I've gotten to the point where I can have each part of a Poser figure individually named, so that I can do the rigging process, per PhilC's excellent videos on YouTube.

I'm creating the skeleton, arranging and naming the bones appropriately.  Many of the body parts work fine.  However, I'm having trouble with the bone influence on some parts.

The legs of my creature bend in its resting state.  What's happening is that child bones are influencing parent parts.  For instance, I bend a knee and the buttock moves forward, instead of the model just bending at the knee.

Is there a way to limit the influence area of the bones?  I couldn't find anything covering this.  It's as if the makers of Poser don't have a concept of tapering bone influence.  It's pretty frustrating, coming from a Maya/zBrush world.

Can you post a screen shot illustrating what you are experiencing? Preferably with the joint parameter window open so that we can see the bend joint parameters.

Are the figure's IK chains turned off? They need to be off whilst adjusting joints.

Thanks.

There is the exclusion and inclusion zones for each joint and possibly a spherical falloff zone to adjust.  If you have poser 7 theres some documentation in the tutorials folder about rigging.

Here are some images of my current rigging problem.  I've mostly figured out the inclusion/exclusion zones, but when I move this pinky or ring finger, verts move in the knuckle area across the palm.

Maybe it has something to do with the spherical falloff, which I haven't played with yet.  But maybe not.  I'll play with that.

I've also included a look at the bones.  Maybe that will help?

Thanks again, guys.  Maybe this will help us solve this problem. :)

yep you need to use spherical falloff zones to limit the area of influence there are two falloff zones just like with the angles everything inclosed in the green sphere is influenced at 100% and everything in the red zone is influenced from 100% at the edge of the green zone to zero percent at the edge of the red zone. this system replaces weight mapping, which is what the higher end suites like Maya use.

This is why I was hoping to find a rigging partner for my models in the first place.  It doesn't get much dumber than this when it comes to getting a finger to move properly.  On my screen, those spherical influence zones are always right at 0,0,0.  I don't know if they're supposed to be there, but it would make more sense to have them with the bone.

I even adjusted the red sphere down just slightly.  Instead of those knuckle areas working properly, the finger started bending at the wrong place, and distorting badly with anything more than a slight bend.

So, sadly, this is taking me away from the modeling that I need to be doing.  If anyone still wants to rig my models and share 25% of the sales profits here on Rendero, let me know.  I'm still interested in doing that, but again, rigging these myself is becoming too time consuming.

Thanks to everyone for all  your help!

I do provide a rigging service. If you would like to email me my address is pcooke@philc.net

Quote - This is why I was hoping to find a rigging partner for my models in the first place.  It doesn't get much dumber than this when it comes to getting a finger to move properly.  On my screen, those spherical influence zones are always right at 0,0,0.  I don't know if they're supposed to be there, but it would make more sense to have them with the bone.

Well, the first thing you need to do is move them to where the bone is. I hate the fact that Poser puts them at 0,0,0 by default, but that's just how it is.

Quote - I hate the fact that Poser puts them at 0,0,0 by default, but that's just how it is.

yep thats one of the many things that have always annoyed me with the poser joint editor, thankfully the Studio joint editor defaults to centering the falloff zones on the origin of the bone, between that an its other features I feel no interest in going back to the poser rigging tools.

Do Figure Editor -> Zero Figure while in the Pose room and see if that fixes anything.  It can happen that you might set a rotation value while in the Setup room, and this value will deform the figure while it appears to be in "zero pose" in the Pose room.

incidentally:

Quote - "If anyone still wants to rig my models and share 25% of the sales profits here on Rendero, let me know. "

25% is not a really attractive or fair offer for any complex rigging job, in my experience it's at least as much work to rig the figure as it is to model/map/texture it.

Quote - > Quote - I hate the fact that Poser puts them at 0,0,0 by default, but that's just how it is.

yep thats one of the many things that have always annoyed me with the poser joint editor, thankfully the Studio joint editor defaults to centering the falloff zones on the origin of the bone, between that an its other features I feel no interest in going back to the poser rigging tools.

Grrr! I'm still waiting for a version of D|S that works properly on my machine. I can see and manipulate all the bits in the joint editor, but my camera controls are screwed up, so it's really hard to get accurate feedback on what I'm doing. Using multiple viewports helps a bit, of course.

Other than that, I definitely agree. The DAZ joint editor is lightyears ahead of the Poser one.

Phil, first of all, are you working on a Mac? I noticed when you switch over to wireframe mode, the Mag zone also appears as a "3D" zone. That's awesome! Is that feature available on the PC version of Poser? Or is that just something that you added to the presentation using another program?

It's something he explains in his intro to magnets tutorial, set the display style of the falloff zone to "wireframe".  Watch:
http://www.philc.net/PTB_tutorial5.htm

He shows it with a magnet there but it applies to joint parameter falloff zones also.

I do have a Mac but that was on a PC. Mac or PC both you can set the display style using the Poser display menu.

Ok, got it...it's under the Display>Element Style>Wireframe. Thanks!