Part 2

On to the set up room...

You might remember that I had exported a combined version of the FacePlate and Hemet model. I need this in order to create a conforming figure version. The prop needs to be one object with any relevant groups named to match the target conformer actor in the target figure, internal name/case sensitive. In this instance that group is the head actor: head.

Here's the combined obj in a text editor showing the g definitions...

I import the model into Poser.

It's groups...

I switch to side camera to constrain translations and switch to outline to see what's going on...

I open the Setup room.

I open the library and navigate to my donor rig. In this case it's a blank cr2 I made using the Creator's Toybox. If you're working with LF and dont have her "Pro" version than you won't have the dev rig. You'll want to use a blank to avoid a bunch of headaches. I can whip you up a blank LF if you need one.

I load my blank into the set up room. I'm prompted to choose the actors I want to transfer over for the rig. For a helmet it's easiest to just choose the hierarchy from the hip to the head and leave everything else out. I tend to just use a prepped solo head bone donor but sometimes that can be tricky. Using the hip to head hierarchy is best for your purposes. I don't choose copy morphs or auto group. There's no morphs, I created the simple groups already.

The bones are transferred over to the model and it's now a figure. The bones from the neck down have no associated geometry, they're ghosts basically. The head bone is what's going to be relevant to conforming. The model was already grouped with a poly group named head which matches the internal name of the relevant group in the figure, head. The polys of the helmet ( head) are bound to the donor head bone. Next I'll want to ADD a bone for the visor articulation...

This part's a bit tricky but it's important.

I need to use the Bone tool and create a new bone that controls the visor.

I select the head bone and choose the Bone tool. It's important that the parent is selected before drawing out a child bone. 

The easiest way, and least likely to cause disasters is to select the parent actor in the Hierarchy Editor, Select the bone tool, hover the tool in the position you want to draw the bone out and simply draw it out. Sometimes the Bone tool can be finicky. Clicking the top of the work space or the bone tool or the parent again can clear things up. When you have the Bone tool selected don't click about in the preview screen aimlessly, always be very deliberate. If you mess up drawing out a bone you can use undo but make sure to reselect the parent before drawing out a bone.

Here's a little trick. If you're creating a child bone at some distance from the parent bone, the child will invariably yank the parent out of it's default orientation after you draw it out. To solve this you'll want to create a temporary anchor bone...

I select the head bone, and with the bone tool click the very endpoint of the head bone and drag out a tiny bone... bone 1, a child of the larger head bone. This is an anchor bone.

Now I select the head bone again and draw out another bone that will control the visor. It's at some distance from the head bone. If I were to draw this bone out without the tiny anchor bone 1 it would yank the head bone out of orientation... the visor bone (bone 2) is the new large bone in orange, the anchor is barely visible here

I position the visor bone similar to how I positioned the origin for the articulated prop, the fat end of the bone is the origin (center) and the pointy end is the endpoint. I can use the joint editor to fine tune this after I leave the Setup room, for now I just need to get the bones created in roughly the right positions. (compare this bone orientation with the green and red crosshairs in the prop demo).

At the moment the visor bone (bone 2) is not influencing the polygons of the visor as it should. With bone 2 selected I open the parameters palette properties tab and rename the internal name of the bone to faceplate to match the group name established for the visor. Doing this binds the polys of the visor to the bone's influence. I also take a moment to rename the external name of the bone to FacePlate (not critical but for neatness and user clarity)...

Now that the visor is part of the rig it's safe to delete the anchor bone, the visor bone is set in place...

I right click bone 1 in the Hierarchy and choose delete selected. This deletes the now unnecessary bone.

Time to exit the Setup room to the Pose room

At this point I make some minor adjustments to the origin(center) of the Faceplate bone. Before I do this I turn off bends, located in the properties tab, in the FacePlate and Head actors of the figure. It's mechanical motions for the Faceplate and I don't want any unexpected influence from the head bone about the neck of the Helmet.

I went over adjusting origins(centers) in part 1 of this demo.

When everything is working as expected I rename the figure from Antonia 1.3 to BasicHelmet_Figure in the Hierarchy. I force limits on all rotations and translations on the visor except for the x Rotate. This stops the visor from being dragged out of whack when you grab the figure.

I create a master parameter in the Body actor and create a convenient controller for the visor in the body via the Dependency Editor. It's a master that drives the x rotate in the FacePlate.

I zero and memorize the figure.

When I save it to the Library I just choose create New Geometry. I trash this file and repoint the cr2 to the original obj in Geometries by editing 2 references near the very start of the cr2...

I load the conformer into a new scene and conform it to my Custom Antonia 1.3, Svetlanka. Works pretty good! Nothing fancy, just a demo...