With scaling supposedly having been fixed in recent updates for Posers 9 and Pro2012, I have been working on updating my characters with more accurate body shaping using scaling for ScaleX, ScaleY, or ScaleZ as well as ScaleAll.  As I delve more deeply into this process, however, I am finding some strange behavior in conformed figures.  Even with "Include Scales When Conforming" in use, I am encountering inconsistent axial scaling between the conformer and its conform target.  Generally this isn't a problem but in cases where the surfaces of the two figures need to closely match it is proving to be a real hassle.

It looks to me like axial scaling, then, is either still buggy or its implementation is based on some undisclosed assumptions about how a conformed figure will be constructed.  In the past, conformers have only needed to contain actors with geometry plus, when appropriate, one further actor along each "chain", to provide anchoring.  So I have a bathing suit, say, which covers only the torso.  It has geometry for hip, abdomen, chest, and the collars.  It needs as anchoring actors the thighs, shoulders, and neck.  The conforming figure doesn't require hands or feet or head, much less fingers and toes, which allows for a trim conformer cr2 and (presumably) less overhead overall.

Is this sort of setup still acceptable, for use with axial scaling?  I have been testing a problem conformer and right now all signs seem to show that the inconsistent axial scaling resembles the problems seen in other cases when those anchoring actors aren't included in the conformer figure.  I begin to suspect that a more thorough anchoring setup is somehow expected by Poser, for proper axial scaling in the conformer.  I fear I may need to add those hands, feet, fingers and toes, all the redundant bits, in order to get proper handling out of this.

Has anyone tested this sort of thing?  Does anyone have observations or advice?  Any thoughts?  I will add junk actors for stabilization to all of my conformers, if I need to, but I'd rather not if there could be another solution to my problem.  Anyone?  Cage will try not to be as great a Grumpy Pants as he has been recently and will answer nicely. :lol:  

Well, huh.  It looks like this may be a peculiarity of Antonia, or Antonia-WM.  Possibly due to scale zone interference from helper bones.  :unsure:

This screengrab shows what happens.  Here, I have conformed one full Antonia-WM figure to another.  The Waist actor has been scaled up on Y.  As the actor is scaled, the torso actors of the conformed figure begin to rotate and offset.  The joint centers no longer correspond to those of the conform target, with both location and orientation having changed.  In the joint editor, no oddities are evident.  Yet, as seen here, the full torso chain of the conformer has pulled backwards on Z as the scaling is performed.  There are similar problems when the Waist is scaled on Z, but X-scaling causes no problems and global scaling of Waist also creates no oddities.  No other actor seems to cause scaling problems. 

 

Edit:

This is not a helper bone issue.  I thought I had tested with Antonia-WM, but I used Antonia-1.2, which has no helper bones and no overlapped actors with scale zone influences that might interact badly.  So this is some peculiarity of Antonia's rigging.  I'll have to dig to see what's going on.... :unsure:

The Andy mannequin figure also has a Waist actor, and I have tested the same setup, here.  One Andy is conformed to another.  The conform target figure's Waist has been scaled up on Y.  The conforming Andy has properly followed the conform target Andy, and no oddities are evident.

Back after more tests.  The problem I'm reporting is an Antonia-WM problem.  I had initially tested using two Antonia-WM figures with all extra information stripped out, including all helper bone data in the cr2.  The lack of helper bones confused me.  Possibly I need more sleep.  Ehm.

The problem occurs with Antonia-WM and conformers, but Antonia-1.2 does not have the problem.  As far as I can tell, the trouble results from an Endpoint mismatch somewhere.  I haven't tracked down the specific error, but it can be fixed by using a script to copy all endpoints from Antonia-1.2 to Antonia-WM.  I will report back for posterity if I track down the actual source of the problem.  :unsure: