My little alien guy, based on Mike 2, is coming along quite nicely, but complains that his hands are far too human. The solution seems to be to replace his fingers with the Dragon Factory 'Xtra Digit', with which he is pictured. There's also a Thumb, which he wants as well. My question is this: can I set up the extra digit to work the way Mike2's fingers do? Can I set them up so that when I change the 'grasp' or 'spread' settings on Mike's hand, the new figures respond, in all their parts, as Mike's fingers do? The Dragon Factory extra digit and thumb are .cr2 files. I'm not certain if they have their own .obj or if they use one from another figure-- I haven't checked. They have four parts: a Base and three finger sections, same for the thumb, jointed together and set up with Bend, Twist and Side-Side morphs like regular digits on a Poser person's hand. It would make working with the character (who will have four arms) a lot easier if I could use the whole-hand morphs. Any suggestions for solutions are extremeley welcome. Thank you very much! (pardon if I don't respond soon... it's in the wee hours over in Scotland and I'm off tae ma bed soon.)

And I thought aliens had only three fingers... I gotta get out more.

LOL!-- yes normally they do, but if I remove one all of his alien guts will pour out through the hole in his hand. :)

There was an old episode of the Outer Limits where David McCallum (I think) was transforming into an alien and he grew a sixth finger. In fact, I think the episode was called "The Sixth Finger" or something. Love your alien. He looks great. Melanie

heyas; be careful, you might put your eye out with that thing! but on to the question at hand.... let's see, if i wanted to replace michael's fingers with the df fingers.... okay, here's what i would try. import the digit obj(s) -- they do have objs. er, somewhere in the df geometry directories, i can't remember offhand. and position them over the fingers/thumb. then use the grouper on the poor things and spawn props. then i would try to replace the body parts (finger joints) with props. but i dont know if that will weld them together. i suspect it won't. :/ however, they will then work just like the normal fingers, with the grasp dials etc etc. they won't be welded to the hand, either, but the base bits should stick into the hand-holes and keep any gaps from showing up. you could try the same sort of deal with lining up the meshes with michaels fingers, and then exporting him (sans fingers) with the objs, and creating a new base obj to plug into the cr2. that's more work, but it will get the finger joint welds in there. or you might just try lenthening and thinning out his fingers, and morphing the nails into claws, or adding a claw prop, perhaps. that might be easiest.

LOL Bloodsong, I tried EXACTLY that before I posted! Long and short of it: it didn't work. Wow, did it not work. It SO did not work. I don't know why... I suspect there may be some weirdness in the DF figures, but creating props from the individual digits created some very strange artifacts including fifteen-foot spikes jutting off the pinky. Right now what I have done is carefully parented carefully sized and positioned DF digits to Mike's hand, turning his fingers invisible. It doesn' look precisely horrid... Perhaps at some point, I will remove the invisible digits in Compose, export the lot as an .obj, and set the figure up again on Poser... unless someone tells me a better method! Right now it's workable, as long as I don't texture map it. :p The problem with lengthening/thinning Millennium figure's fingers is that the positioning of the parts of the hand become royally screwed up. Otherwise, yes, I would have taken that route. I tied magnets as well, but the bending became highly wonky, and I wanted a fully posable figure. Oh well! It's been great fun! And thank you ever so much for taking the time to post!

Thanks Melanie! ...I remember reading something like this when I was very small... it couldn't possibly be the same... could it?