I've been working with Poser now for a couple of months. I have recently been able to make some major headway. I was able to import a geometry as a 3DS and make it quite poseable. Unfortunately, I need to be able to add wings to the model (this is an anthropomorphic figure with wings). The wings already exist, and I have attached them to the chest, so they are static for now. When I bend the figure, the wings distort. On the other hand, I would like them to move idependently. Now, to go directly to my problem. I go to the setup room and select the figure. The figure is grouped properly and I choose the chest bone. As per the Poser tutorial instruction, I draw a bone out directly from the side view. At this point is where I seem to hit my problem. The bone is attached, as in I use the Translate tool and it has a white line attached from the bone to the chest bone. This would be the left wing. If I go to Grouping controls, I do not see the bone in the list (at this point it would still be numbered). If I go back to the bone creation tool or Translate and select the bone, it does not have the Bend, Rotate, standard functions of Poser bones. All it has are the XYZ Rotate, so on and so forth. If I use the Grouping cursor and select the bone, it will appear in the list after it turns green. I gather that is it being selected. But even then it does not have the ability to bend using standard Poser functions. I know that when I go into Pose after I have attached the geometry to the new bone, it still does not have the necessary functions even now. If I use the Translate dial, it will come right off of the body. What am I doing wrong? Am I doing anything wrong? This is greatly upsetting because over the last week I have made a lot of headway. I was just getting ready to make use of the software and can't get anywhere. Help appreciated, D.C.

Did you rename the created bone to match the name of the body part group within the wing?

The default names of he dials will be xRotate, yRotate, zRotate etc. You can edit the name to twist, bend, side-side etc by double clicking on the dial.

Does that help a little?

Bones always belong to a geometry (which is nothing more than 1 ore more polygons and a name). So, if you have a bone named lWing1 there must also be a geometry named lWing1. I think this is even case-sensitive.
You create bones in the Setup room. There you can also set up (and name) polygon groups, but I find it much easier to do this in an external modeller like Wings3D.
As far as I remember you cannot change the name of a polygon group with the grouping tool, but you can easily change the name of the bone. (Actually, a bone has two names, an internal and an external. I always use the same name for both. This saves me some thinking.)
Hope this helps a little.

Yes it did! I figured out how to rename and group the polys. The wings move, now here's the new, I don't understand why but the figures chest now stretches in accordance to the wing itself... as in her chest stretches to the side causing her breast to elongate sideways when the wings are moved. What I would like to be able to do is,be able to move her chest thus moving the wings, and move the wings seperatly, and the chest itself be unaffected. I appreciate your time and willingness to help, thank you! DC

Use the Joint Editor to adjust the wing bones' joint centers and falloff zones. I'm sure that geep has touched on the subject at some point .... * rummages around * Here it is: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1651754

HA HA! I appreciate the help people, I got it. I am still so green that that tut you pointed me to is terrifying.I will be studying it but... YIKES. But I am nothing if not tenacious. What I ended up doing was creating a bone out of the chest that attached no geometry to it and then attached the bones for the wings to it and that seems to have worked like a charm... Again thanks for all the help. Just to let you guys know what it is I have been working on, I discovered a 3DS of the characters form the sonic the hedgehog games, and thought they would make excellent models for my own use! I wish I could upload them... :( But now I have Rouge the Bat... lots of problems still with arms and I need to add her tail but I am happy so far! Again THANKS TONS! DC