Okay, I put together some screen captures to illustrate problems I'm having with M3 SR1. But first, here's some background information: I'm using Poser4.0.3 on a Mac. I got the SR1 upgrade and body morph upgrade from the products' page. I installed. I even deleted the old M3 objs, and replaced it with the new M3 objs in the Runtime. This first shot shows what I first noticed with M3 SR1 in the default pose, no morphs, -- the left forearm has this bizarre bluge-like shape. The right arm does not have this.

I made a Quicktime movie morphing M3/M2 into M3SR1. Besides comparing the the differences between M2 to M3, I could clearly see the indent on the left forearm of M3Sr1. (I don't know if you can upload movies in a post. It's kinda big.) Okay, next up the dorsel fin on M3's shoulders. ;p

To fix the rounded folds open the joint editor and close up the joints on the bend dial...like this..Steve

Bast, I'm not sure about Poser 4 on the Mac, but if it uses RSR files within the Geometries folder, make sure you removed those as well. I just checked over the entirety of SR-1 I have on my computer and it is perfectly symmetrical. Make sure you loaded the M3 SR-! figure,(with an orange circle behind it), and not the old default Michael 3.

I think DAZ have left them open to prevent breaking when the arm is bent a lot...its a no win situation no matter how you do it...Steve

To fix the shoulder one, select the collar and open joint editor and with the front back dial selected pull the fwd green line more forward...Steve

And here's the last bunch of screen captures of M3's "cottage cheese" underarms. *sigh* I don't know all that goes into figure creation and morphs, but one thought has stuck wih me after hearing about the mystery model based on M3, is it really possible to get a higher res figure's obj to morph from skinny to muscluar to fat and have all the joint parameters work correctly when posing? I'm guessing many of M3's problems are related to the joint parameters. If I'm not completely off-base about this, should higher-res figures like M3 and V3 be separated in different mini-packs for different base body shapes like: Default, Skinny, Muscle 1-3, and Fat? Did V3 have this many problems, or do we Poser users demand more body shape variation from a Male figure than a female figure? Hmmmm..... bB

Wow. You guys are fast. :D Steve, Thanks for the tip. I have never opened Joint Editor. LOL. Guess I'm going to have to start. ;p Real quick I have a question, why would the joint setting not be stored in the .pz2 file? What's the point of buying poses if you have to spend your time editing joints after applying a pose? DraX, Mac's don't use RSRs, or at least, not as a separate independant file. I did delete the old M3 objs after I upgraded from M2 to M3 to M3 SR1 in an empty folder on my desktop. I even replaced all cr2, pz2, !DAZ folder items in my runtime with the "M2 to M3 to M3 SR1 in an empty folder on my desktop" items. Then I ran the Body morph upgrade on my poser runtime. So everything related to M3's base figure and all the body morphs SHOULD be super current. I wonder if anyone else is having these problems with M3SR1. bB

Once again, Bast, I only recall seeing these errors previous to sR-1, so this appears odd indeed. Please also check the previous support threads here, as there is information posted directly by Tony Bradt, Project Manager at DAZ, in regards to the update.

Joint editor is like a car engine, you don't have to open the hood but it'll run better if you do open it and do the odd little thing in there ;o)....i'm haveing the same problem bB the model i used to check your problems was SR1, not sure i'd call them problems though i think its more of a compromise (the way the joints are), for example if you close the elbow joints the will break up when bent a lot so you have to find a half way mark that allows the best you can get within the limits of the poser posing system....i'm not sure a pose will save a joint edit though i haven't tryed...Steve

The pose won't save it but creative cr2 editing will...

Just so it's clear, the RSR files DraX suggests could be the problem are not the RSRs that produce the thumbnails in your selection folders. This is an RSR file is associated with the OBJ file. I believe it is generated and can sometimes generate in a funky manner which will make the OBJ behave strangely. Deleting this RSR file (located in the Geometries folder) corrects the problem as a new RSR is generated if necessary. I say if necessary because I'm not sure what criteria makes the RSR generate. It doesn't happen for every OBJ. So MAC or not, it may really bear looking into to see if an old RSR is the culprit here. It would make more sense for a MAC not to use the RSRs that are for thumbnails than for it not to produce the RSRs that are generated for geometry files.

Hmm..I wonder if M3 has the same limitations in DAZ|Studio?

