I don’t expect anyone to have an answer for this one. Explanations require science, and that in turn requires a stable universe where the laws have a consistency amenable to reason. Time and time again, I’m running into Poser witchcraft and I can hear the gods of chaos laughing.

 

Sure, I know that the really, really good Poser rigs are a result of years (yes years) of effort. Let’s consider that for a moment. Years… In my arrogance, ignorance, and yes, optimism, I thought I could create a good rig in a fraction of the time by falling back on joint controlled, partial body morphs to make up the shortcomings in Poser’s falloff zones system. I have the Daz Studio Setup tools, Morph Loader Pro, the property editor and Zbrush. I have time and the discipline of commitment, but there are some prices I’m not willing to pay, and that includes a rig that take years…

 

The Daz Studio Setup tools are quite good. They provide a better visual representation of the “dynamic” and “static” effect of the spheres. You can export a posed figure as an obj;  sculpt corrections in Zbrush and create joint controlled morphs with relative ease. However, when you export as a cr2, the perfection is lost. Distortions appear. Also, when you “stack” morphs, anomalies can occur.

 

To be specific, I was attempting to create a joint controlled morph in the collar, shoulder, chest and neck region, controlled by the z rotation to correct the distortion and create realistic deformations when an arm is lifted above the head. This required two morphs, one for each side of the body. Since the morphs included the chest, the chest would have two morphs applied to it when both arms are raised. In just about any other program, a morph is a vertex map that can be culled to exclude portions of a body part. In Poser, if an area is affected by a morph, the morph must include the entire body part. I think it was something in the stacking of the morphs that created another problem. I’m not equipped to prove that theory, though.

 

When the right arm is raised, a black spot appears by the neck and chest demarcation on the left side of the figure. Depending on the preview mode, this will either look like an indentation or two blackened polygons. This will not happen on the right side of the figure when the left arm is raised, despite the symmetrical object , symmetrical rig and symmetrical morphs. (Witchcraft!) In addition, the oddest thing occurs. While the right arm is down, the spot where the problem happens consists of the boundary of the neck and chest parts. When the arm is raised, the problem occurs between the chest and neck in two polygons that belong to nothing. In addition, the demarcation of the chest and neck changes to accommodate the fact that these polygons have been discarded.

 

I think I’ll do what I should have done years ago and stop wasting my time with this sort of frustration. I’ll try my hand at short films in Lightwave using low poly versions of my models with weightmaps and displacement for the surface details. Poser is for those who can’t afford any better or who can’t or don’t create their own stuff. I don’t fall into either category.

Download my free stuff here: http://www.renderosity.com/homepage.php?page=2&userid=323368