Quote - Hey Morkonan,  sad to hear about your system crashes.  As far as it's Hexagon it's a derivative of some probs that was also in AMAPI. I got Amapi 5 (??) a ten years back cause it was the only (semi-)professional modeler with a output option for the freeware POVray raytracer. That's up to today one of the best raytracing engines. But all for it has to be written as source code. And really, it's not my way to have things I see or want to see defined in values and vectors ... that must be done visually or it's a big trial and error experiment.

I've used POVRay a few times and it's interesting to use.  But, I do agree there are some drawbacks to implementation.  The learning curve to get good quality results intuitively is pretty steep.  I don't mind certain command line "like" functions but POVRay has too much going on there for my personal tastes.  The GUI for rendering is fairly straightforward but, it takes a lot of work to get used to using it.  As you said, there is very little in the way of visual feedback previewing and that is really needed.  I haven't updated my version in a long time.

Quote - I also got Hexagon cause it was cheap. But build by the same developers I found lots of things I don't like also in Hexagon. For example the whole workflow with the mouse using different functions with right or left clicks and enter between is rather bumpy ... in my opinion. And it was mostly tricky to work with the mouse and the keyboard. I love to enter values for different functions and often you have to choose the number fields by mouse while function is active. And then  the drawn line etc. is  hiking over the complete desktop  to the entry field.
So for modelling C4D is lots more precise in handling ... ok, ok, also lots more dollars ... although for american people it is much cheaper as for us european guys :cursing: ... up to 30% ... I don't know why

I work well using both hands but, I do agree that it is very annoying not to be able to enter certain values for functions and then, being forced to click on a field entry while a tool is active is very disconcerting.  I do like Hex's overall interface and it is very, very intuitive.  There's not much need to spend hours searching among nested menus and obscure commands.  It's all laid out for you fairly easily.  You can be modelling with Hex and using complex functions within a few minutes.  Trying to do that with something like 3DS, admittedly a much more robust and commercialized engine, and you'd be lucky to get primitives modelled the way you wanted in the same amount of time.

Quote - But Hexagon has some functionality in UV making which is really outstanding, e.g. that thing in making new seams and splitting with lines ... but as said before UV mapping isn't my best side. I struggle with that ... and the winner isn't defined up to this moment ...

I guess I'm one of the few that actually enjoys UVMapping with Hex.  However, my biggest complaint there is that one reason Hex has some great UV mapping tools is that you NEED them to make sense out of the initial projection maps that Hex first supplies you with for your object.  I don't think Hexagon knows wtf it is doing on some projections and "pinning" doesn't seem to help much most of the time.  Some better instructions there would be most helpful.  If it didn't have some great tools to manipulate the UVs, that feature would be impossible to use otherwise.

Quote - As for all that pc, poser, etc. crashes I'm really surprized sometimes. I read a lot of such things in the forum but I never can understand.

Hex's overriding problem, IMO, is intercepting errors when the program is waiting for a particular procedure to be "Validated" by the user.  Choosing other functions that may depend on the validation of a previous procedue will result in an error.  The new function doesn't have anything to appy itself to because the object is still "in use" by a function that is still "open" and not Validated (closed/finished).  Since it wasn't set up to be intercepted with a reminder to the user to "Validate" whatever process they had begun beforehand and are now finished with, Hexagon crashes.

Quote - So I'm with you in most cases memory is the problem. But it's not the problem if poser is crashing while starting ... with figures loaded in preview it might be a OGL flaw with graphics card driver and while rendering it's mostly a memory problem. But normally a big library doesn't shoot poser. It might slow down the start cause poser is reading the complete directory structure of the library plus the content of the last choosen folder. But this isn't very memory intensive, thats only pointer lists.

I agree.  But, a previous crash could compound the problem, couldn't it?  If unassigned instruction sets are running around in ram or still in Poser's old cache and Poser restarts and loads those instead of ignoring or flushing them, would that cause continued problems?

Quote - @paramount: for that starting problem, try to build one separat runtime as I mailed you and leave it empty or only one easy prop in it. If you are ending poser normally, make sure you are standing on that empty lib with your library pallet. Next time starting poser will read this structure and cause it's empty there should be no delay. If doing so and poser is crashing on start again then we will be sure it's not a problem with the library as such or it's volume.

That's a nice debugging tool for runtimes.  Good one!

Quote - And now for the cuff's ... Morkonan, they look great but that did my also. Did you try for example with bend knee's ?   If that work I'm very interested in that cuff's.

They work fine with bended knees with the only problem seeming to be controlled morphs like thigh muscle flexes when the knees are bent at significant angle.  I could add some standard V4 morphs in there that should handle that or just include some poke-through morphs.  (Maybe a bit of both.) 

Here, you can see they work just fine with extreme bends of the shin (unlike P3Ds boots which don't work well with the calf-flex controlled morph).  However, on the thigh bend upwards, they don't have the controlled morph in them (there could be a center issue as well, I'll check it) so there's some poke through when the thigh is bent at a negative angle and the muscle morph is activated:

Quote - And having a wish I would prefer cuff's with a outcut V at the back. While the overall length is well I would prefer a bigger height in the front and a lower height at the back. So that the boot looks diagonal at the top from front to back with the cuff unfolded. You know what I mean ?
In your actual model I would give them up to 1/3 to 1/4 of length more in front and up to 1/4 to 1/5 less at the back ... depends a bit how wide the V will be.

Understood.  I'll either put those in as a morph or just do another set as well.  However, I can't go any lower in the back without also doing a corresponding morph for P3Ds boots.  The top of my cuff is only a few centimeters above the top of P3Ds Thighboots.  I'll raise the front in a new model or morph and see how that looks.  I'll look for some photos of a "v" notched cuffed boot and use that as a guide for the size of the notch.  Modelling the cuffs is the part that takes the least amount of time and doing two sets doesn't impact the rest of the workflow to any great extent at all.

Quote - B.t.w. did you see that these boots have a bug in their CR2 ?  The creator has hidden far to much dials in that figure. You are unable to do anything with them if not conformed to figure.
At the moment I use a python script to unhide neccessary dials on the fly but that's annoying, have to go into the CR2 next time and push the respective parameters to correct values.
Are you interested in a updated CR2 ? 

I haven't looked at the CR2 yet.  I hadn't really ever looked at these boots until they were brought up in this thread.  I don't have a lot of call for using thigh boots. :)  But, I do like pirates so I'll do an unhide on them and see what's there.  They probably used a pre-existing CR2 from something else and then hid too much of it. 

Quote - Hope you had had a fine kunch ... for me it's time for late night diner now ... :biggrin:

Lunch was fine!  I went to the cafeteria and had a full, well-balanced nutritional meal and a big slice of pie. :)