Hi I made a prop, it is an interior door which i need to animate so it swings open and a figure walks through the doorway.
I have seen doors where the artist has made the opening functionality a morph ( crank the morph dial, door opens to whatever degree)
Anyone got a tip for hoiw this is done? I was going to try something simple like:

 open the scene with the door in it ( closed position)

use twist, translate to get the door in the open position ( still lined up on its hinges properly),

and then save the door in this open position as a morph target.......

however I do not know if translate and twist settings  are parameters  that are recognized  in a morph target. In other words,i do not think this morph will change the position of the door, becaue morphs only consider changes in the mesh. I am not on my home PC  so I cannot try this myself right now.
does anyone know how i can make the door open with  a dial?

Thanks

you will just need to change teh center point in teh joint parameters of the object, then use the yrotate to open and close the door...no need for a morph.

I think I'm correct in telling you this, but not certain in Poser.
Rotate your door so that it's in the open or final position
Export it's obj file but do not check "as morph target (no world transformations)" because in this case you want world tranformations (the rotation).
Use parameter dials (properties) load morph target, give it a name and you will have a dial to open and close the door.

You do NOT want to use a morph target (MT) to make a door open on it's hinges.

If you do, the door will appear distorted between the 0.000 and 1.000 values of the morph parameter.

What you need to do is set the door's "origin" where the hinges are located and then use the yRotate parameter to make the door open and close.  Now the door (object) will not get distorted when it moves between the open and closed positions.

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

What you're seeing in those doors is either a renamed axis for rotation, or a slave morph, where a single dial affects several other dials in some way.
I'ld go for the renamed axis, unless it has some sort of mumbo jumbo mechanism to open/close.
What I'ld do is, 

• import the jamb and the door itself independently (that is, import as two files, not one).
• Parent the door to the jamb
• With the joint editor window, move the pivot of the door so it coincides with the door's intended ummm swivel point. Could be easier to do from the Top camera
• Investigate which rotation axis will open the door, and rename that to open/close.

Now if you want to go deeper, you can also set the rotation limits for the door.
Even deeper, edit the cr2 to force the limits on that dial.
Even deeper, make a slave dial to control that.
Even deeper, make the dial control the knob, then open the door, then return the knob to the "resting position"

It all depends on how deep you want to go.

As to how to incorporate the slave dials? Check for cr2 tips and tricks threads in this forum, or ner3d tutorials on the net. Or buy the Poser bible: Secrets of Figure Creation with Poser 5.

Attached Link: Learn How To Make "Dr Geep's Door"

Sort of ....... like this.

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

Your right Dr geep it does cause distortion. I just tried it on a doorway I recently made, the distortion however is not really noticable untill you exceed 90 deg rotation

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

Dr. Geep seems to have explained bit more graphically what I was writting.
Cheers for Dr. Geep!

Yes, that is correct because an MT changes an objects geometry between 2 specific values of the MT, i.e., 0.000 and 1.000 and all of the affected vertexes will move in a linear fashion between the 2 values.  This may cause distortion between the 0 and 1 settings of the MT parameter. (see red line in image above)

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

Thanks Dr Geep. Ya as I watch the door during it's movement it does not follow an arc and after your explanation that makes sense because there is no "rotation info" being provided.
It's interesting how sometimes we see what we want or expect to see. I had made this doorway and tested it and I thought it was working perfectly, obviously it's not.
Chris

Hi Chris,

Epilog ...

You CAN use an MT to move something like a drawer because it moves in a straight line but for anything that rotates, using an MT is a no-no. ... ;=]

Glad to help.

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

The sin of using a morph to open a door is closely related to to the sin of trying to translate an eye with a morph!

Thanks  everyone -  and  thanks  DG  I like your  tuts

maybe  what i saw on some doors  that i have used  was not a morph  dial,  perhaps  i missed the fact it was just an axis rotate dial ( where the axis had been migrated)

oops.

you folks are HARD CORE !

;-)

Thanks santino,  ... ;=] ............... glad you like 'em.

Yes, on later versions of Poser, one can change the name of a parameter dial from, say, "yRotate" to "open/close" or something similar.  We can, also, change the order of the parameter dials just by clicking and dragging a dial to a new (higher or lower) position on the display.

cheers,
dr geep
;=]