Ok, I have Poser 5, and it has some very serious shortcomings.  I would like to know if these issues have been addressed or corrected in versions 6 or 7.  Now on with my list...

1. Cloth room bugs: 
       calculation routinely aborts before the end of the animation (i.e. calculates 3 frames of a 400 frame sequence)

2. Animation
       If Firefly perceives any object surrounding a scene to be "Solid", all frames are rendered as the background color.  So, 30 hours later, you have a solid "Poser color" animation.  This happens even if rendering single frames vields the images correctly

3. Displacement
       Blotchy appearance on figures scaled over 200%

4. Hip-centric animation
       Any attempt to re-orient the hips tips the entire figure.  This makes keyframe dancing just about impossible.

I have wasted countless hundreds of hours trying to get some effect out of Poser only to find that it just doesn't work right.  If Poser 7 is the same, I'll be skipping it altogether.

1 Cloth room Bugs, Sorry on that one. I don't work with the clothroom, It always eats up render time (using that freature) which is the slowest feature in most programs.

2 Animation. I don't have the answer for that, other than, You need to Test run a frame before you spend 30 hours working in the dark. Render a  few scenes whenever the lighting changes in a scene or clip. You always need to do this. As of yet the Previews don't show you an acurate example of what the final render will be. As far as anyone knowing if Poser 7 has fixed those problems, No one knows yet, it hasn''t been shiped yet, they are taking pre-orders.

3 Displacement, Blotchey appearance on figures scaled over 200%! This has to do with bucket size and render nodes to the best of my knowledge. I seen a lot of people have this problem. I am on Runtime RNDA. In the Forum they have the answer for this, or you will get an answer for this. Just type in Displacement Problems and do a search. You will get some answers. I'm sure someone will have the answer here, but I am on the forum there, mostly because I don't have the time to spend on a bunch of forums, and look at the new stuff everyone has out.

4 Hip-centric animation. I'm not completely sure what you mean by that. If you are using poses form your library and they are not set up correctly, There is nothing you can do. They will fly all around when they meat the halfway point inbetween the two poses. You can see what is happening on your graph editor. When the two lines meat the next frame they flip. My suggestion is to Use your first pose out of the library then go into what ever motion your animation going. You can always try that second pose, but if at the part where the two points meet and start to spend. Delete the second pose. work from there.

Or are you taking about you are having trouble animating your figure because you are having trouble understanding how the hims work. This mostly comes with experience. but You need to work with IK on when your moving your characture around on the ground. You will switch off your IK when you need to finetune a movement with the legs. (Sometimes you need the IK on the hands also, but that is gereraly an easier part to work with.)

Back to your IKed feet. This is only a general guide. You move one leg forward with IK on to take a step using either the Parameter dials or the Translate Tool. After your happy with your leg spacing, You then move your hips forward with the dials or Translate tool again. Make sure he looks balanced between his feet. There you can twist him at the hips just a little, or you can pull him forward by the hand if the IK is on in that hand, unwhich, alot of time in doing it this way gives a more natural body motion. ( you can fine tune your body parts later.) You can repeat this process. The IK is very good once you understand when and how to use it. It is great for spinning opn the spot. But you ususally have to correct the legs bends with the IKs off if you make the characture twist to much.

I'm kind of going to leave you with that, because if you are talking about something else, I won't fill you in on useless information that you may already know. good luck

Cloth room is much better in P6 than it was in P5, using dynamic cloth is a breeze in version 6 and I see no reason why it wouldn't be improved again in 7!

4. Create a new IK chain for the torso.  Problem solved.

Thanks for the detailed advice, I cant wait to try it.  Man, I tried to do a simple hula dance, and the entire figure looked like she was in a blender!  I take it all this is covered in the manual under IK chanis or something?  Is there a good tutorial here in renderosity about this?

As for the firefly animation thing, I had been doing what you said... It's the strangest thing.  I can render a single frame from any frame in the scene, but when outputting an animation as an AVI, It's all that poser brown-gray. 

Strangely, if I tell Poser to output it all as BMP's, all is well.  Also, If I use the Poser 4 renderer all is well.

On the cloth thing... Here's what I'm doing.

1. I created a Judy figure, and made a 400+ frame walk path.  the walk worked perfectly.
2. I added a dress, and went through the process to create a cloth sim, as I have many times before. 
3. I made sure to match the sim's framecount to the walk's.  I think it was 475 frames.
4. I gave it a drape of 20 frames
5. I hit "calculate simulation".

The calculator seemed to drape for about 5 frames, and even though it counted out the rest of the drape, nothing changed in the last 15 frames.

