Does anyone know if there are any tutorials out there which explain inner and outer mat spheres and what you are supposed to do with them to fix funkiness in your poser clothing? I've come up against these devils and I have no clue what to do.

Joint parameters There are a few around, but the big thing to remember is that they work on the same principles as the little x thingies -- red is no bend, green is full bend, and where they overlap is partial bend. I've always liked ClintH's tutorial for a start to jp's (dig through the offsite tutorials through the tutorial link at the top) beyond that, It's been trial anderror for me, but htere are some good ones at Poser Pros, if you have the patrience to dig for them :)

There are three polygon selection sets (for JPs) in Poser, all of which use inclusion/blend/exclusion zones: Mantra: A Child affects its parent and itself (Period). 1. Line: You'll see these on Twists and they denote the start and end of the 'twist' blend zone. Everything beyond the green end twists 100%, everything beyond the red end twists 0%, and everything inbetween is on a linear scale from 0 - 100% (blended). Think of the ends as two planes perpendicular to the twist bar and remember the mantra above. 2. Four Planes: These are the "Joint Angles" and denote inclusion/exclusion zone boundaries. Again, everything beyond the red zone (static A/D) does not move, everything beyond the green zone (dynamic B/C) does move, and everything inbetween is blended. Think of the four lines as four planes extending infinitely (and remember the mantra). 3. Mat Spheres: These are really ellipsoids which denote the same thing as the others, sort of. innerMatSphere is the green inclusion zone and outerMatSphere is the red exclusion zone (unless where it might intersect the innerMatSphere). Everything inbetween these two ellipsoids is blended. Here, the mantra is still in effect. The spheres, em, ellipsiods are bounded 3D objects - not infinite planes. The idea here is to control the polygon selection and blend zones more finely (and more organically, one supposes) than 2. Kuroyume

It can help to look at the figures you get with poser ( posette etc ) to see how the spheres work in these figures.

Thanks for the info. I'll sit and try to digest it (it's all very technical ;-) I have a pair of puffy pants I'm working on which have fairly large legs and I tried turning off the spherical zones, which seemd to work okay and I re-saved the CR2, but then when I went into it again and tried posing it a different way, it didn't look right. I tried messing around with the zones last night and I roughly made the red and green spheres the same size and location, is this not the proper way to do it? I see it has something to do with inclusion areas and exclusion areas? I think I pretty much made them into long ovals that encompassed each pant leg.

They aren`t usually the same size, look at the p4 male or female trousers to see how the mat spheres should be done.
You can have them loaded in at the same time as the clothes you are making and swap between the two in the joint editor to make the mat spheres right.

Message edited on: 08/24/2004 10:05

Right, xantor. The green spherical zone should cover the area that you want to bend 100% (for the referenced body part and its parent). Everything within the green sphere zone will rotate as a unit during bends/twists (just like your entire lower leg rotates when you bend your knee). You don't have to cover children of the body part as they are automatically bent/twisted because of the hierarchy (and are not affected by their parent's falloff zones). The red spherical zone covers the area that you want to blend between 100% (from the green zone perimeter) and 0% (to the red zone perimeter). This is why they are referred to as Spherical Falloff Zones. Everything on the particular body part and parent outside of the red sphere (and green sphere) is unaffected by joint bends/twists (0%). Everything from the green sphere perimeter to the red sphere perimeter is for smooth (instead of hard jagged) deformations during bends/twists. You must decide what you want to fully bend/twist, not bend/twist, and how much inbetween for proper stretch and compression (the falloff zone). HTH

I take it your not creating a CR2 from scratch? if so you really just need to scale up your Spheres, but rather than use the scale dial use the X, y or Z dials depending on the body part.....as an example on the shin increase the scale on the z and x axis but not the Y (the Y will effect the thigh you see) then the same on the thigh.....fiddle and tweak a bit then maybe adjust the Y scale, but if it does need tweaking it never (IMHO) needs as much as the other 2 axis.......if it was the Shldr you'd increase on the Y and Z but not the X as this would effect the Collar....Steve