What in the hell is all this anyway??? Okay, so I made a nice hybrid of V3, Laura, Steph3 and Aiko. It's a real good looking shape. As a base, I assigned it Aiko's Joints, which seems to work fairly well except for the collar to the fingers. So, into the joint editor I go to try to tweak them. I start at the collar and tweak one by one Up/Down, Front/Back and Twist parameters. First I align the zones and try to keep the green out of the red and encapsulate everything I want to move with that parameter. Seems like the right thing to do, no? Then I try the joint and I see where the mesh goes out of line. No worries, just got to tweak the xyz right? I get it to where it looks great and then bend the joint in the opposite direction and repeat the process. When that all seems to be good, I then adjust the bulge settings to fine tune the results. I'm all excited, because I seem to be on the right path. Next I will move on to the next parameter and repeat the whole process until one body part is done, for example, the collar. Now I go through down the chain and repeat those processes. Problem being, ultimately, this doesn't seem to work at all. I have small victories here and there but without fail something along the way always seems to get untweaked! Am I going about this the right way or no? Thanks. PS I've tried Geep's tutorial but it's just too busy on the eyes to follow in any coherent manner (sorry geep) -WTB

Go the other way, WTB. Work from the end of the IK chain up, not from the mid point down. So when doing legs you would start at the feet, and arms you start at the fingers. But, yeah -- it's still a PITA!

It can help to have a ready made figure loaded in with a wireframe view so you can look at it with the joint editor and see how the joints should be made. You can have your figure and another one loaded in at the same time and switch between the two.

How about a 3rd party joint editor? Something intuitive and unwacky? Might come in handy. Thanks for the tips, guys. I will definately try both suggestions/rules. The differences between this hybrid figure and Steph 3 are subtle, but nice and it would be very cool to master this process to make all sorts of 'tweeners between the various unimesh models. -WTB

Attached Link: 3D Menagerie (tutorials under "Goodies")

hmmm... why are you trying to keep the green zone out of the red? are you talking about the matspheres or the bend-x controls? if you mean the matspheres, the green zone should be IN the red zone, although it doesnt matter if they overlap. also, pay attention to the blend zones BETWEEN the red and green, and not so much on the green and the red by themselves. try my quickie tutorial on joint editing at 3d menagerie, and see if that clears anything up for you.

B.L. Render, in her book on Poser 5 (includes 4) and character creation, warned readers to remember that "children control the parents" - reenforcing the ends-to-hip approach of joint editing. Forgot that, myself, and find I'm starting over on my first figure. Mark

Smoker -- bloodsong is B. L. Render :)

In that case, all I have to say to bloodsong is "thank you." :) Mark

Yeap, if you're going to mess with JP's, get Blood's book. Worth every cent and more. I've been EasyPosing a bunch of new stuff and having that book has helped out with the joints a LOT.

Naa, the Joint Editor is EZ, doing textures it tough! I've set up a bunch of figures from more-or-less scratch, so I'll give you some shortcuts. If you used Aiko's CR2 as a base, open up Aiko and your new figure side-by-side. For starters, adjust each joints center so it falls on about the same place on the new figure as it does on Aiko. Then do the same thing for the fall-off spheres. Eyeball them, use visual clues like "the inner edge of this sphere is just a little past the joint center" to duplicate the position and scale of each as close as you can. That should get you in the ball park, if your careful that should actully be all you have to do. Remember most DAZ figures use JCM though, your joints aren't going to work as well unless you duplicate that, too. As a reference, it took me about 10 hours of work to do Ingenue Vickie's joints. She used V3's CR2 as a starting point, but as she is tiny EVERY joint had to be adjusted. If your new figure is close to the same size as whatever base you use it will be a lot less work.

