Anyone know why this would happen?  I setup my bones and groups for a character.  Then i went back into the pose room and tried to move the head.  What i see is gaps inbetween my neck and shoulders/collar. 

The character is one single mesh.

Do i have to overlap polygon groups?  Do i have to adjust the falloff zones of the bones?  Sorry if i am using the wrong terms.  I normally use c4d and in that app we call it weighting the bones.

The figure has to have seperate groups or it will tear.  None of the groups should overlap. (the only exceptions are the chest and the hands but they are more like central hubs than overlapping parts).

Quote - The figure has to have seperate groups or it will tear.  None of the groups should overlap. (the only exceptions are the chest and the hands but they are more like central hubs than overlapping parts).

Ok but that doesn't explain how to fix the neck ripping away from the collar.  Any idea on that?

You may need extra polys in the nexck area. Also, if you used an old rig from Poser (I think Poser 2) then there's this extra bone in the neck that is invisible and not assigned to anything. It causes breakage (or did for me once). After that, I just started making my own rigs instead.  So yea, check the number of polys in the neck and chest  groups, then if that's not it, check the bone setup you used.

Quote - You may need extra polys in the nexck area. Also, if you used an old rig from Poser (I think Poser 2) then there's this extra bone in the neck that is invisible and not assigned to anything. It causes breakage (or did for me once). After that, I just started making my own rigs instead.  So yea, check the number of polys in the neck and chest  groups, then if that's not it, check the bone setup you used.

Cool thanks for the tips.  I'm using the Kate rig from the poser 6 library.  Any idea if that has the invisible bone?  How do i find it and get rid of it?

I have no clue if it does. :(  I found it by going into the setup room one day. It's called a Neck Dummy or at least, it was on the rig I used. Mind you, I didn't see it for the longest time until one day, I went into the setup room and there it was...really tiny like.  I had to delete it and once I did, whamo...no broken neck.  Sad thing is that I ended up having to redo the whole rig anyway because of the hands, which were geometry swaps on that old rig.  Ah well, live and learn. Anyway, zoom in as close as you can to the neck and chest area, that's where I found it and it may be on your rig too.

The neck shouldn`t be "attached" to the collar, if it is, it will tear, the neck should only be attached to the chest and the head.

No neck dummy in Kate's bones. Screen shots would help a lot.

xantor has it. Each group can't be attached to more than two other groups.

How do i figure out if the neck group belongs to more than 2 groups?

Select the collars and chest in turn and in the properties window set each invisible. This will enable you to see how they relate to the adjacent body parts. Your neck needs to be touching just the chest. It looks like it is also abutting the collars.

The solution is to extend the chest group over the collars.

Quote - Select the collars and chest in turn and in the properties window set each invisible. This will enable you to see how they relate to the adjacent body parts. Your neck needs to be touching just the chest. It looks like it is also abutting the collars.

The solution is to extend the chest group over the collars.

Yep just figured out before you posted that my chest bone is to low.  I had to drag the tip up to the bottom of the neck bone.  I also had to drag the base of each collar bone down.  When i did this everything worked like a charm.  No tearing at all anywhere in the rig.

Now i gotta figure out how to get smooth deformation in the fingers.  Any tips from anyone?

Spherical fall off zones. Poser uses Spherical fall offs instead of weight maps. to help aid Poser to understand how much influence bones have over body parts.  There's also the green and red joint ...arcs...can't think of their propper name at the moment.  Anyway, those should be set first and then, if you still need more control over the deformation, the spherical fall off zones.  A good rule of thumg with the arcs is to place both green lines on the corners of one end of the bondy part and the reds go i the opposite direction.  Red dertimines what is NOT affected by the bone and green determines what IS affected. The colors of the spherical fall off zones are also red and green and they mean the same thing...anything outside of the red circle is not affected at all, anything inside the green is what is most affected and the space between them is kind of the fall off. Or at least, that's how I see it.

Hope that was clear and helped a little.

Finger Tips? :)

Ensure that you have sufficient polygons to allow for smooth bending.

Look at the way the existing Poser figures have been set up.

They are tricky, if you get stuck post a screen shot and we can go from there.

Ok cool thanks.  One problem i just ran into, is a weird one.  The hand bones are now offset from the forearm bones.  I can't get them to line up again.

 Ya got me Phil!  8p

Check the scale on either the forearm or the hands. Usually this is the cause if they wont' reset when you reset the figure.

Ok thanks i will check that out.

What's the best way to rig the eye bones?

Would i select the polygons in the front view then go into the main view and deselect the surrounding face polygons?

