I have two questions, what I'm trying to do is simply make some hands grasp and set up some IK chains in for legs and arms..  I'm working on several different models including Mech types so these things are not set up and are rather difficult to get working right in poser.
on to the questions;

If a foot does not have X, Y, Z trans dials and only works with rotate, how can I add these dials? (so as to get an IK chain to work)

If a hand is set up so the fingers can move independently but there is no 'grasp' controller on the hand itself, how do I set one up?

Thanks, hope someone can help.

Edit, Note; I'm still on Poser 7 btw.

You will likely find that the xyz tran dials are hidden. Use one of the unhide scripts , or edit the cr2 and look for hidden 1 , change to hidden 0 , save and reload the figure.

grasp controller can be done with erc .  look for the thread on saucer struts in this forum , it shows how to do simple erc .

Dimension 3D has an unhide dials script - part of a bundle (free) at Content Paradise or on the D3D website.  (Dimension 3D is a Renerosity vendor, too, in case you need to sitemail him.)

Poser 8 would it make it easier to drive several finger dials from a master dial.  The interface is directly available as "dependent parameters".    In earlier versions of Poser, you have some CR2 editing magic or perhaps EPU2, which I think lets you set up slave dials of all kinds (not just chains.)

-K

**markschum, andolaurina, thanks, the trans dials don't appear to be hidden though.. will look into erc, looks complicated lol.

kerwin, waiting for a few patches / updates before I buy, not so lucky with new software myself :)

I've run into another problem, which is confusing me, I have this Mech that I wanted to put an extra set of arms onto, I built the arms in 3DsMax and imported obj to poser, I set up bones and IK, parented it to the abs, works great, but now the pose dots won't hold the pose,  its because the second arms are classed at a separate figure, I've tried to re-parent them and am having no luck so;

how do you merge figures?  just parenting one to another doesn't seem to work for the pose dots (though it does work for saving to the library).****
**
thanks.

I would recreate the whole thing as one figure, probably not what you wanted to hear.

just re-done it as one figure, took 11 hours (maybe I underestimated the complexity of the arms before) :(  its 4 in the morning and I can't help thinking that all the work I did today just puts me back to where I thought I was yesterday morning...lol

anyway, big thanks to everyone who helped, still can't get the trans dials to show in my other mech model (the python script doesn't show trans hidden so I assume they are just not there..)

while this thread is up top I think I'll ask another question, off topic for rigging but don't want to start a new thread while this one is on the first page;

I've been using the material node : 3D textures / marble and hooking it to Diffuse_color, Specular_color and Bump.  looks really cool on metalwork kind of things, anyway, when animating the pattern jumps around as if its animated too, but I can't find any references to animation in the node -or in fact in the material room, anyone know what's going on?  I don't have a lot of experience with the material room yet so the answer is probably staring me in the face...lol