Creating Shrunken Characters

When you use Poser to do GTS pictures, you can use the "scale" parameter to make figures larger or smaller. Suppose you take a male figure and set the scale parameter to 10%, the entire figure will shrink, but the figure shrinks relative to the origin of the figure.

Typically the origin of the figure is somewhere around the belly button, so the "origin" of the shrunken figure is about three feet in the air. This becomes obvous if you place the shrunken figure on the floor and then use the rotation dials to orient the figure. You will find that the figure rotates around the original origin. If you apply a pose to the shrunken figure, you will find that the figure assumes the new pose, but is moved back to the origin, three feet in the air.

I have found that it is convenient, when creating shrunken characters to insure that the origin of the figure is at the appropriate place near floor level. This can be accomplished by moving the original figure down using the parameter dials until the origin is at the right level above the floor. Then change the scale to set the figures height to the appropriate size. You can save the figure in the library and it will retain the new size and the new location of the origin.

When you use a character created in this way, it will work well when used at floor level. If you want to use the figure on a table top, you can apply a similar procedure, but instead of positioning the origin of the figure just above the floor, position the origin just above the table top before shrinking. Then the character will behave correctly when you rotate or apply saved poses.

Using the hierarchy editor:
When applying conforming clothing, it is a good idea to use the hierarchy editor to make the poser figure the parent of the the clothing figure. That way, when you change the size of the parent figure, the clothing will be resized at the same time. This trick can save a lot of time, especially if several clothing figures are applied to the same human figure. For example, the shirt, trousers, and each of the shoes are sometimes each a seperate figure. Each of these can be made a "child" of the poser figure and they will all be resized at the same time. This can save a lot of time when creating a complex scene with lots of resized figures.

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