Small disclaimer: I'm actually a P12 user, but I've been told here is where all the cool and knowledgeable kids hang out, so...

Over the past year or so, I've been playing with an old figure, Antonia, that some may remember. She was made before weight-maps became a thing in Poser, and so she has a MouthOpen morph in the head actor to go with the jaw x-rotate, but no support for the other jaw movements.

I'd like to change that, and my provisional plan is to create a weight-map for the x-rotate, than copy that over to the other relevant jaw movements (I'm thinking y-rotate, z-translate and y-translate), make any tweaks necessary for the individual movements and finally add bulges and JCMs where necessary.

Once everything works, I'd also like to create an injection pose with all the changes that can be loaded into the regular CR2s.

General question: does that sound like a reasonable plan, and what are the dos and donts that I should be aware of?

More specific questions:

- Is copying weight maps between channels a good idea? Will it work? Anything I need to be aware of? Is there a way to do it directly in Poser, or do I need to edit files (no problem if it's the latter, just wondering).

- Do joint setup changes in injection poses work? If so, what do I need to be aware of?

Thanks in advance!

To partially answer my own questions, I've been pointed to this document about injecting weight maps: https://www.posersoftware.com/article/551/weight-map-injection. There's a vague hint that this might be easier in more recent Poser versions, but it looks easy enough to me as it is.

I tried merging zones to weight maps on Antonia's jaw actors. Didn't work. Beyond my technical knowledge I'm afraid. I will say that you should strongly consider rotation limits in the jaw actor/JCM combo. There's absolutely none in Ant 1.2... that is of course unless you want me to have some hilarious wire frame animation fodder lol.

I'm kidding :)

I'm thinking that certain channels in Antonia's jaw actors have been deleted, similar to eye rigging method. But this is just a guess that I came up with in lieu of the merge zones failure.

I'd be keen on your thoughts or explanations... always interested in learning something new.

Yes the copy paste between channels exists in 11.

I also had some trouble, at first. But then I changed the axis order in the joint editor, changed it back, and everything worked nicely. I don't want to show my current weight maps because they're still in their awkward phase, but I assure you they exist.

Yes, I think the channels were probably deleted. I can check in the CR2 if anyone needs to know. :-)

Cool. Glad it isn't just me. Thanks for clarifying that.

These are typical channels that would be excised. This is from Teyon Alexander's advice. Lesbentley has similar, almost identical, though slightly different method. I know he was involved somewhat with Antonia. I misspoke earlier I meant the head actor.

Just for posterity and esoterica...