Well, I figured Id put this up some place, coz its a handy thing to know (and remember, if you’re senile like me lol) This basically turns something that conforms into a parented “figure” instead.

So why on Earth would u ever want to do this? Well, in the cases of Helms that are conforming, or hats and such, you might want to. You see, when you conform a helm or a hat to V4, it deforms with her head movements. And no amount of joint editing or falloff adjustment makes it work like it should (that being, not deforming with her head movements and staying with her head instead) If you have extra posing parts coming off it? You’re even more screwed, as they will not pose correctly at all, and you’ll end up with that part being “stuck” while the rest deforms into mush. In order to make it so its stationary, but also keeps its functions (like posable parts, etc) you need to trick poser into believing its a posable prop – a weird hybrid between prop and figure.

Sooo, in order to do this trick, you need to change a few things in your CR2. For the sake of this tut, Im using a my War Helm from Vermillion Dawn since it was done this way, and the head is my target. Im also using this as an example, coz well… a skull would definitely not deform like it does when it is conformed, since its solid. So its a perfect example of why you want to do it this way instead.

After all your rigging is done, first, youre going to open your CR2 in something like Edit Pad, so you can see the code. Locate actor BODY. At the top, you will see the following code:

name    BODY
on
bend 1
dynamicsLock  0
hidden  0
addToMenu 1
castsShadow  1
includeInDepthCue  1
useZBuffer  1
parent UNIVERSE
creaseAngle 80

See where it says parent UNIVERSE? You need to change that to: smartparent head:1

Now, that its changed, don’t go loading it quite yet. Theres a few more tricks to this.

First off, if you loaded it in Poser right now, Poser would most likely crash. Why? Simply because its trying to parent itself to itself. This occurs when the parent is to head:1 and the instance numbers in your CR2 are also :1. You need to force it to see V4 as :1 and itself as :2. So youre going to change them all in your CR2 to :2, by doing a quick search and replace in edit pad. In the search field type :1 and in the replace field type :2. Then hit replace all. Note, this is also going to change the parent u just added to :2 – you will need to change that back to :1.

Also, so this trick will work in DS, you need to do another thing. Type “conforming 1” in your search field, and hit enter. It will take you to a line that says just that. Change the 1 to a 0. This will make it so it doesn’t auto conform in DS (and thereby, overrides the conforming function completely, so it parents instead)

Finally, the last part to making this work right. Poser will automatically omit the BODY on this, coz it sees it now like a prop and props do not have BODY actors. So any FBM’s for morphs you have will disappear altogether on you. That is, if you make the BODY the node for your FBM’s. DS’ Morph Loader Pro and ERC freeze will allow you to choose what node you want for your FBM’s. So instead of choosing the default root of the figure in DS (named after the figure name) (aka BODY in Poser), you’re going to change it to head.

Sadly, you cannot choose where to put the FBM in Poser, when making FBM’s…. so in there, youre kind of stuck just doing them like normal, and then manually changing them in edit pad or some equivalent. Thankfully, fixing them is simple. Open the CR2 in edit pad, and locate the ERC code on each morph (search for “valueOpDeltaAdd” to find the first of five lines of ERC code) You only need to change the BODY:1 in the ERC code to head:1 instead (also pretty simple using search and replace all – just copy the ERC lines and paste in the search field and in the replace field… then change the replace field to head:1 – hit replace all. Note, do not just search and replace BODY:1 – its important to include part of the ERC code in your search/replace parameters, or you will only end up replacing ALL with head:1 and it will break the CR2)

Also note, if you have Easy Pose rigged into the figure, you also need to make that node the head as well. Since Easy Pose is basically ERC controls, they function just like FBM’s – and if you make the Body the node, it will disappear like the FBM’s for the morphs.

Now, when I go to load my War Helm, it poses with her head as it should (being fully stationary) YET, the jaw still hinges and the posable parts still move as they should. All the FBM’s/Easy Pose dials are located on the head, so people can still use full body morphs and EP to control the entire figure (even though Poser has now omitted the BODY actor completely) Be sure to note the head is the node in your readme or something, so people know to use it instead for the FBM’s.

Keep in mind, should you need to save the figure again, Poser will default the code back to the way it should be, and you will have to do this all over again. Its pretty simple, though, so no big deal if it happens. But if you don’t wanna have to keep redoing it, its best to leave this step for last.

Lastly, this has been tested and works in P4, P5, P6, P7, and PP2010. It also works in DS2, DS3 and DS3 Advanced. It works on multiple instances of V4, with multiple instances of the parented figure.

And that’s all there is to it…..