FyreSpiryt opened this issue on Sep 19, 2004 ยท 12 posts
FyreSpiryt posted Sun, 19 September 2004 at 1:59 PM
Well, without file hacking on the end user's part, anyway.
Background
For those who don't have it burned into the back of their skull by staring at too much code, every remote-controlled morph has five lines of control code like this:
valueOpDeltaAdd
Figure 1
rCollar:1
zrot
deltaAddDelta -0.020000
The first line says "Hey, I'm remoted controlled!", the second line says which figure the controlling dial is in, the third says which body part, the fourth which dial in the body part, and the fifth is a number that Poser multiplies the controlling dial's value by to figure out the controlled dial's value.
And if it worked that way, all would be well and right in the Poser world. But of course, it doesn't.
In Poser 4, the dials largely ignored the figure lines and searched through whatever figures they could find and used those dials instead of the ones they were supposed to. This caused crosstalk, the problem where when you had several morphed figures in a scene, the later ones all looked like the first. On the other hand, it also allowed joint-controlled morphs in clothes to automatically follow the movements of a clothed figure, which is a good thing.
In Poser 5, this bug was at least partially fixed. When the control code Figure number is the same as the figure's number, both numbers are updated when the file is loaded and cross-talk does not happen. Unfortunately, joint controlled morphs doesn't follow, either. Now, you can hack a file so that the control code figure number is different then the figure's number. This will force Poser to look outside the figure for the control dial.
Again, if Poser would look to the figure number the dial is calling for, all would be good. But, it doesn't. It freaks out and latched the first dial it finds in another number. The problem here is if you're trying to conform clothes to a figure, and the clothing has the hacked control code that looks outside for a control dial. The first item of clothing freaks out, and latched onto the figure's dial. This is good, because when the base figure is posed then the clothing item's JCMs will trigger, and that's what we want it to do. Unfortunately, when the second item of clothing freaks out, it latched onto the first clothing item's dials. Conformed clothes joints don't change when the base figure is posed, so the second's JCMs won't trigger.
If you sacrifice a virgin calculator to the electronics gods during a full moon while doing the hokey-pokey and turning yourself about, sometimes you can get the second clothing to work. But it sure is a PITA.
The Good Part
I may have found a way to force multiple pieces of clothing to follow the base figure in Poser 5, without file hacking. I have free toolkits for M3 and V3 that include poses to connect JCMs when making clothing items.
http://www.shininghalf.com/desprit/downloads/V3Tools.zip
http://www.shininghalf.com/desprit/downloads/M3Tools.zip
I found that if you apply the JCM-connecting pose to a conformed piece of clothing, it will force it to look in Figure 1 for control dials, even if it's the second or later item loaded.
The Down Side