This is a question pertaining to Millenium 3 figures such as Victoria 3.

I am told that as a general rule, the grandparent actor cannot follow a grandchild. In other words, in Hip > Buttock > Thigh, the hip cannot follow the thigh. However, in some vendors' clothing models here on Renderosity, they have been able to get the hip to follow the thigh. The significance of this is that if you conform a dress to Victoria 3, simply moving her thigh will also deform the hip, which will follow the thigh (its grandchild).

Does anyone know how the rule is defied? Is there a certain procedure?

I believe you are referring to having Inverse Kinematics (IK) turned on for the figure. This freezes the feet on the ground and causes any pulling on the figure to (more of less) create natural joint movements in the torso and limbs.

Load a Gen 3, turn IK on for the legs in the Figure menu and start pulling on an arm to see what happens.

There are a few ways of doing it. The most common is with ghost bones.  Ghost bones will have dependencies setup on them to move things.

I've tried looking through PhilC's tutorial about ghost bones, but they don't seem to cover what I'm attempting to do. Could you explain, however briefly, how a ghost bone would affect this mechanic? I know what you mean by ghost bones, but I'm just not sure how it should work.

I believe I've just figured it out. The answer is the Joint Editor. Typically, in these setups there are two ghost bones: one "conformer" and one "operator". Selecting "Bend" from the drop-down menu in Joint Editor, I hit the "Affected Actors" button and set the operator to affect the conformer, and the conformer to affect the hip, effectively creating a movement chain.

It works, but it seems to be moving the entire hip, rather than just deforming a specific part. I think I'm on the right track.

Well, that didn't seem to fix anything. And there seems to be zero documentation in the Poser manual and every other tutorial I've searched for on here, at Content Paradise and on YouTube.

One figure I'm looking at is a V3 tunic figure. When conformed to the Victoria 3 base, the hip deforms perfectly with the thigh, and they didn't even use ghost bones. I feel there's a trade secret they aren't letting anybody in on.

One figure I'm looking at is a V3 tunic figure. When conformed to the Victoria 3 base, the hip deforms perfectly with the thigh, and they didn't even use ghost bones. I feel there's a trade secret they aren't letting anybody in on.

*If this is happening with V3, chances are that there is a joint controlled morph at work.

Is there a tutorial of any sort for that?

Is there a tutorial of any sort for that?

*There are. Do a forum search or a google search for Poser Joint Controlled Morphs. 

I suppose it's possible to create your JCMs with Poser's morphing tool and link them to the figure's limb rotation dial with the edit dependency function, but if you want to go first class, you should have Zbrush and colorcurvature's Morphloader scripts in my opinion.

After examining some other figures for the Victoria 3 base, I've determined that one of the things being done to get the hip to follow the thigh is typically to set the parent of the thigh to the hip in the Setup room. By doing that myself, I'm able to get the hip to follow the thigh, but the problem is that the entire hip follows the thigh rather than just the buttock or thigh.

For example, when I mimic the method of adding all of the polygons of the skirt to the Hip group and then parent both the left and right thighs to that Hip group, moving just one of the thighs causes the entire hip to move with it.

I looked into the Joint Controlled Morphs (JCMs) recommended in the posts above, and they don't seem to fit what I'm trying to do.

I'd like to think I'm halfway to figuring out how this is done, but it's quite confusing.

You might send a message to LesBentley - he's one of the gurus on such things.

Hello Darchind,

If you want to see how to work with a ghost bone, check the tutorial that comes with my freestuff item "M4 Pelvic tilt morphs". Here is the link.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/details.php?item_id=69311

Moving the hip part with the thighs (and buttocks) is not a simple task. This can be done with dependant parameters by linking thigh to hip rotation.  See my other freestuff item on V4 hip motion and read the tutorial to understand the issue of hip dependency.

Allstereo

Thank you very much. I'll read it in just a bit.