Parenting distorts model

[McThought]

I've built 2 bone hierarchies(Same layer) in modeller, upper body and legs which deform the model (character) appropriately in layout until I parent (in layout) the upper body bones to the leg bones. This distorts the model. This is affected by fall off type which if set to inverse~64 seems to restore the model to it's original shape. However, the upper body bones no longer affect the upper body mesh unless their strength is set very high (200,000) and then not in a predictable fashion. The leg bones still defrom the legs properly. Does anyone have any idea where I might begin to solve this?

Incidentally using an expression and a mediating null (between the pelvis and lower spine bone ) doesn't cause this effect but I don't understand the use of pos and wpos which I've seen in tuts to link items. I've looked at the online docs but I clearly am missing something because sometimes they follow and some times they don't.

thanks
McThought

[Dodgy]

Could you post the scene/model so I can have a look?

[McThought]

I've done some more work using earlier versions of the scene. I didn't take the precaution of aligning the pivots of the bones before parenting which if I do seems to avoid the problem. I am now 7 versions away and have tried resetting the pivot of the child bone with no sucess, both parented to the new bone (pelvis) and to it's orignal layer. I'm having problems with the rotate pivot tool which doesn't seem to rotate the whole pivot and simply generates gimbal lock.

Anyway I guess I'm going to have to retrace my steps but thanks for the interest.

In case Dodgy you are still interested I will post the scene and model files in a separate post as when I tried earlier the whole thing crashed.

thanks

[McThought]

Here are the scene and modle files

[McThought]

Sorry here are the scene and model files.

[McThought]

Sorry it doesn't seem to want to accept my attached files. I'll try again. Here is the scene file

[McThought]

Apologies I get a newtek database error every time I try to send the model in a zip file.