Hi all, Have you ever, like me, gone to read a Poser tutorial and felt like you couldn't be bothered wading through the detail ? That's where quick tips and tricks come in handy - you can keep "playing" while you are learning more about Poser. With this in mind, I want to start the ball rolling to compile a long list of tips and tricks to help us all get more fun and efficient use of our favorite app(s). So here is my initial contribution. 1. For DAZ figures, apply a small negative value (e.g. -0.1) to the HdAlien dial for the head to get an interesting new character. 2. If you have created a magnet to morph one side of the face or body, and you want a symmetric morph on the other side : duplicate the magnet, copy the first magnets dial values to it, and then change the sign of the x-tran, y-rotate and z-rotate dials. 3. In Photoshop, to paint hair behind the head : export the image from Poser as PSD, in Photoshop separate out the alpha channel, and then paint the hair on the background. 4. To give your DAZ characters a long pointy nose, set the "Nose Flat" dial to a negative value (works well to about -1.2). Then mix and match with other "nose" morphs. I will add more as I think about them. Please add your contribution if you can think of some quick and snappy tricks for Poser. regards, Andrew

Poser Thumbnails of Transparent Parts -

When saving a character, prop, pose, or any library item that includes transparency, Poser will not show the part affected at all in the thumbnail (this usually affects hair with a transparency map). To show a thumbnail of the intended result, save the library item in the folder you choose, then go into "Render Options" and choose a new 91x91 window (your regular work window needs to already be a square). Render the image, including the appropriate transparency settings, and then save the final 91x91 image as a PNG file; locate the folder in which your character or prop was saved, and simply overwrite the existing PNG file there. Afterward, your new thumbnail will appear, with any parts that include tranparency rendered correctly, and it will even have the familiar drop shadow :-D.

Faster Poser Loading: Simple, but sometimes people tend to miss the simple stuff. Delete everything in the scene and load in the lightset you use the most often. Maybe even the Poser figure you use most often. Setup all of your favorite camera views and lights the way you want them. When you are all done tweaking, go into the Edit menu and select General Preferences. Click on the Set to Current State and OK. Now whenever you load up Poser or click New, it loads up with everything set to the way you want to use it.

Thanks everyone so far. Here are a couple more quickies from me : (1) Alt-click a parameter dial to reset it to zero. (2) Magnets : If you reposition and re-scale the mag base, highlight it and press Ctrl-C (copy), then highlight the mag zone and press Ctrl-V (paste). You then have the mag zone positioned and scaled in line with the mag base. You may have to scale it further according to taste. regards, Andrew

In Poser 5, make interesting, asymmetric characters (Real people are NOT symmetric) by clicking the little arrow to the right of whatever morph dial you want to split in left and right. Then choose Split Morph and 2 new dials will appear at the bottom of the list. Interesting affects can be made with the ethnic morphs in small values. And always remember that any morph works in reverse too, and using negative settings can give new and interesting effects. Many morphs can also be dialed well beyond 1.

Poser 5 cross-talk fix fix, or fitting morphing clothes to morphed characters Load V3 (or whoever) and inject body morphs Load your piece of conforming morphing clothing Select V3 Body, highlight parameters palette and press Ctrl+C Select Clothing Body, again highlight parameters palette and press Ctrl+V All included morphs will be set to match the character.

Another way to create interesting, different characters is to make subtle changes to the taper and the x-, y- and z-scale parameter values for the head.

Always save before rendering!

Dynamic cloth in Poser 5: set the figure in zero pose, zero morphs at frame 1. Set the figure in its final pose, and apply morphs, at frame 20. Then apply the clothing prop and do the simulation.

svdl, your "Always save before rendering" is the best tip here yet! It should really be a feature of P6, to ALWAYS save a copy when you hit Render. (of course with an option to turn it off) 9 out of 10 times, when Poser dies, it doess o while rendering. And ALWAYS if you have a complex scene and didn't save it...

Poser also dies sometimes when it can't find a texture.

