If you are building a scene or vehicle or prop or whatever to specific real-world dimensions instead of "making it look about right"--that is, if you are creating, say, a room that is exactly 4 meters by 4 meters by 3 meters rather than one that looks about right sized to a Poser figure with no specific measurements--when you resize it for Poser could you please somewhere in the description or documentation tell us what scaling you were using to import it, if any.

If you were scaling it so that it matches Poser's internal unit scale (103.whatever Poser-inches equal 1 Poser Standard Unit), or 1 PSU = 8' (96") real, or if you didn't use a definite scale at all, it makes it a lot easier for those of us who do care about dimensions.  Even if I have to resize everything to get it to the scale I want to use, it makes life a lot easier if I know that going in.  I hate having to stop setting up a scene in the middle because I discover a character that is roughly 6 feet tall would smash his chin on the top of a standard door opening.

Incidentally, that brings up another rant.  I know it takes a lot of work to set up a big scene with funiture props and working doors and the like, and then texture it.  Believe me, I appreciate the work.  The question I've got is why some scene creators would go through all that trouble modeling and texturing and setting it up for Poser...and then apparently not dropping a basic Poser character in to see what the scale looks like when they get it into Poser.

I mean, I've seen un-resized basic Poser character who would not fit through the door in a scene without bending over.

Yup, I've run into this problem when building both scenes and vehicles.
Part of the problem is that the newer Poser characters are unrealistically
tall, even by Poser's own measurements.   James is 6'6", Jessi is 6'2".
So a scene or car that is built to correct Poser dimensions will still be cramped
for these characters.  Posette's thighs are way too long, so a desk and
chair built to realistic dimensions won't hold her legs.

On an antique car I just finished, I set the default scale to 111% so it
will hold Poser characters at their typical size, and then added a note
in the readme that you should reduce the car to 100% for accurate
dimensions with "antique-sized" people.  :)

I export the V4 M4 figure in various poses and use those to make sure my scene is sized right, but that doesn't take into account other figures.

I also export a stock Poser figure and use that as a scale reference for everything I make. Sometimes what I create is pretty hefty in size so I also create 50% size models too.

Scaling things is pretty basic and is what should be done for items being sold (I'm a lot less demand on free stuff).  However, some merchants are not bothering to scale things for Poser despite selling them as Poser products.  This along with other things shows a real lack of understanding of how to make Poser products and really makes me wonder if their products are worth it due to the extra time I will need to spend working with their products.

Makes you wonder about any quality control by the sites hosting them as well.

Quote - I export the V4 M4 figure in various poses and use those to make sure my scene is sized right, but that doesn't take into account other figures.

You don't need other figures.  Basically any of the standard adult human models that are most used (any of the Victorias, Michaels, the E-F) will get someone in at least the right ballpark.

The room I mentioned where a character couldn't get through the door had it too small for Miki2, which is significantly smaller than the other adult models, so that should tell you how out of whack it was.

I agree with the above, but especially with Ockham. I model my vehicles to exact real world dimensions, and scale them correctly for Poser.

Once in Poser, I try to make characters fit into cars, or on motorbikes, etc. On the DKW-8 car that I built it was impossible to fit Vicki or Mike into the car, I had to scale the car to 110% to make their legs fit.

Part of the reason for this is that real people can "make themselves smaller", or squeeze into a space, whereas digital models are too difficult to pose like this. If anyone has been to an antique car show you will notice that the spaces in the cars where a lot smaller than in modern cars.

With military models, such as tanks or armoured cars, the problem is even worse. I have been to museums and struggled to fit into the seats on tanks, mini subs, etc, (I am 6") and in Poser it is impossible to make Poser characters fit into these vehicles without either scaling the character or the vehicle.

But in general I agree that modellers are not paying enough attention to scaling, I have seen models with stairs that are either twice the height of a normal stair, or half the height, or windows built into walls that are too low, that a character standing at the window would have to duck to see out of it. 

real people can "make themselves smaller"

Good way of putting it.  People aren't nearly as squishy as cats, but they're
a lot less rigid than Poser characters!

I use real-world scaling in all my products. I mean.... why would you not do it? It's as easy to make things the correct size as it is to take a wild guess. Every modelling app has some sort of scale and it's not rocket-science to export things at Poser scale. Mind you, judging by the amount of people who don't do it properly, there must be some weird satisfaction in doing it the wrong way.

However, Pose changing scale with P6 didn't exactly help matters. It's only 107.5% difference, but it does show. Why they did that, I'll never know.

Anyway, all my products - Room Creator, Home One, Bar Italia, etc - all use real-world scale. I can guarantee that.

mac

It's as easy to make things the correct size as it is to take a wild guess.<

Especially when you compare with clothing.  Nobody would make a blouse 3 times
too large to fit Vicky. 

Chairs, cars, stoves, keyboards ... everything we use is "conforming" in some sense,
and most of these things have at least one absolute or invariant dimension that can
be used as the baseline.  Door height, counter height, wheelbase, distance between keys.......

There used to be several Poser 'yard sticks' that you could use within Poser to gauge the height of figures and other objects. I'm looking through Poser Utilities now, but not finding them. I even think that Geep had one.

The problem with those yardsticks is that the scale changed between versions,
and you can't be sure which version the yardstick was meant for.  It's better to
set the Preferences for meters or inches, then move a primitive up and down
or back and forth to get exact measurements in the version you're using.

While I agree with maclean about being able to model to exact dimensions in your modeler,  my concern has always been how that scale will translate into every version of Poser including the versions that haven't been released yet. That's why I prefer to use an imported M4/V4 character to judge the appropriate size of the room or props that I'm making.

Ultimately that is where the rubber is going to meet the road in Poser :)

• Rick