hi there, I hope I'm posting this in the correct part of this forum.

short introduction: I've started working with 3D art a few years ago. I'm currently working with Poser 11 pro and blender 2.81 I've learned how to model, UV map and texture 3D assets and wanted to learn how to create some rigs in blender. So far, I've managed to rig a few simple items to use in poser, like a rope, a swing, a crocodile like tail and a sci-fi rifle, so I can say I do know the basics about rigging and weightmapping, but that's basically it. I don't know much about remeshing and whenever I think I finally got it, a month later I learn that my last mesh was far from optimal to rig ^^'

my problem: I want to learn how to model and rig more complex stuff like faces and whole characters, but everytime i sculpt for example a face and port it over to poser, it doesn't work properly. I set the Skinning method to "poser unimesh" in order to be able to add subdivision levels, but in some areas, the mesh just breaks appart and i have no idea why.

here's a picture of a sort of swamp imp. the fins on the top of the head as well as the tongue and the lower jaw have all bones (plus the head of course). when I move the tongue, everything works fine. moving the fins is fine in some areas, in some not. closing the jaw though breaks the mesh in two halves...

what am i doing wrong ? thanks for any advice

PS: I'm exporting from Blender as FBX (I don't change any options besides activating "selected objects" so only my selection is being exported. i select the rig and the mesh, nothing more)

make sure you have bend checked in the properties of the actors. It needs to be set 1 level above/below, in the hierarchy, of each actor you want affected. So for head you would need to have it enabled for neck/head/jaw. And so forth. Of course you will also have to adjust joint parameters to affect how far each actor is affected. You do not want it turned on for the eyes though, as it would warp the head when you try to turn them.

Poser has different hierarchy rules than Blender. It appears the jaw is a child of the neck and the head. Poser doesn't do that. A body part in Poser can normally only have one parent. If the head had a row or two of polygons that when all the way to the neck and the jaw only touched the head, it's parent it would work. Sibling body parts can not touch.

P.S. There are hacks to get around this but that's not recommended.

thanks for the quick reply!

though I'm not entirely sure if I understand correctly. So it appears to be a problem with the hirarchy, but I didn't intentionally parent the bones to two other bones. I only extruded a jaw-bone from the head-bone by pressing E. Here are screenshots of the hirarchy inside poser and the bone arrangement inside blender. the weird thing is, that the mesh only breaks appart when i set the skinning method to poser unimesh, on "simple bones single skin - interoperable" it works fine...

the "bend" option in the properties is checked on all bones. the eyes are seperate spheres and only parented to the head, they're not part of the rig.

bump (?)

so did i misunderstand something or is the hirarchy not the problem after all? am i perhaps missing something ? do you guys need more / other information from me?

i can also provide the .blend file so anybody can try and see if they can find a solution on their computer.

this is the last time i'm bumping up the thread. if nobody can answer the questions after this point, i'll give up on trying to use poser's unimesh skinning method. not being able to subdivide isn't too tragic, but i've noticed a bunch of figures i've bought on turbosquid have the same problem.

Looks like the Jaw group is connected to both the Head and the Neck group. That's probably why you have this breaking. If it's connected to Head group only then this break would likely dissapear.

As above.

Also, for the inevitable headaches when and if you decide to rig the eyes...

https://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2865446#msg4053276

Head is child of Neck, Jaw is child of Head. Not included but Tongue should be child of Jaw, Ear Fins children of Head, as too the Eyes. You'll probably need to create temporary anchor bones to stop the parent from being dragged out of whack when you draw out children bones... least that's what I've done in the past.

thanks for the replies! i'll look into it and change the weight maps and bones to fit better into the head.