Hello @arrowhead42

For anything mechanical I recommend to NEVER use a FIGURE. As a figure it is cumbersome to rig, harder to handle than a prop, and also comes with much overhead which only clutters up the hierarchy without any actual benefit (IK Chains, CenterOfMass, GoalCenterOfMass).

What I use is something which I call a "Prop Figure": Actually it is the same as a figure (less the unnecessary overhead).

But with the difference that there are no "body parts", but only individual props parented to a "master" prop. If the "master prop" is large enough (like, the chassis), it's dead easy to grab it with the mouse and move it where ever you need it (unlike like a figure where you must carefully pick either "BODY" or the "hip" equivalent to avoid actor offsets, with all the unpleasant consequences!) And it's even more light-weight (RAM-wise).

Have a look at my "URAL" lorry: Fully working undercarriage:

• all wheels turn (synchronised by a master dial, if you wish)
• all axles bank individually
• tilting rear truck
• Option to bank or tilt whole car chassis with a single dial while the wheels stay on the ground.

PLUS:

• Working steering (incl. steering wheel)
• Cabin doors and engine hood open/close
• Detachable wheels (in case of a breakdown ;D )
• Optional canvas hood included, with adjustable height

Consumption is only 40 to 100 ltr of gasoline or diesel per 100 km, depending on terrain :)

The BMP-1 works the same way:

• all doors and hatches are fully functional
• working "wading shield"
• rotating turret with elevating gun (which, as an extra, also will raise avtomatically if it traverses the opened commandant's hatch
• The "Matyulka" missile is a separate prop and can be "fired" with a single master dial

If you are interested in this technique °1, just say so and I'll write more detailed information about it! You can also contact me here: http://sasha-16.forumprofi.de ** See you, and good luck with your project!**

Karina

Footnote °1:

Setting up such a "Figure Prop" is very easy:

Just load all the props needed, parent them to the "master prop" (e.g. the chassis) and LOCK them into place, only allowing them rotations in the desired directions. E.g., dooors and hatches only rotate along their hinges, wheels only rotate as if spinnig but still can be "steered", axles can bank following the terrain, and so on.

I've written a simple Python script that will lock each individual prop into place and only allow movements along permitted axes.!

FVerbaas posted at 12:42PM Tue, 05 March 2019 - #4347465

....

Moscou, les plaines d'Ukraine

Et les Champs-Élysées

On a tout mélangé

Et l'on a chanté

Merci!

[...]Je pensais deja: "Q'apres le tombe de Lénine on irait au Café Pouchkine - manger 'Gâteau au Chocolat'"

(Bloody edit time ran out...) Sorry for OT.

K

Why oh why is this song playing in my head now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TilQ8BIHisw

But I really like it so much - I get goosebumps each time I listen to it!

K

To be precise:

No, LaFemme won't work in any Poser version below Poser11.

You can still load it in the older versions, but you'll lose a lot of it's functionality, especially in P9/PP2012.

You also need to create new textures from scratch, because the texture that comes with LaFemme contains two "poserSurface" nodes (one FireFly, one SuperFly), and older Poser versions will choke heavily upon these.

As an alternative you could try "SASHA-16": http://sasha-16.forumprofi.de/showthread.php?tid=2

Welcome back to Poser!

Karina

ADDENDUM:

You have to understand the differences between a Figure, a Character, and Expressions / Poses: (I'll skip Custom Morphs here, to focus on the important issues:)

!

A FIGURE:

Is just the base mesh as it loads and sits there in your workspace.

!

A CHARACTER:

is everything you dial in with the dials, or add as custom morphs,with the final goal of creating a - yep! - a Character: a unique shape.

!

AN EXPRESSION:

It should NEVER change the dials that were used to create A CHARACTER, because these dials were applied by your "customer" painstakingly to create his carefully-designed CHARACTER he named "Gabrielle" (for example).

Can you imagine the overjoyment of your "customer" if your "Expression" or "Pose" destroys all his work with a single click on your "pose"??

AN EXPRESSION POSE MUST NEVER CONTAIN ANY "FACE SHAPE" DIALS - EVER!

!

A POSE (a.k.a Body Pose):

The same as already mentioned in the "Expressions" paragraph" applies here:

IF you create Poses, then DO NOT (NEVER, EVER!) include other morphs or scales in your pose file, unless you want to make your customer raving mad by destroying his carefully dialed body morph.

A POSE must ONLY contain the ROTATION dials. NOTHING ELSE!

!

Again, sorry for shouting in parts, but I'm sick of this board's user-unfriendly handling of text formatting.

K

Excellent @BartNel!

But please don't repeat the same error with LaFemme which became the curse of V4:

"Content creators" often intermixed the "face shape" and the "face expression" morphs randomly, resulting in a partial reset of the face shape once you applied a "Zero Expressions" pose"

!

Please be aware that a "Face Shape" morph and the "Expression" chips are two different beast and NEVER should be used simultaneously for character creation!

