...and all you need the mag base for is so you can save and/or delete the thing when you've finished with it. That's not entirely true... position and orientation of the Magnet Base determines a couple of things, including: - It's position determines from 'where' scaling and translation takes place. - It's orientation determines the 'direction' translations and scaling take place, as well as the center of rotation if you apply rotations using the magnet. ...so, just as an example, let's assume you want to create a theoretical "Pregnant" type morph and that you've attatched a magnet to the abdomen of the figure. You'd probably also want the magnet to affect the 'hip' (and possibly the 'chest' and possibly even both of the 'buttocks'). If you want the magnet to also affect other body parts (aside from the part you connected the magnet to), you click on the magnet (not the base, not the zone), switch to it's properties and click on "Add Element to Deform". Do that once for each body part that the magnet needs to affect. But for example purposes, let's just assume it only needs to affect the abdomen, or that you've already done those steps... Now, when you first add the magnet, it's mostly centered on the selected body part, and roughly scaled to the size of the part. Let's see how the magnet Base affects the results... As EB mentions above, usually the very first thing I do is select the Magnet Zone and change it to wireframe ("Display/Element Style/Wireframe" menu). Now it's easier to see what parts of the model the magnet is going to affect - the Center of that sphere gets the Strongest effect from the magnet and the effect tapers off out towards the outsides of that spherical zone (you can make the Zone non-spherical by scaling it in one direction or the other). For now, just scale the Zone up large enough so that it covers most of the belly, but don't move it. At this point, if you look from the side, you'll see that the Zone not only covers the belly, but also the small of the back of the model. If you were actually creating a "Pregnant" morph, you'd want to move the zone forward, so it didn't affect her back, but let's leave it where it is for now. Ok, next, let's play with the magnet Base a bit. Since you added it to the abdomen, the Base and Magnet parts might actually be hidden inside the model... one thing you could do to make it easier to grab would be to select the Base and Scale it up. This also scales the Magnet prop up. Since we're making a Pregnant morph, we need to bulge the belly outward. There's a couple ways to do this, so let's play around with a few ideas. Next: - Select the Magnet itself (not the base, not the zone). - Adjust the zScale to 150-200%. ...ok, now the belly is indeed bulged out, but if you look from the side, you'll see the the small of the back is also bulged out (d'oh! :)). Leave the Magnet how it is for now and let's play around with the Base a bit and take note of the affects... - move the Base back (negative zTran values) - move the Base forward - move it left and right - move it up and down ...note that when you moved it left/right/up/down, nothing happened, but when you moved it forward/backward, the affect of the magnet changed drastically. What you are doing is moving the "point from which scaling takes place". If the Base is in the center of the model, the polygons both in front of and behind it are scaled outward from the center. If you move that center behind the model, there are now ONLY polygons in front of the center, so they ALL move forward. Since our Magnet only had some zScale (front/back), moving the center left/right/up/down made no difference. Move the Base back to the center and let's try something else... - rotate the base back and forth on the x-axis (xRotate) - with it rotated (one way or the other), raise the Base up/down (yTran) and forward/backward (zTran). - how about rotating left/right (yRotate)? ...as you can see, moving the 'position' of the Base affects the "Center about which the magnet effects 'rotate'". Your magnet (and this explanation) is probably a mess by now :), so you might want to delete it and start over, but hopefully this helps explain how the Base might be used to achieve certain affects. Once you get a good grasp of this, you can greatly simplify some tasks that are nearly impossible (or at least much tougher) to achieve if you just leave the Base alone. For example, what if you want to make a bulge at a 45deg angle? What I would do would be to rotate the magnet Base 45 deg (say yRotate) and then just zScale or zTran (depending on the situation) on the Magnet in the new/desired direction (some of this would be easier to illustrate with images, but I don't have any handy right now). In fact, I do this ALL the time when using magnets. I rotate the Base so that the front of the Magnet points in the z-direction of the direction I want the major bulge to go. That might be towards one side or the other and/or more towards up or down. This is particularly handy when trying to get a bulge in some clothing item to cover up some skin poke-through... rotate the Base around so that it's pointing in as close to the exact same z-direction as the bulge of the skin poking out as possible, then just bump up the zScale (or zTran, depending) until the skin is covered. Anyway, sorry for rambling.. I get carried away sometimes :). - Keith

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