i am building a figure for poser inspired by the daleks from dr. who however i am lost when it cones to setting up the joints.in short HELP!!!! if some one can point me in the right direction or help me understand it i would be forever in that persons debt .

besides the number of bones, it shouldn't be to difficult compared to any other figure, not sure what your after, but if you want to bend the joints without deforming the mesh on the joining body part (more mechanical than organic bend) the easiest way that I've found is to put a "joint bone" in beteen each section, with no mesh asigned to them. if it's a different problem your facing, perhaps a specific example would help get an answer for you good luck :)

Which version of Poser do you have? If you've only got version 3 you can do what The 4th Party said by creating a simple object where the joint is, make it the child of the section behind, and the parent of the joint itself, and then make it invisible once the figure pops into Poser. Have to agree though, nobody reading your post will know what you do or don't know already, try telling us what you can do so far, and at what point you get stuck? regards peejay

i use p4 , and feel that i am in over my head . the manual is pretty vague on how the joint params work.what i get when is body parts falling off when i move the parts with the rotate dialsi dont get this part of building figures

a couple of things to do: Examine (do not modify) the joints of the businessman or any other stock character to get a feel for how to set up joints. Look at Bloodsong's tuts here There are enough references on the joint parameters to keep you informed (and confused) for years, but if you take good notes you shouldn't have too many problems - TJ(who keeps losing his notebook)

You can create a figure with the Hierarchy Editor. Before you begin use your modeling program to divide the mesh in to appropriately named body parts and export to OBJ format.

In Poser import the OBJ and with the grouping tool "spawn props" you will have a poser prop for each body part now plus the origina OBJ you imported. Delete the obj you imported leaving all the body parts alone. DONT MOVE ANYTHING

Open the hierarch editor and start sorting out the body parts. Drag the parts into the correct order and parentage. Save the collection of organized parts as a fall back point.

In Poser 4 you also must set the rotation order before creating the figure. The first axis is always the twist and should be on the long axis of the object. Sometimes this is a hard call because the object is at an angle. In this case consistancy is the order.

Click the Create New Figure button. It will go into the new figures library.

Now for the fun! Load the figure you created in a new scene. Each joint will need its start and end points set. The angle of the origin (This fixes those funny angled parts you weren't sure which axis should have been first on. Set it up so the twist runs right down the middle of the limb.) The gimbal angles and fall off zones....

Whew this is more for a tut than a forum thread... Look here for help with joint setup Clothing

Just getting back into this I refreshed my memory on this recently.

Everything Nerd said is just the way I just did it to set
up a stickman just a couple of days ago. Nerd's one of the best!

A lot of people still use phi builder to set rotation order in P4, but I think you can avoid using it by using the heirarchy editor and including the parameter dials and setting the rotation order that way when you set the heirarchy.

Page 319 of the P4 manual has the names as they appear in a hierarchy (with a std rotation order)but with six legs you'll have to rename them anyway and you'll have to play with the rotation order some. BTW that's how he came out without messing with the joint parameters. (He's gonna be called Luke StickWalker when hes done)

"Boning" issues aside for the moment, that is one fascinating interpretation of a Dalek, Bluto! Is it for a private project or do you plan to release it? (Please, release it; please, release it; please, release it!!!) Before it devolved into the "less than well received" movie for the Fox network, Speilberg had a hand in a developing "Doctor Who" project. One discussion (okay, rumor) that arose was a redesign of the Daleks to make them more menacing. The one idea that permeated many threads was the inclusion of spider-like legs. I've seen several fan designs, but this one better captures the essence of a Dalek than many. If I wore a hat, I'd tip it in your honor! Great design! Sincerely, Bill

Tempt the Hand of Fate and it'll give you the "finger"!

I'd use phi builder, it's easier to chain stuff up quicky and you can assign the rotation orders there too. Also, looking at the figure, it appears to be non organic, so to make life simple, you can turn off the bending on the body parts. If you'd like, I'd be happy to take a look at the model and see if I can put it together for you. Take a look at www.beyondbent.com in the free stuff section and see the cymech and mechalien figures, they are non-organic and have the bending turned on the limbs. I leave the bending on for fingers. Davo