Skin textures in real life usually have a touch of sheen, but you can go to far. Setting the Sepcular Color to a very dark gray and the highlight size to .1 gives a very soft, natural looking sheen. In P5, you can also link the translucent node back to the texture with a love value to get a softer effect on the skin. Big light sets can be nice for some things, but sometimes fewer is better. A single spot can give beautiful effect. There is no undo on a delete, so make d*mn sure you REALLY have what you want to delete selected before you confirm the delete. A number of transmapped hair props are designed with a square flat mat. Try other maps of the same type of different hair. Example: B-Man's hair is a great model but only has 1 dark texture. But using a Koshini hair map with it's the b-man transmap gives nice variation.

Change default camera settings and save as memory dots Change the Main camera to 100mm focal length and the Face camera to 160mm. Change Hand cameras to 100mm. Save them in the Memory dots. Use the memory dots Save all new cameras as memory dots because they load instantly when clicked. Saving cameras in the library takes more time to find and longer to load. Save your preferred Poser state as a memory dot. Opening a PZ3 will change your settings to those the PZ3 creator used. Clicking the UI (User Interface) dot immediately brings things back to normal. Use Memorize, under the Edit menu, after morphing a figure or element. This changes the default conditions that the figure or element will revert back to. If Edit/Restore is used, it will bring the figure back to the last saved state and not the original figure state (such as default Vickie). If a morphed parented prop or hair is used, save that item under Memorize/Element because restoring the figure will also reset any parented props. Use poses to start the figure in a pose similar to what the end concept is and tweak it to what's wanted. There's no need to waste a half hour to get a figure into a kneeling position when there's already a pose that does it in seconds. Make it a unique pose after that, tailoring it to the artistic vision in mind. As has been said, Save, Save, Save, not just before rendering, but any time that a lot of work has been done, using multiple iterations of names (scene1, scene2, etc). Poser does occasionally crash for various reasons. Operating systems can crash. Power outages or brownouts occasionally occur. There's not much reason to not get into the practice of saving files when a lot of work has been done. It's a good practice to save different iterations of a work because it documents what was done (good for proving copyrights) and allows going back to an earlier good point if a wrong path is taken. I've occasionally abandoned hours of work going in one direction only to realize that I liked an earlier concept better. It's a lot easier going back to that saved version than starting from scratch. Save images as TIFF Always save images in a TIFF format because it saves the alpha channel of a figure(s) that can be loaded as a selection. Save individual pieces of complex scenes When a scene starts getting complex enough (multiple figures, many props and clothing items) that Poser starts to drag save the versions of the scene to the Library and as separate PZ3s. If there's a complex background, with many elements, save it as an image and load the image as a background. Figures that aren't interacting can also be saved as an image and loaded as a background so that only new figures are loaded and posed. This cuts down on Poser resources and makes it easier to work in the program faster and more efficiently. All elements can be reloaded for the final render or assembled in an image editing program.

Always a slight tint of grey or light blue to the eyeball; it'll give the eye texture a bit more realistic look.

Use the animation palette as a Multiple Undo feature. Advance one frame each time you try out new poses or new morphs and you can undo it by going back to the previous frame. Still remember to save!

Transmap male genital props. I think Quim started this one. His Floreal texture comes with a transmap for the genitals that gradually fades at the hip to blend in with pubic hair and avoid unsightly join lines when the genital figure meets the character. Don't be afraid to mix and match on textures. I love the eyewhite in one set and the irises on another. In P5 you can also use the color math node to blend two textures to very nice effect. Great for adding tats or just combining 2 body texture sets to create a new look. Like David but want more head options? Use morphmanager to copy head morphs from V3 to David. Try David with the V3 male faces set at a partial level. Want a freak head on M3? Use morphmanager to transfer the Freak to M3 head morph to M3, and then apply a negative value. Don't be too afraid to hack a .cr2 file, just be sure to make a backup copy before you do.

If you wanna suffer...and use p5 Load 2 spheres onto a zeroed figure. Set both spheres to 13% (cast shadows off)and go to matroom Hit both with a mirror or glass and set transparency to 88% (Too many settings to list here so you'll have to experiment. Make both Corneas transparent. Back in poseroom make head invisible and pull one sphere up level with one eye and use xyz to cover front of eyeball, barely and use cams front and side to be sure. Forget about your mouse and type it. Parent and (lock object)it to the head! Copy y and z coords to sphere2, then x it over second eye and parent/lock. Now click on eyes and reduse to 99.5% You can add refraction and even displaement nodes and eventually get Liam Kemp-like reflections if you're patient... Remember to have something to reflect in your scene and save it 1st (svdl), lol If I ever get this down to a science, I'll put it in freestuff.

