Hi, I've been wondering if it is possible to create your own "body parts" to an existing figure using the group tool in Poser or Daz so you could choose to display or not display certain parts.

Problem is , with some models they are nicely separated out; you select the figure and then go into body parts and select what you want then hide or show accordingly.

My biggest grumble is with furniture or large scene figures, for example in this attached image I have Macleans home one Kitchen unit. Yes the doors and oven and other parts are defined as body parts but I want to create a new group called "Hood" just the range hood, and add this as a body part, so I could rotate, scale or choose to display or not display.

Is this even possible in Poser or Daz ? I've been looking through numerous tutorials and I could spawn a new prop of my grouped part, or I could spawn all the props and then delete the parts I don't want but then there is the hassle of putting all the parts back together again.

Is there no simple way to "group" together some polys and say "ok your now body part "blah"

been banging my head against the wall with this one so would appreciate if anyone has any pointers

You've stated the choices correctly. 

Use the grouping tool to "Spawn Props", then delete the original.  After that, resave the set of individual props.   Turning this set into a proper figure is somewhat complicated, probably not worth the effort unless you need moving parts and joints.   If you wanted the range doors to open, the figure would be worth the work, but not just to hide the hood separately.

Maclean is always around the Daz forum ... you might site-mail him over there and see if he's willing to make a figure version of this stove.  

Transparency map or define a new material group.

You can create a new material which is the range hood. You can then make that material transparent, black, no specular and it will dissapear. If you then select and spawn a prop you can parent the prop and have it moveable.

Thanks, adding the group and group material with a transparency does the trick !

I guess I coudl "spawn" props and rebuild, but basically I just wanted rid of the range hood, theres a few other models I want similar "reductive" measures; just remove parts I dont want that havent been set up as body parts.

Funny thing though that posers group tools allows "additive" processing ie spawning of new props but not "reductive", ie removing parts of a figure.

Still it woudl be excellent if you could create body parts from using the group tool; I guess thats just not an available feature =(

PMd you at DAZ. mac

Just for those curious as "how to"

I think I've kinda got a solution worked out; bit it seems kinda messy...Let me know what you think....

What I did was go to the group tool and select the hood part then did an invert and create prop.

This created the figure without the hood but there were a few fiddly left behind polys from the hood so I continued to repeat the process, select hood parts, invert, create prop, etc until I got a clean break off.

Next I added my new unit as a prop, I loaded up the original figure and set the main body parts visibility to false and positioned the original figure so the doors and other parts matched up with my new "hoodless" prop. Then I set the relevant parent items with Change Parent and Set Figure parent so the "hoodless" prop wouldn't slide around when moving the whole figure.

Next added this to my library as a full figure in Character Library et viola !

I now have a nice kitchen unit sans extractor hood. Was a bit of a chore to do but finally got there in the end !