Hi, Been lurking here a while, buying stuff but never really posted much.

Anyway i decided to dabble with content creation.  So far I have currenlty built a pair of ballerina shoes in 3dsMax, I can import them in to poser just fine. I already grouped them to ltoe/lfoot in Daz Studio (its a long story) and poser picks this up fine along with surface groups.

In the setup room I can then load the bones for the target character (V4 in this case)

My question is, how do I go about deleting V4s unwanted bones?  I only need ltoe/lfoot/lshin/lthigh at most.

So do i just point & click + delete manually one by one?

If so there are a few problems with that, first it needlessly takes forever. (indervidually deleting all 15 finger bones for example)

secondly it seems to screw the skeleton up. weird things happen with bones distorting and streatching down to the floor, also Poser sometimes becomes unstable and crashes out when I'm doing this.

Im pretty sure Poser must offer a more sensible way to do this and Ive just missed it like an idiot.

Thanks for hearing me out.

The $64,000,000 question: which Poser version are you using?

Sorry Poser 9 :)

Yes you can delete unwanted bones by selecting in the set up room and clicking the delete key on the keyboard.

Yes it will take a long time.

Suggest that you also delete all IK chains using similar method. Select in hierarchy window, hit delete key.

Also suggest that you retain hip and the rest of the legs.

There are utilities available that will make the process much easier. One such is the PZ3editor http://www.philc.net/PZ3editor.php of which I obviously have a vested interest but I'm sure that others are available.

Alternatively you could make and apply a pose to simply hide the unwanted actors. By that I mean hide them from the drop down lists, not just hide them in the scene. Again the PZ3editor can do that.

Another point to note is that your donor CR2 may have some preset bends in it so to remove those:-

Figure > Zero Figure
Edit > Memorize > Figure

Hope that helps.

Thanks Phil,

Its a great help, problem is that all the poser rigging tutorials focus on building bones from sratch rather than usign a donor, while this might be a good idea for tops and skirts etc. its really not necessary for shoes.

Thanks for the tip in IK deltetion and I will check out your edior - although the link for the lite version dosen't seem to work.  Id like to try it out before I buy it :)

It does seem ridiculous that smith-micro have done nothing to simplify/speed up the process. Das Studio has a excellent utility for this in its figure setup, you can literally bind a donor skeleton to your object and remove unwanted bones in less than 30 seconds! Unfortunatley the Cr2 output from DS is sometimes not conforming correctly in poser. (hence why ive come back to Poser and forked out out for an upgrade to the latest version)

The Lite version is now in the freestuff/archive.

http://www.sharecg.com/v/51452/view/10/Software-and-Tools/PZ3editor-Lite

Attached Link: DarkEdge Tutorials

@Darkedge and PhilC - that is fantastic, thanks very much to both :)

DarkEdge, Your Tutorials Rock! the best I have encountered :)

That's great feedback!

Thanks for your kind comments and I hope you learn a lot.

Most welcome. I'm still fighting it out with Poser, and Poser is winning!

The problem is posers auto grouping, When poser assigns V4s grouping to the mesh, It creats a horrible jagged divide that doesnt follow my nice neat topology at all. Obviously the topology of my shoe is not like that of V4s foot.

Anyway this causes some minor artifacting problems with the smoothing groups where visible breaking occurs between lFoot and lToe poly groups on the mesh. Nothing too offensive but its not acceptable as it shows up in renders.

Weirdly when I use V4 as my donor figure, I at least get my two anticipated poly groups, 'lfoot and ltoe',

To my horror when I use V4 Dev Foundation I get an unwanted third face group -'lShin' causing even more broken Geometry and wrecked smoothing in the heel area of the shoe. The shoe is a Ballerina, so the shins are not needed or wanted.

It would be nice to group it manually, but my god- Posers grouping tool is just as awful as it was 3 versions ago  (to the point where if it were alive I'd shoot it, just to put it out of its misery.)

Think I'll try setting up the Groups in DS (with is vastly superior grouping tool) and export back to OBJ - I am praying that poser will pick them up. when I grouped the same mesh before in DS I had no problems with smoothing groups.

Is there anyway I can setup Face groups in my modler that poser will pickup? I noticed Poser picks up the different matt IDs and assigns them to different matt Zones, which is nice.