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One we never think about until someone points it out:

If you have a fully clothed figure (I know, a rarity; indulge me, okay? :) ), go into the hierarchy window and turn off those parts of the body covered by the clothes. Also, remember that the human body is not 100% symmetrical. If you want to go for realism with things like slightly closed eyes, close one just a bit more than the other. When posing the body, remember that there are few times when we hold ourselves 100% straight along the backbone. We tend to curve one way or the other, creating something like a very slight S curve. Exxagerate it too much, and it looks lousy, but keep it subtle, and it adds an enormous amount of realism to your standing figures.

Message edited on: 09/28/2004 12:06

Attached Link: http://fnproductions.net/graphics/tutorials/p5.php

Poser5 -> Loading faster... If you don't use the vrml import/export option, you can remove from "Poser5/runtime/plugins" folder the FFVrml.arp and FFVrml.rsr files (make a backup to be sure). Poser5 will load even faster... Another tip is to create a new runtime, and let it empty. Always befor you exit, go to this empty runtime.

1. Easy eye aiming. Create a simple prop like a box or ball. Call it FOCUS. Make it a child of the head and place it at 0,.7,1. Point both eyes at FOCUS. Hide FOCUS. Now, to easily aim eyes just slide the x or y trans of the FOCUS prop and the eyes will follow. Worst thing in a render is unposed eyes. People aren't stuck staring straight ahead. 2. Lower texture sizes. I made a long post explaining why huge texture sizes will kill Poser. http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1801334 Bascially the larger a texture is the more memory it uses exponentially. If you don't need a 4000x4000 texture then reduce it.

There are all sorts of little tricks with Poser 5 shader trees. 1: You can distort the various 2D and 3D patterns available by adjusting the U and V scales. Stripes? Use a rescaled tile or brick node. 2: Tire treads on vehicles. The weave node, with asymmetric scaling, can be used as a tire tread displacement map for a background vehicle. Also, transparency maps: 1: Apply the transmap to the specular colour input as well as the transparency input. Black is invisible, and no reflections. 2: Poser 5 on Windows will read a PNG; it's much better than a JPEG for storing a greyscale, such as a transmap -- good compression and no artefacts at edges.

Use CorrectReference (hogsoft, free download) after installing a new item to the libraries to avoid/fix missing texture maps.

"If you have a fully clothed figure (I know, a rarity; indulge me, okay? :) ), go into the hierarchy window and turn off those parts of the body covered by the clothes." This becomes even more significant if you're preparing a scene or figure for export to Vue d'Esprit, because parts made invisible in Poser don't show up in Vue, that is, they're not just invisible, they're not there at all. That can add up to huge savings in terms of poly count and render time. If you're not going to see a figure's hip, why would you allow the invisible hip to eat up resources? If you forget to do this in Poser, simply delete hidden parts in Vue. Dynamic Cloth: Don't get too hung up about what frame you pose your figure at. You can always save a pose you like to a pose library, then re-apply it to a figure in a new timeline when you're ready. Just be sure that the figure is zeroed (with no IK turned on) at frame 1. Furthermore, if you're doing an animation using dynamic cloth (as opposed to an animation where only one frame will be rendered) you might want to start with several frames of the figure posed exactly as it will be at the first frame of the animation. For example, frame one: figure zeroed; frame 30: figure in initial animated pose; frame 50: animation begins. In some cases this can help with realistic draping, otherwise the cloth may take too many frames to "catch up" with the figure's actions.

You can tile a texture by dialing down the U scale and V scale in the texture map node in the P5 material room. Great for fishnet materials!

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/photos/MSG/Message558394.txt

1. See link above for a list of Poser hotkeys, posted by Little_Dragon.

2. Save before rendering (ok it's been said before, but can't be said too offten).

3.If you use magnets a lot, get Travelers "Targo-Magnet", it makes posing the Mag Zone easier.
http://www.morphworld30.com/files.html

1. Shadows are one of the most important graphic elements, don't just acept the default shadow values for your lights, experiment. The Shadow dial affectys the intensity of the shadow, the Map Size affects the fuzzyness.

