Hi all just trying to find info on body handles. Are they just basic magnets that have had the geometry replaced, or am I missing the bigger picture? dag

Body handles are basically an extra body part that when moved affects the part they are attatched to.

Like Bloodsong says, "Children affect their parents." Body handles are, indeed, extra body parts. I'm working on a set now that started as Poser's cone prop. They don't need to be welded. They don't even need geometry (but it makes it easier to select them). Functionally, tho, they aren't that different than magnets. Body handles can have bulge and crease set in the joint parameters (they seem to work best with spherical fall-off zones, too). Still, Magnets got the ability to effect clothing. It is a great pity Poser chose to go with morphs and made magnets an overthought; sure, you can morph a figure all over the place, but fitting clothing becomes a nightmare.

Maybe ockham can come up with a script that converts morphs back into magnets somehow. He could do it on the basis of the direction and magnitude of change in the center of gravity for the part, when the morph is set at 1.0.

Trouble is, morphs can do all kinds of things that a single magnet can't do. You'd have to do some sort of 3D Fourier analysis using multiple magnet zones. My head hurts now. 8)

So, let me get this right, to make a body handle, take one piece of geometry (a cone) whack on joint information/attributes in the cr2, add it as a child. That right?

That's about it. It's the same as adding any other limb, except that the geometry is optional; it's only there to give you something to click on and avoid having to use the body part menu.

You can of course also control them with ERC; i've got a skirt I've been playing with that uses body handles a little like joint-controlled morphs. A point to remember in setting joint parameters, is that neither the center of a body handle, nor the zone of influence, needs to be near the joint or even near the handle itself. You can, for instance, aproximate a horizontal translation by moving the center of the handle way way up in the vertical.