Okay, I'm setting up for a single frame shot, dig? No animation. 
I have a suit of armor. I just want to put hands in the armor, where they would go, holding a sword, a helmet, axe, whatever, K?

So, since I don't know of any poseable disembodied forearms hands, I decided to start working with a figure "James", and made everything invisible except the hands. Okay, fine, but why can't I seem to disable kinematics ? I disable Inverse K and autobalance, but every time I move one hand, the other will move to compensate.  It's maddening.

I am almost ready to add an additional "James", to supply one of the hands (thus isolating), as my last resort workaround, which I know will certainly work. But it seems so clunky and excessive a solution. 

Does anyone know if invisible polygons and rigging, etc will continue to tax system resources, even if all of the attributes are disabled (visibility, seen by ray tracing, casts shadows, etc)?

Does anyone know a better way to do this hand and forearm thing?

While I am at it, does anyone know why poser, in the material room,  doesn't allow you to simply save and load (entire, ie, all attributes) surfaces? The closest I can get is to hold shift button as I copy all nodes, and paste to the new (object) surface. Not so bad, but far from ideal.   Probably I'm missing something.       In all of this.     This all can't be right, it has to be my own stupidity or unwillingness to read manuals too often.

First, I dunno.  Disabling IK should do just that.

Second, yes, even invisible things will still tax resources because they are there in the scene, even if invisible.

Third, Poser will allow you to save and load a whole lot of attributes in the Material Room.  Save a Material Collection, instead of a single material.  Setting it up may be time consuming but afterwards it will always load in one click.

I like this metod: Take james into the setup room and delete all body parts you don't want. In the Pose Room, select the Setup_prop ( I think that's what it's called) and delete it. Done correctly you should only have the forearms, hands and fingers left in your window. Save that back to the library. It should accept textures.

If I remember correctly there are disembodied heads and hands in the "Additional Figures" library. they are of the P3/P4 variety but the right and left hand would load as seperate figures without the additional body parts adding geometry to contend with. 

As far as why the James figure's hands are acting as they are, I have no idea. It definitely sounds odd to me.

And yes as Sam said, you can choose (in P7 anyway) to save an entire material collection or a single material. If you save the collection it will save all materials attributed to the figure or object you have selected at the time of the save.

There are actually just hands included with Poser in the Figures->Additional Figures library, although they are massively scaled upon loading so probably not ideal for what you want.

Re James, if you use the tools (rotate, twist, translate) to drag the arm around he does seem to balance himself, but using the dials (collar, shoulder, forearm and hand respectively) to move an arm doesn't result in the other arm/hand moving. Not in my experience, anyway.

Quote - There are actually just hands included with Poser in the Figures->Additional Figures library, although they are massively scaled upon loading so probably not ideal for what you want.

Re James, if you use the tools (rotate, twist, translate) to drag the arm around he does seem to balance himself, but using the dials (collar, shoulder, forearm and hand respectively) to move an arm doesn't result in the other arm/hand moving. Not in my experience, anyway.

I haven't ever checked (and can't at the moment) but does James default load include Auto Balance switched on?  That would also explain the weird behaviour.

I have done exactly what you describe, with Vicky, and have had no problems.  Are you perhaps using one of the hand cameras?  This would be tied to the movement of one hand, making the other hand appear to move when it's really the camera that is moving.

A long shot, but when things don't make sense it's usually something you wouldn't suspect.

On the materials collection, only 6 & 7 have that capability.  P5 can only save a single material.  There is a button (6 & 7) that allows you to select the specific materials that are included in the collection.  You probably want to avoid that, as the invisible parts will still be using materials, unless you remove them.  You could end up with twice as many large maps unnecessarily.

John

I just tried with V4.1, and if I click on the arm and drag with the translate tool selected, she bends and her other arm raises. I'm viewing using the main camera.
It stands to reason really. If my arm was grabbed and pulled, I'd follow it and likely my other arm would rise whereas if I moved my arm myself, just that arm would move.

Yeah, of course.  For some reason I had a totally different idea of what you were saying.  I have now rebooted my brain. :)

Hey, "guys", thanks for all the good input; I won't really be doing them all justice in this quick post, just a few notes of clarification:
yeah, I'm using dials not drags. That's why I'm mystified. I was thinking there must be some kinematics beyond the inverse and autobalance that I have disabled, and I could see why that might kick in if you drag a part too far, but if you are using the dials, conservatively at that... why?

I loaded a fresh james in a new scene. Auto balance was not enabled, so I just ticked OFF the IK of the 2 legs (since that is what was enabled). Could move forearms without moving up the chain. Good. That tells me there is something goofy going on  in my armor scene, some strange hierarchy entanglement, even though I did not conform james to armor, or vice versa.
The armor is a figure with full body hierarchy. weird.

No, not using hand cameras.

That set-up room approach sounds great, I hope I can get it to work, because it would be the best approach: get rid of useless geometry, get what I want from the forearms/hands. As long as the hands still have the posing dials and are otherwise poseable after the set-up maneuver. Well, actually, even that is not essential. I mean, If I get the grasping right, and that gets "frozen", so to speak, and only left with the basic properties parameters (trans xyz, etc) to move 'em into place, would work. Well, I'm getting ahead of myself, next move is to just try it, duh :)

sincere Thanks! to all

Ashamed of myself, got busy and neglected/forgot to give proper props to nickedshield for the excellent direction that cut to the chase with the optimal solution.

THANKS! 

Glad to hear you got things working the way you want.