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Poser - OFFICIAL F.A.Q (Last Updated: 2025 Jan 25 4:22 pm)



Subject: Scaling Hands (A Tip)


phoenixamon ( ) posted Sun, 07 July 2002 at 4:42 PM · edited Thu, 16 January 2025 at 7:46 AM

I don't post here much, but I've seen a few posts browsing back over the past weeks about the size of characters' hands. I had to figure this out recently, and thought I'd try to share my method. Say you want to Victoria's hands to be smaller... 80% their original size. You can't scale the hands because the finger joints go all out of whack. What works is to scale down the whole body (in the figure's BODY parameters), and then scale every part BESIDES the hands back up individually in the body parts parameters. (It's actually quicker to do than it sounds.) The only trouble is you want Victoria's clothes to still fit her, so you have to be careful you scale her back up correctly. If you scale the body down to 80%, if you're like me you'll think you need to scale the parts other than the hands back up 120%. That's wrong, and aggravated me to no end. :) You have to do a little math. Pick a base number to represent Victoria's original body size. I picked 500 units. It's an easy number to calculate on, but is just an arbitrary number. Any number will do. I assume Victoria's body is 500 units as the base size. I scale her body down to 80% that size. 500 x 80% = 400 units. Now Victoria's base size is 400 units. If I scale her body parts back up 120% leaving the hands as they are, the resulting size will be 480 units and Victoria's clothes will not fit without scaling. 400 x 120% = 480 units. To get Victoria back to her regular size by scaling up her body parts, I have to figure out 400 * X% = 500 If you remember your basic algebra, the way to solve that problem is X% = 500 / 400 The solution is 125%. So if I want Victoria to stay her original size, but for her hands to be smaller, I scale the BODY down to 80%, and then pick the head, neck, arms, etc. each individually and scale them up to 125%. The results are very good for making hands both bigger and smaller. It's a little extra work, but if you really need to pay attention to the hand size it's worth a couple minutes. :) Hope it helps someone. Phoenix


Jaager ( ) posted Sun, 07 July 2002 at 4:52 PM

A little late. Tmech presented this over a year ago and there have been scaling poses for the Mil figures available to do just this for quite some time.


phoenixamon ( ) posted Sun, 07 July 2002 at 4:59 PM

Sorry to Tmech for recreating his wheel. :) However I never saw those posts, just figured it out for myself, saw recent posts (last week) asking this question without an answer, and hoped it would be helpful. I mean to step on no toes and haven't asked for this method of doing things to be named in my honor. It's just a tip, even if it is just reiteration of something that may be buried too deep for people to know it's out there. Way to make a girl feel unwelcome, Jaager. Thanks. Again, just trying to HELP. Phoenix


scifiguy ( ) posted Sun, 07 July 2002 at 5:04 PM

Well, I didn't know about it and the only scaling poses I've downloaded for hands have those joint dislocation issues. Thanks for the post Phoenix, I found it very helpful. :)


movida ( ) posted Sun, 07 July 2002 at 5:15 PM

Thanks phoenixamon, I've saved it s


Roy G ( ) posted Sun, 07 July 2002 at 5:43 PM

It sure would be nice if scaling the hand would also scale the joints to the right positions. Add that to my Poser 5 wish list, though the scaling poses work well for now.


phoenixamon ( ) posted Sun, 07 July 2002 at 5:56 PM

I'll second that, Roy. :)


Spit ( ) posted Sun, 07 July 2002 at 5:58 PM

Hey thanks, Phoenixamon...I was just trying to do this the other day with no success.


Strangechilde ( ) posted Sun, 07 July 2002 at 6:40 PM

Thanks, Phoenixamon! It was something I had cause to discover on my own as well. However much good that might have done me, what I really wanted to be able to do was to scale the relative lengths of the fingers... all of which led to this post at RDNA. But for folk who stick to the human, this is welcome advice, and I for one, don't mind seeing a helpful tip repeated a few times. Benedictions!


phoenixamon ( ) posted Sun, 07 July 2002 at 6:57 PM

Strangechilde, Thanks for the link to the RDNA thread. I hope you find a modeller for that project. It sounds like a great idea. I myself (just yesterday) modelled my very first blob of an abdomen with arms and something vaguely like elbows, and was proud as a peacock. ;) I gave up trying to morph Poser figure hands long ago, and would like to see an add-on package like you've descibed. Phoenix


ming ( ) posted Sun, 07 July 2002 at 7:03 PM

Thanks for the scaling tip. Very helpful.


