I feel like I just wasted my money. The scalebility of this character blows. It's only saving grace, or improvement over the P4 male is the dedorkification of the head, and added realism with morph targets. The body however is a cheap solution offering ZERO scalability. I realized this after trying to make some standard hero type modifications to Michael, muscle and body scaling. The new "dynamic scaling feature" totally blows. Anytime a modification is made, it totally hoses all the rest of my scaling work, and blows out the seams creating holes in the mesh. It is almost as if the seams aren't even welded together. Making any type of body mods absolutely the most frustrating thing I have ever attempted in Poser. Not to mention that the seams are COMPLETELY blown apart when you attempt to do such scaling to the hip, knees collar/arms/chest. Just try to resize the hands, and see what happens. The joint rotations on the thumbs are totally off, the seams on the chest and collar intersect when scaled. The knees do the same. What a cheap solution. Unless someone knows a way to disable this dynamic scaling feature, I most likely won't be using this figure as a base for my future characters, which was the whole point of me buying into this crap in the first place. More testing of Zygote models should be done in the future, before releasing them, as this one is a lemon. This totally sucks! I plan to make a custom fig with the head from Mike and put it back on the P4 male, as then perhaps I will have more luck. Extremely dissatisfying. Back to the dork. If you haven't already purchased Michael, don't waste your cash on this one. co(V)(V)union

Do the re-scaling with morph targets rather than the scale dials. Re-scaling bodyparts make a mess out of any figure IMO. -JH.

No, the P4 male does not have these scaling issues, and since per bodypart scaling is an option, and works properly with the P4 male within reasonable levels, (obviously scaling above 200% will create freaky issues with the P4 male) it is a bug, and should be fixed. Or Zygote should offer a version of the Michael fig without dynamic scaling. Resizing a bodypart should only affect that bodypart, ie, resizing the hand should not affect the size of the wrist, forearm, and bicep. And should not blow out all of the finger joints. Do this with the P4 male, and then do it with Michael, and you will see the issues I am talking about. Try resizing Michael's hip, and you will see the gaping holes in the mesh, where the thighs connect to the pelvis. This works FINE with the P4 male. Try the same with the knees, and you will notice that the seams never seem to blend properly. co(V)(V)union

Also on another note, after closer inspection, and importing the geometry of the P4male body and Michael's head into MAX to examine them, and noticed that the vertices are offset from the neck and the body. Won't this make a head swap mod impossible without affecting the morph capibilities of either one or the other if a custom character was to be created? I am finding myself wondering if this was done on purpose. co(V)(V)union

Attached Link: http://www.3dposer.com/

Someone has already added the Mike head onto the p4 body: http://www.3dposer.com/ It's called "Bobby".

Attached Link: http://talshaya.tripod.com/dominque.htm

The key to Vicky and Mike is "small" increments when morphing or rescaling. You can't hit t with a massive change in size. I have wrangled with Vicky for months, totally frustrated, and wondering if I'd wasted my money too. But it's tiny editing that brings about acceptable edits in their configuration. Hey, your not alone Communion. Lot's of us just cringe when we load up Vickie or Mike, and try to get a desired effect. Buy a lot of Rogain. You'll need it to help replace all the hair you'll pull out working with these two. *LOL!*

You guys rule. Thanks for putting up with my temper tantrum, and helping me find a quick solution to my issues. I think this will work out fine. co(V)(V)union

I guess I have to play devil's advocate here, but Vicki and Mike are all I ever use anymore. I never touch the Dork and Dorkette at all. I'm almost ready to just dump them. I don't make redesigned characters, or mess with scaling, I just like realistic human figures, so Mike and Vicki are just wonderful and I can't say enough great things about them. They make the original Dork and Dorkette look like cartoon characters or plastic window mannequins. My advice is that if you just want good realistic people for ordinary scenes and normal looking characters, Mike and Vicki are supreme! They're just beautiful! I recommend them highly. If you want to make extreme characters, then probably the Dork and Dorkette are fine to make morph targets from. Who wants to mess up those gorgeous Mike and Vicki figures anyway? They're too close to perfect just the way they are. Just my humble opinion and personal slant on them. We all have our own opinions. For anyone else considering buying them: form your own opinions of them by the work people have done with them and don't just go by what the rest of us say about them. We're all very prejudiced one way or the other. :) It really depends on what you want to do with them that makes the difference. In Communion's case, they just aren't acceptable and that's fine. In my case, Mike and Vicki are perfect. But we do different things with them, so that's what makes this community so great. Melanie

Melanie is so right and so is Vethril. Indeed one must hold himself or herself back in order not to feel tempted to use the "mouse tools" like sizing or rotating on the fly. Rather using the dials in very (!) small increments does a tremendous job, but sometimes it takes an in-between rendering job to see the real fine results. Even better if one uses high resolution and anti-aliasing when rendering. Comes to it that you can do a lot with textures and bump maps. Many 3D-beginners (me included) are thrilled with what they can do with all-3D-objects. I for myself like creating landscapes with Vue d'Esprit (and also a bit of Bryce). Many convincing effects like e.g. vegetation are rather done with a clever texture than by creating all in 3D and zillions of polygons taking hours to render. I've bought quite a few of Catharina Przezak's fine textures for Zygote's/DAZ' Michael and came to the conclusion that she did a great job by just applying different facial and body textures to the very same Michael figure, no dials used. Poser is such a fine program to play God or Goddess with, but let's not overdo it! It really is not size that matters ;-) Marco/Switzerland

I was very dissapointed with Michael during the first fifteen minutes or so....I quickly found out the problem was me not him...Once I did realize that he became rather character friendly in my mind.....What gets me is the idea that Zygote could have sat around and done nothing until the next version of Poser...I am so thankful that wasn't what happened...I have read other complaints about him here since his release...I go on the theory that if you aren't that happy about the figure(or anything else from them) then you should take advantage of their 30 day money back guarantee that they offer...That is one reason I like dealing with them..If I buy something I don't like I know I can get my money back...Best part is I haven't found a need to do that...And in this age of poor customer service I would rate Zygote's customer service as being great if you have a problem or question....I agree with Melanie's statement regarding no need for use of the standard P4 figures since the introduction of Mike and Vicki...Communion, my suggestion would be simply go for the refund if you are that unhappy...I am not trying to dispute your claims but obviously there are a lot of people around here that are happy with Mike and Vicki as they are...I personally am somewhat curious as to what they have up their sleeve for their next character!

There are a few people around here who still contend that Vicki is just plain mud ugly. I don't. I guess it's all subjective. I've made some very pretty iamges of her. And, speaking from a woman's point of view, Michael is just plain gorgeous!!!! If I could transform him into a real guy, well.... Anyway, needless to say, I think Mike deserves a fair chance. Maybe he's not designed for extreme characters like super heros or such, but for realism, he's fabulous. I don't really know that scaling is the best way to achieve what you're after, anyway, Communion. I think morph targers would be a better route to go for the result you're trying to get. Melanie

heyas; i dont know, because i haven't seen it YET... ;) but it sounds to me like the new scaling thingy you're talking about is something akin to an ecm or jcm -- or the grasp dials, for instance. in other words, when you scale a body part, there's channels in there that cause other parts to be controlled by that scaling dial. if that's the case, then you could edit the cr2 to slice those out and get a normally-scaling figure out of it. i suggest you contact the poser tech forum and egroups for help and details on that :)