Quote - Also for the shoulder problems you can try a third bone for the shoulder- arm bend, it helps to break up the bend sometimes not always, but sometimes. Thanks. I was wondering how that third bone would be used and you've answered my unvoiced questions concerning this. I might try that eventually. Is lifelike inverse kinematics still possible with a three-bone chain, I wonder…? My original shoulder parts didn’t have enough polygons and were causing sharp edges to appear when the arm bent downward. This looked ok when rendering with ‘smooth polygons’ but it looked like hell in the actual geometry so I subdivided sections of the original model and corrected this. I keep going back to the modeler and re-defining the part boundaries. I’ve come up with a good collar/shoulder definition at this point, with sufficient polygons for bending. 'got to pay your dues if you want to sing the blues and you know it don't come easy...'

Yes IK works fine with the third shoulder bone, but BVH files and animation files made for a figure without a third shoulder bone will not use the extra bone so you have to go through them and add it in.  Part boundaries are indeed more important than many people think, even the shape of the part grouping effects how the part deforms as it bends.

Keep going and it gets clearer and more understandable as you go.

cheers.

. 

A HOMELAND FOR POSER FINALLY