I am trying to set a figure to a particular real-world height, but the only relevant tool I can find lets me create a line. If I get the positioning right, I guess I have a measurement, but it's not easy to avoid being off-plumb in one direction or another. And then I'm told that the new La Femme is "0.736" tall. Is this an arbitrary unit of measure, or are Poser figures just made really small (if it's metric)? I can't find a setting for units. It would be great if I could select a feature and input it's height in metric or imperials units.

Units can be changed in General Preferences - Interface. Yes, Poser has a small scale in comparison to other 3d apps. When using the measurement tool you can constrain it to an axis so use align to y for height (Properties tab).

I missed that align to y for height! Thanks ... and I have found this tool quite helpful. I always make most of my female characters shorter than original ... most women are NOT that tall!

caisson posted at 7:43PM Fri, 27 September 2019 - #4364433

Units can be changed in General Preferences - Interface. Yes, Poser has a small scale in comparison to other 3d apps. When using the measurement tool you can constrain it to an axis so use align to y for height (Properties tab).

Thanks! I am shocked and amazed that La Femme is 6.34 feet tall. That's ridiculous.

Hmmm.... So, if I measure La Femme, then select her and scale her, the measurement kinda sorta scales with her. But her feet come up off the ground and she scales differently than the measurement line. She is much smaller than the measurement shows. This makes the measurement tool considerably less useful than it might be- if they scaled together, you could read her height off it, and if the tool just sat there, you could set it to the desired height and scale the figure to fit.

Dusk is 7.06, Dawn is 6.14

Boni posted at 8:14PM Fri, 27 September 2019 - #4364512

Dusk is 7.06, Dawn is 6.14

What's your procedure for scaling them to a specific height? Best I can do is measure a figure, scale it so the readout, not the figure, is the right height, then add another figure and scale that to measurement line. Since the scaling doesn't anchor the feet on the ground, this takes multiple tries. There must be an easier way.

Use drop to floor with the figure selected? Or load a basic cube, scale that to the height you want, switch to front camera (orthographic), load and scale figure to match?

Well, I still have trouble getting the measurement tool to act consistently, but when it works it moves to the scaled figure changing as I change the figure scale.

Maybe my method is too simple, but here's my workflow.

Ages ago, I found a simple and free caliper that at 100% scale accurately measures feet. I changed the origin to be the inside of the fixed arm, and I can adjust the height to whatever I want-if I want a character who is 5' 6", I just set the height to 5.5, and then scale the character so he or she matches the height.

As a bonus, I can use it to check the size of various things like cars (the wheelbase is easiest to find and measure) or to see if building are scaled the same as everything else (doorknobs are more or less a standard height, so I measure those.

https://www.sharecg.com/v/69559/favorite/21/daz-studio/measuring-wall

I have used this simple prop to scale figures to approximate heights Move the wall prop close to your zeroed figure, use the front camera, make certain both the wall and figure are dropped to the stage floor, and you're good to go. Scale figure then drop to floor and make your measurement.

The whole idea of scale is fraught with controversy in Poser, since the standard changed several times over the years, with some builders creating to one, others to a different standard, yet others going their own way and so on.

It's not correct to say La Femme is a six foot plus model because by some scales, she won't be. ISTR reading that by one measure, Victoria 4 is almost 7 feet tall. Sure, she's a big lass but not that big. Just scale stuff until it looks right to you and forget about getting any accuracy across the board.

My own stuff is built to a slightly odd scale, based on models built by Mechmaster and converted by billy-home for Poser. When I started making Dalek models, I scaled mine to be roughly the same as Mechmaster's, so if they were used together they wouldn't look strange.

The upshot is, when I import from Wings - the modelling app I use - I reduce down to 1.115%, which makes everything match up well. That in itself shows how tiny Poser's world is, compared to other software. As an aside, I think that choice of scale is equivalent to a standard Poser used to use, donkey's years ago. Later, when I worked on converting some of Mechmaster's models, I stuck to the scale and everything looks consistent.

Any road up, it's all well and good but... I found my guitar amp set to be a shade too big, when compared to guitars made by Mask-Da, so I included instructions on how to reduce it, and by how much to make 'em all match.

Short version, my models are consistent across their scale but not necessarily correct for anyone else's. That's something you'll find time and again with Poser models.

SamTherapy posted at 9:19AM Sat, 28 September 2019 - #4364572

Short version, my models are consistent across their scale...

And that, to me, is the important bit. If the models are consistent within their universe, it makes it a lot easier to work with them. Even if I have to rescale something of yours, I can be pretty sure that 97% (or whatever) for one item is going to get me really close on the others.

http://www.morphography.uk.vu/scaleobj.html

Link to an article on Poser scale. Some points to keep in mind while reading this is most of the change in scale was caused by outside companies/people at around the time of Poser 5. Prior to Poser 5 what the scale was really didn't matter as they were all static images with no dynamics. With Poser 5 came Dynamic Hair and Dynamic Cloth, both of which require a scale to determine the amount of movement. As one of the most basic things is gravity and gravity is calculated as 16*T^2, you have to have an idea of how much distance that is in PNU's. As Poser has set it internal measurement system to 1 PNU = ~103.2 inches that really is what ought to be used even though that makes most figures too tall.

It not only makes the figures too tall, it also means there's a lot more math involved with creating scenes, because approximately 103.2 inches is a totally non-intuitive scale. For example, a 6' figure becomes .697 PNUs, while a 5' 6" person is .639.

If the reason for using PNUs is gravity, that's adjustable. It's a lot easier to pick a scale that works, and calculate what the value for gravity should be. Once you do that, you can use the same figure every time as long as the scale is the same.

Yadda yadda excuses excuses. Pauline2 is a native Poser figure and she's 75 inches tall. LaFemme, though created out of house, is the new flagship figure and she's over six feet. That's just laziness on Poser's part. Yeah, some other 'Poser' than the current owners. Still.

It seems that one problem is just about LaFemme. Her center for scaling purposes seems to be in the chest somewhere, so she shrinks from both ends, but differently. Pauline2, on the other hand, behaves properly- her feet stay anchored to the floor so she scales nicely and the measurement line scales with her instead of doing arbitrary goofy things like it does with LaFemme. This is something that should be fixed in a 'flagship figure.'

That sounds easy except go look at the table of model heights and even the same vendor is all over the place when it comes to what a default figure height should be. The fact that most female figures are in the top 1% or less of real world females basically means they are meant for the runway and not used in what would considered to be a real world setting. Also the height has been growing over the years as it seems to be a race to have the tallest figure out there.

Also since in the virtual world numbers have no meaning unless compared to each other so if vendors and figure creators were really interested in scale they should have been using the Poser 1 man as the measure since he is 5'10" or there about since he was the first thing to put a scale to.

BTW, I just ran a quick test. If you're using Feet as your unit, setting gravity to -10.3 gets you within about 1 or 2% of the correct falling speed. For an object falling for one second, it's less than a frame off the theoretical value.

almostfm posted at 7:31PM Sat, 28 September 2019 - #4364665

BTW, I just ran a quick test. If you're using Feet as your unit, setting gravity to -10.3 gets you within about 1 or 2% of the correct falling speed. For an object falling for one second, it's less than a frame off the theoretical value.

Well, that's good to know, although I'm not animating anything currently.

Richard60 posted at 7:39PM Sat, 28 September 2019 - #4364650

That sounds easy except go look at the table of model heights and even the same vendor is all over the place when it comes to what a default figure height should be. The fact that most female figures are in the top 1% or less of real world females basically means they are meant for the runway and not used in what would considered to be a real world setting. Also the height has been growing over the years as it seems to be a race to have the tallest figure out there.

Also since in the virtual world numbers have no meaning unless compared to each other so if vendors and figure creators were really interested in scale they should have been using the Poser 1 man as the measure since he is 5'10" or there about since he was the first thing to put a scale to.

Why, since as you point out, the numbers have meaning only in relationship to each other, would there be a race to have to tallest figure out there? Do vendors and creators want users to have extra steps in using their products with other designers' products? Do they want to have their own little proprietary sub-universe where things from outside don't fit? It seems pretty contrarian to me. Since Poser does have a conversion from native units to real world units, why not make things 'real' sizes?

Why they want to have the tallest figure is an unknown. There is the fact that real sized figures in Poser are not popular. You have Miki and Roxie neither of which was popular, however you have Vicky and La Femme etc. which are very tall at least that what Poser says. It might have to do with the fact that Runway model females are the thing that all users want to be or to be with, since Poser is a fantasy world why be stuck with the boring real world? Maybe it is harder to make short figures taller instead making a tall figure shorter?

Given that most posted images are pinups or at least single figures, what height they are doesn't matter. You could have a 90-foot woman. If the scenery is scaled to match, it doesn't matter. So it's likely most figure creators don't care. And many seem to want to use the old scaling method rather than adopt the new one "so the figures all match" despite it's rare to have Dawn or Lafemme or PE in with Posette.

Perhaps most images are pinups because lack of consistent scaling adds a lot of unnecessary overhead to using Poser for other purposes.

Part of your issue is that most likely you have the measurement tool attached to the top of her head and the other point on the ground. Hide the ground Crtl-G and with only the figure in view pick a point on her head and the other point on the bottom of her foot. Doing this I can scale La Femme up and down and it doesn't matter if her feet come off the ground. When finished use Ctrl-D to put her feet back on the ground. Now she is whatever height you want in one easy change.

The other issue about scale is a matter of Vendors not building to a reference. Or more likely building to what in theory is the standard and that is V4. She is either 5'10.4" or 6' 3.7" or in simpler numbers 179cm or 192cm. That may seem like a large difference but it really isn't. If all props are built to her and if they reflect real world design so that if say a car was built and V4 got in at the 179cm size she should be sitting with her head close to the ceiling and looking well over the steering wheel. Most short people get in a car and you can barely see their eyes above the steering wheel. SO lets say a car was built to V4 at 179cm then when it is imported into Poser V4 and the car will still look the same as they both scale at the same rate as the numbers are only relative to each other.

The only time this can be an issue is if someone is trying to build something to what they consider to be real world numbers and then put it in the scene with a V4 or La Femme or Pauline (since they within 2cm or each other) and think it is to small because they thing any of the girls above is something like 5'2" 159cm. As long as all objects appear to have the same scale they can be any height you want.

And if it really bugs you make a conversion chart much like inches to metters.

Richard60 posted at 4:20PM Sun, 29 September 2019 - #4364766

Part of your issue is that most likely you have the measurement tool attached to the top of her head and the other point on the ground. Hide the ground Crtl-G and with only the figure in view pick a point on her head and the other point on the bottom of her foot. Doing this I can scale La Femme up and down and it doesn't matter if her feet come off the ground. When finished use Ctrl-D to put her feet back on the ground. Now she is whatever height you want in one easy change.

Ah, that works! Thank you. What would be really nice is if we could input the height numerically and it would scale to that size, but oh well.

I keep hearing about V4- is that a Poser figure that's no longer part of the kit? A third party item?

Victoria 4 is from daz3d. I can't link to other stores, but if you add a .com, you'll get there. Then search for Victoria 4 and you'll see her. There's a couple of bundles on sale right now. You'd probably want at least the starter bundle, if not the pro. And if you need guys, there's also Micheal 4, her counter part. They do have newer models, but they take more finagling to get into poser.

Thanks, Red. I see that there lots of Victoria models, besides characters built on them. Do Daz figures have built in morphs, or is that something you have to do in Blender, etc? Are the different numbered Victorias able to share clothes, and so on? Are some Victorias better than others?

Wow. Last week I thought I was the only one having issues with scaling the models.

HKHan99 Victoria 4 is the last Victoria that will work natively in Poser. When you look at others you will see the software compatibility. Some will say DSON importer for poser. This is a free plugin from DAZ to allow some later content to be used in Poser. I never really use it, some people say it slows the system too much, others seem quite happy with it. Also these Victoria's (5 plus) are morphs of the various genesis figures from DAZ. Victoria 4 comes with very limited morphs, the base morphs which have to be injected. So to have a wide range of morphs you need to buy various morph packs, the morphs ++ set are almost essential. Clothes between the various versions are not interchangeable in Poser, you will have to ask DAZ users about this in DAZ

HKHan99, you're new so you don't know. Never ask what's better here. It's worse than bringing up politics and religion combined. Guaranteed to lead to WW3. Vicky's morphs are a separate purchase from the model as Nails said. They are included in the bundles I mentioned. There are plenty of characters available for her, some need those morphs, some were created by hand. Most say whether you need the morphs++ or not. So, while you can take her into Blender, you don't have to.

As far as V5-V8, as Nails said, you need either dson or a script to get them into Poser. In Daz Studio, they can share clothing, but not in Poser unless maybe you fit the clothes to a figure in DS and then save it. I don't use DS much so I don't know for sure.