I brought the Dressobj into the Setup room and used a donor cr2. For some reason, after I click on autogroup now, bones still show when I go back to the POSE room (see lower left hand corner) and when I load the dress from the library. The donor I used ONLY had [Chest,Abdomen,Hip,lcollar,rcollar] so don't really understand why those other bones are visible. You can see these bones protruding out of Maddie's head and hands.

Obviously fixing the pokethrough is a matter of adding handles. Looking into doing that.

Two questions though:

1.)How do we delete the different material zones and morphs(skirt long, skirt wide, etc) which are now in the dress from the donor? If it's editing the cr2 in notebook, please be as specific as possible (referencing lines). I have NEVER edited one and don't want to accidentally delete something I need.

2.)When testing out the rig, how many poses do you go through and fix JPs (if necessary) before you know no more  editing is needed?

Seriously, do yourself a favor and get a good CR2 editor.  I very highly recommend Dimension3D's Poser File Editor, but even a free one like John Stallings' will save you so much pain.  I've done a fair bit of scripting and programming over the years, and even though I'm pretty comfortable with editing large oddly-formatted gibberish like Poser's files, trying to do it in Notepad was brutal.

I don't know about the exact process you're using here.  Auto Group Editor is involved?  Maybe it is adding these bones for you.  Poser's built in Group Editor won't do this.

When testing, you really should test every joint, every bend axis.  Thankfully you only have to do it for one side, left or right, and when you're finished you can do Figure menu -> Symmetry -> Left to Right, and when prompted for "Copy joint setup information" select Yes.  Once you get comfortable with this workflow after having done it a few times, it gets a lot easier to tolerate, it really doesn't take too long to check.  That's the point of using the "donor CR2" method, because most joints will already be OK.

When adding posing handles for the skirt, the thing you may think of as a first step - actually adding a ball or cube or whatever to be the handle for the user to grab - is the thing you probably should do last.  Focus on getting bones into the skirt that get the deformations that you want, and save the CR2 incrementally (e.g. "Dress 1", "Dress 2", "Dress 3" etc.) 

Save frequently!  There are some devastating bugs that can pop up unexpectedly, like sometimes you'll add a bone and it will seem to work OK, but when you save and re-load the figure, that bone won't bend anything any more.  Why?  Who knows!  But at least you saved a previous version and can fall back to that.

Maddie is rigged hip -> buttock -> thigh right?  Like V3/M3?  If so, then it may be a good idea to include the rButtock/lButtock bones in your donor rig.  This way, with the skirt grouped as all "hip", then the character's buttock bones can deform the skirt as the legs are moved.  The thigh bones will not, but there's nothing to be done there except with posing handles.

oops, ps:  When testing, rather than run entire poses at first, just check each joint, bending it one direction at a time.  Save the full-blown pose testing for last, except maybe just for grins.  You can only fix joint parameters one at a time anyway, and when you apply a full pose, it's harder to identify which joint and which bend is actually causing a problem.

Quote - Maddie is rigged hip -> buttock -> thigh right?  Like V3/M3?  If so, then it may be a good idea to include the rButtock/lButtock bones in your donor rig.  This way, with the skirt grouped as all "hip", then the character's buttock bones can deform the skirt as the legs are moved.  The thigh bones will not, but there's nothing to be done there except with posing handles.

oops, ps:  When testing, rather than run entire poses at first, just check each joint, bending it one direction at a time.  Save the full-blown pose testing for last, except maybe just for grins.  You can only fix joint parameters one at a time anyway, and when you apply a full pose, it's harder to identify which joint and which bend is actually causing a problem.

Yes correct. That is Maddie's rig. Will include the r/lbuttock bones next time.

Thank you Pjz! You're always very helpful and patient.

Quote - Seriously, do yourself a favor and get a good CR2 editor.  I very highly recommend Dimension3D's Poser File Editor, but even a free one like John Stallings' will save you so much pain.  I've done a fair bit of scripting and programming over the years, and even though I'm pretty comfortable with editing large oddly-formatted gibberish like Poser's files, trying to do it in Notepad was brutal.

