heyas;

   so i have this armor with shoulder/elbow/knee pads, and i thought... hey!  i should paint the entire pad in 50% weight, so like when the elbow is bent at 90 degrees, the entire elbow pad rotates around 45 degrees!  sounds smart, right?

   yeah, any help on how to make that a reality?  the only 'solid' colour i can get on the entire elbow pad is 0% (no dots).  i 'fixed' the joint X arms so the two green arms are on top of each other, and the two red arms are, as well.  so theoretically, the base joint parameters shouldnt be affecting the joint.  (yeah, right.)  so the elbow pad is a gradient from green to orange.  when i try to 'add' or 'subtract' weight from any part of it... nothing happens.

   today, i just tried the shoulder pad.  this time, i could get something besides a gradient painted on it (no idea what i did differently), but now i have patches of red dots in the green field.
   okay, just tried starting with the whole thing solid green, and painting it down from there, but i can't get the yellow dots to turn green at all.  i'm painting at magnitude 1, it doesn't get any stronger than that.
   the way i read the manual, 'add' means 'make more green' and 'subtract' means 'make more red.'  ainnit?  ::sigh::

  i know this is a new tool in poser and is bound to be primitive, but... !!!

   alternately, does anybody know of a way to import joint weight maps from lightwave or blender?  actually, i've never tried either programs weight map painting tools -- are they any more controlled?

gah!

The big problem is you will need to copy the joint centers to your model.  I think you are working the other way around.  Weightmap the figure model.

Blender's weight-mapping tools may offer a bit more numerical precision.  As with many tools in Poser, the weight tools are apparently designed to be intuitive, but also imprecise.  You can't be sure you're setting a vertex to a weight of .25, say, as you can in Blender.

But Blender's weights are in a different format, in a saved file, and would have to be imported using COLLADA (for which Blender export may or may not be fully effective... and does Poser import as well as export the format?  Umm.) or via a Python script.  Similar problems would exist when exporting weights from any other application.

Poser's weights are also more sophisticated than most in the industry, AFAIK.  Poser can have one or more maps and two bulges for each rotational axis, as well as maps for scaling (which may still be buggy at this time).  Blender, at least, offers only one map per joint.  So conversion from another program may not give ideal results in Poser (or at least not take full advantage of Poser's weight-mapping capabilities) even if such conversion can be accomplished.

Quote - So the elbow pad is a gradient from green to orange.  when i try to 'add' or 'subtract' weight from any part of it... nothing happens.

I'm trying to learn this WM stuff myself, and struggling. It seems to me that you need to fulfill three conditions before "something will happen".

1. There must be a weight map in existence for the parameter you are trying to adjust. If there is not one , you can add one via the "Add" button.

2. The "Active" check box must be enabled. This is the one that usually catches me out.

3. The "Paint" button must be active.

4. The painting tool you are using must have its Magnitude set high enough to have a noticeable effect.

If you have checked all the above and still nothing happens, close the Joint Editor, then re-select the actor, and open the JE again. I have a suspicion that in PP2012, the JE might sometimes loose focus on what it is supposed to be doing, and need restarting.