Also when rigging the fingers should i avoid dragging the tips and base of the bones?  Does this mess up the parametric controls?  I want to rig hands and keep the controls they have on the Kate rig.  So that i can use the dials to control the grip and each fingers.

hehe yep :)

Can you post a screen shot showing the bones?

screen shot of which thing?  kind of got too many topics in one thread here.  :)

For the eyes I think your only chance will be to select by material. It will be the only way you can select the polygons within the skull. You may find that defining your groups in your modeling program or UVMapper ( http://www.uvmapper.com ) to be easier.

For the eye joints you'll need to do some editing of the CR2 file in Wordpad or a propriety editor. I use CR2editor ( http://www.poserstuff.com/programs/Cr2Editor.zip ) Remove the joint lines in the eyes and the ones relating to the eyes in the head. Again see an existing Poser model for an example. If you have loaded in an existing Poser bone set up then this will have all ready been done.

I thought if i switch to the front viewport i can then assign polygons to the eye groups through the skull?

Then i would only have to deselect the outer skull polygons.

Now that i think of it i guess i could setup the material ID of just the eyes.  Then when grouping i would "Auto Group" everything but the eye groups right?

I'm off to experiment.

sorry, i have nothing constructive to add, i was just atracted by the hilarious topic title (^_^)

Grouping in Poser is painless (if tedious) for the most part, however when you come to objects embedded within other objects, it's best to have them pre-defined as seperate entities, as you run the risk of having stray polys selected (but not visible) when grouping them in Poser alone.

Yes, I usually make sure things like eyes are seperate groups in the object file, it makes it much easier to do the poser grouping.

how do i setup such an object?  i need to setup a polygon selection in my modelling program right?  then export to wavefront.  but how do i assign a group in poser based on that?  i don't even see a "group by material" button.

it would be great if i could import seperate wavefront objects into my existing rig.  how can i do that?

as a prop maybe?  hmm.   confused :)

Well, there are options in most modeling programs to name objects individually. If you do this and export the OBJ, the names should stick, then you'd see them in the group listing. What are you modeling in? If the program doesn't support this, use UVMapper. Just load in the object and, assuming you've UVmapped it correctly, select the eyes or teeth or whatever in the head you want to be seperate and assing them to new groups. Then save out the new OBJ and use that as your base for making a rig.

Oh, you can do that...I think...you'd have to adjust the bones or the parenting accordingly and I think you'd lose any morphs already assigned.  As a rule of thumb, leave the morphs for last.

Hmm.  Ok i did export the figure from my modelling program, c4d.  It contained seperate objects like eyes and teeth.  When i exported them those seperate objects became one object.

When i imported and grouped using the group tool they then showed up in the grouping list drop down.  I just couldn't figure out how to assign bones to those groups.  How do i attach the eye bones to each seperate eye group? 

As of now i don't have any morphs on the figure.  I don't know how to do that yet.  Althought when i jump back and forth from Pose to Setup room, i get a dialog about morphs.  Why is that?  Is it because i used the Kate rig?

I use an older version of cinema 4d to make groups and texture names, in that I have found that if you assign a material to each seperate group as well as setting the name for each object as well then the object imports into poser with the seperate groups.

Yes. Most rigs you get from other sources will already be assigned to morphs for whatever character you're using as a rig base. This is one of the reasons why I just started making my own rigs from scratch.   You may want to take a moment and just look at the bones Kate came with, see how they're setup and named.  Eye bones are usually connected to the head object or to a dummy bone which is connected to the head.  Make sure your objects have names and seperate material zones before exporting from your modeler. This would normally keep the objects seperate when looking at the grouping in other programs. I have never used C4D, so there may be some dialog box options to check as you export.

Edit: looks like Xantor confirmed my suspicions about the export from C4D. Thanks!

danb, use Spanki's Riptide plugin to export Wavefront OBJ from C4D instead of the built-in exporter as it ignores point/polygon selections on a single mesh.  Riptide will allow you to export using the polygon selections as OBJ groups ('g' in the file, bodyparts in Poser) without the faux material assignment approach.

The eyes in Poser are usually set to XYZ Joint Order and have no Joint Parameters (twist or joints) so that they rotate independently of the head without deformations.  If you look at the Joint Editor window with an eye selected, you should only have 'center' (and maybe some smoothscale) options in the dropdown.

Might I suggest "Secrets of Figure Creation with Poser 5" by B L Render as the definitive source to this process.

Robert

gee and my answer would of been simply Leprosy. See how much I know.

Ahh, here's the thread...