Patricia ( ) posted Mon, 08 July 2002 at 1:20 AM

Thank you, phoenixamon!! I was one of the people carping about breaking 2 of Mike 1's fingers trying to scale 'em up, so I was very glad to read your post. Some of the old timers here forget that a lot of us just joined the community and are going to have questions that are old to them, but new and extremely aggravating to us. (BTW, I nearly always do a search of the forum archives before I post a question, but between the vagaries of the search engine and broasted brain cells from all the frustration, the answer just proves elusive.)


gryffnn ( ) posted Mon, 08 July 2002 at 6:39 AM

Stopped by when I spotted jaager's post. What the professor occasionally lacks in tact, he makes up for with generously shared brilliance. LOL: broasted brain cells :-)


phoenixamon ( ) posted Mon, 08 July 2002 at 10:16 AM

You mean Jaager who knew how to scale hands, did not have time to answer people asking how to do it, but DID have time to change the subject line of my post to be sure everyone knew it was useless old news? Yes, I am aware of Jaager's contributions. I appreciate them, and a few months back when he was having trouble with the bandwidth use from people downloading his freebies, I offered to host them for free. (He politely declined.) I respect Jaager's work and knowledge. But right at this moment I respect Jaager himself exactly as much as he respects me. ;) Fair enough? Sorry to be so cranky, but why does a person bother to take the time to type out a message for the sole purpose of informing someone their contribution is useless? Professor. Brilliant. Phoenix


ming ( ) posted Mon, 08 July 2002 at 10:34 AM

I would rather do without contributions than put up with attitudes. Thanks again for the tip. Very useful.


Jaager ( ) posted Mon, 08 July 2002 at 7:09 PM

I am not Tmech. I am not claiming first authorship. The original was posted here, I think in Poser Tech.

Say you do come up with something original and it is useful.
After a few months someone else duplicates your discovery and posts it as if original with them.

If someone who knows the true originator does not set the record straight, you would be justified in questioning how grateful anyone is for the idea. Proper credit is the only payoff.

Correcting a misconception is attitude?

Phoenix: Sorry that you are disappointed, but that does not alter the situation.

This has been discussed rather recently and if there is a thread that asked this and it went unexplained, I missed it.

Doing a JNT pose to lengthen the digits? That would involve 30 actors, more than the rest of the figure. A bit too tediuos to do if you do not need it. So I sat that one out.

I do regret not footnoteing DraX more often, for MORdonor.


Strangechilde ( ) posted Mon, 08 July 2002 at 7:16 PM

Here's a question. Can you change the shape of hands, including the length of the fingers, by creating morph targets in other applications? Forgive me if someone's asked it in an earlier post. ;)


Jaager ( ) posted Mon, 08 July 2002 at 9:53 PM

Yes. And with MTM you would only need do one hand. The only Mil complete hand morph that I can bring to mind - is Heavy for Vic. If there are JP problems with scaling the fingers - even Xscale (which I think is the long axis) then morphs would be the way to avoid this. In any case, morphs would probably be the preferred method. It is not that the morphs are difficult, they would not be. They WOULD be repetitious. And - you would probably need to morph the hand as well, so you are talking about applying 32 separate morphs - if you do only one style. Konan's morphing program would probably cover anything you would want to do, as would any of the major modeling programs. Even doing the mirroring in MTM - at 3-5 min to mirror and extract the OBJ. One - easy - 16 times = ? Inserting ERC - because these morphs are only reasonable as FBM/PBM - is doing the same thing 32 times. This is probably why there is no abundance of hand morphs. This is one case where supplying the morphs as deltas, would be the only way to keep the ERC script, and - except for the author, , in total, save a ton of work.


Strangechilde ( ) posted Mon, 08 July 2002 at 10:20 PM

Hot dog! Thanks! I am intending to buy Konan's app when it comes out for Mac OS9. I'm not a modeller and have no modelling software apart from the freebie Amorphium 1 that came with a magazine, but Extreme Morph looks like something I might be able to figure out. Hands have always been a sticking point for me. I wonder if there's any equivalent of MTM for Mac?


