But it works anyway. I needed to chop up a series of "barium swallow" movies into separate flip-card images, so that my teaching-machine program can use them properly. But after looking at the flipped result, I realized that they needed some indication of which frame is currently showing. This really should be a job for a 2D program; mix the layers. But I couldn't see doing it all by hand... there are 6 movies, each with about 30 images .... so I found a way to let Poser handle it.

Here's a look behind the scenes, showing how the setup is actually arranged.

Outstanding idea, I think. Gotta get some work out of those teaching assistants and this looks like a good job for one.

Seriously, there's one unexpected advantage. Placing the images on a Square and then rendering them in Poser, with colored lights, yields a clearer final image than any adjustment I could find in PaintShop. (This doesn't show in the drastically reduced GIF I posted above.)

Wow! That's fascinating!

Thinking about this a bit more. Very early in the Poser game I realized that it was much easier to manipulate 2D shapes in 3D. For instance, the pointer and bezel in this picture are really 2D objects; "logically" it should have been easier to draw, shape and move them in a 2D application. But in PaintShop it would be wildly complicated to create those shapes, rotate and scale them to look right, form a layer for each, get the transparency and masking right, create a new layer for each position of the pointer..... In the 3D world, I spent 30 seconds making the objects in Amapi, then animated them in Poser. Moving the pointer in equal intervals along the X axis is nearly automatic. No need to think about transparency and masks, no need to sort through a stack of layers. So why isn't there a 2D app with Poser-like control and flexibility? Why doesn't PaintShop have parameter dials? It doesn't really matter, because Poser does everything I need. Still, it just doesn't make any sense!

Ockham, there is a program called Director. From those very clever people at Macromedia who make Dreamweaver. But I agree that manipulating 2d images in 3d is sometimes easier.

Page layout in Rhinoceros, anyone?

"But in PaintShop it would be wildly complicated to create those shapes, rotate and scale them to look right, form a layer for each, get the transparency and masking right, create a new layer for each position of the pointer....." There is a reason why Illustrator and similar programs have such a huge market share with designers .. a 2D vector program would have been the right choice as opposed to the pixel oriented stuff in paintshop. I mean hey, cool! Nice way to use the tools ya have ya know? ANythign that works is good... but there are tools for this stuff in case you need to do a lot of it :)

Pixel vs vector... Now that makes sense! I will look at Illustrator if I need that sort of thing. But as I said, Poser + Python serves my needs just fine. Most of the time I'm building 3D things and adding some parts that could be 2D, so there's no reason to break completely away from 3D.