Actually, if I understand you correctly, the Poser hierarchy makes a lot of sense: everything radiates out from the hip. The position/orientation of the hip determines the position/orientation of the body. The basic poser hierarchy is: hip-thigh-shin-foot-toe hip-abdomen-chest-neck-head chest-shoulder-forearm-hand-finger So, in general, start at the center, and work your way outwards. Make sense? This works because you can fairly easily define the position of the fingers relative to the hand, the position of the hand relative to the elbow, the position of the elbow relative to the shoulder, and so on, and so on.