I've combined a dwarf body with a walrus head and want to make this one character. I'd like to fix the back of the neck in a modeling program but I am afraid of losing the facial dials for the walrus. Suggestions or volunteers for help??

First off ... where on earth did you find a walrus? Secondly ... you've got a lot of work ahead of you I'm afraid. If you weld the mesh together in a modeling program, you will need to resetup the figure for Poser. The face dials are morph targets, each with their own gometry. In order to keep them you would need to spawn each one out as an obj, and if you are lucky, re-apply them to your new character. However, I don't think that will work, as the welding will have changed the geometry of the base figure and the morph targets will no longer match and therefor not work. umm.... but for a more expert opinion on this, ask LemurTek who made the amazing Second Nature series of anthro figures using various Poser animals

I bought the walrus from Daz3d for a pretty penny. I know welding the two will be a big mess. :( Where can i find examples of these Second Nature characters. I'd like to see them. :) Thanks!

heyas; didn't you know daz had a walrus? :) isn't that one of rob's?? if you have the walrus head and neck stuck on your human... er, dwarf, you can mess with the welding of the neck and (possibly) not mess up the vertex order of the head. if you don't weld anything, you'll be fine. why don't you try just re-shaping (morphing) the neck so it fits over the human neck/chest like a sorta big mane deal?

I'll give the morphing thing a shot. I'm still kinda new at this poser modeling. thanks for the idea.

Attached Link: http://www.3-darena.com/

As for Lemurtek's second nature series, they can be found at 3d arena's freestuff archive. Very cool figures.

DAZ's site is perniciously slow for me ...dialup still sigh and a quaint version of Netscape. So there are some areas that I never go into, as well as the fact that their site comes in with overlapping images and so on. But I think that's my fault for using the Model-T version of netscape ... If the look works for you I'd be inclined to shrink down the size of the walrus neck and go swipe the conforming lion mane from, I think, Bloodsong's site. With a little jiggling of color and so on it might work.

no genitals, but i will have different versions for my project. Which is why i want to keep the facial morphs so badly. I'm going to try and set him to walk, i think getting the flippers to work is going to be a task. I'm going to try the mane trick, See how that works. Keep the suggestions coming! I'll need help with him until he's 100% perfect for what i need. Thanks for all the help!

Here is a 4-view of this problem and my less than stellar attempt to fix it. You can see in the neck where I'm trying my best to get them together. I tried the mane thing but it made him look like a big toothy pimp with a fur collar. I just need a little tweak in the neck to smooth it out. Plus i'm still having problems keeping his head on dispite the fact i've parented it to the body. I think i'm in over my head. :(

heyas; don't parent the head to the body, parent it to the chest or the neck. which neck is that, anyway? if i were doing it, i'd grab more of the walrus' neck and overlap the human neck with it. the walrus' neck should be smooth by itself. then just curl it down into the shoulders.

That is the dwarfs neck. I am not doing well with the modeling so i'm having issues with the neck. I will take your suggestion to parent it to the neck. I appreciate the help and i'll continue trying to model the neck.

Attached Link: http://www.3-darena.com/

Hey- Sorry I haven't answered sooner. Looks like you're on the right track, though, cool figure! This is a tricky business, so don't get discouraged if you have trouble. I cringe when I think about how poorly I started my first figure in Poser. You might want to grab Mr. X's Morph Manager, it can transfer morphs from the original body part to the scaled/moved body part, as long as the vertice count/order hasn't been changed. Since the vertice count from the dwarf neck and the Walrus head probably don't match, you might want to create a new neck with the top vertices matching the walrus head and the bottom vertices matching the dwarf chest. This way poser can weld the vertices without losing the head or chest morphs. I think Bloodsong's approach might be best, though, given how big the walrus neck is, you'll probably have to get the collars involved as well. Depends on how much work you want to do on melding the head to the body. Feel free to download and study my Second Nature figures, as Bladesmith noted, there at http://www.3-darena.com/ in the freebie archives section. Good luck! Regards- Lemurtek