(A thing that I would like to be emphasised in "BOLD, UNDERLINE, FONT SIZE = HUGE" in the manual! Maybe even publish it in the NYT or WP???)

I've seen enough people here already who attempt to create "characters" by using the face "expression" chips.

PLEASE do not make history repeat itself, cursing us with more hundreds of so-called "characters" which get reset by every "Zero Expression" pose!!

SO for ALL character creations: --> LEAVE THEM BLOODY CHIPS ALONE!!! <-- : (sorry for shouting)

Preaching on deaf ears? I hope not.

Karina

The real problem here is to separate the "Face Shape" dials from the "Expression dials, which isn't easy.

If you choose one of the simpler "Spawn..." ways as described above, you might end up with a morph which will also zero any expressions applied (or re-inject them if you had any expression applied during save), because all morphs are saved with their current values.

You can see the inverse effect with badly made expressions which reset your dialed face to default if you click them.

So without a script made explicitly for V4, you'ld have to manually edit the pz2 files.

Thus, the other suggestion made to select the head (and after that, the neck too) and use Poser menu "Spawn Morph Target" is an easier way to go. But that also has it's caveats:

1. ALWAYS make sure that there are NO other morphs applied to head & neck, AND!! that ALL OTHER body morphs AND the scaling (esp. for head & neck) is at their default zero.

2. Remember that this method only modifies the mesh of the head. Any other adjustments you (or the morphs you applied) made are NOT saved in the new morph target. So if you changed the eye width, height or depth (which make the eyeballs follow suite in the original morph dial) will NOT appear in your spawned morph target, so you must readjust them manually. Not for the faint at heart...

Do yo know how to edit a pz2 file? DO you have Dimension3D's "PoserFileEditor"? https://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/poser-file-editor-3/62322

If you don't have it, buy it! It's your Swiss Army Knive to Poser's inner workings.

VERY brief instruction:

Save your figure as an "Expression" to the Face library. ! Make sure that you really only have the morps dialled which are used for the character! Then open the resulting fc2 file with PFE.

In PFE, go to menu "Repair" > "remove unused dials / groups" Click it! and then do the same with "remove unused value parameters"

This will remove all dials left at zero, and only the ones you dialed in will remain.

Save your file under a new name (maybe make a pz2 of it, it works!) and then test the new injection.

Works perfect for me all of the time! Hope that helped.

Karina

P.S.:

Since you're using V4: Have you ever met SASHA-16?

http://sasha-16.forumprofi.de/forumdisplay.php?fid=6

Thank you @Deecey! :)

Could anybody here just explain in a few words what "The Escape Key" means/does?

I'm on a limited download quota so I can't watch a lenghty "webinar" just to get an answer to one small question.

Thank you!

K

Just Google for "cellulite"

K

"FB" is the wrong abbrevation. It should be "FSB". That would be much more fitting. NO FSB in my lifetime for me, ever again. K

Not sure whether I really understand the problem because I didn't encounter it to this extreme before, but of course this is character-specific, depending on how the dials are set.

But here's a possible solution.

In V4 there a TWO ways to scale the head:

• One is to use the SCALE dial
• But there's another dial in the "Morphforms" section called "Head Size" which also controls the head scale via the "valueOpDeltaAdd" method. If these two add up you'll get the balloon heads!

So always have a look at the head's "scale" values and avoid them adding up. You should be safe when setting the head Scale to 100% with character morphs which use the "Head Size" dial. Otherwise, zero that dial, and set the head scale manually (which I prefer anyway).

K.

I just pronounce her "en Francais": La Famme with an open "a" like in the exclamation "Ahh!"

duanemoody posted at 6:45PM Wed, 30 January 2019 - #4344804

Blackhearted posted at 5:16PM Wed, 30 January 2019 - #4344798

I originally wanted it in the base but SM said no.

I'm assuming SM's planning on bundling LF with Poser, and if that's the case they're avoiding DAZ's infamous "do not copy or shrinkwrap to our mesh" section of the EULA. By putting it in your HD Morphs pack sold here the liability gets put on your shoulders not theirs. But that's a guess and I'm usually wrong about that stuff.

I see you Americans are already well-dressed to your almighty "CopyWrong" industry and it's lawiers's business models.

In the free world I could make a morph for V4's head, call it even "Farenghi head shape", and I would get away with it (except for the little typo because "Ferenghi" might also be a protected trade mark - dunno)

But then - why shouldn't I create a morph called "V4 Head Shape"? I mean: I'm doing nothing else than shifting vertices on a 3D figure which has nothing to do at all with V4. If they end up in the same place as the "holy" V4 mesh, I'ld insist on "artistic license". Now let them sue me!

Folks! Relax! DAZ isn't the almighty international trust - it's just another tiny company in Utah, USA. And the estimates about it's "almightyness" are, IMHO, strongly overestimated.

So keep calm and carry on.

K