Quote - Making sure to leave Body transforms unchecked in the dialogue that pops up when saving makes no difference. The pose will still return the figure to whatever location the figure was in when the pose was saved.

Not so in my experience. By default, Poser does not save BODY translations or rotations to a pz2 unless you select 'Body transforms' when saving the pose, and thus the pose can't move the BODY actor. Poser will save hip translations and rotations, which is why you should normally position your figure within the scene by translating BODY in x and z, not the hip. That way, applying a properly saved pose should not move the figure to a different part of the scene. yTran is a different matter, normally the BODY's yTran should remain at zero, and the hip yTran should place the lowest part of the figure (eg feet) on the floor (or at the desired altitude, eg in a jumping pose).

If you (or the author of the pz2) did not select 'Body transforms' when saving the pose, and the figure still moveds to a different part of the scene when you apply the pose, it is because the pose contains large hip translations. It is bad practice to include large hip translation in the pose.

Quote - So what am I looking for to edit out?

In figures that do include BODY transforms, you can edit them out in a text editor or a Poser file editor (eg CR2Editor, or the D3D Poser File editor, or philC's pz3editor) just select the transform channels in the BODY and delete them. If you did not select the 'Morph channels' option when saving the pose, you can delete the whole body actor from the pz2. Alternatively, you can apply the pose, then resave it with 'Body transforms' deselected.

If the problem is caused by hip translations, then the best way is probably to apply the pose, adjust the hip x and z translation (but not ytran) to, or near to, zero, then resave the pose. > Quote - And what text editor to use? Since all the standard ones I have like to jumble everything up.

I use EditPad Lite, but any half decent text editor should do (Notepad is not a half decent editor). Also considder getting an editor designed specifically for editing Poser files. Not really needed in this case, but handy for editing cr2 files.

Looks very nice to me!

Get CR2Editor (or one of the other editors mentioned in my last post). In CR2Editor (for example),  load the cr2, and scroll down until you see the 'figure' section (near the bottom of the file), and expand that section by clicking the + sign next to it. Scroll down again until you see the lines starting with the word 'material'. Click on a 'material' that you want to delete, then press the keyboard Delete key. Do the same for other materials you want to delete. Save the cr2 back to disk. The process is similar in other editors, in some editors you can select and delete multiple materials in one go, but CR2Editor only allows you to select one at a time.

If you were to delete all the materials from the cr2, the next time you loaded the figure, Poser would read the material zones from the obj file and add corresponding material definitions to the figure. You would need to save the figure again for these to become a permanent part of the cr2.

Assuming that your obj file is your own creation, and not just a morph of the m3 obj, you will probably also want to delete any morphs from the figure. Morphs are stored in the individual actors as 'targetGeom' sections and can be deleted in the same way as the materials. Also any 'valueParm' (FBM) channels in the BODY actor can be deleted in the same way.  

CR2Editor can only open cr2 files, it can't open crz files. If your figure is saved as a crz, open it in Poser, then in Edit menu > General Preferences > Misc tab, deselect 'Use file compression', then resave the figure to create a cr2.

@TrekkieGrrrl,

No, adding materials via a pz2, mc6, or mt5, will not affect the obj file.

Quote - Yes it's very annoying. But there might be a reason why they do this, not that I can think of one.

There are not many cases where this can be justified, but there are a few. In some animated Poses, especially those involving a walk cycle along a path, BODY transforms may be desirable, even necessary. In couples poses, where it is necessary to set the relative separation between the figures, a case can be made for including BODY transforms. These are the only examples I can think of where BODY transforms would be acceptable in a pz2. Most of the time I think it is as cspear said, quote: "This is just sloppy and lazy".

It is usually caused by the (normally) bad habit of selecting the "Body Transformation" option when saving a pose.

There is no way that I know of to delete materials from within Poser. Unfortunately, the explanation of this gets a little long winded and complicated. The material zones themselves (groups of polygons assigned to a material) will be part of the geometry, and may be either internal (geomCustom) or external (obj) geometry. Most figures (cr2) and props (pp2) use an external obj file to house the geometry, and therefore the material zones are also in the obj.

When you use the Poser Grouping Tool to assign materials, Poser creates new internal (geomCustom) geometry. When you save a prop that has internal geometry to the Props library, it will continue to use the internal geometry the next time it is loaded. With a figure that uses internal geometry, it's a different story. When you save a figure that has internal geometry to the Figures library, Poser will write a new obj file for the figure, and immediately start using that new obj. You don't need to reload the figure, a figure "in play" will start using the new obj immediately. The new obj file will have the same name as the figure you saved, and it will be placed in the same folder as the cr2 you saved.

In the geometry the material zones define which polygons are assigned to which materials. This is done in the sections of the file starting with 'usemtl' lines.

In addition to the material zones in the geometry, a pp2 or cr2 will also contain 'material' sections, these 'material' sections define the settings for the particular material, eg colour, image maps, etc, that will be applied to a zone.

OK, so how do you remove materials? To remove a material zones from an obj file, I usually use 'UV Mapper', the free version will do fine for this. First make sure you have a backup of the obj file, in case things go wrong. Load the obj into UV Mapper, select the material you want to remove;

Edit > Select > by Material

Once you have selected the material, assign the selection to a different material;

Edit > Assign > to Material

You can assign the selection to one of the existing materials, or type in a name to change the name of the material. When you have assigned the facets to the desired material zones save the obj. The old material will now have been removed from the obj. You can also do the above in most modelling applications, though of course the details will vary with the application.

