I have a general question for Poser4: If I have a model that wears clothing whenever I select on a body part I nearly always get the clothes selected instead of the underlying body part which is usually not what I want. Is there a way to disable selectability on entities?

Make the clothes invisible while posing. Unfortunately, this solution is embarrasing if someone (like the wife) looks over your shoulder while you are working! I find the Hierachy window good for toggling the invisiblity of objects rather than selecting each one individually and changing the properties.

What you can do is select whatever part you want and then look under your picture. There's a list where it (lleftmost) says Figure 1 (or Koshini or something else) if you have the character selected and also says Figure 2 or something if it's the clothes. Then you just select Figure 1 instead of 2 and the same part is now selected on your character. But AFAIK there's no way to disable selection.

Try selecting by clicking on the body part name in the Hierarchy window rather than the figure in the Document Window.

Selecting the part from these menus isn't any good when you are trying to pose a character using the mouse. As soon as you try to move, say, the leg, you end up selecting the trousers. If that's what you are trying to do, then you need to make the other parts invisible while posing.

Hi, thanks for those answers. Selecting from the drop down list/hierachy window is always possible but just adds a couple of clicks to the process which I wanted to avoid. Making clothes invisible is also problematic especially if the underlying body parts are partially invisible too. Is there a way to do this more easily in Poser5? Thanks, Eric

Nope! Well not that I know of. You are kinda asking the software to be telepathic as to what you want your mouse click to do. However, if you use the Hierarchy window (thanks for the spellcheck PhilC), it's very easy to toggle the invisibility and you can keep this window open while you work on the scene.

Once you have the body part selected, holding down the shift key while clicking/dragging will keep the little curser from jumping over to something else. You may also find that posing while in fast-track (box) mode at least to get to the rough position works well. Precise posing means going into the dials and getting comfortable with them. Suppose that you have a guy in a fuzzy sweater with his pet iguana or a fairy with a butterfly on her nose or a lady with a coffee cup... these are all instances where you will want to check each fingertip, wing angle, and tail drape and nudge them into place. Have you unchecked the IK chains? That helps, too. Carolly

Well I dunno about bizarro, but that tip will sure help me- thanks!

posing with the mouse is usually a bad idea ..things get very wonky very quickly. I hardly ever actually 'touch' the figure I'm working with. I use the bottom selection menus and the dials to change things. Much faster, with less accidents.

One thing that might help is to lock body parts that keep getting in your way. With the part selected, go to Menu/Object/Lock actor and that will freeze that part. Unfortunately, when you want to use it, you have to unlock it again. mac