Quote - BTW, I wouldn't spend too much time perfecting the non-weightmapped rig unless you need him to be fully backwards compatible.

Thanks Joe. I've always liked how you aren't afraid to speak your mind regardless, even when we don't agree on certain issues. 

 

I'm open to making him backwards compatible, at least some version of him. I think what I'm trying to do actually is possible in older versions of Poser, but ironically it would make him more complicated for using in pre-p9/2012 versions. But I'm still working that out so I can't make any promises or definitives right now.

Rigging him the standard way right now has a lot to do with how his design works in conjunction with his mesh. Without a well-refined base rig and geometry, it will make things more complicated in later stages of his development even with weightmaps, so I'm trying to get everything as accurate as possible from one stage to the next as I progress with it. 

Innitial rigging also leaves open the possibility of making him backwards compatible, so that's another benefit to how I'm going about it. 

And, the ability to pose him in his current stage of development, even without his anatomy finalized at this point, actually helps me work on the anatomy and adjust the rig at the same time. But that's mostly a personal decision because it makes my workflow easier.

For the most part right now I'm focusing on the mesh and how it interacts with itself and the rig. It may seem anal and seem to take longer than it should but that's how I do it because that's how I was trained. 

 

~Shane