Spit ( ) posted Mon, 08 July 2002 at 11:51 PM

" Say you do come up with something original and it is useful. After a few months someone else duplicates your discovery and posts it as if original with them. If someone who knows the true originator does not set the record straight, you would be justified in questioning how grateful anyone is for the idea. Proper credit is the only payoff. " So do we have tips police now? Are people patenting their tips? Oh goodie! Yay! I get to go through all the forums and mailing lists and newsgroups for all the software I use to find the tips and things I've figured out over the years and freely shared to make sure I have proof that I, and only I, should ever get credit for any of them. Nobody else, ever, anywhere, could possibly figure out any of those things on their own. And if, heaven forbid, I should figure out something else on my own, I can go through all the forums and mailing lists and newsgroups to see if someone else figured it out first two years ago. Only after 7 weeks of doing that can I post my new tip. Sounds great!


Jaager ( ) posted Mon, 08 July 2002 at 11:56 PM

I don't know about a Mac MTM. But, there are no X=0 verts involved with the hands, so you may be able the mirror just using a text editor. Only the X is different? And that difference is just the sign? And all verts are one sign? The Y & Z are the same in mirrored morphs? The X=0 verts must be a special case - and if morphed out of line, why the program complains. Doing the original morph is one thing and it becomes what it becomes. Trying to do an exact mirror duplicate by hand in a modeler is much more difficult for me. At best it takes twice as long to do.


Jaager ( ) posted Tue, 09 July 2002 at 12:16 AM

Spit - where did I say not to post the tip? Recycling is fine, useful. You just don't get credit for the original idea, even if you made the discovery independently, if someone else got there first. Because the idea was out there already. Almost everything works like this. And if you do not do the research to determine if someone did get there first, be prepared to find out in public if someone did. It does not mean that the tip is not valuable. Imagine being a grad student giving a talk at the AAAS meeting and getting caught not doing your homework. (A nightmare, it didn'thappen.)


Spit ( ) posted Tue, 09 July 2002 at 12:48 AM

This isn't rocket science. It is the INFORMAL sharing of information. I don't care if I don't get credit for any of my ideas...I am not writing a thesis or presenting a paper. If we start using the same rules here as in the scientific community people will stop posting tips for fear of ridicule. Jaager, really, this is bizarre. It is not the same thing at all.


tmech ( ) posted Tue, 09 July 2002 at 12:33 PM

Thanks Jaager for the credit. And, Phoenix, like the way you go about problem solving. ; ) tmech


phoenixamon ( ) posted Tue, 09 July 2002 at 8:21 PM

Tmech, LOL! Thanks. :) Sorry I didn't know you had posted it before... I mean REALLY sorry because it would have saved me some brow knitting. Spit, Thanks for understanding. Everyone else, Glad it was useful. My pleasure. Maybe it will even show up in the search engine for people trying to solve this problem in the future. ;) Not likely. As mentioned, I was posting to be helpful, not for credit. I didn't claim to be the first (or the second, only to have had to figure it out myself). I didn't actually think it was a unique idea, but one that was worth explaining. I said "this is my method" to signify "maybe this isn't the best way but it's what I do." I'm glad it was useful for some. Being a help was the ONLY reason for posting it at all. I stink at math, and had a hard time figuring out how to scale the body parts back up right... thought other's might benefit from the example. For what it's worth to whomever cares, I spent a lot of time searching for an answer to this question before deciding I had to figure it out myself, and the search engine on these boards blows. ;) If I'd found the answer on the boards I'd have answered other people's question with a link back to past messages. Would have been faster. It was not an intentional slight, and I hope Tmech doesn't see it as a slight at all. See how nice Tmech was, Jaager? How hard was that? You can give credit to one person without making another sound like a thief. I'm sorry about sounding like I have feelings and stuff, but especially since I post here so infrequently and only when I think I can be of help, it rather bites when he first reply I get is to discredit me. And I kind of think my having gone out of my way to try to be friendly and helpful to Jaager in the past deserves at least politeness. If you haven't got anything nice to say, hush. Phoenix


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