Since the Poser programmers left the "hair" thingy and the code for joint controlled morphs in the code base, I began to wonder what else might be there. So I went bit-diving through the Poser4 binary. A few interesting things popped out: - there are some text strings which refer to an Adobe Illustrator plugin. From the content of the strings, it looks like both import and export were planned. This might be as simple as importing splines for the Walk Designer (can Poser import Illustrator splines somehow?) - In addition to the standard Channel labels ("xScale", "Twist", "Bend", etc) there is one I don't recall seeing: "Fatness" - There were "Gun Point" and "Pinky Point" hand poses which did not make it into the product, though strings for them are still embedded in the program. - There are a number of references to the "Canon", which apparently changes all scale and taper values on a figure somehow. It can also do it for all frames of an animation. - There are also some references to "Treemaker", which DEL recently pointed out is the hair thing. - It has dialog boxes to display the current contents of the Clipboard (this one is probably a debugging hook for the programmers) - It has Font, Size, and Style menus buried in it, which is interesting only because there isn't anywhere in the program where you can enter styled text. I wonder what they were planning to do with the Font support, or if this was a remnant of a standard Application shell? - There is a fascinating menu with Sharp, Bristles, Very Soft, Soft, Less Soft, and Slanted selections. I don't know what it is for. - There is a dialog box to control "SMOOTH SHADING PARAMETERS", which can control the Diffuse strength, highlight strength, the use of a color map or bump map, and whether to antialias. If I understand it correctly, the smooth shading mode most of us use to pose things interactively has the capability to do more than the basic coloring it now does.

Sharp, Bristles, Very Soft, Soft, Less Soft, and Slanted? ^That kind of sounds like Fur or hair. The mind boggles at what "Canon" might be for. It would be nice to have more capability in shading. Multiple layer textureing would be nice.

Well, I can clear up the mystery on the Sharp, Bristles, Very Soft, Soft, Less Soft and Slanted items. Those are part of the sketch designer. They are controls for items that allow you to configure the type of sketch you want. Not many people use this aspect of Poser, myself included, but I've tinkered with it a little bit. Kate

Wow, nice bit of detective work there Geekholder. "Fatness" I can figure out grin but "cannon" sounds very interesting. Paul

cannon? well they obviously were planning in advance for the jar-jar poser model SewerRat

All this sounds veeeery interesting. It hints at some of the things that I would like to see in poser but were never put in. One thing is that I don't know why they didn't include a way to put text into the pictures. I also would use the sketch part if it wasn't so hard to figure out. I have never got anything but a scribble after hours of fiddling with the dials... Any other goodies laying buried beneath the Poser skin? butch

{- It has Font, Size, and Style menus buried in it, which is interesting only because there isn't anywhere in the program where you can enter styled text. I wonder what they were planning to do with the Font support, or if this was a remnant of a standard Application shell?} Maybe this ties in with the Adobe plug-in? Perhaps they were working on something to allow Adobe text-handling in Poser scenes?

The torus prop primitive currently contains the "Fatness" dial. Pinto

The "cannon" thing is obviously one of the settings for the penile morph on the male P4 figure. The other end of the scale is the "wiener". Thats also where the "fatness" thing comes in. Originally there were two dials controlling the penile morph (length and fatness) before Zygote removed it..

I still reckon that 'Treemaker' is an escapee from Painter! Exact same menu style, slider controls etc. And why can't they put in a Hierarchy Panel that we can pull open. It's SOOO frustrating dicking around with that thing! maclean

Canon Type is listed in the cr2

Steve Cooper told me the cannonType field is the number of heads high the figure is set to. Basically outdated, or so I was told.

Canon is left over all the way from Poser 1, wasn't worth the effort of removing. The fonts thing is pretty fascinating! Dan