Macs don't have .rsrs. :)

Drax, The figure in the screen captures above is the kneeling M3SR1 figure from the character library with the orange circle behind it. I read the treads from Daz support on the forum before I made the images above. Problems people were having on the PC (didn't delete the old rsrs), or problem people had who didn't replace !DAZ files in the main Poser 5 Runtime, do not apply to me. As best as I can tell, this is something else. 3ddave44, Macs don't have RSRs. The only time I see them is when I have a conversion error in MacConverter. But a rsr Mac conversion error shouldn't be the problem I'm having with M3SR1 for the Mac since I downloaded Mac format .sit files. I will try a fresh reinstall again tonight, deleting M3 and all his morphs, and see if that makes a difference. I'll try anything to get M3 working. Could there be an error in the Mac version of M3SR1? I dunno. steveshanks, LOL! You Poser "Grease Monkey" you, with all your badass tinkering under the hood. ;) Thank you so much for looking into the M3 pose errors and for your pose tips. What a relief it's not just me that's having funky M3Sr1 poses. Did V3 have these problems too, or is it just M3? It sucks needing to custom adjust M3 joints, but I like learning new tricks. :D Do you think custom joint edits will create more realistic poses for M3 than M2 could do? I thought one of the improvements of M3 was better joints for posing. It seems ironic there are so many glitches. Maybe they are just "new" problems and the new joints more detailed, and therefore it takes more work to refine it? I don't know. I just want it work. And I want it easy to use too. Things that take too long to use, can't be a good thing. It's too discouraging. ;p About the joints not being an error, but a compromise... How can that be? I don't understand. What were the choices one had before the compromise was reached? Are not figures created Poser meant to be posed? Would they not be designed to work within the limitations of their mesh and the program(s) that pose them? Do the problems V3 and M3 have posing in Poser not exist in other programs? Is so, why? Does yet to be release Daz!Studio somehow figure into this? And how did the old Poser characters like P4NF, P4NM, V1/2 and M1/2 get around the challenges of posing in Poser? On a side note, it has yet to be determined if this new approach to joints and poses will be more successful than those of the figures that came before. Either way, I support experimentation. M3 does have improvements over M2 that do work and are way better M2 such as the new texture mapping, posable gens, injection morphs, and aesthetically I think M3 is better looking. It's just his joints that are wacky. Drax, About creative cr2 editing to save joint edits.... It's beginning to sound like this will become a "Fact of life" type thing when using M3. I wonder if there will be a product that will refine a pose with joint edits using an injection poses in the near future, or perhaps some other kind of easy-to-use solution 3rd party program that helps tweak refine a pose for M3. Hmmmmm..... Could "Pose Joint Refinements for V3 and M3" be a whole new industry within the Poser world to replace the old ones wiped out the M2 and V2 upgrades? ;p bB

Extreme JP changes can be pasted into a pose file, but they stay unless something active is done to reverse them. Either a JNTpose to restore defaults must be provided or every pose would have to have JP data - even those that use default. Like locking eye trans for character face morphs, this is a different track and requires a wider attention to details if you want to make it automatic.

An .rsr is the Mac resource fork in a separate file so that the Poser code ported from the Mac can run on a PC. A resource fork is just part of a file on a Mac (it correctly stores data and code separately within the file, unlike PC's). So by definition you don't have .rsr files on Macs. Also the problem with .rsr's on a PC is that being separate files they sometimes don't get written along with the main file, leaving the files out-of-sync. That they exist in PC Poser is a kludge, that they need to be deleted manually hen they get out of sync (because they lack a simple timestamp sync) is pure design negligence. Back to M3, isn't anyone else concerned about the huge round "muscle" on the outside of the shoulder? Bend the Shoulder (upper arm) to 45 to see it. Try the Skinny morph, and you'll see that hardly changes in size or shape. Same with Emancipated. As the figure gets slimmer the flesh on the outside of a man's shoulder has to diminish. It does on M2 BTW (another way to see it is to turn the Skinny dial negative - M2 shoulder bulges up huge, M3's barely expands). Look on V3M and you see it's exactly the same as M3 (and peeps complained about it then), but surprisingly the V3M Skinny morphs worked better there! Looks as if the mesh, the morphs and the JCMs were moved over wholesale from V3. The problem isn't major on V3 because the base CR2 doesn't have muscle/flesh on the outer edge of the shoulder - it's added in the various Muscle morphs so it plays no role in the slimmer/younger morphs. So when they added that muscle/fleash/growth to M3's base CR2 they needed to modify the Skinny, Yound, Emanipated, etc., morphs and JCMs in order to compensate, but didn't, even in SR1. As someone posted when M3 came out, we've paid $50+ for a genital CR2 and re-purchased V3M. Expected M3 to be weak on the musclebound end of scale, but I was surprised to discover M3 doesn't do lean well either...

