opposite end) the beginning of a ball. Anton, I have made figures (the centipede) with 180 parts. And even on my machine, as long as there are not a lot of morphs or additional things to keep up with...models with such things dont gripe much in poser. Poser does gripe, but not nearly as much as it does with V3. So the idea to completely dodge morphs. Control handles (if even necessary) instead of morphs will be much more "end-user" friendly than morphs. But as you say, there is the poser limitation and how it will behave so Id have to keep that in mind too. With that in mind, I also want to watch the poly count so as to add enuff to make it real, but not so much as to make it like having 2 V3's loaded. Just guessing, but I think I can bring it in under 30000. As for other figures..like mike, aiko, dina, v2, steph..etc. I dont have them..so I cant make pre-set hair for them. I will however make this as versatile as possible so that, even tho it enters the scene for V3..it can be repositioned and saved to be used with any figure. I'll remove the transational data from any poses so it wont move after its positioned. I have absolutely no doubt I can make this. After making the boa, half-making a fur coat and making the pirate hair (same method as the boa), I know I can do this and give great mapping so that people can even use real hair picts as textures much easier. I just dont want to limit it too much. Now lets talk ERC. Exactly what do you all mean you want it to do via erc? I can add an EZ-pose like setup to it for each strand (so it can be straight, curled, or wavy)..but what else do you have in mind. Please remember that tho erc is kewl, with a large joint model, it is more likely to make poser choke. thanx for everyone's input BT

"Example 1)Say you have a snake with 300 body parts in a row. The snake should pose very quickly and be responsive 2)And say you have a spider with 300 legs of the body The spider likely would lock or freeze in Poser because Poser has to calculate the overlaping joints, scales, and taper parameters for all the legs on the main body." As I said snakes and worms aren't where the problem will be. It will be in the the number of parts coming off the scalp.

ahhh.. duh, Ive hit this problem before and hadnt even thought of it this time so, of course the easy workaround is not to make it a 'single' scalp..or to step up in stages to the final strand count. I think there is an actual limit to the number that can come off of one body part. Ive hit it before and until I removed or re-parented the part, it wouldnt work. 8? does that sound right (per body part) or was it 10? (I should have written that down) thanx for jarring my memory. So a minor re-evaluation of the initial setup will have to be done. Perhaps layers with their own parent and then those layers parented to different parents..and those parented to a single base. The idea right now is to have 10 main layers, but then each of those 10 layers will have 30 or more layers unto itself. and each of those will have multiple posable parts. thanx BT