Parenting alters the position of a character....

IsaacNewton

If I parent one figure (G8f) to another (G8f), the parented figure moves (or scales) relative to the figure I am parenting to. I have the scale value on both figures locked. I have the "parent in place" option checked.

This issue does not seem to occur with all G8f figures. Can anyone suggest what the problem may be and what to do about it?

Richard Haseltine

Please give a step-by-step description of how to trigger the issue. I suspect it's scaling, but I'm not sure.

IsaacNewton

I can't say much more:

Load figure 1 (G8f) with outfit 1.

Load figure 2 (G8f) with outfit 2.

Pose both figures next to each other.

Lock Scale on both figures.

Select figure 2 and select "Parent to", check "Parent in place" option.

Parent figure 2 to figure 1.

Result is that figure 2 moves relative to figure 1. I'm not sure if its a "movement" in the Y axis or a scale issue. It should not do either since parent in place is active and Scale is locked.

Leana

Maybe try parenting both to a null rather than parenting one to the other?

Richard Haseltine

So is figure 1 scaled? Or figure 2? or both?

chris-2599934

Don't lock the scales of the two figures before you parent them.

When you parent one figure to another, the scale of the child is determined relative to the scale of the parent. Here's an experiment to show that:

Create a 1m cube primitive, set its scale to 50%. Duplicate it, so you have two 50% scaled cubes. Position them so you can see both of them in your view port.

Now parent (in place) the second cube to the first. You shouldn't see any change in the viewport, but if you look at the cubes' properties you'll see that the child cube now has a scale of 100% - its scale is 100% of the scale of its parent, which is still 50%. Daz adjusts the scaling so the object doesn't change size.

Now unparent the cubes (the former child's scale will go back to 50%), lock their scales, and repeat the parenting operation. This time the child cube will shrink to half the size of its parent - because its scale is locked at 50%, and that's what that means.

Bottom line: it's usually best to unlock all an object's properties before you make it the child of some other object. Once you've got the parenting as you want it, you can lock them again.

IsaacNewton

Both figures are scaled a bit. I will try unlocking the Scale dials.

chris-2599934

Another thing you can do, because it can be useful to lock things to protect them from badly made poses, is put each figure in its own group.

So, to continue my cube example, unparent the cubes so they're each individually locked at 50% scale again. For each cube in turn, select it and create a group. Now parent one group to the other - the size of the cubes remains the same.

Putting your figures in their own groups has other advantages too:

If you remember, when moving them around a scene, to move the group instead of the figure, you don't have to worry about them jumping to (0,0,0) when you apply another badly made pose. The figure is already at (0,0,0) relative to the group, so there's nothing to change in that respect.

Also, you can toggle the visibility of the figure, their hair, clothes, etc. with just one click - make the group invisible and all its descendants are invisible too. That's not the case with normal figures.

IsaacNewton

Unlocking the Scale solved the problem. Obviously I did not understand how the Scale and Lock functions work in DS. Thanks for the info.

Thanks for the tip on making groups, I'll check that out too.

Richard Haseltine

chris-2599934 said:

Don't lock the scales of the two figures before you parent them.

When you parent one figure to another, the scale of the child is determined relative to the scale of the parent. Here's an experiment to show that:

Create a 1m cube primitive, set its scale to 50%. Duplicate it, so you have two 50% scaled cubes. Position them so you can see both of them in your view port.

Now parent (in place) the second cube to the first. You shouldn't see any change in the viewport, but if you look at the cubes' properties you'll see that the child cube now has a scale of 100% - its scale is 100% of the scale of its parent, which is still 50%. Daz adjusts the scaling so the object doesn't change size.

Now unparent the cubes (the former child's scale will go back to 50%), lock their scales, and repeat the parenting operation. This time the child cube will shrink to half the size of its parent - because its scale is locked at 50%, and that's what that means.

Bottom line: it's usually best to unlock all an object's properties before you make it the child of some other object. Once you've got the parenting as you want it, you can lock them again.

Not literally all, but perhaps not to blanket lock those which are not locked by default.