This is probabaly an easy one but I'm a little confused - how the heck do you make a charecter's butt flatten out - I have a charecter sitting on a hard bench and I can't get her butt to look like it should - it shouls spread out and flatten but in my million and one poses /morphs and dials I can't find the comination to make it look right- help!- please

Quote - This is probabaly an easy one but I'm a little confused - how the heck do you make a charecter's butt flatten out - I have a charecter sitting on a hard bench and I can't get her butt to look like it should - it shouls spread out and flatten but in my million and one poses /morphs and dials I can't find the comination to make it look right- help!- please

That is a major problem with all the Daz figures.  I could never do it either, short of sending it out to an app like Zbrush and reshaping the whole hip.

That is one of the main reasons I built my own two models, check them out they have normal looking butts.
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1626437
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1606435&member

My models are not out yet.  If you are looking for a model that's out and does a heck of alot better job with that, take a look at Apollo Maximus,  I don't know if there any female morphs for him but I bet there is and that model is way better at bending than any of the Daz models.

4/8/08

Magnets could be used to flatten and spread the buttocks. I have had no luck with magnets, but some one will be along soon who can point you to some turotials.

LMK

The default morphs won't help you here.
Short of re-rigging the mesh, the easiest way is to use the Poser 7 morphbrush to make your own morphs.
This way you can work directly on the mesh inside Poser while it is posed on the bench.

Pose your figure on the bench.
Make the bench invisible, then flatten the buttocks a little more than necessary with pull/screen and push/surface.
Make the bench visible again, then "unflatten" the buttocks again with "restore" set to a low value until they contact the bench.
Then"spread out" the buttocks with pull/screen at a low value.
Finally use the smooth brush if necessary and save as a new morph.

I was looking through my files because I did it once with magnets, but I couldn't find them.  I'm pretty sure I used three magnets to reshape the buttock and hip on one side. It takes a long time, alot of messing with them.  It's probably better to try the morph brush in poser 7 if you have poser 7.  Otherwise you could do like most people do and just pick an angle that hides the worst of it.

Quote - The default morphs won't help you here.
Short of re-rigging the mesh, the easiest way is to use the Poser 7 morphbrush to make your own morphs.
This way you can work directly on the mesh inside Poser while it is posed on the bench.

Pose your figure on the bench.
Make the bench invisible, then flatten the buttocks a little more than necessary with pull/screen and push/surface.
Make the bench visible again, then "unflatten" the buttocks again with "restore" set to a low value until they contact the bench.
Then"spread out" the buttocks with pull/screen at a low value.
Finally use the smooth brush if necessary and save as a new morph.

sounds great - where's the morph brush?

The simple way to do this is as lkendall suggests with a magnet (maybe more than one, but one may be plenty).
http://www.philc.net/PTB_tutorial4.htm
http://www.philc.net/PTB_tutorial5.htm

The morph brush is up above with your other tools like translat rotate ect. its near the right top of your pose room.

i'm with magnets too.

Magnets are the way to go.  You just need to know three parts of the magnet.

Horseshoe, magnet base, and magnetic zone.

Let's take the magnetic zone first.  Its the circle and any polygon within the circle will be affected-meaning they can be stretched, pulled, twisted.

Next the red horseshoe:  This is the fellow that does the stretching, pulling, and twisting.

Finally the magnetic base:  When that bar is on the horseshoe magnet's open end, the horseshoe magnet can't do squat.  When it is moved off the bar along the x, y, or z axis, it will drag polygons with in the circle with it.

The neat thing with the bar, by clicking and holding down the mouse button you can move the whole nine yards well, the horseshoe and circle as a package.

Now for the specifics, select the left buttocks, from the OBJECT drop down menu, select create magnet.  The three portions of the magnet will be centered on the left butt.  Now move the circle along the z axis so that only half the butt's profile is within the circle.  Now move the horseshoe portion along the z axis towards the rear, notice the butt expanding towards the rear.  You just have to move it slightly off the bass.

Now click on the left buttocks again and in the OBJECTS drop down menu select spawn morp target-name it  "flatten butt, inout, etc".

Then click on the horseshoe and delete it-you don't need it anymore.

You will have a new dial with your name applied to it either under OTHER or CUSTOM.  When you rotate the dial, you butt should go in or out.

Repeat for the other one.

If you experiment, you can create other dials for lifting the butt, moving it sideways or fatten it up (moving the horse shoe up or down-left or right-resizing the x axis of the horse shoe.

This procedure applies to noses, ears, primitives, anything that has a multipoly mesh, great for clothes too.  

Have fun--Jan

A modification of ockhams Eureka python script might do the job.

Eureka is a script that does something related to this problem: whenever a character sits on a soft surface, like a cushion, this soft surface should deform. Eureka will calculate how the vertices should move, including pushing vertices aside.

You could even use the script "as is" by rotating the figure and the bench upside down and sort of "have the bench sit on the characters buttocks." The script can use the bench as the hard object and the buttocks as soft objects.

The result of the script is a morph target dial.

I've been fiddling with the idea of expanding on the script, making it possible to use other movements than just vertical, and adding a graphical user interface to pick hard and soft actors. There's quite a bit of math involved, and I haven't had the time yet.

The Eureka script looks quite interesting, did a member's search and can't find him/her.  Where can we find it?  Jan

http://ockhamsbungalow.com/Python/

Pjz, that was fast!  Thank you!  Just went there and downloaded the script-took one sec on a 56K MODEM too.  Now to bring up a figure (soft) and a cube (hard) and figure out how to use  ye old pyton script--reading the instructions is probably a good start.  Jan

have fun :)