Your chain may only be only 350K while mine weighs in at 2.5meg, but mine is a real Swinger! Thanks for the tutorial Sams3D! My first poseable character!!

Question however about the PhiBuilder:
With the Groups being Mount-Chains-MainBody, I thought the hierarchy should be:
1-Mount->2-Chains->3-MainBody
But when I placed them this way the MainBody (part with candles) became the anchor point?
Even when I reversed it (1-MainBody->2-Chains->3-Mount) the Ceiling Mount still rotated with the chain?
To get it to work I had to make the hierarchy:
1-Chains->2-MainBody and left the Mount on its own.
As a result I have to move the character around by selecting Figure-Body when I thought I should be able to move it around by the Mount too?

Am I missing something about hierarchy or is this just the way it is?

Now on that same note, suppose I want to regroup the chains to separate the top string from the bottom support chains so it could have a more realistic swing at the Connector Rings?
If I had it grouped:
Mount-TopChain-ConnectorRings-SupportChains-MainBody
How would that stack into the PhiBuilder to achieve the Mount as the main anchor point with the TopChain swinging from it and the SupportChains swinging from the ConnectorRings and still keep the whole thing together?

If you go to phi builder and hit text you can cut and past your order, then save it, does that help. Sharen

I guess my question is in the Order of the hierach chain, which one acts at the 'Base' or 'Root' for the model. Compairing mine to the P4Rattle Snake I would have thought my "Mount" should have been at the Top like the "Middle" is for the Snake (or Hip for a human) but when I ordered them like that actually my "MainBody" became the 'Middle' (or Hip) of my figure? Here is how they compair now. So why did mine go the inverse of the P4Rattler?

Oh, and I did first try staking them "1-Mount->2-Chains->3-MainBody" but the whole thing separated from the Mount so I changed to what is pictured here now..

kind of lost, what did you want this to be like.

I'm trying to understand the hierach ladder of order. I thought that by making Mount the #1 Parent and parenting Chains as #2 then MainBody as #3 that the Mount would then be like the Hip of a human. Meaning that if I move the Mount (hip) the whole figure would move xyz. I thought this should have acted like your chest where the Chest was the 'base' or 'hip' of the charater, the Lid bends (open/close or 'swing' in my case) and the Hinge follow the Lid (or MainBody follow the Chains in my case) But instead, with this order the MainBody became the 'hip' and when the Chains was rotated the Mount followed while the MainBody remained stationary - the figure separated and at the wrong place? The pic above showes how I had to remove the Mount from the hierachy to make the MainBody follow the Chains and the Chains not move the Mount. However the whole figure still follows MainBody xyz but not when the Mount is moved xyz as I thought?

Okay, when you go to text mode you can first change the order by cut and paste of your object, then go back to tree and place your children, then your mount will be the parent of all...do you know what I mean. Sharen PS: cut and paste your mount to be on the top of the tree with the text button

Mount has to be on the top to be the body.

igohigh, I use PHI builder to basically just list the body parts, because if there are a lot, I'm too lazy to write them out. LOL. I just save whatever PHI B says, then open it in notepad and do my own hierarchy. It's a lot easier. So, a couple of things you might want to try. First, what is your rotation order? The default is normally XYZ, but for non-human figures, YXZ is probably better. Second - when you tried Mount/Chains/Mainbody, did you switch off bend for all body parts? Bend is a disaster for figures like this. Again, it only works well for humans. I can't see why that sequence wouldn't work. mac

Or my PhiBuilder is possessed!! I duplicated my first attempt that failed, But now it works??!! The Center is what I had when this thread began, the Right is another try I made using the Text Editor, the Left is what I tried originally but it wouldn't behave last night. I think Poser is trying to drive me insane. But the jokes on Poser, I'm Already NUTS!!

Let me ask you, after you do all this, you are deleting the rsr that is generated in the geometries folder right, because it will interfer with your object file. Sharen

So, is it all set now? Sharen

Actually, no. But I was naming them Candleier, Candleier2, Candleier3...? THANKS for pointing that out Sharen! I just did and WHOA, the size changed, joint perams changed - it got all messed up. I just reset everything and all looks fine now, thanks to your tutorial and help, and thanks for puttin up with my rambling ;p

I am glad to help....you did a wonderful job. Sharen