heyas; okay, here's what i'd do. i'd totally skip trying to weld anything anywhere. i don't think it' necessary in this case. i'd grab the walrus' neck and bend or morph it so it curls down from the head at a 90 degree angle, to be able to set the head on the human torso. it would cover the human neck (shown in light grey), and overlap the chest down the back, and try to get it to taper and merge with the spine somewhere between the shoulder blades, or even lower. forget having a walrus head balloon out of a human neck. think like a big mask that rests on your shoulders, that's more like it. now i'd parent the walrus to the human neck. then i'd go in and chop the cr2 to take out the human head and the walrus bits i'm not using. in fact, you could delete the human neck and parent the walrus neck to the chest.

I'm going to give that a shot bloodsong. Thanks for the diagram! I'm still working on the modeling. I have never really created a morph so there's quite a learning curve I need to get through first. I'm so gratefull there's a forum like this one and so many people willing to help out a novice like myself! Thanks!

Attached Link: http://www.morphworld30.com

heyas; check out trav's magnet tutorials at morphworld; you can do that all right in poser. (erm, unless you have p3, that is.)

I'm using 4 pro pack. I'll go there and check it out. The less i have to use actual modeling programs the better! ;)

Here is my magnet fix. I even have the head set to parent the chest for poses. Any suggestions for improvements?

The next steps are getting flippers for feet and finding a way to make this all one figure instead of the two. Also finding a way to make the color consistant for the entire body.

Thats not too much to ask is it? hehe ;)

Thanks for everyone's help!

heyas; that came out right nice! i would do more of a curve where the back of the head goes down, but that's just me. (and flippers!? oy!) why do you need to make it one figure? once you chop the cr2 to cut out the rest of the walrus, that should be fine. if you're new to the wonderful world of cr2 editing, um... poke around in the poser forum back room (which is here somewhere) for john stallings' cr2 editor. that'll come in handy.

I've tried to round the hump but it just won't obey. I'll work on it somemore. I'll also look into choping the cr2. As for flippers on the feet, do you think it would work if i exported the existing flippers as .obj files and then used them to replace the feet or is there another, more efficient way about it? Thanks for the help!

heyas; it depends on what you want him to wear. if you replace the feet with props, there will be a seam there; whenever you beend the foot (now a flipper), it won't be welded to the ankle. hmmmm... you could weld the flipper objects onto the figure for a new base figure, but any time you weld seams, you risk screwing up the morphs for any/all the body parts. i wonder if you could parent the flipper to the foot with inherit bends on, then replace the foot with the flipper. okay, the easiest thing to do would be to build the flippers over the ankle and foot, parent them to the foot with inherit bends turned on, then make the foot and toes of the figure invisible. i think.

parenting the flippers was exactly what i was planning but my concern is the way the flippers are I'd need to import 2 more walrus figures. My question is will the cr2 editing allow me to permenantly remove unused pieces thus allowing the file size to be more managable?

heyas; yes, you can chop out the unusued cr2 parts. but you should make the flippers props, not use the figure, then you just need those two obj pieces.

I'll do my best, but i've never done any modeling. I recently bought lightwave but it seems a bit over my head. maybe flippers won't be so hard. :)

So i open up my walrus pz3 file and it loads fine except no head!! The heirarchy editor says that it's visible and i can select from the pull downs but no head! Whats causing this and how can i correct it!? Very worried, Garicstarr

heyas; just relax, it'll be fine. first, reboot and reload. second, try importing the pz3 (file: import: poser document or prop). third, try deleting the walrus geometry rsr from the geometries directory (wherever the obj is stored). fourth, if you've upgraded your memory and now have 2 gig or more, be sure you get the poser 'you have too much memory' patch at curious labs. have you messed with editing the file yet?

thanks but it looks like the obj file for the new morphing was corrupted somehow. Thankfully I kept the bast figure and was able to recreate (even better in my mind) a new morph target with magnets. Here's how it looks now: