Why has Poser produced a device called wave deformer but not provided any information on how to use the damn thing!!! The only tutorial I can find is called 'making waves', which offers a lot of promise, and NO delivery. The spec's for wave deformer make perfect sense, as I former student of electronics I understand the principle perfectly. So why won't the bloody stupid thing work?!!!!! All I can produce is either a mole hill or an exploded porcupine. Can somebody please tell me how I can use the wave dials, within reasonable boundaries, to produce simple wave deformed sheets. Somebody out there knows, it's obvious from your pictures that many of you are using this feature, so why the big secret hmmmmm?

um.... i dunno, i just put it on and use it. doesn't seem to hard to me ;) try either making the wave zone thingy smaller, or the wave frequency and/or amplitude smaller. practice on the ground plane if you can't see what it's doing on a more complex model. also, if the bit you're working on doesn't have much geometry, it won't be able to do much with it.

Thank you, perhaps that makes some sense. In theory it should be dead easy to use. Maybe my mistake is trying to apply it to simple Poser prop shapes, like the plane or cube. I just can't understand why there are dozens of tutorials on Poser magnets, which are very easy to use, and none on wave deformers. Come to think of it, I just don't see any forum posts on this subject either!!

the wave deformer is good for bending/warping (if the scale is large enough). the image is an example of a wave deformer in the x and y directions acting on a 2D plane. I don't recall the settings, but ISTR it was a default wave, x-rot of 90 and wavelength of about .4 for the horizontal wave and one or two smaller (amplitude) vertical waves of around .6 wavelength. the trick is to get the amplitude large enough so that it isn't that circular deformer, in which case the critical variables become the rotation, amplitude and wavelength of the wave object. the position of the wave object is a less critical variable IMVHO.

Thank you!! I didn't realise that the position of the wave object had any effect. I see that scale is important too. I'll give it a try.

3D Worlds has a wave deformer for a water prop. You can have an ocean or pond make waves. Also you can download an example of a wave I made from my tutorial site. I make a square (cloth) flow over a ball. PhilC has done this also, perhaps a bit better, with Magnets.

Attached Link: http://3dtutor.homestead.com

the url to my tutorial site.

"...the trick is to get the amplitude large enough so that it isn't that circular deformer..." Less tricky is clicking on the Wave properties and switching from "circular" to "directional." eng

Thank you all. I am taking notes on all this. As for 'wave properties' I think I've obviously missed something.

directional??? there's a directional setting!? dang! :) sorry i wasnt very helpful, zippy. but yeah, if you're trying to mess with a cone or cylinder or cube... there's just not enough points for it to deform in any sort of sensible manner :)

Okay. Could somebody please explain why you say simple shapes 'don't have enough points to deform'. I take it that 'points' are something to do with the geometry. I tried to deform a simple flat square from the props library and it deformed into a bit of a wavey form, but the edges deformed at right angles at the same time, i.e. in a different direction. Result chaos. It seems to me that the dial settings should be kept very low. Surely the flag shown above is made from one simple flat prop. Isn't it? I can understand a seascape being made of tiled waves, but not a flag. I've downloaded the wave sample that jamball suggested, but haven't got around to trying anything since yesterday. I'll have to try tomorrow. I honestly don't mean to be rude to you good people, but let's face it, Poser is badly in need of a good tutorial on wave deformers, with examples and sample dial settings. If I ever get the hang of this I'll do one. I refuse to be beaten by a stupid dumb machine!!

sorry, shoulda mentioned the flag is an amorphium 2-sided square composed of 50 horizontal divisions by 30 vertical divisions the divisions produce a grid of 50X30 square polygons, which are all triangulated (divided in half diagonally), so the polygon count is 3000. the poser square is one square polygon (untriangulated) and IMVHO it is an excellent example of a prop that has too few polygons for morphing. I think I tried a few sizes, and the 50X30 was the minimum I liked when morphed and textured (which is another reason to have many polygons).

heyas; you can see very easily what's going on if you go into flat shaded lined, or smooth shaded lined mode in poser. then you'll see the mesh you are working on. now any deformer (magnet, wave, or poser joint bending) can only bend/deform polygons by moving the points -- ie, the corners. if you look at the square in a lined mode, you can see it is really just one square polygon -- it has four points, one at each corner. if you look at the ground at the same time, you can see the ground is not just one square, but a grid of squares. so if you take a magnet (for simplicity of example, here), and put it on the square and on the ground, and you bend it 90 degrees.... on the ground, you will get a smooth bend, but on the square, the two end points will move, but the lines between them just can't bend. there's no points for them to bend AT, between one end and the other.