2. Remember you have a "Cut" and a "Paste" function in Poser, "Cut" copies the paramiter values for for the selected item to the clipboard, you can Paste the result into Notepad, edit out any unwanted paramiters and paste back into another poser element. I keep this snippet handy:

Light 1 0 xrot Spline 0.0000
Light 1 0 yrot Spline 0.0
Light 1 0 zrot Spline 0.0
Light 1 0 scale Spline 1.0000
Light 1 0 KdRed Spline 1.0000
Light 1 0 KdGreen Spline 1.0000
Light 1 0 KdBlue Spline 1.0000
Light 1 0 KdIntensity Spline 1.0000
Light 1 0 xtran Spline 0.0000
Light 1 0 ytran Spline 0.0000
Light 1 0 ztran Spline 0.0000

Pasted into a Poser spotlight it will turn it white and zero the translations and rotations.

1. To better see transparency mapped hair, to position or pose it: Select the hair, then from the Preview Styles pallet chose Element Style, then chose Lit Wire Frame. To revert chose Use Figure Style.

2. When you load a magnet from the Object menu it affects only the prop or actor (body part) that was selected when it was loaded, you can add actors or props to be affected from its Properties menu "Add element to deforme".

3. If you use "Point At" on a characters head, it is the top of the head that will point at the object. You can open the Joint Editor and move the red cross hair that represent the End Point of the head so that it is positioned in front of the green cross hair, the front of the head will now point at the object. Notes, write down the values of the End Point before you do this, as that is the only way it can be restored, changing the End Point will affect the way the neck bends (not always a bad thing).

1. Props can suffer from Gimball Lock, this is when two rotation channels have the same effect, and one axis of rotation is lost. You can line up the translations (not rotations) of a Poser Box with your gimball locked prop, parent your prop to the the Box, then set the Box to be invisible. You can now use the rotations of the Box to recover your lost axis of rotation.

Poser file hacking:

1. If you save a set of spotlights to the Lights pallet, when you come to load that set it will turn all the other lights in the document off. Ever wish you could load a light set without turning the other lights off? You can! Download "MinFig" from the Free Stuff. In Poser parent your light set to MinFig, save MinFig to a figures pallet with a new name. Open the cr2 you saved in a text editor, do a search and replace of the string "spotLight" with "MYspotLight", asn resave. When you load the cr2 the lights will load with it, they will not turn other lights in the scene off.

2. It is somtimes said that you can't apply a pose to a prop unless the prop is parented to a figure, but you can! Save the prop to a pallet with a new name, posed the way you want it. Open it in MAT Pose Edit, save out a pz2. Open the pz2 in a text editor and replace all instances of the word "prop" with "actor", and resave. The pose will now work on the prop even if the prop has no parent (but there must be a figure in the document before the pose can be applied).

Poser 5: When a render has crashed, kill the process with Task Manager, delete the poserTemp.* files from the Poser 5 folder. Reboot to clear up the memory mess.

Rename figures, props, cameras, lights to something meaningful. Especially useful in scenes with many items.

To simulate a point light, create 6 spotlights, parent 5 of those lights to the first light. Set the x,y,z trans dials of the parented lights to 0.
Set Angle Start of the parent spot to 60, Angle End to 120. Choose a color. Use copy/paste to apply the settings to the parented spots.
Set Distance End to a reasonable value (how far will the light reach?) Set Distance Start to a very low value (say 0.01)
Set the x,y,z trans dials of the parented lights to 0.
First three parented spots: Set the yRot to 90, 180 and -90 degrees. Last two: set xRot to 90 and -90. Even better: parent all the spots to a MinFig, save the MinFig to the figure library, and edit the CR2 as mentioned in post #28.

Errmm.. I don't have 5 cents (being a Brit), but my 2p worth.... Be patient. Wait a bit longer. Be more patient... Wait a .. I expect you get the drift. Poser is a resource hog. Be it disc space, memory or time, Poser grabs all it can get. And tries very hard not to let go of them. Sometime just going off and making a cup of tea/coffe can help. Other times (after the drink), you need to take a walk around the park and admire the statues and the birds. Then you get back and scowl! (Hope you took svdl's advice...) But SOMETIMES Poser gets it togethjer and finishes the task... Cheers, Diolma

P5: Monitor resource usage (especially memory, page faults and VM size) with Task Manager. The "Adding Objects" stage for the final render (not the shadow maps) is rather sensitive and crash-prone. If resource usage does not change for a couple of minutes during the Adding Objects stage, the render has crashed. Canceling won't work, kill the process.

