- While the Select option is a welcome solution to the problem with click selecting (position the cursor over an object stack and right click for a nice surprise), there is something haywire in the click selector generally. I routinely get sudden attacks of "No Actor" "No Object" at the top of the doc window. Once it happens, I can't click on anything to get going again. I have to pull down the Actor menu and select one, even there's only one to select.
- Sydney's Point At for the eyeballs is totally hosed. I tried pointing at the camera, and one eye crosses (it's random which one, as near as I can tell), even if the camera is 60 feet away. I tried pointing at a ball. Same effect. I tried having Judy and Kate 2 "look" at the camera and the ball. No problem. I looked in the Joint Editor to compare the eyes and everything looks kosher -- the only differences are what you'd expect for bilateral symmetry. Maybe in Setup.
- In complex scenes, it's routine for the Camera to suddenly decide its own parameters. The one where I caught it, it had dollied out a few hundred feet and set its focal length to 955 so I wouldn't notice. Neither of which I asked for. I come back from a render and my scene is suddenly 50% or so closer (in other words, the time I spent framing it is history). While I'm working with a Hand camera, the focal length changes and the distance changes, and suddenly I'm apparently the same distance away, except I have a fisheye view.
- I was afraid eF had bought out Blacksmith a few weeks after I purchased it, when I read about the Morph Shaper. No, they've just engineered a truly unworkable imitation. I spent a half hour trying to make the tool, the instructions, and the Fisher Price fold on a sitting Miki resolve into something, anything, that made any sense. I don't think the Blacksmith3D folks have anything to worry about. Buy B3D and enjoy.
- When I go to the Material Room, a 1/5 screen artifact blocks my view of the palette until I click on the palette.
- If I go to the Face room with a figure selected but NOT the head, using the Face Camera, then I get told I'm using a non-supported figure (Sydney in this case) and when I go back to the Pose room, the "Face" camera is staring at her feet from ground level.
- Chaotic lack of synchonization between red outline, doc window object selection, and parameters palette object selection. For example, I just clicked on Kate 2's neck. I have no red outline, the doc window says I selected her neck, and the parameters palette says I selected her right shoulder. And there's no telling which is correct. I click again, in the Face Camera, on her NECK, and I select the GROUND, which isn't even visible in the viewport, much less in clicking range.
- Apply Kate [stranded] hair to her head in the Hair room. Click on the Hair length dial without moving it (or the hair length field without changing it), and the guide hair springs up as if electrified. The only way to get it back where it was is to Undo. The same thing happens if you click any Growth Control, but not if you click any Dynamics Controls. I emphasize, this happens without you actually "changing" anything except the focus, and it can't be fixed, only undone. I'm running a render to determine if the actual hair render is hosed. If you are happy with the new P7 rendering speed, stay away from the Hair room and keep your joy.
- Kate Casual is actually a conglomerate of a half-dozen figures, such as Kate Left Shoe. If you run a render of her face (neck, head, and hair, to find out if the electric hair is really sticking straight up), P7 loads the texture for her shoes ... and is nice enough to let me know it's busy doing that. In case you wondered why Poser renders are glacially eternal. Truth be said, P7 is lightning compared to P<7, but if it didn't load shoe textures to do face pictures, maybe it could actually compete with other programs.
That's enough for now. I'm getting depressed.
M
PS: Finally the render is complete. Based on the messages while building the render, it's obvious that it built everything in the scene, visible or not. And the answer is yes, Kate's 'do is totally hosed. Without changing anything; just for touching a Guide Control. Sheesh. I guess nobody noticed that before they went gold....
Oh my heck. Is "sheesh" a bad word? I mean, you KNOW what it stands for!
