I hope it's the right place to post this qiestion.

I'm using Poser7.

I'm trying to rigg a hair figure, and I need the head bone to have multiple chide bones.

The problem is as soon as I add a child bone the head bone I made stops having the "end point" parameters. I know it's normal for bone with one child, but the thing is when I add several more children I assume it should come back? For some reason my head bone just remains without the end point... And my guess is that it's what messes up the conforming to V4 part. So what am I doing wrong?

Anyway if anyone can point me towards any good tutorials on the subject, I'll be very grateful :)

The end point will still be there, just not visible in the joint editor. The same will be the case for any body part that has a child. You are correct in that adding children will affect the head end point which could upset conforming.

Suggest that once you have added all the required children that you use the Wardrobe Wizard Copy Joint Parameters tool to copy back in the original head start and end point centers.

Wardrobe Wizard > Utilities> Figure > More > Copy Joint Parameters

Thank you for a quick replay! :)

I'll keep the WW in mind, but is there no way to do it manually? While I don't mind using WW in future projects to speed thins up I'd  like to understand what I'm actually doing for educational purposes if nothing else :)

It is frustrating - if I can add children to the mesh with existing head bone without distorting it's alignment, why can't I do the same with the bone I made? :(

Not sure that your system of having a head with the neck as child will work for a conformer. I think it has to be rigged with the same hierarchy as the target figure. That is to say with the head as a child of the neck.

All the conforming hair figures I have see have the hair geometry in the neck actor, and the head is a child of the neck. There is nothing that I know of to stop you having geometry groups for other parts, like the head or chest, though this is not usually necessary unless the hair goes below the chest actor. But I think the hierarchy needs to be the same as the target figure (I may be wrong).

I'm not trying to do that. I have a Head bone and I need to attach braids to it, not neck. I'm not even using a neck bone, it's not needed for something this short.

Sorry, missunderstood what you were driving at. In that case I don't know a solution. Why is it important to have the "end point" parameters for the head visible?

I believe the question is better stated as "how do I attach multiple children to the end of the head bone for multiple braids" maybe. 

My answer would be "I have no idea" except to maybe look at how the figures hip and shoulders are rigged.

lesbentley - because right now the bones end parameters are taken for the start of the next bone (child) and it messes up the conforming function. If they are visible I can adjust the aliment of the bone and it will conform properly.**

markschum -** I did look, and the hip bones have the end parameter visible, the simmacro site states that the bone with multiple children would have visible end parameters... But for some reason main don't, what I'm trying to find out is why?

Did anyone here make a conforming pair of trousers? How did you solve the problem with the hipbone? That should be similar I think...

Could it be that there is some misunderstanding about what in "bone" in poser is? In some other 3d-applications e.g. blender, a bone is displayed as a kind of octahedron, connecting the parent bone and the child-bone. It serves as a visual aid and at the same time it defines the deformation of the mesh. When you enter e.g. Poser2010's setup room and use the bone creation tool, you get those things that look like long pyramids that might easily be taken for "bones", but they are not. Instead look at the green axis cross, that is what should be called a bone. The long triangle things are only a visual aid, but may or may not point to their child-bones, with seemingly no functional impact. For multiple child bones, they usually point to the first child bone, but it is the origin (the green axis-cross) that counts.

Yep they have the green cross in the bottom, and the red one on top. The Head bone and the hip bone should have both - the end bones and the bones with multiple children should look like that.

My hedbone only has the green cross, what I'm trying to find out is how do I make is so it has the red one as it should as well...

I have never used the the Setup Room when creating a figure, and don't know much about it. I can't see a way to fix this in the Setup Room, or in any other part of the Poser interface. Personally I would save the figure, then edit the 'endPoint' line in a cr2 editor, or text editor. The 'endPoint' line contains three values seperated by spaces, the values represent the x, y, z, position respectively of the endPoint. You could Copy & Paste the endPoint for the head from the target figure to the hair figure.

endPoint 0 0.72836 0.0267356

x y z

lesbentley - I did try that - took the end values form a properly conformed head bone and replaced the line in the later version after I added children and it did not seam to have any effect...

Every tutorial I found so far just uses the V4 Dev Foundation instead of making fresh bones for conforming, but it seams a bit unpractical - I need only one bone after all :( Dev Foundation has the correctly set up bones, so it should be doable in Poser no?
I think I'm missing something.

If it were me I would use the V4 DEV version keep the hip, abdomen, chest, neck and head and delete the rest. Save as "MyNewModel.cr2"

Import your hair model and enter the set up room.

Double click on the "MyNewModel" thumbnail in the library to add the rigging to the model.

Add extra bones for the tails ensuring that I name the bones to match the group names in the model.

Return to the pose room.

Ensure that the head is selected then run this script to reset the head end point.
Look in the V4 DEV cr2 for the required values of x,y and z.

import poser
scene = poser.Scene()
actor = scene.CurrentActor()
x = 0.000 # type in end point X coord here
y = 0.000 # type in end point Y coord here
z = 0.000 # type in end point Z coord here
actor.SetEndPoint(x, y, z)
print "%s end point set to %f, %f, %f" % (actor.Name(),x,y,z)

Save to the library.

Quote - Every tutorial I found so far just uses the V4 Dev Foundation instead of making fresh bones for conforming, but it seams a bit unpractical - I need only one bone after all :( Dev Foundation has the correctly set up bones, so it should be doable in Poser no?
I think I'm missing something.

The reason you use the V4 skeleton is so that the bones match exactly when conforming. It's always been the received wisdom to use at least one extra bone down the hierarchy (some suggest using back to the hip).
Any unwanted bones can be removed in the setup room, but it does require a little care, and it's best to work inwards from the extremities.