@Glitterati3D when the new figures can exactly emulate the shape and joint parameters of the figure I've invested 20+ years of disposable income in, I'll gladly move on to newer figure technology. Sorry to be stuck in the mud, but I'm currently and long-term in the zero (disposable) income bucket, and the only tools I have are python and time, and I don't want to waste yours.

I do know what weight mapping is capable of, that's why I'm using a weight mapped base figure. What is difficult is extracting information from anywhere about how Poser deals with weight map transfers, when there is no Python API which gives access to them. Almost everything I've learned about them has been from that very V4WM figure, and I've modified her original weight mapping substantially. I've looked under the hood of La Femme and I don't see significant differences in the technology. There is NO recent, freely available documentation on the Poser file format with sufficient detail on the structure and connectivity of weight mapping, other than looking at representative figures using that technology and trying to reverse engineer them. That's what I do! Pull things apart and work out how they fit together.

You have your priorities, and I have my own. Foremost among them is that figure bending must be as realistic as possible. I have yet to see any figure in Poser meet my expectations in that regard. I will bolt on JCMs and ghost bones with weight maps, and facial morph tiles until I get where I want, to the limits of the available technology and knowledge. But an information vacuum is death for any endeavour.

I've been made painfully aware of the limitations of all of the rigging methods available in the Poser and DAZ environments, to the point where I've abandoned any desire to have Poser incorporate Dual Quaternion support. None of them suffice, without augmentation, to represent exactly what human skin and muscle does when bent over bones. So, we compromise, until constant muscle volume mesh deformation comes along (if ever), with new requirements and terrors for clothing figure creators.

What offends me is not that you might tell me straight out "Forget it, it can't be done in Poser yet". I could live with that. I may come to that conclusion myself. But bothering to post at all, just to say you can't be bothered to explain is both patronising and negative. [RANT]

Wow! That was cathartic.

Now, I must immediately and profusely apologise for allowing myself to be rubbed up the wrong way and unforgivably vent my spleen on you.

I do appreciate any help you're willing to give. Even advice to change course. But I can see that it's not my choice of figures or their archaic rigging that's getting in the way of achieving results I'm after, but merely my understanding of how the rigging hangs together for conforming, weight mapped clothing. I could change to another weight mapped base figure, but that would not change the need to convert and conform an existing, non-weight mapped piece of skin tight clothing (A figure consisting of actual geometry body hair, not Poser's opacity plane dynamic hair) actually intended for the original, unweight-mapped base figure.

Peace?

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