So I got a wild idea this morning, but I don't know how to accomplish it. I'd like to have a central object, say a monster or some other horrendous threat, and a crowd of Poser folk, presumably in an ecosystem or ecosystems, running away from it. Any ideas on how to play with the orientation so that my running figures are fleeing in all directions?

4 (or more) ecosystems in a grid?  monster in center, and tweak the y-axis rotation until they flee AWAY from said monster and not run towards it?

curious to see what others come up with - kudos on a great question, ajtooley =D

Here's what I like to do to not only keep poly counts low (considering your use of Poser folk) but to give myself a bit more control over placement......

I use a plane object and place an ecosystem of whatever on that. Then I make the plane invisible and save the whole thing out as .vob. I usually make 3 or 4 for variety.  Then, I just load the .vobs and place them, scale them, rotate them any way I need to.

This way I avoid a lot of carpet polys that the camera won't see anyway and I can move my ecos around.

M

Check this link:
http://market.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2187952
Basically, it's the exact opposite of what you want to achive, so maybe a simple opposite filter thrown in somewhere will  do the trick.

Thanks, everyone! I'll try these ideas out. The main problem I've been having with rotating ecosystems is that whenever I edit the ecosystem after the plane's been rotated, the figures snap back to the "original" orientation, so that all the figures end up facing the same direction again. But saving the plane as a .vob is certainly intriguing, and something I should have thought of. And Bruno's link looks useful, if a little over my head at the moment (gives me something to shoot for, eh?)

But in the short term, I decided to try it with a crowd of oblivious bystanders instead of fleeing refugees. Given the subject matter of this particular image, that works just as well --but I still want to solve the original problem, so back to work for me! Thanks again.