I have been trying to seperate the tail from the horse without any luck. I used CR2 editor to delete all the other body parts except the 4 tail actors. Saved the file, opened in poser, saved under a different name and reopened the file. What I get are the last three tail sections, #1 is not there. Poser tells me there are no actors, and none of the X,Y,Z controls have any effect. Could some kind soul point me in the right direction? Thanks Ralphm

There's no actors because you just created a prop not a figure. This is easier: 1.) open the poser horse and select export 2.) choose single frame and only have one of the four tail sections Xed. and export it 3.) do this with each tail section 1-4 4.)start a new file and import each tail section one at a time. And align them if needed. 5.)arrange them in the Heirarchy window so that tail#1 is the parent. and the others are parented to the previous section (see the manual for examples) 6.)click the create figure button in that window You now have a poseable tail figure without the horse. This is a general overview. You'll need to have the rotation orders in the right order before you click create figure. and you'll need to adjust the JP's once it's created to get the best bending possible. But you can try it without knowing all that and see what happens. You'll get a general idea of the proccess from doing that. ScottA

A quick-n-dirty solution: Just set the rest of the horse to Invisible and no Cast Shadows (double-click on relevant part) and parent the hip to ... whatever. Should work, but adds a whole 'nother character to the scene, and I always have a problem keeping the population levels down. ;)

I tried doing what Scott suggest back whne I was working on my horse tail transmap. I never could get it to work properly. sigh

Hmm. I think I remeber that thread Daio. Was this before the patches were released? The export options in patches 117 and 118 are much better than in the original program. There's nothing I left out other than to ONLY select weld similar vertices when importing each piece. And just for grins I tried this with the horses tail myself and it works perfectly. However. if you use the default rotation orders and JP settings. It doesn't pose at all. Actually forget posing. It self destructs ;-) But that's just a matter of getting the rotation orders correct before creating the figure with that button. And if you use Bushi's Phi Factory utility. It will show you what the correct rotation orders are for the horse and all it's parts. I can't imagine what would cause any problems other than this. There's nothing to it. ScottA

Thanks I'll give that a try, Looks like its time to drag out the manual and figure what rotation orders are and how to set JP's Ralph

I found with Poser 3 that if a curve segment X is child of a non-curve segment Y, the front end of X is distorted to make it point at the geometrical center of Y. Thus, I found that if the root segment of a model is curve, in the posed or exported form its front end is distorted to make it point at the geometrical center of the whole model, since the root segment's parent is the model's BODY. The remedy is to interpose between X and Y a very short non-curve non-rigid segment.

what did he say ;-). Actually in this case. The problem is people don't know how to set up the JP's and what rotation orders to use. The tail figure will pose fairly well without using any curve options. In addition to that. The center axis needs to be rotated for this particular figure because the parts are at an angle. I understand what you mean about the curve characteristics. But these people are having trouble with the basics. Looks like I'm gonna have to write a JP tutorial. It's getting pretty frustrating watching people struggle to do such simple tasks. ScottA

For me at least what Anthony Appleyard wrote may as well have been in Chinese. Simple task depends on your level of expertise, for a beginer seperating the tail is not simple but rather turns into a daunting task. I have also found that many areas of the Poser manual are about as clear as mud. Ralph

Hang in there Ralph. I'm making a tutorial right now that will be so easy that a child could do this. ;-). It will be all pictures and very little wording. Nothing like the manual at all. Give me until tomorrow and I should have it wrapped up. ScottA

Many Thanks ScottA!! Myself and I am sure many others are grateful to the many talented people who post tutorials,morph targets,props, models, etc. here on the forum. Ralph