And I apologize if this has been discussed in depth elsewhere; this forum is terrible for searching on anything productively.

I'm building a model vehicle in Lightwave that I want to convert to a Poser character. I have the book on Poser 4 Pro Pack, and I've read the tutorials on creating characters and adding joints, but I don't recall seeing anything that deals with mechanical joints; I don't want the metal joints to bend, I want them to pivot. Is this difficult to set up? Is there any special prep work I need to do to the file before exporting the OBJ and importing it into Poser? I've already imported the static model, which looked much better than I'd even hoped, but I'm not quite at the point where I can make doors open and close, flaps pivot, etc. Should I import parts that move against one another as separate OBJ files, or simply make sure that the vertices between them aren't welded?

Inquiring mimes want to know :-)

Thanks!

Some folks have found a way to do it with a single OBJ. That may be better, but I never figured it out, so here's the way I use. Start with separate OBJ files for each rigid part. Situate them properly in Poser; set parent/child relationships in a reasonable way, so that every OBJ is part of the hierarchy. Select the topmost parent in the hierarchy window, then hit the Create Figure button at bottom of hierarchy. After that, there's still some cleaning up to do. Edit the CR2 to change every "bend 1" to "bend 0" so the joints are mechanical instead of organic. Remember that a figure only makes rotation parameters available to the user, so if some of your joints need to move linearly (like drawers in a desk, or hydraulic cylinders) you'll have to edit the "hidden 1" line to "hidden 0" on the appropriate sliding parameters. Bring the figure back in and adjust the joint centers if necessary.

Beautiful! Sounds like it's a lot easier than I expected; I'll give it a try.

BTW, I didn't realize one could do linear movement as joints; I was expecting to have to do them as morphs. I was hoping to use a hydraulic cylinder, in fact, to move with a gull-wing door, but I had no idea how to make it work in Poser, so I was just going to omit it; if it does work, that's one more bonus to the figure :-)

Thanks very much!

Ptrope, the above explanation is what the Doc made me when I was converting the Powerloader from Aliens for Poser. You can use one solid *.obj file, but then there must be the correct groups. If you want you can download the Powerloader at www.vanishingpoint.biz and look through the joints and things. Remember to set up the limits properly, and on joints that must move only one way, ie bend, lock the other movements by setting the maximums and minimums to zero. Hope that makes sense.