I don't know about the exact process you're using here.  Auto Group Editor is involved?  Maybe it is adding these bones for you.  Poser's built in Group Editor won't do this.

When testing, you really should test every joint, every bend axis.  Thankfully you only have to do it for one side, left or right, and when you're finished you can do Figure menu -> Symmetry -> Left to Right, and when prompted for "Copy joint setup information" select Yes.  Once you get comfortable with this workflow after having done it a few times, it gets a lot easier to tolerate, it really doesn't take too long to check.  That's the point of using the "donor CR2" method, because most joints will already be OK.

When adding posing handles for the skirt, the thing you may think of as a first step - actually adding a ball or cube or whatever to be the handle for the user to grab - is the thing you probably should do last.  Focus on getting bones into the skirt that get the deformations that you want, and save the CR2 incrementally (e.g. "Dress 1", "Dress 2", "Dress 3" etc.) 

Save frequently!  There are some devastating bugs that can pop up unexpectedly, like sometimes you'll add a bone and it will seem to work OK, but when you save and re-load the figure, that bone won't bend anything any more.  Why?  Who knows!  But at least you saved a previous version and can fall back to that.

Wow I'm surprised I understood all of this. lol

I guess I am learning after all. :woot:

Will do!

Just grabbed Stalling's Cr2 Editor.

To answer your question...I DID go through Autogroup Editor. Since I got my licensce key back, I wanted to put both AGE and ConCloth to work, but it's been awhile since I used them. I forgot a thing or two so chucked that plan. (Hey...I spent good money on them and although the donor method is quick and fast---wanted to utilize my tools! :p )

I saved the obj out of AGE as "MaddieGrouped". Then I opened THAT in Poser and went from there. Oops. Should've imported the original Dress obj outta Hex.
:blushing:

When you get more comfortable with your modeler (Hexagon I guess), you might end up just dispensing with trying to create groups automatically.  I group stuff by hand now myself.  In many of cases it's just a lot cleaner, e.g. when you have part of the garment near a border between body parts - like around the neck is a common place.  Many times an auto-grouper will break up that area into a very messy set of groups that won't bend as smoothly as a single "chest" group might.

Quote - When you get more comfortable with your modeler (Hexagon I guess), you might end up just dispensing with trying to create groups automatically.  I group stuff by hand now myself.  In many of cases it's just a lot cleaner, e.g. when you have part of the garment near a border between body parts - like around the neck is a common place.  Many times an auto-grouper will break up that area into a very messy set of groups that won't bend as smoothly as a single "chest" group might.

I keep forgetting to group it in Hex. I guess it would be grouped, "Chest", "Abdomen" and "Hip".

I always finish my model, freeze it, then export.

What is the difference between Maddie 3 and Maddie3Preschool?

For those V3/M3 style rigs, around the collar/shoulder area it may work better to follow the character's grouping and leave the arm holes as lCollar/rCollar groups.  For V4 it's practically always better to do it all as just "chest", but that's a different figure.

I don't know what differences there are between those two figures, I don't have either one.

Recently, I've been getting lazy when it comes to skirts and have been using Wardrobe Wizard to create my figures.  I've been still grouping my OBJs first even though Wardrobe Wizard will group the OBJ for you.  I like the way Wardrobe Wizard will add basic body handles and will keep the legs in the figure as ghost actors even if everything below the waist is grouped as the hip.  One thing to keep in mind with Wardrobe Wizard if you are going to redistibute the file is the body handles are separate OBJs and will need to be included (I actually replaced the  balls that Wardrobe Wizard use with my own boxes)

Quote - What is the difference between Maddie 3 and Maddie3Preschool?

Maddie3Preschool is a reshaped and rerigged version of Maddie to allow her to wear the "Gen 2" Millennium Girls Preschooler's clothes. 

try this one, pjz99. this was recommended to me by several people who do a lot of .cr2 editing
notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm

Really the CR2 editor by Dimension3D is very very very useful.  You can do things like drag a material block from one CR2 into another, or set up ERC dials with much less work and fewer mistakes than with a straight text editor.

@**chriscox

Ahh. Thanks!

I made shirt. This time did NOT go into AGE. Used the donor and got the same skeleton thingy in the clothes.
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