Hi all,

I just made a new head (with neck) for Apollo (in 3d studio), and I imported it into Poser, turned off the visibility on the old head and neck and put the new one in place, it fits perfectly (when I made it I made sure every vertex from the new head would fit every vertex of the body).

Now, how do I actually replace the heads? So its just now a cut off head sitting into its place?

Probably the easiest way is to save your custom head as two separate files, one for the neck and one for the head then edit the Apollo CR2 file to call them up. The CR2 lines should look like this:-

actor chest:1<br></br>
    {<br></br>
    storeageOffset 0 0 0<br></br>
    geomHandlerGeom 13 head<br></br>
    }<br></br>
actor neck:1<br></br>
    {<br></br>
    storeageOffset 0 0 0<br></br>
    objFileGeom 0 0 :Runtime:Geometries:Your
Folder:neck.obj<br></br>
    }<br></br>
actor head:1<br></br>
    {<br></br>
    storeageOffset 0 0 0<br></br>
    objFileGeom 0 0 :Runtime:Geometries:Your
Folder:head.obj<br></br>
    }<br></br>

The original head morphs will naturally not work with your new head but doing it this way you'll not mess up morphs in the rest of the body.

But how will Poser know which vertices attach to which? Will it just attach the closest ones?
And I assume that all pivots must be in reference to the figure's origin, right? (the head's 0,0,0 should be the same as the foot's 0,0,0 and the hip's 0,0,0) 

Providing the chest/neck seam is the same for both the original and custom heads, Poser will be able to handle the welding.

Not quite sure what you mean by the pivots. The joint parameters can be adjusted if desired but unless your custom head is vastly different probably will not need to be.

The UVW seam of my new neck runs along the same vertexes as the original neck. Is this the seam you're mentioning? If it is, yes, it goes right thru the chest/neck weld point just like the original neck.

 Why not just try it out? :)

And do post a pic, I'd love to see Apollo with a better(?)  face!

I did try them all out. Tried editing the CR2 like he sugested, tried editing the scene's PZ3 file... I got results, but it didnt work...

Now I'm reading a book on Google about it... 
http://books.google.com/books?id=ePPfj8bHZVQC&pg=PA94&lpg=PA94

I'll post images when he has a head...
and a neck...

 What if you import the head to poser and overlay it - just to be absolutely sure you've got the right size and scale and placement and all.. I have a feeling that might be the problem - Poser's scale is miniscule compared to Max'

Now it's hard to know when I don't know what happened when you tried. Could you post a pic of what is wrong? PhilC's method should work if everything fits together as it should.

Yes if you could show what the results were we'll be able to advise accordingly.

Frankensteining 101:

1. Make sure the new neck and the new head use the same internal names as the old neck and head: "neck" and " head".
   That means, every vertice of the new head must belong to a group called "head" an every vertice of the new neck must belong to a group called "neck".
   Use Poser's group editor to check and eventually fix this.

2. Export Apollo's body without the original neck and head as an object file.
   Don't forget to completely zero all joints and morphs before you do that.

3. Re-import that headless body into Poser.

4. Import the new neck and head into Poser.
       (Check point 1. with the grouping tool!)

5. Export both Apollo's body object as well as the
       new head and neck object simultanously from    Poser so that it will be fused into a single new object.

6. Edit a copy of Apollo's cr2 so that it calls the new combinen object (Old body + new neck/head)

7. Delete the now useless head and neck morphs using morphmanager or similar.

NOTE: Unless the new neck has the same UV-mapping as the old neck, there will be a visible texture seam where old and new parts (chest and neck) meet.

JoePublic, I followed your tutorial and tried several variations of it. It gave some promising results but at the end it did not fully work.

Before it all, I checked on Poser that my new head has a polygon group called neck and another called head, and they were in the correct place. Though a problem with my new head doesn't really matter as I also tried without it just to troubleshoot.

Here's what I did:

1- Started Poser Pro.

2- Deleted the starting figure off the scene. Scene is now clean.

3- Under the Figures tab, clicked the figure !ApolloMaximus.cr2 to load a fresh Apollo.

4- Under the Poses tab, clicked Apollo_Poses01/!Default Zero Pose. Apollo is now zeroed.

5- Clicked File/Export/Wavefront OBJ/Single Frame.

6- Unchecked GROUND, then Neck, Head, Line_of_Sight, rEyeTarget, lEyeTarget, lEye, rEye, lEar, rEar, upperTeeth, lowerTeeth, tongue1, tongue2, tongue3, tongue4.

7- Export Options: Only checked "Include body part names in polygon groups."

8- Saved as D:/Apollo-Headless.obj

9- Started a brand new scene (File/New), and deleted the starting figure off the scene.

10- Clicked File/Import/Wavefront OBJ. Import Options: [X] Centered, [X] Percent of standard figure size=100.0, [X] Make polygon normals consistent. All the other options are unchecked. Selected file. D:/Apollo-Headless.obj.

