Currently, blending is only possible between direct parent and child, using the "joint" and "twist" parameter channels. It would be useful if Poser 6, or Poser 6.1, or Poser 7, had a feature for the user to be able to easily insert blending between two parts which are not direct parent and child. For example, being able to adequately blend between lThigh and rThigh, and between lShin and rShin, would finally cure the endless difficulties that users have had getting a woman's skirt to behave correctly as she walks or sits. I ran into this skirt problem when I wanted to make a model of a man in a sterile surgical gown like surgeons wear during operations. It would also cure problems with webbed hands and frog-type feet and bat/dragon-type wings. And with animals like horses where the shins (= tibia) touch the hip and the forearms (= radiius and ulna) touch the chest if the horse is divided by anatomy like with a man. And it would let horses have the "collar" (= shoulder-blade) movable like in a real horse even though it would let the "shoulder" (= humerus area) touch the chest. (Note that what looks like a horse's shins and forearms is actually elongated hand/foot bones.) If this was done, the horse's "collar"'s zTran and yTran would have to be un-hiddened for realism, so that would need an ability for Tran channels to have blending :: I know, I ride a horse once a week.

Currently, when I went to remove (or reinstate) blend channels, or do surgery in the hierarchy structure, I text-edit the .CR2 file. Poser 6's massive size of many CR2 files caused by the new texture language, makes this more difficult. It would be useful if there were these features in Poser to do this to a character while it is on stage:- (1) If Poser detects that his .OBJ file now has a group which is not in the declared list of actors, offer to make a new actor for it, and ask him which existing part is to be that new actor's parent, and ask him to choose its joint angle order between xyz yzx zxy zyx yxz xzy. (2) Let the user change an existing joint's angle order between between xyz yzx zxy zyx yxz xzy. (3) Let the user change the parentage of a part. (4) Let the user delete an actor, at least if it is a "twig", i.e. if it has no children. (5) Cure the IK-on /IK-off joint angle conversion nuisances, like I have described before. One sensible way would be for a part which is an IK-goal to have an "actor" which always describes its relations with its ordinary parent, and also an "inkyActor" which always describes its relations with its IK-parent. That will also let it keep separate lists of blend information and joint parameter limits to be applied to its relations to its ordinary parent and to be applied to its relations to its IK-parent.

(6) Let a character's parentage, and an IK-goal's IK-parentage, and IK-on/IK-off settings, change during an animation. That would allow animations such a frogman riging a manned torpedo alias chariot riding it partway through the animation and then swimming away from it while the chariot keeps on going. Or if someone throws an object. (7) Let the user remove or insert blend channels. Whenever I make a Poser character which is a mechanical object, I must text-edit its CR2 file to remove unwanted blend channels between rigid metal articulated parts. (8) Cure the nuisance whereby the x/y/zTran channels still move along the coordinate axes even if the rotation axes have been changed using the "orientation" in the Joint Editing Window. In Poser models of mechanical objects I have plenty of use for Tran channels.

(9) Radiosity would be useful for light sources which are not points. With me, that includes ray-gun beams. It could also be used for fluorescent light tubes. Or for the whole sky when it is overcast and the illumination is diffuse.

(10) It would be useful to be able to move or re-scale movie poses in the dimension of time, i.e. to make them happen later or earlier or faster or slower.

If it was up to me, the poser animation palette would be scrapped and replaced with one like the lightwave one, which works much better and is much easier to use. I think that most of the recent improvement ideas that people have had for poser 6 wont actually be in it, and version 7 might be the same.

Excellent idea. I've been wishing for the same thing. Of course I can implement it in Python, but that's nowhere near as smooth as a "Percent Parentage" dial on the object itself.

All I would like for P6 to do is to make the cloths conform easier without a struggle! :)

(11) Make it possible to un-hidden x/y/zTran channels without having to text-edit the CR2 file.

(12) Multi threaded renderer - with options to run from command line (13) Open GL

Sorry: what is GL?

Open gl is a crappy 3d rendering system, if you dont have a graphics card that can use it then it is almost useless. It would be ok to have open gl AND the poser way of rendering as long as you didnt have to use open gl. Open gl shows more details like shadows etc.

Open GL coupled with a graphics card that can handle it could give you much more detail about how something will be lit- transparancy (the real kind not the dotted things we see now)- shading +++ Really it renders previews in real time. Its by no means a final render (and I woldn't want it to be)but you can see much more detail before having to start rendering tests. I just read that it will be in Poser 6. (CL site) Well here's hoping for multithreading. (I'll be buying it for Open GL anyway so the multithreading would just be cake) By the way most graphics cards now have GL support. And the better the card the better the effects it can render. It will increase Posers on screen performance. (Well it should... it remains to be seen)

Well poser 6 does have open gl, but I don`t know if that is all it can use. Windows 98 users can forget about using poser 6 unless they "upgrade" to windows xp or 2000. If open gl is required and xp or 2000 then a lot of people just wont be able to use poser 6 which is a bad thing. It looks like what I said in message 6 has happened, the small but useful improvements that people have suggested have mainly not been implemented in poser 6.

I think you are misunderstanding open GL. Most if not all programs that offer it also offer a way to offload the graphics processing back to the processor if an Open GL graphics card is not available. also Open GL is only involved in the on screen preview. It allows you to get a better idea of what your final render will look like. Open GL is what games are using to get those awsome graphics and effects. The final render will probably still be handled by the P4 or P5 rendering engine just like the current itteration. (speculation) I'm sure CL would answer that unless they've changed the rendering engine. (Which i doubt)

and Xantor wins my prediction. it clearly states on the site... SOFTWARE and OpenGl. bascially you don't want OGL? turn. it. off. and. use. software. and if you can afford Poser 6, a 40-120gb HD for your poser models, to spend a fortune at Daz or Renderosity.. you can afford to upgrade your OS.

if you can afford Poser 6, a 40-120gb HD for your poser models, to spend a fortune at Daz or Renderosity..

I can afford none of the above.
I already have windows xp, I installed it and didn`t like it, it is very slow on my computer and some of my older favourite programs wont run, even in the near useless compatibility mode.
Likos, Curious labs themselves said a graphics card that uses open gl STRONGLY RECOMMENDED, it sounds like without open gl the preview will be poor quality.

Message edited on: 02/17/2005 19:08

I doubt the preview will be any worse than in 5. It would be foolish to move backward. I am most certain that software will not even compare to GL acceleration though. Ever play a game in software mode and the enable GL? It's like playing 2 different games. I imagine that will be the difference in P6. I could be wrong though it could totaly suck. Well find out in spring. ( I may need to upgrade my graphics card too, might wait to upgrade the whole system, i guess we'll see)

"The disappointment of the year" Wow, that's classic. A program that hasn't been released yet. That only few details about it have surfaced yet. That you haven't seen, used, or know anything about it. Yet you label it already the "disappointment of the year" - brilliant.

For me, the fact that it doesn`t work in windows 98 is bad enough but having to use open gl is another dissappointment and the double sided object rendering problem NOT being fixed is another disappointment so I stand by my dissapointment of the year statement.