My husband gave me Poser 5 recently. Since then, I have discovered this wonderful forum and am having a lot of fun learning how to model clothes for the DAZ characters. Needless to say, there is a lot to learn and I haven't quite gotten the steps down yet. I am keeping a Poser journal as I go in hopes that one day I will be able to post it here. It will contain all the problems I have faced as I learn how to model and the solutions I have found either from this forum or elsewhere. I thought it would be rather fun to find out from the Poser experts out there, what problems they encountered as the learned their "trade" be it modeling clothes, creating characters or making textures. So here is the point of this post, what was the most difficult learning experience you had and what did you discover, as you grew more skillful, that could have made that learning experience a whole lot easier?

My initial difficulty in using the Setup Room to create conforming items came as a result of not realizing that whatever figure I loaded as a joint-donor had to be zeroed first. And I don't just mean the rotation and scale dials ... the hip and body Trans dials have to be set to zero, also. I spent over a year not making conforming items until I figured this out.

My original purpose in using Poser was to build and animate educational illustrations. I had developed a crude system of bones, using just Windows line-drawings, which worked fairly well, but clearly didn't look right. So when I heard about Poser, I figured it would solve the problems I was running into...... Well, Poser looks a whole lot better than my original setup, but it turned out that the problems were still there! I had hoped that such an expensive system would have some way to prevent surfaces from passing through each other like ghosts. Nope. I also hoped that the strange question of turning things in three different directions would be solved. Nope. The latter problem is one you'll encounter sooner or later. It's called "gimbal lock" because it was first encountered in the gimbal systems of compasses and gyroscopes. A quick way to see it in Poser is shown here. As in the left image: Set up a box, scale it so you can tell which side is which, then use the parameter dials to wiggle it back and forth on each axis, returning to zero after each wiggle. (Shown here is a Z-wiggle.) Now set two of the rotations to 90 degrees, as shown in the right picture. Wiggle all three again. Presto! You only have two real axes! Where did the third one go? The head-hurting answer is that the third direction doesn't really exist. You can move an object to any possible orientation with only two pivots. The third direction is only there to make things more natural, because our joints and muscles are designed to pivot three ways. Poser's solution to this problem is so clever that it tends to go unnoticed. Every figure has a BODY, which is the main carrier, and a Hip, which pivots within the BODY. This means that you never have to get caught with your directions down; if you can't rotate the BODY in the desired axis, you can always rotate the Hip, and vice versa.

This is a really interesting thread. I hope more folks post to it.

I've already learned about two things I didn't know. I'll have to get more into making conforming clothing, which I've been avoiding for years. I've also encountered that gymbal lock effect but didn't understand just what was happening.

Ockham you are my hero. ;} I've had this very problem on so many occassions I thought I was just going to have to live with it. Thank you for putting the light on. 8) Catlin

Well, it took me two years to learn that I had neither immediate talent as a modeler nor patience to develop the skills involved. Banged my head a lot in the meantime. Luckily, I learned that a lot of what I wanted could be done with a general model and good texturing/transmaping. THAT I can do.

The spline editor. That was the hardest thing for me to get a grip on -- and even now I get all weird about it. For some reason, that whole "line" thing just didn't make sense to me for the longest time. Second hardest thing for me to learn was how to not spend 18 hours a day infront of the computer fiddling with poser or something related to poser. Still learning that one, apparently....

I'm still struggling with Poser 3 and 4..;) All I can say is pose first, clothe later. Keep an eye out for props, characters, hairs, freebies, spendies (go by Freestuff and load up, good for experiments..;)..etc., and check the 'requirements' box..Poser makes 'item x for y'..and I've actually gotten far enough to find that Victoria X stuff doesn't work on the basic Poser figures..;)
have fun..

I still remember my amazement when I discovered that poser figures had textures. I had no internet access at the time, so I'd never been to any poser communities. But my first real breakthrough was in 'modelling' - which, at that time, meant using the poser primitives. I figured out how to export/import and began building all sorts of bizarre objects, combining all the standard poser props in peculiar ways. Then I learned how to make them posable.... and became a menace to society! LOL. I still reckon that for anyone who wants to try building poser models, this is a great way to start. With a bit of imagination, you can build anything out of boxes and spheres. mac

Yes I do and I wanted to throw Poser4 in Lake Michigan. but I stuck with it and I love it. Now have pro, but took 5 off my computer, just couldn't do a thing with it.