Well, I've got everything fairly satisfactory except for the fingers. The idea of doing this 30 times is kind of daunting, especially since none of the finger joints even seem to be placed (not using spherical falloff) for some reason. Very frustrating. Am considering a handless model lol. But the rest isn't too difficult but some questions remain: How often do you guys find you have to adjust the xyz center point settings in the joint editor? How often do you have to adjust the bulge settings? What about Joint Angles? I have been tweaking these here and there and am not really sure if it's necessary or not, from Jim's info I'm not gathering that any of those are necessary but I could be mistaken. -WTB

It's really not that hard afterall! Fingers still a pain in the ass but there's hope now! Starting at the toes and working my way up, I totally get it now and am amazed. Thanks for the help folks! -WTB

I find that you have to adjust most of the settings usually even if you use a poser figures bones to make a figure. The hands are always the worst and getting the eye joint centred is quite difficult, too.

Yep, fingers are the toughest part! Why do you think Glamoros Jessi lost Jessi's poseable toes, after all? Allowing for the fact I couldn't see many users actully posing all thoes toes, combining 15 joints on each foot into 4 (still 3 more than Vickie has) saved me a ton of time, which I invested into something more useful, like setting up her remaining joints really right. IMHO, I find that all of the DAZ figures I've used have very well set up joints, and it is going to take quite a lot of work to get any improvement at all, so using a similar joint setup isn't going to be far wrong. Jessi, on the other hand, came out sort of half-baked (in all honesty), so I was able to make what I feel were major improvements may moving the centers around and also moving the joint partings in the mesy (the joint between each part). I found it useful, for example, to move the joint well down into the child part so all the bend JCM (she was planned from the first to have JCM) would all be in the parent part, instead of the half and half JCM that V3 has in some of her joints. I came down to basicly starting from near scratch.

Oh, a good way to get centers for the eyeballs is in your modeling program. Just put a sphere primative exactly over the eyeball and right down the readout for the center and transfer the numbers to Poser. Or maybe you can use teh eyeball itself, Max has the tool to find the center of a mesh, if it is perfectly round, for example.

WTB - another little tidbit. Do one entire side, then use the symmetry function and when it asks you if you want to copy the jp's, say yes :) That way, you only have to tweak, not do, the entire other side.

I only use that to zero a figure, hehe I guess I'll go back and read this thread to see if it has any other value to it other than zeroing the pose.

Going through fingers like a breeze, and eyes were a piece of cake. When I have time, I intend to write a mini tute for complete newbs. It's not really that hard after all! (Again) -WTB

heyas; you're welcome, smoke :) william, you dont NEED mat spheres OR bulges on ALL the joints. start with the center, and place it where you want the joint's main bends to occur from. you may jiggle it around while you're doing the major bend, to get it just right, but after that, you should be leaving it alone. once you get the center centered for one bend, moving it for another bend is gonna change that bend, too. when you move the bend-x controls from the center, you're ALSO moving the center! they all use the same center. (except the twist-bar, which doesn't really have a center.) now, if bending/siding/twisting of the joint is mushing its siblings, or chunks of its parent you dont want it to mush, then you put on mat spheres. if bending your joint makes it sorta deflate in an ugly manner, then mess with bulges. (bulges aren't really a very good solution for this, they just don't have enough fine control, but you can try.) as for getting the center of the eyes, i have a tutorial for that, too... somewhere in those tutorial goodies :) (and that's funny, i always start jointing from the base and go out. ::)

Hi ya. :) My tutorial linked at the bottom of your "Quickie Joint Parameter Tutorial" is no longer. :( It was lost when I moved ISP's. Bummer. I wanted to let you know so you could update your page and remove the "For more detailed information on the Joint Parameters, try Clint's Tutorials!" link at the bottom of your tutorial. FYI, Clint

Attached Link: ClintH's Poser Joint Parameters

I found it on the way back machine ... Missing some of the graphics though:

http://web.archive.org/web/20040429051132/webpages.charter.net/chawkins2/Tutorials/PoserTutMod4.htm

http://web.archive.org/web/20040614044912/http://webpages.charter.net/chawkins2/

Message edited on: 07/18/2005 11:44