Hi everyone,

I need to ask a question, but feel like I'll regret it soon afterward when I realize what I'm doing wrong. But after a day and a half of trying to puzzle it out, I must ask for help.

I don't create figures (.cr2) very often, but I've made a few. Obviously by this post you'll see I'm no expert, but a part time hobbyist and somewhat new vendor. I'm working with a newer version of Poser (Poser 11 Pro) since the last time I made a figure for distribution a year ago and perhaps that is why I'm asking "am I missing something?".

I made a model of a motorcycle. There is a prop (.pp2) representing the body, and one representing the forks, which are parented to the body. I loaded the prop(s) into a scene and using the hierarchy editor menu, converted it into a .cr2. Now I want to make the forks steerable. Using the parameters palette, I click on the properties tab and then "display origin".

Here's the problem.... I can't seem to modify the origin along anything except the X, Y or Z axes. A motorcycle fork is angled froward from the handlebars to the wheel, not the Y axis which is straight up and down. Seems to me that in the older version of Poser, I was able to rotate the origin itself along any one of the 3 axes, so it would tilt in any direction, thus allowing me to make a more accurate angle of rotation for a body part, in this case, motorcycle forks. If I remember correctly, I did this somewhere in the Joint editor menu. In this newer version, I'm only able to move the center point of the origin along the X, Y or Z axis, and I'm unable to rotate the origin. I can find no help in the users guide.

This can't be right... This new version of Poser cannot be set up so that it limits the way a user can manipulate the origin, which brings me to the question "What am I missing?"

i believe a magnet will allow that let's say x axis rotation? on that geometry so that the whole obj can be rigged

First of all when you create a Figure through the Hierarchy editor  like in your case 2 props you need to make sure that both have the correct name, In the Grouping Tool and the Hierarchy. Both need to have the same names for a correct workflow, no additional group names for individual parts. 

Best way is to assemble by using spawn Props to have the correct position before you even think of creating the figure in the Hierarchy editor. After you have the correct parts ( Props ) assembled you hit create new figure ! now your figure will be saved in the New Figure Standard folder . The next important step is to load your new Figure and save it again as it has integrated geometry, this needs to be separated it will not work to manipulate the Joints correctly until the geometry is extracted. Do not forget turning off " Bend " on every bodypart properties ! The props often load with a _1 at the end remove the _1 on the names to have the corresponding name with the one in the Groups. 

After these steps you should be able to manipulate either the rotation or the axis position using the Joint editor in your new figure . 

If you have further issues you can send me a PM , and if you wish your model so that I can fix it for you. Do not need any credit , in any case it would be a solution to figure out what is going wrong with your props.   

I usually do this kind of thing in the set up room.

I threw together a little demo with a simple bike mock up. The model is imported as one object into Poser.

The bike object has 3 groups: Chassis, Forks, and Front_Wheel... 

I select the bike object and enter the set up room, I make sure I'm in a side ortho view. This makes the bones that I'm going to be drawing out more or less automatically centered from the get go.

I select the bone tool and draw out my first bone... In the bone 1 properties I name the bone internally as chassis to match the corresponding group.  It must be named exactly matching, case sensitive...

I then make sure bone one (chassis) is selected and draw out another bone. This is a holder ghost bone. It will prevent the next bone I draw out from snapping to a position that's undesirable. In a sense its an anchor... I do not bother naming this bone.

I make sure that bone one (chassis) is selected. Its vital that you do not mistakenly draw out your next bone from bone 2 (holder)...

Bone 3 I will name internally forks

I need another ghost bone anchor now, otherwise when I draw out the front_wheel bone it will snap the forks bone to an undesirable position, I draw this bone out from the selected forks bone... I do not name this bone

I make sure forks bone is selected and draw out my front_wheel bone. Center this as close as possible and rename internally to match the corresponding group, front_wheel

I have the Hierarchy Editor open all the while in set up room, this makes selection easier sometimes and is useful for the next step... Here's the Hierarchy at this state

I right click bone_2 in the Hierarchy and select delete

I right click bone_4 in the Hierarchy and select delete

I now have my proper Hierarchy

I leave the Set Up Room. I now have a working bike steering rig. Very little adjustment need be made with the Joint Editor in this instance, some very minor adjustments, every thing is pretty well centered. Turn off bends in properties of relevant actors. Set up limits to restrict non relevant rotations by double clicking the concerned rotation dials and editing dial settings. Point your cr2 at the proper object in geometries. I won't bother describing these steps in detail, I'm assuming you know these steps.

...

...

Thanks everyone for the responses.... I don't know why this is now so @#$%$# difficult. Last year when I made The Devil's Chariot (for sale in my vendor space) it wasn't this hard... It was a relatively easy process!