Message edited on: 09/28/2004 17:19

The biggest rendering hog I've run into is lights. The more lights, the longer the render. I use the fewest lights possible to achieve the desired results. It's amazing, in fact, how few lights are needed in a render with some tweaking.

I also save my favorite lights, poses and other library settings.

Awesome thread so far.... 1) P5 often locks after I save. To rescue from a lock-up on XP, hit Ctl-Alt-Del and load the task manager. That should bring P5 back to life. Close the task manager. 2) Plug your bump map into the spec colour on human skin, and tint the spec colour blue. Add a hint of red ambient helps too. 3) The Python Scripts window. A horrible buggy little thing, but useful. If it's not responding to clicks, click the title-bar of the Python Scripts window. If the button dissappear, click the very bottom of the Python Scripts window. If a python script dies that is running in a tcl window, go to the windows task bar, right click the tcl button and close it. P5 should return back to life. 4) Cloth room. Once you've got your clothing draped, export the clothing items to an obj file. Then you can delete the clothing items from the scene and reload via the obj file. That way the settings don't get lost when you now restart P5 and reload the scene. 5) If you are doing a custom skin on V3, there are heaps of duplicated materials for the body and head. Solution 1, modify the V3 obj file to combine the materials into 1 for the body and 1 for the skin (tricky to do - needs to be done outside poser), or (not as good a solution) save the skin material you are using in the mat room for one part of the body, and then apply it to the other body parts. 6) Dynamic hair. This really only works for black hair. You actually don't need a huge amount of hair to render well - IF you render with shadows. The hair will cast a shadow on the head, meaning the light doesn't hit the scalp. [I didn't explain that too well!] 7) Use the hole material on wings3d when making dynamic clothing.

Wow thanks everybody. I wonder if anyone would mind if I published these tips in one convenient place on my website ? ..... (not sure when I would get around to it, hopefully soon) There wouldn't be any copyright (or other) issues, would there ? I'd mention each contributor on the page. Please let me know :) regards, Andrew

Saving some time and space: 1. Once a figure is clothed I make everything underneath invisible, or at the very least go into the materials room and delete all the un-needed textures. 2. For anything transmaped, I ususally use the Cartoon display in order to see it. You can usually disconnect the transmap(s) in the materials room as well. Just be sure to reconnect before rendering. 3. More than one shadow source-light usually just wastes time and memory resources. Pick your source light, set the shadow to either 7 or 8 for a realistic cast shadow, and render. And I never have the map set higher than 512. Shadows look just fine. 4. When it comes time to render, disconnect your 'puter from the internet, turn off your firewall/antivirus programs, go into Poser, turn off all the tools and tiles so all you're left with is the display window, make Everything display as wireframe only, and Then render. All that other stuff takes up resources, and the fewer you have running in the background, the faster the render will go. Hope these help!

@gagnonrich - you suggested "Change the Main camera to 100mm focal length and the Face camera to 160mm." Just curious as to your reason for these camera settings. Why not 55mm main and 75mm face? :O)

Shadownet: The reason for the altered camera lengths is to give you a more realistic look at your scene. I have my default Main and Face cameras both set at 100mm, leave the hands at 25mm, and then if I'm doing anything but a portrait shot, I'll reduce the Main to no lower than 75mm so that everything doesn't look "flat". Shorter than that and the figures start to distort and the depth of field gets all whacked. Take a look at a book on basic photography techniques to learn more about focal lengths. Too much to go into here for a complete explanation. And for that, I recommend "Photography for Dummies." Great book. To-the-point and easy to understand.

Anyhow, Photography is sort of what I was going by, but I may be in error as to my thinking. It seems I was taught (and it has been a number of years, and I tend to unlearn stuff rather quickly) that normally 50-55mm compares to what the human eye sees. For close ups, you want 75-100mm or maybe even higher. I am not saying all that is right, only that is what I have believed to be a true statement. I do know that at one time, that was what was suggested here in the forum, and thus that became habit with me - since I always try to heed good advice. LOL. Only, now it looks as if the thinking, at least for some, has changed, and I was curious as to why. So thanks for answering. It could be that the Dork looked better at 55mm and the Mil People at 100mm - you know, kind of like in a bar, on a saturday night, after a few, with the person sitting next to you....

