Thanks for the illuminating explanation ... ockham There may be a way to make it easier but takes some effort to set up . First break up the different Poses for keyframing in ASL/BSL by body sections ... eg rUpperLimb, lUpperLimb, torso, head, hands, and so on ... Then pose and save into the Pose library ... using save subselection and selecting only the relevant body parts (save as single pose or animation). You'll have to devise a meaningful system of labelling ... eg lArmSwingFront, rArmThrustUp, lHandOpen and so on . The poses can be adjusted, eg to use pose/animation with interpolation or relabeled and evolved over time . At some point, python can be used to combine and sequence these actions by its loadlibrary function, and drive the animation thru a 'meaning' based interface . That would be comparatively easy as most of the work would have been done in the library .

Try Poser's, Pose>Walk Designer - a set of 30 frame per sec walk animations . You can mix a walk from different Walk Designer animations - see the Poser help for more details .

yeah, i agree, conforming is an in inexact science and that is a conundrum ... many factors must come together first and then you only get an approximation ... 1) the master obj figures must fit 2) figure hierarchy n continuity must match 3) figure jointing must match - both centers and axis rotations 4) figure scaling and taper must match ik must then be used to fit peripheral parts ... somehow simply matching transforms don't work ... a conondrum i noticed that in conforming, the clothing transforms reset to the 'initial' values that can be seen when you open up the clothing cr2 file ... if you manually match the 'initial' scale values to the master figure, the clothing will automatically fit the rescaled figure during conforming ... i'm finishing an app for poser 4 that might solve most of these problems ... would you be interested in testing it ... filesize ~ 8 MB prezipped ... if you are interested, please indicate the platform you're using, pc or mac and i'll e-mail you a copy .

One reason may be the conforming figure has a Side-Side init Value not set to zero . You can check for it in the channels section of the chest actor in your cr2 or text editor .

There are one or two buttons for uploading the character from the library . Use the 'New Figure' option .

Try ... Creating a new texture map instead of modifying the old one in UV Mapper - use the z axis planar option or another if that is not suitable . The Joker suit is incredibly good - especially for a first - and would do well in a Comic Book package .

Parenting with props as the master may be the problem . Create a dummy figure as the master parent . Then set the props as children of the master or as children of props in the master . Then save the figure in the figures library .

If you have enough hard disk (a few hundred megs to spare )and you don't mind playing housekeep you can try this ... 1. Copy the entire poser directory to a new folder . 2. Start deleting the geometriy and character files that you don't require . 3. Make sure you start a new poser session from the poser.exe in the new poser folder to access the data in the new poser subdirectories . 4. If you don't like the result, just delete the entire new poser directory . Remember to clear the recycle bin after that .

If you're saving the image as a jpg file, there is an option of compression setting to make during the save process . Choose the 'best' or 'no compression' option to avoid blurring .

About substituting body parts ... ( Warning - may be technically a breach of the oem licensing agreement ) 1. a new head with matching vertices at the attachment has to be created . 2. the old head has to be deleted from the obj file . 3. the new head has to be stitched or welded to the decapitated figure . 4. Save the new obj file in the Runtime:Geometries folder under a new name . 5. Edit the 'figureRes' references in a cr2 file of the old figure ( located in the Runtime:Libraries:Character folder ) to point to the new obj file ; and save it under a new name . Voila - you've got a new working figure in the figures library in Poser . The old head morfs, if any, will not work anymore . nb - step 1 is particularly tedious . - steps 2 and 3 can be done with John Wind's - Composer - a Java based application available free somewhere on the net .

About joint orders ... From exprimentation - I figure that the joint rotation order is determined by the order of the rotationX/Y/Z in the channels section of the particular actor in the cr2 file ??? If you want to rotate in XYZ, you should set the rotation order in reverse i.e. rotationZ, rotationY, rotationX in the cr2 file . I don't think that the order of the jointX/Y/Z or twistX/Y/Z matters . They just seem to indicate which is the twist axis . About joint zones ... I think the joint zones were created originally for simulation of tendons . But they don't seem to work effectively that way . An easier way to adjust bends is to adjust : 1. the start/end bend angles in the joint editor by directly moving the bullseye cursor of the angle handles in the poser figure . 2. the bulge values in the joint editor panel .

I do know that the translate channels are translate values for the actor in the 3 degrees of freedom . The offset channels don't appear to have any functionality . I suspect that they may be an obselete poser transform operation that hasn't been updated . This may also apply to the scales that refer to multiple child actors and the smooth channels ??? I think that the joint channels that matter are - I) Channels section : 1. origin 2. orientation 3. startPoint 4. endPoint II) SubChannels section : 1. angles 2. center 3. startPt 4. endPt 5. bulges 6. spheresMatsRaw SpheresMatsRaw, by the way is a 4 X 4 matrix transform of a sphere for the inner and outer matSpheres in the joints editing section of poser - hence the 8 descriptive lines .

You could try importing the obj file into poser and then export it again using the weld seams option .

One possible way ... ( won't require custom pose files ) 1 . A collapse gimbals function - to remove the scaling and rotation joint info on a cr2 file - this needs to be propagated down the hierarchy tree ... taking into consideration 'Actor' orientations, axis rotations and transformations . 2. A map gimbals function beteween two cr2 files - where joint data from a figure's cr2 file can be mapped to its conforming clothes cr2 file . nb Unfortunately the joint info is all over the shop in a cr2 file so it 'll take some under the hood hacking . Would such a utility be worth purchasing in the marketplace ?

I think the group that is being referenced externally has to ba removed(deleted) in the original obj file first to avoid conflicts.