Hi!

 I have an animation where M4 is holding a figure (video camera). I want to be able to load the video camera, and have it be automatically in M4's right hand and be parented to it, so it follows the animation of his hand.

 I've edited in "smartparent rHand" to the video camera .cr2, which does parent it, but the camera loads way off target, not in M4's hand.

 I tried positioning the camera figure (unparented) into place in his hand, and then parenting it to his hand, and then saving that .cr2. But when I reload that new .cr2 from the library, it's not in place and not parented.

 It's too late to make it a prop instead of a figure. I've already created many poses and animations with it as a figure.

 Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks!

Hello there

What is ~  "smartparent rHand" ???

i just parent to the hand the save the prop

in poser

it'll say its parented ..do i want to save as smart prop ..

i click yes .. and have no problems

It's a figure, not a prop.

sorry for the delayed reply

question ~ does it doing anything ??

if not .. export as .obj ..import back in

then parent then save as smart prop

You could have two versions of the camera.  One a figure, one a prop.

That way, you could still use the poses and animations you've already created.

It seems to work OK for me. Try the attached file which is a camera figure smart-parented to V4's rHand. You will need to loose the ".TXT" part of the file extension.

Here is what I did. I loaded V4, turned off IK, zeroed the figure. Loaded the camera figure positioned it in V4's rHand, mostly by moving and rotating the BODY. Memorized the camera figure. Set the Figure Parent of the camera to the rHand. That parented the BODY actor, which is the only one you should normally parent to another figure. Saved the camera as a single figure.

Lastly I opened the Smart-Camera.cr2 in a text editor, and in the BODY actor, changed the line "parent rHand:1" to "smartparent rHand".

Like is said, it seems to work OK, with the camera assuming the correct position relative to the hand. Note that there is a known problem wit smart parenting figures, if you try to delete either figure, without first unparenting the child figure, it can cause Poser to crash or hang. My Smart-Camera figure makes use of the default Poser "camera.obj", so if you have multiple runtime folders, it is probably best if it is install it in the same runtime as the default Poser content.

Here is what it looks like. V4 was loaded and posed, then the camera figure was loaded. No alterations were made to the camera after loading, it assumes the correct position in the hand. It's not a very very pretty camera, and I did not spend much time getting the positioning relative to the hand correct. It's just a quick cobbled together job to demonstrate the point that smart-parenting a figure can work.

 You're the man les! Worked like a charm. So weird tho, I did the exact same thing before, except I didn't do the "memorize" step. I guess that's what made it not work?

 Thanks so much! Great camera btw, lol.

Another weird thing is the camera .cr2, I manually edited the runtime and texture paths, and then when I saved this new .cr2, all of that work is reverted to the original paths. Is this just a Poser bug?

Quote - Another weird thing is the camera .cr2, I manually edited the runtime and texture paths, and then when I saved this new .cr2, all of that work is reverted to the original paths. Is this just a Poser bug?

Sorry, I have no idea what would cause that. I suspect it may be user error. I have sometimes saved a file with a typo in the name, then wondered why my changes were not apparent in Poser, when I was actually using a diffrent file to the one I saved.

If you don't want to bake the positioning data into your camera.cr2, then you should be able to construct a pose file that will position the camera relative to the hand, and do the smart-parenting.

Load your original (none smart-parent) camera figure. Set the Figure Parent to be the rHand (orlHand) of the character. Position the camera in the hand, as far as reasonably practical, use translations of the BODY to do this, but if you encounter gimbal lock problems use rotations on the BODY's immediate child to overcome them.

Now you need to save a pose for the camera's current translations and rotations, that includes data for the BODY actor. In P7, I think there is an option to include BODY data, but in P6, I have to use a Python script to accomplish this.

Lastly edit the pz2 to add the smart-parenting line to the BODY:

actor BODY
    {
    smartparent rHand
    channels
        {

Applying the pose to the camera  should smart-parent it to the hand, and set the transforms to correctly position the camera.

I'll demonstrate this with examples. Attached above is "Stupid-Camera.cr2", this figure is not smart-parented, or positioned to fit the hand, it is parented to the UNIVERSE same as any normal figure. In my next post I will attach a pz2 to smart-parent and position it.

If you apply the attached pose to the "Stupid-Camera", it will convert it into the "Smart-Camera". This pose positions the camera for V4, you could make another pose to position it for M4, or any other figure.

Quote - ... except I didn't do the "memorize" step. I guess that's what made it not work?

In don't think the Memorize step is essential, though it is a good idea so that if a Restore function us used, the camera will stay in the correct position relative to the hand, instead of moving back to its default position. In a cr2 the Memorized value for a channel is stored in the "initValue" line, near the top of each channel. I should really have included such initValue lines in the "Stupid-to-Smart.pz2", eg:

        rotateZ zrot
            {
            initValue 21.938900
            keys
                {
                k 0 21.938900
                }
            }
        translateX xtran
            {
            initValue -0.288930
            keys
                {
                k 0 -0.288930

... But I forgot to add them. Anyway it,s a lot of extra work. For your own personal use, you can just Memorize the figure after the pose has been applied. For a commercial product you should probably take the time to add them.

This is a very good information about props. Thank you lesbently and Xameva.