I'm trying to create a cartoon style horse for Poser4 and have run into an odd problem while trying to set up the joints. This is my first real attempt to do this, so hopefully this is a newbe mistake that's easy to fix. Here's what I've done so far:

1. I created the body in Anim8or
2. Imported it into UVMapperPro and assigned Groups
3. Imported the OBJ into PhiBuilder and created the hiearchy.
4. Opened Poser4 and selected "convert hier file"
5. Used the Figure tab to import the new character into the workspace.
6. Scaled it down to 1% so it will fit into Poser's worldscale.
7. Left the figure floating in place and started moving the rotation dials and... everything seems to fall apart.

I selected my groups on the X plane of UVMapperPro, so why is the first neck section trying to move with the head? There are other body parts that are doing the same thing - it's like the body's not quite connected. If I move the abdomen section, the chest stays in place and won't follow like it's supposed to.

I'm sure I'm missing a step, or doing something wrong, but what???

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Either the OBJ isn't welded, or, more likely, you need to have MenuDisplayBend Body Parts checked. It looks like you have a really good start, and congratulations on doing it the "old fasioned way" with a PHI file.

Hmm... No, the "bend bodyparts" is checked. What do you mean by "the OBJ isn't welded,"? The object is all one mesh, but did assigning groups in UVMapperPro split it somehow?

welcome to the exotic world of poser rigging! i guarantee you many hours of head scratching but persistence will be rewarded.

do the scaling first and move the obj to the floor, before anything else. much of the rigging will depend on where the figure is in poser space, so you want it properly scaled and placed (at 0,0,0) before all the hard work. export the properly resized and placed obj from poser and save this as the new base model.

second, you are correct -- you have missed a step. converting the phi gets you only so far in rigging your figure. it's really just a starting point. the real work is still ahead of you, that is, tweaking the blend zones for each axis of each joint, and creating spherical falloff zones where needed. specific steps to follow are difficult to provide; trial and error's the only technique available here. but you can check out the setups of similar figures like the poser horse for clues.

one more thing -- bodyparts that share the same name will be treated as one piece, so you may have mistakenly given some of your head polygons the name "neck" or vice versa. make sure the names of each part are unique. you might also follow the naming conventions poser uses for its horse, so your horse can use any poses designed for that figure.

good luck!

Message edited on: 06/20/2004 17:46

As Dave says, don't scale the figure on import. Make (or scale) your OBJ mesh the size you want it to be before Poser-ising it. Once you've converted the PHI hierarchy, open your newly created figure and save it back into the library before you do anything to it. You may have problems with the JP editor otherwise. Other than that, the Anim8or -> UVMapper -> PHI -> slaving over JPs route should work; it does for me. It isn't easy, though. ;)

Unwelded groups - means that the mesh vertices are seperate Not relevant but mesh imports from DXF format invariably have unwelded vertices It may be that regrouping in UVMapper split up the vertices Solution is to import the mesh into Poser with 'Weld' option checked - at the same time you could also scale down the figure as appropriate Kudos to you for modelling a beautiful cartoon horse - GreenWithEnvy :) Godspeed in adjusting the jointing params with the jointing tool