"About the joints not being an error, but a compromise... How can that be? I don't understand." ...If you take V2 or Mike 2 and bend there arms at the elbow a long way...bend your own as far as it will go then emulate that pose on a poser figure.....you'd get breaking up on the joints, to fix it you'd open the joint in the joint editor, it wouldn't fix it 100% but it'd be better, so what they did was go half way with the way the joint works....i'm just guessing here BTW i don't have any inside info...The problem as i see it is folks want more and more out of there poser figures but want to do less, as you said yourself you'd never opened the joint editor but i bet you will now :o)......"for a genital CR2 and re-purchased V3M" I disagree 100% because the model has the same amount of polygons doesn't mean its the same model, i reckon i could take a model of a bmw and using the same points turn it into a jumbo jet but it would serve no purpose except waste two years of my life LOL, but i can see the reason behind DAZ doing it......Steve

Daz will refund your money layingback and then you can purchase the genital addon V3 at runtimedna. Personally I don't see them as being that close in structure. I am surprised none of the folks here who are modeling characters have done a model that compares to any of the Mil models that Daz has done so far, and would sell them for a reasonable price. In fact, I haven't seen any that even come close, if I'm wrong please point me in that direction. If the prices really bother you that much you might want to check out some of the prices on human models that aren't even posable. You are not dealing with a human here, you are dealing with polygons. You can have some things but not all, you sacrifice some things for others. If you like Mike 2 better than stick with him, I think Mike 3 is superior in most respects. I'm not getting a lot of the problems I see listed here, not on a Mac so I don't know if that is what is making the difference. Marque

The M3 shoulder does bother me, even the default guy with no morphs has a strangeness going on in the shoulder which I call "the dorsel fin." :( I want to like M3. I'm still hoping he's fixable and that this is not a major design flaw. If worse comes to worse, I would like to use M3's better looking face, texture maps, and clothes on M2. I'll try experimenting with the M3 to M2 morph again tonight to see if there's a solution somewhere in the body shape. Jaager, Is there any kind of Mat pose one can hit to reset the Jp's to default? Last night, I used "restore figure" in the menu a lot during my M3SR1 pose trials, but if I had morphs on him, I wouldn't want to lose them by doing a "restore figure." bB

"how did the old Poser characters like P4NF, P4NM, V1/2 and M1/2 get around the challenges of posing in Poser?" The early ones didn't. They broke horribly. Jagged mesh edges from hell, holes... So people started doing postwork. If you do an extreme pose with an older figure and compare it to an extreme pose like kneeling with arm bent at say 90 degrees with the V3s & M3s, you can really see the difference. M3 with all morphs is only $36.66 for Platinum Club members. How many times does it have to be explained that M3 is NOT V3 permanently morphed male?!!

Traps small .. "dorsal fin" gone ..

Ghostofmacbeth, Oops. I was referring the shoulder distortion as seen in picture number 2, and not expressing a taste perference for the size of M3's traps. The traps look fine to me. :D Maybe I need a better word than "dorsal fin." ;) How does "Twizzler Shoulders" grab ya? ;p bB

Restore figure - is a different function. It just looks at all of the initValue data and sets the keys for all channels to this value. You can make this initValue whatever you want by using the Memorize function and saving the cr2. Memorize affects the initValue. With a couple of exceptions, every variable in a CR2 is open to adjustment by a pose file. Generally speaking, you do not want to change the MATsphere settings for an extreme pose, but the exclusion zones can stand adjustment. Sometimes bulges can be adjusted with effect. What you do is use the JP editor to make the adjustments and save the cr2. You then open the original and the changed cr2 files in a text editor and find the line(s) that are different. I think - for the exclusion zones it is just one line with four numbers in the rotation channel. Some things also show up in the same rotation in the parent group so look there too. You make a pose file with just the lines that are changed. One pose with the default - for restore One pose with the change. The change can be pasted into the POSpose to make the change automatic. The restore you can have separate or pasted into a restore pose that zeros the rotations also. You want your JP changes to affect both sides. P5 has a symmetry function that copies the new JP to the mirror groups. P4 also has it - but the buttocks get ignored - if I remember correctly. Also, for me - P4 Joint editor tends to freeze if you try to do a second joint. P5 is stable. The golden rule with pose files is - If you do not want to change it, leave the line for it out. That is, you do not duplicate the whole channel in a pose file, you only have those lines you actually want to change. Right now, I think there is one awful exception to this: P5 MATposes containing node data. They are all or none. Either have everything, or only have what is in a P4 MATpose.

