Attached Link: Knee Brace

Howdy,

I'm posting this both in this forum and the LightWave forum as the solution may lay in LW or Poser.

I recently constructed a kneebrace in LW for use with M3.  While it conforms very nicely to M3 in Poser, I noticed that at the hinge point it tended to distort upon bending.  I spoke with a friend of mine who suggested increasing the size of the InnerMatSphere.  While it did seem to help somewhat, the distortion for the most part is still evident.  Then again, my experience with the Joint Editor and InnerMatSphere manipulation is very limited, so maybe I'm simply not understanding his suggestion fully.  If anyone can offer a suggestion as to how to fix this distortion problem, or direct me towards a tutorial that addresses this type of problem, it would be greatly appreciated.

If you click on the attached link above titled "Knee Brace" you'll see an image displaying on the right side what the kneebrace looks like before it is bent and on the left side showing how the kneebrace distorts when it is bent.

Thanks in advance.

Combining stiff mechanical items with squishy organic things is a challenge for Poser's rigging, to say the least. At a glance, I'd say that the pivot point of the leg brace isn't at the same point as M3's leg joint bend center. If you go into the joint editor for M3's shin bend (not the brace) you'll see where the center point lies. You'll probably need to remodel the brace so that its joint is at the same place.

Once you have that right, you may still have trouble getting the joint parameters right - but better riggers than I can advise on that.

Oh, and if you meant to post this in the Poser forum - sorry, you missed. This is the 3D modelling forum. ;)

Oh (2) - you can add an image to your post by using the "Attach a File:" box below the Reply section.

Thanks EnglishBob.  I posted here as well because I didn't know if it was a LW issue or a Poser issue.  I originally used the "Attach a File" feature in the preview but the image was too small to read the writing it had so I used the link instead. 

Thanks for the input.  :)

Attached Link: Poser Technical Forum

I see from your post in the DAZ Forums that you have the pivot point sorted out now; but that turning off bending on the brace means it doesn't conform properly any more. This is similar to a problem I had a while back, and still haven't found a satisfactory answer.  One problem I found was that with bending set  "off", a lot of other things don't work either, including magnets; so I couldn't make any corrective morphs that way. If you can make the morphs by some other method, that might be your best bet. Rig the brace as an unbending mechanical item, but add morphs (possibly joint controlled, possibly not) to accomodate the way the figure's leg changes shape as it bends.

Anyway, your best place to post this would be in the Poser Technical Forum - or maybe the main Poser forum, although you should expect more answers of all sorts there, possibly including some misguided ones. ;) This forum is for general 3D modelling questions, and the Poser rigging experts won't necessarily frequent it.

By the way, when you attach a picture to a post, a reduced version is included in the thread so it loads quicker; but if your readers click on the image, it will be expanded into the full-size version.

Ah, you did post in the Poser forum. I'll stop trying to keep up now. :lol:

Thanks for all the help and suggestions EnglishBob, it's really appreciated.  :)