:O)

If you're trying something new test it out using low res figures or even primatives. Whatever you do, don't forget to have fun!!!!!!!! (It's OK to get a little silly now and then and you don't have to show anyone else what you did.)

And always remember to save to a new file after at most 10 minutes. Keep the files in a separate folder and number them sequentially. Plus: Always save before a render. Always save before attempting anything in the cloth room. Always save before attempting anything in the hair room. Always save before changing materials. Always save before attempting a severe pose change. Always save before adding a new figure or prop. And ALWAYS ALWAYS save after what ever it was you were trying to do was successful! (UNDER A DIFFERENT NAME - just in case the save isn't successful..) I suspect you get the drift -- save early and save often. (Just like voting..) Cheers, Diolma

To expand on diolma's post... Save EVERYTHING. Poses, characters, lights, scenes, you name it. Do not EVER rely on a PZ3 being readable, uncorrupted or otherwise useable next time you open it. We all change and move stuff around, delete old files and reinstall, so your happy little PZ3 may be useless 2 years down the line. Apart from which - and I cannot stress this too much - things go wrong. No matter how hard you try, something somewhere will eventually screw up so the trick is to minimize the damage. Get yourself a logical workflow. Mine generally goes something like this... Load the model and apply the morphs, textures, hair and costume. Save the completed character. Create the pose. Save the pose. Do this for each character until you have them all the way you need them for your finished work. If you have two characters who interact, save their poses individually. Build up your scenery without any characters in there. This will speed up your work because Poser won't have to contend with 3 Mikes and 42 Victorias as well as your scene. Only ever add in the figures if it is absolutely necessary for camera and prop positioning. Save as much as possible to the libraries, but if no other option is available, save a PZ3 of the empty scene. And while you're at it, give it a useful name. What may seem amusing at the time will have you going, "Huh?" in a month or two. Delete any existing lights and create your new lighting. Save the light set. At the end of the whole exercise you should have enough to enable you to recreate a scene if Poser rolls over and dies or your PZ3 becomes corrupted. At the very worst, you'll have to recreate maybe one step. Another thing to consider is that you will find it easy to create variations on the scene if you need to split it up for rendering, knowing how P5 loves to choke on complex scenes. I have even experienced this in P4, so it pays to be modular in your approach. Something else - and a personal preference of mine, not a right or wrong thing - get as much right in Poser as possible, to reduce or even eliminate the need for postwork. It's a fun challenge to squeeze that extra bit out of Poser, and you will learn something valuable along the way. Final tip from me, and probably the best one you will ever get... Read Dr Geep's tutorials. In my opinion, his lighting tut is absolutely vital to getting the best from Poser.

I agree with Sam on the Dr. Geep tutorials. Excellent and to-the-point! Here's some more space and time-savers:

When you're doing all that saving, you need not save everything as a Poser file. As Sam said, save Everything, or as much possible, in the Libraries. Takes up Much less space than a PZ3 file. The PZ3 files you do save, off-load them to a CD as soon as possible so they're not clogging your hard drive. Same way with all those lovely renderings you're doing. It's amazing how small a 20-Gig HD is once you start loading it up with graphics!

And finally, one thing I do personally, is alot of my scenes are inside rooms, so Using the Room Creator over at Daz, I've built several basics and saved them as PZ3 files. that way, all I have to do is create my characters, save them to the library, open the room I want and import them. Saves OODLES of time!

If you save a lot of pz3 files, it is better to save them with file compression on, it saves a lot of harddisk space and they only take a second or two longer to load back in.

This may depend on OS version, but check if you have an option for "compressed folders" (that's what I see in my version of Windows). I can't directly use them in Poser, but it's fairly easy to pop the files into one. They're actually standard Zipfiles. The Poser-compressed format is a little more awkward for some things. I'd suggest you reserve it for material you don't expect to want to change.

You can switch compression on just before saving a pz3 and switch it back off right after so that cr2s etc arent affected.