steveshanks, Thanks for the explaination on "joints not being an error, but a compromise." Maybe users are demanding more from a Poser figure while doing less with the character as a user, but I don't think that's a bad thing. If Poser is user friendly and can do amazing things, it's customer base will continue to grow and that's a good thing for users, Curious Labs, Daz, and creators such as yourself. Demand makes progress possible. So I'm going to keep making demands for M3. ;D I have another question for you. I was thinking about how the joints have more polygons and how that results in strange folds, and I wonder, Is there a way to squash and streach the joints in Poser? I'm thinking "shrinking" the joint surface area might a solution to the joint folds, sort of like a rubber band. Is "shrinking," or "compressing," or "squash and streach" a feature only the really expensive 3D programs have, or is possible to have something like that for poser? bB

"How many times does it have to be explained that M3 is NOT V3 permanently morphed male?!!"

Then what exactly is it? See the attached image snapped from PP window, from R to L: V1, Steph, M2, M3 & V3. Figures just as loaded, I didn't even change the default pose, so no question of "adjusting" things.

Clearly V3 is V1 subdivided - look at knees, abdomen, breasts. Daz never claimed otherwise.

Clearly Steph is same mesh as M2, as Daz claimed at the time - look at the limited breast vertices in Steph, the knees, and the extra muscle-based vertices in calf muscle area.

Clearly M3 is NOT M2 subdivided, it's V3 derived. Look at the knees and compare with M2 and V3. Look at the breasts, with all those wasted-on-a-male vertices (and their placement), and where are the muscle-based vertices in the lower leg? Indeed if you look close, I'm not even sure that M3 has as many vertices in the abdomen/abs area as M2!

Sorry, but IMHO M3 is derived DIRECTLY from V3 who was derived from V1/2 via subdivision. M2, which is clearly a closer matching male model with respect the muscle delineation, appears to have been the end of that line.

But even that would be OK (I think), if Daz had spent the time to do all the morphs and JCMs to be male from the get go, rather than move over Vicki ones. In particular with respect to the muscle/flesh covering the upper shoulder across the top of the shoulder blade and part way down the upper arm.

BastBlack: On high end programs, like Lightwave for example, a model like Michael would not be subdivided prior to animating and rendering, that is to say that instead of having a mesh with 74500 polygon, it would be a nurbed mesh of probably 12500 polygon, which would be subdivided as the last step when rendering. What this means, is that you would be bending the elbow first, then the bent mesh would be smoothed by the subdivision, the joint most likely would have a better shape without the collapse you see there. But Poser is not capable of this so when you bend the mesh it cannot compensate and completely smooth the joint. The picture shows this principle the left tube is subdivided first and then bent you see the same problem, the tube on the right is bent first and then subdivided much better. Considering the limitations of Poser, I am amazed that with such a simple skeleton they can achieve as much as they do. A lot of rigs(skeleton) have a third bone at the elbow to control the fold there. They can control the joints somewhat with joint controlled morphs but on a joint like the shoulder which rotates everywhich way it's very hard to get a perfect articulation.

the problem with a lot of the suppositions I have heard is that people think you can fix one thing in poser joints without affecting anything else, as someone who has struggled with clothing for m2, m3, and v3, I can tell you that is just not true. adjusting one thing is almost always going to affect another part. this is a limitation of poser as steve said, there is no way that you are going to get perfect joints, without relying completely on Joint controlled morphs to smooth them out, but then forget getting any clothing for reasonable prices, becouse it would literally take months for clothing modelers to match all the morphs in each piece of clothing. matching full body morphs is childs play compared to matching joint controlled morphs. as far as the sholders go a lot of what I see can be fixed by carful adjusting of both the shoulder and collar as tony demonstrated in the other thread. and most of the rest of it as steve said can be fixed with joint paramiters, its not perfect but.... we are talking about poser here arent we?

bump It's interesting revisiting these old threads... Some M3 problems never went away like "Twizzler Shoulders." That could only be fixed if you were skilled with editing in the JP menu. (Or switch to David and Hiro) I'm curious about the solutions to these problems Daz came up with for V4. What does everyone think about the V4 solutions to the Gen3 problems like JPs, JCMs, and Subdivided polygons? bB