I hope this is the place for posting this, it deals with basic problems with the poser figure. Either I am missing something, or all figures up to date have hideous knee and hip bends. I am really getting tired of these limitations. I see all renders of poser figures crippled by the inability to display knees and hips properly. We cannot always sit for hours carefully posing figures so that the legs are straight or arms are folded over the knees. I think this limitation has grown to be too large a limit. I have been thinking about fixes for about a year and they all seem nigh on impossible for me to do all of myself. Now, to be fair I have yet to purchase Vicky 3, but since all of the ad renders do not show bent knees I am not in a big hurry. Maybe soemone can tell me how close to a fix daz3d is. This actually seems to be a problem that covers all computer graphics, since collision detection and deformation is actually a complicated deal. I see one lengthly solution, sculpt morphs for every few degrees of bend when the thigh and shin come into contact with each other, then control these with ERC. The problem with this I note at first is that poser treats these two body parts as seperate meshes that hinge at the knee. This is a huge problem because at least with raydream I cannot put both parts in and push and pull at the same time. Does anyone have any insight on this?

heyas; it's a limitation of the figure meshes and the software, you are correct. if you want the soft body dynamics and the squishy flesh and all that realism, you want a much higher-end program. most of us down here in poserdom just swipe it over with the smudge tool in post ;) but seriously, i don't foresee anything like that occurring in poser in any version soon. not only would it take a lot of hefty programming skills, and a hefty machine to do all those calculations, but it wouldn't be too compatible with the way poser figures and the poser engine works now.

Oh. I guess what we're left with is that by the time I could fake the effect by sculpting morphs individually, I could buy Maya and start there and still the overall cost in labor with Poser would be higher. I can swipe in post also, but I was thinking about animation as well. Hmmmmm.

heyas; yes, it's always animation that is toughest :/ there's been some progress in morphs for fixing those areas. the millennium figures by daz have some elbow fix morphs, for example. (although they never seem to do much for me.) if you're good with magnets, you can use those to adjust the mesh while it is posed, so you can see how your fix is 'fixing' things. that might also help.

I actually tried some magnet manip last night and started to get some promising results. A perfect job will take hours however. I read up again on Vicki 3 and I am definitely going to get her today. The ad reads that they have pretty much done all that they can for fixing joints with ERC. The comments from the people who bought her already seem to be very positive towards this problem. I guess the main reason I am thinking about this problem is that with Poser 5's capabilitites now the last main obstacle to being a great program are the joint setup issues. I am thinking of a set of prefixed poses now that would cover most extreme pose possibilities, saving time for those of us who want to use these poses. As opposed to "standard" poses most of us could whip out in an hour, these would be heavily worked and a real boon to renders. Of course, Vicky 3 is just going to have to be it for animation. Yeah, those elbow and knee fixes on Vicki 1 and 2 don't do much for me either.