heyas; well, seems that the only part of poser metacreations was responsible for was the new interface design. now that they're outta here.... the interface should be changing back to... something more like poser 2, perhaps. i happen to like the p2 interface. maybe it was a bit annoying to have to click on the body icon to move the body around, and the posing icon to move body parts around. but i love the way you can click on a body part to select it and NOT have it jump around. then you can use the cursor in the window to reasonably and logically bend the limb, without it getting all twisted and nonsense. as for the p3/p4 interface.... i kinda like the camera trackball. it's quick. not accurate, but quick. :) i also like the ui dots. i have one ui setup, but in six nifty colours ;) i DO like being able to drag stuff around and stick it where i like. the figure and bodypart lists... they are okay, but i hate where they are located. always wanted them at the top of the dial area. anybody got a scoop from curious labs on the new/old/new interface? :)

I'm considering the Poser4.03 ProPack the next version of Poser...so whatever the PP UI looks like will probably be it. -JH.

While we're on the subject of Interface/Usability how about these suggestions: Use the left/right arrow to change sides of the body. For example, right forearm is selected and I hit the left arrow focus moves to the left forearm. Use something like an Alt-arrow to change focus to the same body part on the next figure. Instead of listing the body parts in an incredibly huge menu under Current Element how about using cascading menus. For example, three main selections, arms, trunk/head, legs. Within arms you have shoulder girdle, upper arm, forearm, hand. Within upper arm you have a choice of right or left. When you select a body part of a conformed-clothed figure. The body part should always be selected instead of possibly getting the basically immovable CONFORMED clothing (No, I want the FOOT not the Shoe!) More than one level of undo. Change the name of the shoulder (joint) to upper arm (segment). Collar should be referred to as the Shoulder Girdle (since it includes the scapula too) or perhaps Girdle for short. Please, PLEASE, Please support the context sensitive right mouse button! If Macs don't have it then they wont know that it is there, but PC users will be thrilled.

The problem with changing the body parts is that none of the existing human, and most of the animal models and clothing will work if you change their basic names, at least the way Poser works know (which i assume won't change much).

heyas; bam, that is a killer idea about switching left/right side selections with some keys! i ALWAYS need that! you can change the 'face name' of the body parts, while leaving the 'internal names' the same. for example, you can go through all your figures and select the 'shoulder' piece and name it 'upper arm.' this won't affect any functionality. future obj's will still have to follow the ol' rCollar lCollar rShldr lShldr conventions, though. any screenshots of the pro pack, jeff?

I really like the Poser GUI, so I'll speak up for it and against going back to the Poser2 style (which is still available if you want it by typing PO2). Jonathan Allen recently described Bryce as "a playground for lateral thinkers", and I'd say this is pretty much why I like the present Poser stylie. Manipulating human(oid) and animal figures is a very 'organic' affair, and is best suited to a control system that enables rapid 'fiddling', rather than precise positioning and data entry. Poser can only benefit from having an avenue into a more 'professional' working manner (4 views, etc), but I'd hate it if it becomes the only way of working. The 'pro pack' could be fantastic, so long as it doesn't result in neglect of the regular version. Poser3 (and onwards) was a much better implementation of the 'Meta' style interface than Bryce, mainly because it is so much more adaptable. I think Poser is incredibly well thought out. Bryce seems to be stuck with the original vision and refuses to go any further; perhaps the designers are too emotionally attached to it to allow development. Poser's designers seem to have been open to new ideas and able to augment sensible solutions to become something even more useful. Most of the limitations to the Poser system seem to be with the deeper aspects of the program. The menus and dialogs are often quite difficult to see, let alone navigate. Those are pretty much all in the old look and way of doing things, and maybe that says something about the notion of going back to the old ways. I've tried working on the old PO2 interface again, and my efficiency goes straight downhill.

I dunno about screen shots of the PP UI, maybe CL will be posting some on their site soon.

One thing that would be nice is to have the body parts listed in alphabetical order. I hate surfing through the list to find the part I'm looking for. I don't care if it's all left-bodypart then right-bodypart or if it's bodypart-left then bodypart-right.

The history of the Bryce interface is deeply rooted in Kai Krause, who has contributed a very artistic vision to all of the products that came out of Kai's Power tools line. Unfortunately they do not translate well into production environments, since they do take far too much fiddling with to get just the effect you wish, with unpredictable results even then. I think the extreme of that vision was realized in the critically exclaimed upon product whose name I cannot even now recall, a photoshop plugin, where the full feature set only slowly became available as one earned "stars" over time during exploration. For myself at least, I never even knew if I had achieved all the features, and grew disgusted that I had to "play with it" to make it open up to me. Prolly why I have forgotten the name, it is not on my machine now. Later Metacreations bought out Kai, and also Poser, and then also Fractal Design, and so began to apply more of Kai's breathtakingly lovely interface ideas to these products. It is a dabatable point, but it could have been part of Metacreation's undoing. It moved the products securely into niche market products, used more by hobbyists, or even pro's, but on their own time and for their own pleasure, than so much in large production environments where predictability and speed are needed. Perhaps the exception of that would still be the very old original Kai's Power Tools 3.0 for a few of it's lense effects and gradient effects. For the new interface, I am excited about the idea of Four posing windows. Four windows gives speed of posing, and predictability. If one looks at other 4 window products, they also have settings where one can choose how many windows one really wishes, and even the layout of them. I could not ask for more. Massive space right now is lost in Poser with the beautiful interface it has (and it is beautiful to look at), this space could be reclaimed by getting rid of some of this stuff and heading more toward a Maya, 3d Studio Max, or Lightwave interface, and this way also Curiouslabs might find it's product accepted as a production environment "serious" tool, and thus open up the game/animation developer market to themselves. If they do this, they might manage to not wind up almost bankrupt like Metacreations did. Of course, this would also require releasing a developers package of information so that production houses could code their own needed plugins. At least, that is how I see it.

I happen to like the poser 4 interface. For me it's easy to use, and if I want to be more techincal about the exact numbers, I can type them too. It's nice to be able to get close with dials, then have a way to be more specific. I just get the feeling if they go more technical, they will maybe gain more of the 3dsmax/maya users but lose the little people. shrug Just my nontechnical opinion

heyas; i think that was convolver, mehndi. :) when kai first came out with his theory about non-standard, non-intrusive interfaces, i was all for it. it looked cool, it was nicely functional and didn't annoy you with dialogue boxes and crap. then, steadily, the kai 'form' began to come before function of the interfaces. and you know what happens with designs that put form before function. i like the dials as well. you can use them like sliders, or double click them for all the options and to type in numbers, and even click the number to type that in, without the extra options. one control that behaves three different ways, all of them useful. (well, i could do without the third option, i usually mean to grab number 1 or 2 when i end up with it! :) )

Make it easy and user friendly.Nuff said.Stop this technical crap.LOL