Primorge, I've honestly NEVER done anything in the setup room as it always looked so daunting! But because you went to the trouble of making this tutorial, I'll give it a try. Unfortunately, due to my work/sleep schedule, it won't occur until evening (Friday the 24th). I'll keep you posted

Now that I'm off for the weekend I can comment on a few things that you mentioned earlier. If you want to adjust your center and end points at an angle, to accommodate an angled steering assembly for instance, you can move them into the desired position while the joint editor is open. Select the translate tool. When you hover your cursor over the center or end point it will become a bullseye, indicating active for translation. If for some reason you don't get the bullseye cursor, which sometimes happens, close the joint editor and reopen it. This usually clears up this bug.

After you have your center and end points in position you can rotate them along the 3 axis' via the orientation fields in the joint editor. Here is a cube prop from left ortho camera with the center and end points translated and rotated 45°...

You can also align the center and end points via the Align button in the joint editor, it's a bit fussy but a combination of all above will allow you to make precise positionings and alignments... Perspective Camera

All of this also stands for drawn bones... I find it easier to get more initially accurate center and end point adjustments with bones... 45° Bone placement

All examples executed in 11 pro...

There you go.  Thanks to primorge, you can see it's easy to rig something that's angled.  TBH, I never use the Setup Room for rigging any of my stuff and, with hard surface models, you generally don't need to bother with it.

My workflow for rigging:

After creating the model with every piece in place in my modelling app, I export each one individually without moving them.  I also don't adjust the scale, so the upshot is they come into Poser at a huge size.  For reference, I use Wings and all my models are built to 1 Wings unit = 1 inch.

Import each piece into Poser until I have the complete model.

Using the Hierarchy Editor, set up all the dependencies.  

Hit "Create New Figure".

Save the scene before anything else because sometimes, Poser freaks out at this point.

New Poser.

Browse to where the new figure is saved, which is always New Figures in whatever your main Runtime happens to be.  Load it into Poser.

Save it back out again immediately before doing anything else.  This forces it to create an obj, which it doesn't always do; sometimes, it retains it in RAM for a while, so unless you make sure it's saved, all your hard work can disappear in a puff of electrons.

Now I play about with the joint editor, adjusting origins, angles and so on, as described by primorge above.

Save the model.

If I'm feeling like it, I then edit the Cr2 to hard code limits, hide dials and add ERC.  It's also at this point - again, if I feel like it - I'll rename stuff so that it all looks neat and tidy, point the Cr2 ref to the appropriate file and folder I created in Geometries and so on.

Save again.

The end.

There you go.  Thanks to primorge, you can see it's easy to rig something that's angled.  TBH, I never use the Setup Room for rigging any of my stuff and, with hard surface models, you generally don't need to bother with it.

Really, it's no bother :D 

Choice ❤

Thank you all so much. I have it rigged properly now and it works great. I think what really threw me off is that changing the orientation of the origin is done the way that it is in your examples. I could swear that in an earlier version of Poser, the joint editor window had xrot, yrot and zrot erc dials to adjust the orientation of the origin.

It never seemed like it was this difficult before. Thanks again for being part of such a robust and helpful community

If I'm feeling like it, I then edit the Cr2 to hard code limits, hide dials and add ERC.  It's also at this point - again, if I feel like it - I'll rename stuff so that it all looks neat and tidy, point the Cr2 ref to the appropriate file and folder I created in Geometries and so on.

Save again.

The end.

Just also wanted to mention that in 11 pro you can force limits on dials, hide dials, and rename dials both internal (despite what the manual says) and external names via the dial settings dialogue (double click the dial you want to edit) and this will propagate to the saved cr2 and also injection files (although sometimes with injections this won't stick until the injection is loaded and resaved overwriting the original injection file, it arbitrarily does this from my experience). Of course Hidden Dials can be revealed by the Show Hidden Dials Parameters Settings option, no matter how coded.

For dependencies, or ERC, I use the Dependency Editor or Netherwork's Spawn Python scripts, both solutions much more hassle free than editing the cr2. I haven't manually hacked in ERC since Poser 8. The disadvantage of the Dependency Editor created ERC is it's only Poser 8 or up compatible. Spawn writes ERC that is universally compatible and can also create linked dependencies that work in conjunction with Dependency Editor derived ERC. Spawn also makes creating JCMs that are morphs activated by multiple simultaneous joint rotations a hell of a lot easier than the Value Operations tab of the editor...

For Geometry Switching and Easy Pose functionality (although it also can set up traditional ERC) I use Ajax's Easy Pose Underground utility software, which still runs in windows 10...

I think the only time I edit files anymore is if I need to precisely edit a material node pos value or pull some usemtl or g definition trickery in obj, most things I use Python Scripts for (Geometry extraction, File path corrections, etc).

:)

arrowhead42 posted at 8:07 PM Sat, 25 September 2021 - #4428072

Thank you all so much. I have it rigged properly now and it works great. I think what really threw me off is that changing the orientation of the origin is done the way that it is in your examples. I could swear that in an earlier version of Poser, the joint editor window had xrot, yrot and zrot erc dials to adjust the orientation of the origin.

It never seemed like it was this difficult before. Thanks again for being part of such a robust and helpful community

Take care.