Kupa, how did you and the other Poser programmers arrange the alternate geometry lines for the hands in the original .PHI's for the Poser 2 Males & Females ? Can that function only be applied to JUST the hands, or is it applicable to all other body parts as well? For that matter, how did you arrange the genital function in the .PHI on the P3,4 & Mike male nudes ? Also, can the alternate geometry have a hierarchy in itself? (ex: a set of Human Female hips with an integrated, bendable cat-style tail) I am expirimenting with aspects of Poser custom figure building, (Call me Dr. Moreau... :D ) and would like to create a figure using this interesting function, but the CR2's are baffling me to no end... Lastly, a special, Poser 5 request: When you guys have finally gotten the Mac versions of P5 done & shipped, and have come up for a breath of well-deserved air...could someone please take the time to elaborate on the details on .phi & CR2 setup? So us experts-in-training will finally have THE definitive, detailed guide to further augment what the pros on our end have discovered to help us in our creative quests to fully maximize our use of Poser's version of the .obj format? The Poser 4 manual helped a bit...but not much. Any assistance on your parts would be appreciated... and I'm waiting with bated breath for the Mac OS 9 & X versions of P5...Please hurry! I'm turning blue over here! LOL...

You can apply geometry switching to any body part. The relevant lines are :-

alternateGeom lHand_2
{
name GetStringRes(1037,2)
objFile 1002 :Runtime:Geometries:maleHandsLo:lHandShape_2.obj
}

These should be placed just above the channels section for the respective body part. Look in the Poser 2 CR2's for a comparison. I don't think you can add extra hierarchy below that. The mermaid on my tutorial CD uses this method to add gills to her neck.

The genital function is similarly scripted. Its not set up using a PHI file

PhilC, Thank you. I'll try that tonight. One other question, though...Should I be concerned with the objFile number or the GetStringRes number? Do I have to change them in any particular way? That was one of the things that were bugging me last night.

The GetStringRes number is hard coded into Poser. If you name a body part using one of the preferred Poser names then the program will write it in automatically. Its there to allow different language versions of the program to be read more easily. For example if you name a part "head" Poser will give that a number. Now when someone using a German version of the program loads the file, Poser will read the number and assign the name "kopf" to it. Therefore just name the part using preferred Poser names if applicable and don't worry about the number.

For the OBJ file you will need to keep "objFile 1002 :Runtime:Geometries:" and add on your directory and file name. Note that Poser uses ":" for the separator. Also if you have more that one interchangeable option you'll need to number the next one 1003 and so on.

Sounds like you are going to get down and dirty in the depths of those CR2 files .... good luck :)

Yeah, If you hear mad screams from the East coast...It's probably me, LOL. I just want to absorb as much as I can. I have some moderately ambitious plans for my characters (Detailed human transforms into werecat), & it'll go a lot easier this way... Tho' I may be bald by then :D... I'm gonna see if I can order your CD, as well... As before, thanks again for the help... :)