now a problem i have. i recently studied dr. geeps tutorial in the hope i could find out, what's wrong. but i must admit, i am totally confused. i am trying to create a posable tentacle. the problem shown in the lastpics is: when i disable deforming i get the first result with gaps - but it bends like exspected. when i enable deforming i get a totally deformed part when posing it. i tried (according to the manual) to adjust joint parameters and axes, but i never get an yScale - only xScale - and what are the spherical zones for ?? is there another tutorial around i missed ...? maybe s.o could help me ...? joek:)

here some parameters - i am not sure how these work at all ...

this is what i created last night - looks fairly good, but not intended for closeups ...

I may be wrong but are the joints "centered"? like this

One thing is you dont have enough geometrie for the tenticle to really bend or do anything. Needs more polys. spherical zones are for more conrol over fall offs. Only areas within spheres are affected but this is not needed for your tenticle. Area in green sphere is effected alot and turns to none into the red area. In picture 2 in first post I can see its bending but there just isnt enough polys to move around for smoothness. The scaleing stuff is confuseing. Look at how some of the Regular Poser characters are set up. Try to notice when and how the spherical zones are used and how the scaleing is set up.

you want the rotation order to be yzx up/down = y front back = z side/side = x my guess is that this rotation order is incorrect. after that order is set up and you have created your phi you will want to adjust your falloff zones. however before I tell how, be sure you are not making a common poser modeling mistake. Its not so much as a goof as it is a contributer to making you perform more work than you have to. if you model a figure, such as this one...it should be modeled totally unposed. That is..its limbs should all be pointing straight up..let poser do the posing..not your modeling program. The reason being, that if you create a figure that is laying on a plane (x y or z) when you convert the heir file, poser will do almost all the work for you..no falloff zones to worry about. If you do it as you have above, you have to manually go in and set each joint yourself which can be frustrating and time consuming. ok, that said... convert your heir file..if you make the above model in an unposed state and have the heir setup correctly, you will be done now..however..if not you have to go farther. *once you have converted your heir file **put the center of each group in the bend center..poser will have it off the the side ***if you make a model in a "posed" position you will have to do the following: ****after you put the centers where they belong, ****click 'align' on each joint so that the actual axis runs along your model and instead of along the xyz planes make the red line point down..and the green lines point up. (everything beyond green moves 100%, everything behind red does not move, the areas between are the blend zone) btw, to get good joints, keep in mind that falloff zones only affect the object and its parent. If the green or red lines (or spherical falloff zones) extend beyond these areas you will get odd looking deformations during posing. BT