11- Then again File/Import/Wavefront OBJ, same Import Options, selected file D:/Apollo-NewNeckAndHead.obj.

12- Moved the Apollo-NewNeckAndHead (1 object) in place on the headless body. It's a near perfect match. Did not move the Apollo-Headless object (the body). So far so good.

13- Clicked File/Export/Wavefront OBJ/Single Frame, unchecked GROUND.
13a- Checked Apollo-Headless. (There was no subobjects)
13b- Checked Apollo-NewNeckAndHead. (There was no subobjects)

14- Export Options: Only checked "Include body part names in polygon groups."

15- Exported to: C:Program Files (x86)Smith MicroPoser ProRuntimeGeometriesAnton'sApolloMaximusApolloMaximus2005-NewHead.obj

16- Under C:Program Files (x86)Smith MicroPoser ProRuntimeLibrariesCharacterApolloMaximus, copied !ApolloMaximus.cr2 to !Apollo New Head.cr2. Then edited !Apollo New Head.cr2 and replace 2 entries of ApolloMaximus2005.obj to ApolloMaximus2005-NewHead.obj.

17- Started a brand new scene (File/New), and deleted the starting figure off the scene.

18- Under the Figures tab, clicked the figure !Apollo New Head.cr2. It loaded an invisible figure. It has all body parts, but nothing is visible or cast shadows, on all cameras.

Now, one of the things I tried was simply to skip the importing of my custom head and neck. (Skipped steps 11, 12, and 13b). Same results: It loads an invisible figure at step 18.

If I just take the 1st exported file (Apollo-Headless.obj) and save as C:Program Files (x86)Smith MicroPoser ProRuntimeGeometriesAnton'sApolloMaximusApolloMaximus2005-NewHead.obj, and edit the copied CR2 file to use that file, it works. I can load the headless Apollo as a new figure and its fully poseable.

So I assumed the problem was on the 2nd export to OBJ. So I tried to take the Apollo-Headless.obj (1st export) into 3D Studio and attach the new head there and then export it again, and it also loads an invisible figure on Poser at the end. I also tried to just load Apollo-Headless.obj into 3D Studio and simply export it to OBJ again to C:Program Files (x86)Smith MicroPoser ProRuntimeGeometriesAnton'sApolloMaximusApolloMaximus2005-NewHead.obj, but it again loads an invisible figure.

Looks to me that when exporting from a fully posable CR2 file, it works as in the figure does not loads invisible. When exporting from an imported OBJ, the problem happens.

Check if the Poser export of the combined figure hasn't messed up the grouping.

Open the object file in a text editor and check if Poser has added a ":1" and/or ":2" to the groups.
(Like "head" has become "head:1")

If so, delete every occurence of ":1" or ":2" and so on.

Then try again.

10- Clicked File/Import/Wavefront OBJ. Import Options: [X] Centered, [X] Percent of standard figure size=100.0, [X] Make polygon normals consistent. All the other options are unchecked. Selected file. D:/Apollo-Headless.obj.

DO NOT CHECK ANY of those import options as they will move/resize the object and so mess up the rigging.

Also do not just use a "zero" pose.
You have to make sure that ALL movement/trans dials of both the hip and the BODY actor are actually ZERO.
Same for ALL morph dials, especially as Apollo has several ERC dials.

The object file must be perfectly zeroed before you export it.

Also import with none of the import options selected. In this way it will arrive in the scene exactly as you exported. If you have to move the new head in any way you'll never get it positioned accurately enough for Poser's weld statement to take effect.

Sometimes I have had to clean up those group names... easiest to do with search/replace in EditPad Lite a free .txt editor that handles HUGE .obj and .cr2 files very well and adds no junk when saving.

I got rid of the :2's that were on the 1st exported OBJ file, and unchecked all the boxes when importing again. Once imported, I checked on the Group Editor, and all body parts were there except the ones I didn't export, and all the polygon groups were correct.

But when I export for the 2nd time, the OBJ file has only 1 object, called Apollo-NewNeckAndHead. There are no other polygon groups. I tried several combinations of the checkboxes for the Exporting Options when exporting the 2nd time, and it always give me only 1 polygon group. It does export all the material groups though. So this explains why I was getting an invisible figure at the end. Though I'm still troubleshooting this and not sure whats wrong. I'm trying 3D Studio again now and editing the OBJ file on Notepad++ to see whats going on.

I got some success by using 3D Studio. As in... I know how to export an OBJ off 3D Studio with all polygon groups in place, which solves the problem I was having with Poser's OBJ exporter. Now I'm on my way to attach the new head.

*** Puts mask on ***

• Pass me the stitches please.

 I think part of the problem is that your new head is too big.

That would make it seem invisible in Poser while in reality it's there, but so huge that it encompasses the whole scene.

At least that was a common problem I had when I used Max. Until I learned to scale it down with a factor of 10000. Then it became visible in Poser :)