Hi!

I created a book (as figure). I'd like to rotate this book about its center.

So, I selected the body and moved the center-point into the center of the book. But it still rotates about an axis through its bottom. Is this the normal behavour or did I miss something?

Kyraia

If you moved the center of the Body, the Body should now

rotate around the new center.  BUT.... the book itself is not

the same thing as the Body.  If the center of the 'physical'

book is still at the bottom, then selecting and rotating the

Book itself (not the Body) will still rotate from the bottom. 

 

One tricky possibility: In Poser 6, the name that shows on the

parameter dial panel is the name of the figure (not 'Body')

when Body is selected.  So, if you named the figure 'Book'

and the physical object is also named 'Book', you won't

be able to tell which is which by the name shown

on the panel.  You'll have to select Body on the pulldown

menus to be sure you actually have the Body.

In a normal Poser figure the BODY actor is a "ghost" actor, this means that it has no geometry itself, it just acts as a sort of base ellement to which other things can be attached. Ghost actors don't display the green crosshairs that you get with a normal actors that do contain geometry. Therefore it's a reasionable bet the the green crosshairs in your picture have nothing to do with the BODY actor, and are in fact associated with some other actor. It's another reasionable bet that if you look in the "Body Parts" menu, you will see one actor named "book" (or whatever), and that if you select this and xRotate it, it will indeed rotate around the green crosshairs. To move the center point of the BODY, make sure the body is selected by choosing "Body" in the dropdown menu, then open the joint editor and type in a new value for the Center Point. There are three text fields for the Center Point, they represent X, Y, and Z, respectivly, so you need to enter the value in the middle field to raise the Center Point. If you don't know what value to enter, make sure Poser is set to use "Poser native units" as the display units, then load a Poser box prop and raise it so that it's bottom edge is level with the center of the book, the value displayed on the yTran dial will be the value you need to use. So if I'm right, it's basicly what Ockham said, except the other way round. You are rotating the BODY actor, but you moved the Center Point of the "book" actor.

Thank you so far.

As for the setup, my book consists of 3 actors: spine and its children front and back. Since the spine is the parent of everything, I tried to place its center into the center of the book (the geometry). And voila: it rotates about this point as expected.

The reason why I wanted it to rotate about the bodies center point also is another unexpected behaviour which I'll post into another message once this one is clear to me.

However, it isn't. I loaded a Victoria, who rotates about a point in her center. Now, I selected "body", placed the center point to y=0, and now she rotates about this pont on the ground. Why does this work with a Victoria but not with my book?

Assuming that all the translations of the BODY are zero, if the center point of the BODY is at zero then the book should rotate around a point on the ground, and if the center point of the BODY is at "0.050" for Y, then the book should rotate around a point 0.05 poser units above the gorund (see atached animation). If this is not working for you, then I'm afraid I don't know what the problem is.