Then it started into calculating the animation.  It calcualted 3 frames and quit, like it was done.  I tried 20 or so times to get it to finish.

Hours later, I trashed the whole scene and started over.  This time, the drape happened just as before, and then the calculator just sat there for 30 minutes without ever reporting a single frame was finished.

Most software would actually report if it had encountered and error.   Most software would understand that 1, 2, 3 does not complete a loop of 475.  

So I guess if I ever want to do a short movie, I need to pick another program.  I guess Poser is only good for posing stills to export to a better renderer.  It's sad, really.

As you can probably tell from my comments, I am an infrequent Poser user.  I'm not trying to make a career out oif it, I'm just trying to have some fun.

Never, ever render an animation out as an animation! ;)  I know that this sounds counterintutive, but you never want to do it this way for several reasons -

1. As you note, you can't see the end results until the entire animation render is complete and you have the animation file.  If there were any problems, you have to start all over again.

2. If something/anything goes wrong while the render is occurring (crash, electricity lost, spilt coffee on the keyboard), you have to start all over again.

3. You are stuck with the results - you can't easily change the dimensions or do too much editing.

The best and most widely used way to render animations is to do so as a sequence of images (BMP, TIF, GIF, JPG, whatever works).  Then you sequence them into an animation in something like QuickTime, Final Cut, or Premiere and save the animation from there.

Another good reason to render out in images is, Sometimes just a little spot or something can be rendered as your making your animation. If so, you can touch up the image in Photoshop, where otherwise you are stuck with your results you had just rerendered.  It is usually faster to touch it up than rerender the complete animation again. 

Well, if I can't get the cloth room to complete it's calculations, then it's a moot point anyhow. 

Is it possible that I missed a patch or something?  I'm suprised with these horrible bugs that everyone didn't ask for their money back.

I would suggest you email Customer service at EF, I have had good results with there answers. I just havent had problems with Poser 6, Poser 5 I had all kinds of problems with. Make sure you have all your upgrades.

I'v been experimenting with the cloth room lately.

1. The "to be clothed" item may never touch the model. Sometimes you "can" get away with it but mostly??

2. No point of the "to be clothed obj" may be inside the model. (Had this a few times; hard to find lost points in the cloting obj.)

3. make your clothing as simple as possible. = Very few points, basic shape, and test.

If all works well, you can subdevide the obj, to get a better cloth flow.

1. Never change the pose during the first 10 frames, let the cloth settle. test. If it does not work? Correct, before going on.

After a "stopped calculating" close Poser and restart. It will NOT autorecover during the same session.

Just what I found out so far, Tony

Could it be that this is a problem relating to my new computer being a Pentuim Duo?  I have heard of wierd problems before with software that goofs up in dual core systems.

And where would the current patches to P5 be found?

The issue you describe with the Cloth Room sounds like an issue with Collisions. If you have the cloth intersecting or it starts out colliding with the figure, it will lock up the simulation.  Make sure that the cloth is not intersecting anything that it has Collisions with. One trick I use is to turn the Figure or the Cloth to a contrasting Color and view the scene in Texture Shaded Mode. You see little bits of Red in the white of the cloth, you know you need to tweak something. Scaling (and then Scale back over the first few frames) can resolve this type of error, allowing the rest to go ahead.

I think others have responded to the rest, but if not let me know.

I'm coming in late and haven't kept up on what's been developed; mostly overworked running my other business.  Bought Poser 6 SE only a few weeks ago when suddenly started getting email announcements about Poser 7, now wondering if I should upgrade?   Here's the crux: want to do animated movie based on a script I wrote and picked up Animation Master in spite of the fact that (so far as I know) there's really no good way to import into AM any of the customized Poser figures and props I've already created.  (With AM, starting from scratch.)  Is Poser 7 animation features comparable to what is available in Animation Master?  Not much info on e frontier website regarding this.

Poser 7 promises to be much better for animation.  The way the recent announcements have been going, ti looks like they are really targetting the animation side of Poser 7.  New features like "layered animation" and lipsyncing show they are really putting a lot of effort into re-creating Poser as an animation tool instead of just still image tool.

If you have purchased Poser 6 in the last Month, contact E-Frontiers, I believe they will give you the upgrade to Poser 7.  I'm not guaranteeing it, but I remember reading that in a few forums.  Contact them and don't miss your chance.

Already emailed e Frontier about the upgrade, but the only reply so far indicated they weren't sure whaI I was asking about (where on their website to I go to register/apply); only place on thier website is the cart for the $129.00 upgrade.

Thanx for the info; haven't unsealed the AM box yet and may return it if Poser 7 works out as you say.