Dan,  as Robert mentions above, you should use Riptide if possible.  This will let you set up all of your groups and materials inside C4D before you export.  It's generally MUCH easier to set up groups in C4D where you have everything in componant parts in the Object Manager (OM).

If the Eyes are separate meshes in C4D and you have Riptide installed...

1. select the left eye mesh in the OM  (heirarchy list on right side of screen).
2. select all polygons of the left eye.
3. create new selection and name it 'leftEye' (or whatever Kate's left eye group needs to be named).
4. over in the OM, right-click on the left eye mesh and add a new tag... "Riptide Tags - > Group"
5. when the Group Tag dialog opens, (or double-click on it later on, to open it again) look for 'leftEye' in the left-hand 'Available' column and move it to the right-hand 'Selected' column (select the leftEye entry and click on the -> buton beside where it says "Available").
6. repeat steps 1->5 for the 'rightEye' mesh.
7. repeat steps 1-5 for any other disconnected/separate meshes.
8. if you have any meshes that have more than one 'group' in them, just create selection tags for each group of polygons, using the exact/case-sensitive/correct naming that Poser is expecting ('hip', 'abdomen', 'chest', 'neck', 'head', lCollar', 'lShldr', etc.), then just add ONE 'Group Tag' to that mesh, but when the dialog opens, move all of those 'Available' group selections to the 'Selected' column (don't add any material selections you might have set up - just the group selections).
9. Set up all of your material zones... select the desired polygons, create a new selection tag, add a material to the mesh in the OM and restrict it to use the named seletion you set up.
10. Make sure all of your meshes are UV-mapped (Riptide expects the mesh to have UV coordinates).
11. When you're ready to export, go to the Plugins menu and select Riptide->.Obj Exporter.
12. enter a filename.
13. on the Riptide Dialog, make sure the following options are enabled/checked:

+ Export Faces

• Reverse Faces
• Export UV Coords
• Export Materials
• Export Groups
• Export Regions (optional... if you have a Region Tag set up with some UVMapper regions set up like the Group Tag is done).
• Sort by Material (this helps de-frag the .obj file, so it loads faster)
• Group Tag Names

...if you set up your mesh(es) as described above, then thos are the only options you need to have enabled.. everything else on that dialog can be disabled.  Now when you export (or import, for that matter) using Riptide from now on, all of those groups and material zones will be preserved.

When you load the model into Poser with all the groups already set up (assuming you used the exact naming needed), you won't have to mess with Poser's Group editor at all.

Cheers,

• Keith

Just to get a clear idea of how Riptide works and what it's expecting, use Riptide to import one of the Poser character meshes... Riptide will create all the materials, material selection tags, group selection tags, Group Tag, and any region selection tags and Region Tag, if there are any in the file.  You can then look at how those are set up... if you follow that example on your new meshes before exporting, you're good to go.

A few tips:

• I generally name my Materials (in the Material Manager) exactly the same as the material selection tags, to avoid confusion.

• aside from the above, make sure all of your selection tags have unique/case-sensitive names.

• Group selections can overlap Material selections (and visa-vera), but currently polygons can not be in more than one group or more than one material at a time.

• Region selections can overlap both groups and materials (but again, polygons only exist within one region at a time), so if you want to partition polygons in some way different than your groups or materials, set up some Regions.

- A good example of using Regions is in creating texture templates in UV-mapper... you select ALL the polygons of materials that you want to be on the head map and put them in one Region ('head_map' for example) then you select ALL the polygons of materials that you want on the body map and put them in another region ('body_map'), then do the same for your 'trans_map', 'mouth_map', etc..  Add a Region Tag to your mesh and put those regions in it.  Now when you get to UV-mapper to make some texture templates, you can 'Select By Region' for hiding/unhiding.

• Don't use spaces in selection tag names or material names (use an underscore or something).

One more tip...

Any time you enter Poser's Setup Room and later save that figure back to the library, Poser will create a NEW mesh (and stick it in the same folder you saved the figure to).  This mesh will be 'split' at the group boundaries.

I usually delete this mesh (I like to keep my meshes welded - thank you very much) and then edit the top of the new figure .cr2 file to point back at my original mesh over in the Geometries folder, where it's supposed to be.

Once I have the rig basically set up, I try not to even enter the Setup Room... you can do adjustments to the rig using the Joint Editor instead.  The only advantage of the Setup Room is in creating new bones (or applying the rig of some existing character) and then a different (graphical) user interface that lets you move groups of bones at the same time (ie. you can move every bone that's a child of the abdomen at once).  So once I have the bones roughly where I want them, I do everything else using the Joint Editor.