At times I feel like such an absolute dummy. Today's utter confusion involves Poser hair. Tell me, shouldn't you be able to just click on the hair icon, and have the hair automatically attached in the proper place on your figure? Shouldn't the hair be smart enough to stay put? The Yanni hair wouldn't stay put, so I parented the hair to Mike's head, and locked the hair. Well, guess what? I waited 20 minutes for this render to complete, and the hair is floating above Mike's head. Maybe you can finally help me figure out hair before I remove all my own. 1.) When you load hair, does it go where it should? Or do you need to fiddle and get it setup right? 2.) Should hair stay on the head, no matter where the figure moves? 3.) Does "character hair" stay, while Hair from the Hair Library doesn't?! Does Prop hair stay?! 4.)Any other questions or answers or wisdom for this balding man?!

Is it a figure or in the hair folder? If it's a figure you'll have to conform it to your figure.

All the hair in my hair folder go right to the head with the exception of the DAZ flat top. That I need to adjust slightly to avoid gaping bald spots.

My figure hair, like Dark Whispers California Hair, just gets conformed to the figure like you would clothing and it usually stays put.

Yan Hair is in the Hair folder. Maybe I moved the hair by mistake?!

Hmm, that's weird! Can't say I've never had hair move on me -- it has. Its been a while though. Hair is supposed to parent to the head (as long as the prop was put in the right spot in the first place). I also have the Yann hair, but I'm not having this problem. Try this: Delete the hair from your current workspace and save your scene. Open the scene back up in Poser and apply the hair again. Before you render, use the hieriarchy editor and hide everything except the figure and the hair and see if the same thing happens (this way you won't wait 20 min to render). If it works right turn everything back on and render.

I don't know if it's just me but I've had to move the hair around a little when I've loaded it. Kozaburo's in particular. It usually is on the head at least. It just needs some minor dial turnage to get it in the perfect spot. I've never had it be hidden inside the body or anything like that. Maybe Daz (if that's what yanni hair is) and other people's hair acts differently.

did you have mike's head selected when you clicked the hair? was any part of mike selected? the last time this happened to me (yesterday) it was because I had clothes selected instead of Mike. Rob

Hair also sometimes flies upward like that when you apply a pose. I think it happens when the pose file contains hair or props: poser gets confused. In theory - delete the hair, save, close, re-open the file and re-apply the hair and it should be in the right place again.

Thanks for your prompt responses. I did that render, and wrote the post at around 1:30-2 am. It was time to drag my ass to bed. I did remove and reapply the hair, then rendered. I have yet to fiddle with the render since then. I may not have time right away today. I have "a million things to do." Ron

Yesterday was obviously a Bad Hair Day: Everytime I parented Kosabura's Ponytail to my (already-posed) Mike, it flew down to his shoulders! And that was after taking record time to get properly placed in the first place, too........I think I redid it twice, then deleted the !*#!! hair and tried with a new one, which inexplicably worked just fine......

Intermittently hair does not stay where it's supposed to for me either. This often occurs when I drop a figure to the ground. In the past I have tried conforming and parenting. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes selecting the hair (if I can find it) and pressing CTRL+E will place it back where it is supposed to be. Sometimes CTRL+E does other strange things to the hair.

BAM, You can ALWAYS find it... even if you can't see it. Under the view window is the name of the currently "active" mesh. Open that menu, select the figure or prop, camera, light... whatever you have lost. When you have selected it, glance at the dials, especially the ones for spatial translations. If your hair went halfway to Mars or the shoe is inside the body, it ought to be obvious from the numbers on the dials. When you know where it is and what orientation, you have the option of restoring the element or moving it by hand, depending upon how far out of whack it is. Note: getting rid of that damnable IK the moment you load a mesh (before posing, before adding anything else) stops most of these placement problems before they occur. Carolly

hauksdottir, Ahhh, yes, easy for youuuuu difficult for meeeeee. You see, I often have more than 10 figures in a scene simultaneously. First I have to figure out which hair has gone missing. I knew that IK screwed up the shoes, I had no idea it screwed up the hair too. Is this a "feature" or "bug". It would be very helpful if someone wrote a program that "melded" hair, shoes, or even clothes to a character. Nothing is more annoying than trying to select the figures foot and getting the sock, then selecting again to get the shoe, then selecting again to get the sock, and perhaps miracle of miracles you might actually get the foot after a while. Yes I know that you can use the drop down menus, but that is inconvenient too.

BAM, Suppose that shoes and socks were melded to the foot... how would you then decouple them if you needed to make a change? One of the reasons Poser 4 is better than P3 is that you can change the clothing and props. You would be amazed at what has IK preinstalled in it. This is why you have to check the shoes and gloves and dresses as well as the main figures. ::grrrr:: Just turn it off everywhere you see it, and life will be simpler. If you do need it to animate a character, you can switch it back on later. IK problems mostly affect shoes, but hair is a close second. Dresses wrapping around legs is another good twist to the problem. It is often triggered when importing a prop (especially 3ds). It can also trigger when you apply a pose. I don't know if applying MATs will send this stuff flying (I prefer to set my materials manually), but regular poses do. You can do a couple of things to help hunt down the missing hair or flying boot. I set my auxilliary camera fairly well back so that it takes in the entire scene, including my render camera. I learned this trick back in RDS days, where I lost more cameras than the space crew. If the hair is within a hundred miles of its owner, it will usually show up on the auxilliary view. You should also be able to use the hand cameras as bloodhounds if you change their "point at" command and tweak their settings. You'd have to keep tweaking them, but that might help (if you can see it, you can get it in the dials, and massage it home from there). Carolly

Carolly, I wouldn't decouple, I'd go back to the original figure, make the changes and then meld/couple that figure together. Or the coupling would not have to be permanent it could be a switch such as hide/unhide of a figure (couple/decouple?). I just have a very difficult time with the fact that if you have conformed the shoe to the foot that you still can select the shoe and in fact it is what you usually select, even though you can do nothing with it from a pose perspective until it is no longered conformed. While I agree that P4 is much better than P3, there always seem to be tradeoffs between versatility and useability (e.g. PC vs Mac). While in P4 you can control many figure aspects, the file sizes are much larger, getting things set up the way you want takes more time, scroll lists have become impossibly long, and beginning and intermediate users are easily overwhelmed. "Dresses wrapping around legs". That's why that keeps happening too? I'll change the aux camera when I get home, that shouuld help a lot. Thanks for all the useful info.

Hope that it helps you to get a handle on it: if you can see it, it is yours to command [insert maniacal laughter]. Basically watch out for IK, keep half an eye on the names below the view window so that you are sure of what is "active", and have a camera set for an overall view. These 3 tips won't solve all your problems, but should take care of a few snags before they become problems. Carolly