You have now removed the material zone[s] from the geometry, but you still need to remove the relevant 'material' section[s] from the pp2 or cr2. This is best done in an application designed specifically to edit Poser files, you can use the free CR2Editor by John Stallings, or Poser File Editor from Dimension 3D,  or PhilC's pz3edit. In a pinch it can be done in a text editor, but I don't recommend that as it involves a lot of scrolling.

There may be advantages in converting the RollinRoad into a figure. If you set the altitude of the BODY to zero, and the altitude of the cylinder so that the top of the road is zero with respect to world space, you could then scale the BODY, and the top of the road surface would remain at zero altitude.

It might be a good idea to make the RollinRoad modular, with individual houses and trees as separate props, parented to the cylinder. This would make it much more flexible, as it would be easy to add, remove, or rearrange elements to suit the purpose at hand.

I agree with comments made by others, that a larger diameter of cylinder might be an improvement.

Trying to make the rate of rotation match a figures walk, so that the feet don't skid on the road can be a PITA. You can add a channel and some ERC that will let you alter the rate of rotation on the fly, so that you don't need to redo the animation of the RR cylinder. This will let you adjust the rate of rotation from within any frame, and the new rate will be implemented in all frames. The normal rate of rotation will be multiplied by the value on the "X_Rot_Mult" dial. A value of 1.0 will give the normal rate of rotation as expressed on the xRotate dial, higher values will make the RR rotate faster, lower values make the RR rotate slower.

To do that, add this channel to the top of the channel stack:

        valueParm X_Rot_Mult
            {
            name X_Rot_Mult
            initValue 1
            hidden 0
            forceLimits 0
            min -100000
            max 100000
            trackingScale 0.01
            keys
                {
                static  1
                k  0  1
                }
            interpStyleLocked 0
            }

Note the 'initValue 1', and the line 'static  1', and channel value 'k  0  1'

Next add this slaving code to the xRotate channel:

        rotateX xRotate
            {
            name xrot (ROLL)
            initValue 0
            hidden 0
            forceLimits 0
            min -100000
            max 100000
            trackingScale 0.1
            keys
                {
                static  0
                k  0  0
                }
            interpStyleLocked 0
            valueOpTimes
                NO_FIG
                RollinRoad
                X_Rot_Mult
            }

You can make it roll in the "correct" direction in response to a positive dial input, by turning the y oriertation parameter through 180 degrees. You can do that in the Joint Editor, or by editing the pp2, eg:

    endPoint 0 1.54235 0
    origin 0 0 0
    orientation 0 180 0

If all else fails, export the morphs individually as obj files from the figure that has them (File >Export > Wavefront OBJ). In the export options, select only  'As morph target'. Then wiith the figure that needs the morphs selected, select the body part the needs to be morphed, and import the obj files (Object > Load Morph Target). It can be a slow method if you have a lot of morphs to transfer, but it's simple, and all done within Poser.

You can then save the figure (with a new name so as not to overwrite the original), so that all the morphs will be in the figure the next time you load it.

The Poser 'taper' parameter never worked properly in my experience, and the taper dial has been a problem since at least P4.

I don't know a fix for the taper problem itself. I suggest you work round the problem by creating a morph to do the tapering.

Set the taper dial to -1.0, then export the obj, using only 'As morph target' in the export options. Import the object into the square as a morph target. Save the figure (I think you said it is a figure) so that you have a version that includes the morph. This should give you the fine adjustment you need. If you need finer adjustment on the morph dial, adjust the dial sensitivity ('trackingScale' in the cr2 or pp2) of the dial.

Quote - I turned PMD off at the suggestion of many users. Called it BAAAAD!

You can turn on 'Use external binary morph targets' temporally, just whilst you save the figure (with a DIFFERENT NAME) to generate the PMD, then immediately turn it off again.

Nerd3D has a tutorial on making PMD injections on his site.

The RRBackPlate.obj seems to be missing from the zip.

Quote - The ON version of your script didn't work but The OFF version perfectly did what I expected. Thanks!

The "ON version"? I didn't post an "on"  version! Both poses UNforce the limits. the 'RotLimitUF.pz2' only affects the currently selected actor, and only works in P5 and above. The 'RotLimitsUF_V4.pz2' pose should work in any Poser version, and affects the entire figure.

However you should be able to take either pose into a text editor and replace all instances of the string "forceLimits 0" with "forceLimits 1" to create poses to [re]force the limits.

The pose is not much use for V4 itself, because, if I remember correctly, by default, V4's rotation limits are not forced.

If the limits are set, but not forced, then aRtBee is correct, just turn off "Use Limits" in the Figure menu. However,  if the limits are indeed forced, then turning off "Use Limits" will have no effect.

Attached above is the text of a pz2 (pose) file to unforce limits on the currently selected actor. Remove the ".TXT" part of the file extension, and save it to any pose folder.

It would of course be possible to create a pz2 to unforce the rotation limits for an entire figure. I don't have the time or inclination to do that at the moment, but the format for such a pose should be like so:

{

version
    {
    number 3
    }

actor BODY
    {
    channels
        {
        rotateY yrot
            {
            forceLimits 0
            }
        rotateZ zrot
            {
            forceLimits 0
            }
        rotateX xrot
            {
            forceLimits 0
            }
        }
    }

actor hip
    {
    channels
        {
        rotateY yrot
            {
            forceLimits 0
            }
        rotateZ zrot
            {
            forceLimits 0
            }
        rotateX xrot
            {
            forceLimits 0
            }
        }
    }

#[etc... all the other actors need to be included here]

}