Ideas - Upgrade To My PropGoto+

Firstly a bit of background...

Q: What's the problem with a smartprop?
A: A smartprop only works with the figure it was created for, and you have to then go and find the hand pose.

As a user I was fed up with props that only had smartprop versions for a single figure, usually V4. So I decided that every hand-held prop I made would automatically work with a wide range of figures. It wasn't as hard as I thought to get the basics working. A few months back I wrote a small script (both PoserPython and DAZ Script versions) to let me put my first handheld prop (my simple dha, a S.E.Asian sword) into any* figure's left or right, parenting the prop to the correct hand, and applying an appropriate 'Dha Grip' hand pose. I also created individual hand poses for each figure - some were good, most were okayish, a few were bad.

I sneaked this little script out as part of my 'South East Asian Duel' freebie - in both 'Smart+' prop (for loading a new prop into the scene straight into the figure's hand) and 'PropGoto+' (for moving a prop that's already in the scene) variants.

My 'South East Asian Shields' were designed so that when the props are loaded into Poser/DAZ Studio the handgrip is the same size, position, and orientation as the handgrip of the original dha prop, i.e. a cylinder about 1" diameter by 4-6" length, oriented as below (screenshot from Blender, so axes are not like Poser/DS):

(N.B. The 'x/y/zOffsetA/B' and 'origin' values in the PP2 file must also  be set to zero so that all rotations are truly around the origin).

It works beautifully - using the 'Smart+ Shield' props (or the old 'PropGoto+') they load into the hands of any of those 28 figures and the figures hand closes around them beautifully.


So why not expand this idea for use with other props? That's one of the things I'm working on. The problem is that most props don't load into the position I've chosen, and the PP2s of most props have non-zero 'x/y/zOffsetA/B' and 'origin' values.

The answer turns out to be incredibly simple...

...to be continued!


*Well, any of the 28 figures I had at the time...

- DAZ Gen 3: Aiko 3, David, Hiro 3, Laura 3, Luke 3, Michael 3, Stephanie Petite 3, The FREAK, The Girl, Victoria 3.
- DAZ Gen 4: Michael 4, Victoria 4 (should work with all variants, e.g. Aiko 4, etc)
- DAZ Gen 5: Genesis (base figure),
- Poser 5: P5 Don, P5 Judy.
- Poser 6: P6 James, P6 Jessi, Miki 2.
- Poser 7: G2 James, G2 Jessi.
- Sixus 1:  Behemoth, PH Female, PH Male.
- Others: Antonia, Apollo, F202 Dollie, Kirwyn's K, MayaDoll.