My modler is 3DS max 2008 which doesnt have one of the best OBJ exporters.

Id love to know how other shoe veterans like 'Idler168' do it :-/

Most shoes just need the foot group. The toes will still bend if the rigging has a toe bone.

But isnt that because Poser Generates the toe face group? Otherwise... Im even more confused. heheh :P

How can I instruct Poser to bind a mesh to donor bones without ant face grouping? Or would I need to make the bones from scratch?

Trust me :)

Or if you dont.... ;)

create a cylinder in Max, say 32 sections by 16 segments.
Assign it all to a group named "foot"
Export out as an OBJ
Import it into Poser
In set up room draw in two bones, each half the length of the cylinder and central to it.
Name the first one "foot" name the second one "toe"
Exit set up room.

Wiggle the toe.

UV Mapper can also assist with your Grouping issues, but don't be too frustrated that your Groups aren't following your topolgy exactly...once you become proficient with rigging in Poser you realize how Grouping really doesn't have to be an exact science, the MatSpheres really assist with that sort of thing.

The thing with shoes is if you just have a Foot bone (like Phil has suggested) you can still bend the toes via a dial, however if you have a Foot bone and a Toe bone you will get a nasty poly shading at the Foot/Toe joint...not good.

Please forgive my lack of understanding. Ok 2 bones can still bend in a single poly group (thanks Phil :) ), 

But "bending the toe via a dial' - but without using a toe bone? as mentioned by Dark edge - I dont quite follow..... (yet :) )

If you are creating conforming shoes, then your conforming shoe does not need a Toe bone, you set up/manipulate the Toe through rigging and the Joint Editor (MatSpheres).

Best way to understand is by doing.

Ha! brilliant thanks, i got it, not 100% sure how i did it though. Ill figure it out in the morning .. need some sleep

Many thanks to you and PhilC yet again :)

Great, good luck!

Hi again - I didn't want to needlessly make a new thread so I thought id update this one.

So far, I have imported the shoe, loaded V4 Dev Foundation as the Donor (but declined to adopted her Poly groups when prompted)

So I have my conforming shoe, with bending toe - minus an actual separate toe bone or Toe Poly group (which was hurting the meshes smoothing groups) I also removed all unwanted V4 bones via the CR2 editor - which went fine also. 

So I'm nearly there-ish. But I do got some issue with fall off, there was some problems on the back of the shoe, but that was easily fixed by adjusting the Green 'V' in joint editor.

However I the toe is still problem when bend or twist dials (or both) are set to near their extremes, there is not enough fall off to prevent the faces in the bend area from collapsing in on themselves.

This might be partly down to my mesh having to many subdivisions concentrated in t his particular area, (not much I can do about that now sadly.) But also - as you can see from this next pic, there is insufficient fall off too.

So is it possible to still adjust the fall off?  because I am not seeing the 'fall off' spheres for the toe, whether in the Pose room or the Setup room.  (maybe because I don't have an actual bone? )

'Sphere 0' is listed in the joint editor, but all I can see this when I zoom out - And I cannot edit it  with scaling or Translate.

I've tried adding a new fall zone off from the Joint editor, but it seems to have no effect - I get the same as above.

Sorry to be a paint in the ass. :(

I doubt if you are going to need any fall off zones for the toe. Try setting what you have inactive.

Also it appears from the highlighted vertices that the joint is having no effect on the foot. This should not be the case. Whenever I see Poser doing something "odd" I save, restart and reload, you may want to try that and see if it makes any difference.

Hi Phil,

Again - nice one! marking the fall off inactive has improved things vastly, still goes a bit nasty with an extreme toe twist or combined bend and twist. But those extremes might be beyond what is realistic human joint movement anyway.  Ill test in DS where it autamically limits V4s joint perameters and see how it behaves..

Thank you again sir!

OK cool.

You can use Poser's

Figure > Use limits

if that is quicker.

Certainly is - Im just still a bit of a noob with Poser. :)

Tested with limits on, I still get the buckling under an extream bend&twist but im not bothered as i tested the same movement on another artists shoe product and it does the same thing. So It looks like Im good to go. :)

Between you two, you have saved me hours of frustration, I cant thank you guys enough :)

You're welcome :)