I may have missed this, so if I have please forgive me.

Has there been any improvement to the operation of the Setup Room?

Currently I have any number of problems using the setup tools, bones not rotating or moving and the total inacuracy of the "markers". So fr no ones seems to have mentioned this, at least in the threads I've seem.

I'd appriciate any discussion on this.

Thanks
mike

I'v not done a lot of testing, but so far it seems identical to how it works in P7...

;( sadly tht would have been the one thing that would have gotten me to buy it. Oh well, hopefully Poser 8 will show some improved tools for content creator. The one thing that I need Poser for is the Jount editor and some Setup room functions (like shifting bones, or adding them) and the controls are just terrible in P7.

mike

I find that when using the orthographic views I have no problem manipulating the bones or using the joint editor in the Setup Room. What exactly are the issues you are experiencing? Maybe I can help?

I'm not sure why Phil, but I seem to have issues with accuracy. When I'm working at ROTATING bones to new angles either I find they won;t rotate eventho the cursor has changed to the small bullseye (IE they will scale or twist but not bend) or I find that I loose the selection form th specific bone and move the target object.

Personally I'd like to see some numerical controls added to the setup room for these operations, as theyed a) be more precise, and b) would allow for excact repetition. But in general I've found P7's visual interface less "accurate" while using the Setup room and the Joint editor. the visual cues seem to change postion when the angle of veiw is moved and it's offten hard to "pick" the right part using the visual cursor.

It may just be me, but I've seen others that seem to have the same complaints, so I'm not sure if it;s just me or the program, but I seem to remember an increase in these problems after moving from P6 to P7. Still P7 has too many other factors I like to want to "go backwards".

mike

The way the whole thing is set up... how one needs to go about selecting things is very counter productive. I like to use Mat spheres for adjustments...  and the whole way of selecting those is a royal PITA.
You have to go to one drop down with a million entries to find the body part (or press your luck picking it off the screen... and Even hierarchy editor isn't that great)
Then you have to go to another dumb drop down to find the joint parameter... then you have to go to a totally different panel and a drop down to actually select the mat sphere... or again or press your luck picking it off the screen.
Then if you want to do any coordinate entry, you go between the JP panel, and the Parameters XYZ dials.

If you're working on JP's for a piece of clothing, and want to work on them interactively while conformed on a character, there's no way to 'freeze' JP's for the character so they wouldn't get selected accidentally.

I swear, if they were trying to make it any more cumbersome, I don't think they could have!!!!

Setup room should have one expandable hierarchy panel with some sort of a spreadsheet access to all the parameters, which allows you to enter then numerically, or to aid in screen selection.  Also, there should be a way to copy parameter values... No by selecting a body part, then the joint then the mat sphere then copy an X coordinate, then select the other JP, find the mat sphere paste coordinate... do the same for Y and Z....
Or have to write them down and key them back in...

One could just copy XYZ fields from one JP (let's say Bend) to the JP's of Twist by a single copy and paste - if they want to. Have a spinner for the numbers right next to the number, instead of on a totally different panel. There are a lot of other little things. I'd have to open up my poser and got through a rigging process to describe them all, unfortunately no time.

What would be a 'dream' is a built in interactive setup panel with CR2 editor... in the style of Visual Basic or MS Access or similar  - where you can select copy/paste values and parameters, and see their effect on the screen. Where you have On screen Editing, Easy Pose, CR2 Editor etc all combined, Mat pose creator and the other 300 or so different utilities from different places a content creator ends up having to collect and use - all in one.  I'd pay good money for something like that.

There are a lot of little things that could be improved that would make it a lot easier for content creators.  ...Poser pro could have been geared towards them... but that's crying over a spilled milk.

Why are they called "mat' Spheres when they're not related to materials? What does mat stand for in there?

Quote - Why are they called "mat' Spheres when they're not related to materials?
What does mat stand for in there?

Probably short for matrix as thats whats used to describe the influence the sphere represents.