Been a long time poser user (P4, P5, P6, P7 and P8) and I've never had trouble using my mouse to move dials on the parameter palette until P8 (Sr1).  It seems the dials in P8 are more sensitive to mouse movements and its a pain to use them. I wind up entering numeric posing values instead which is very time consumming and annoying.  I'd like to use P8 but wind up going back to P7.  Any suggestions??

Hi,
Im useing Poser 7, I recently had similar problems and eventually traced it back to the mouse i was using( wireless)It was just plain worn out,pity as we ve been together 4 years.
Once I installed a new one the problem went away
It may be that?

pete

I have had the problem in other versions as well as P 8 .
In p8 it seems to be more extreme.

Try what happens if you uncheck "tablet mode" in the preference settings.

I experienced this in P7 as well, and it seemed to get worse as the scene got more complicated. The more figures involved, the more unresponsive and imprecise the dials became and I would end up typing in values out of frustration. Using a standard corded mouse can make it truly excruciating.

I am not a  coder so I don't understand the reason why one figure's dials must be hampered by the presence of another figure in the scene. I hope the engineers use Poser in real-world situations when testing, not only with the least possible demand on resources. Maybe a raw beginner works only with a single naked figure, but he or she quickly grows beyond that.

And while I'm ranting inanely at program designers... Please don't design the interface on your laptop! Most who work in 3D do so on screens of 20 inches or bigger, and what looks right on your laptop shrinks to tiny proportions on large screens with high resolutions. The miniscule text, icons and scrollbars (especially those skinny scrollbars) in P8 look like they were designed for low-res screens, with no way for the user to change it.

Experiencing the same, but I've got no solution for it.

Hi .
Not a permanent solution but closing the program and reopening aftersaving works--seems to clear it.

Pete

Whew!  Jerky  could mean anything, if you mean when you flip your dials (take eyes for example) and they flip from side to side or up and down, it could be your dial setting sensitivity control for that dial.  Lowering the setting results in smoother control.  Jan

Quote - I experienced this in P7 as well, and it seemed to get worse as the scene got more complicated.

Same here; dials much smoother in P6 than in P7. I don't find the P8 dials quite as stiff as the P7.
(P7 running on Tiger, P8 on Leopard.)

Quote - Whew!  Jerky  could mean anything, if you mean when you flip your dials (take eyes for example) and they flip from side to side or up and down, it could be your dial setting sensitivity control for that dial.  Lowering the setting results in smoother control.  Jan

True, but we are not referring to that. We mean dials that are smooth in a simple scene, but get jerky and wild as the scene grows.

This reminds me of a pet peeve of mine... The default sensitivity of a dial is 1.0. It can be changed to say 0.1 for more precise work, but next time you open that scene it's right back at 1.0. The change is not saved. 

I've had the same problem with Poser 7 and 8, but always blamed my computer or mouse for it.  I think it's been broken since Poser 6 which I didn't use very much because it stunk.  I find trying to get the dials to a specific number is impossible so I too have to enter the numeric digits to get what I want.  This worked in Poser 5.

TWolf:   unchecking the tablet mode makes no difference I can see. Thanks anyway.

I guess I'm glad others have noticed the problem.  I'm going to mark up a ticket at SM. maynbe they can do something on the next SR.  Thanks all.

Yes, I noticed that too. It's the graphics engine, I guess; P8 behaves (for me at least) with one figure like P6 does when you have 4-5 fully clothed figures in your scene. Reactions are slower, optical feedback is spotty, so one tends to overdial. Everything moves by uncontrolled jerks, which can be a real pain in the neck when working on complicated scenes, and a real shopstopper when working on bigger ones. I still use P6 for posing, for this reason.

I sure hope SM will optimize this for SR2, or at least add the P6 preview engine as an option (I really don't see what the P8 one does better than the old P6 one).

SM indicated they had experienced the problem with P8 and graphic pads and suggested I get a new driver for my Wacom.  I did and it improved slightly, but the dial action is still not as smooth as it should be IMHO.

Nothing to do with tablets IMHO; I have two licenses of P8, one computer has a Wacom attached, the other not, and the display is as slow & jerky on both.

Quote -

This reminds me of a pet peeve of mine... The default sensitivity of a dial is 1.0. It can be changed to say 0.1 for more precise work, but next time you open that scene it's right back at 1.0. The change is not saved. 

You can save it by resaving the figure back to the palette once you've changed the sensitivity on the dials.
OR manually edit the CR2, whatever you prefer :)

DUH!  Turns out the "Fix" for this is to use "Fast" Tracking and not "Full" tracking, per SM.  Works great. 

Thanks; Where do you find that setting?

Ah, that one, okay. Thanks.
I like to see things as they move too, but I'll try it, just in case it yields some dramatic improvement...

It would be sad though to have to go back to box posing in 2009... :-(

Just get a decent opengl graphics card and throw away your gaming card which was NOT made for any serious 3D work.
It's that simple.
It depends on just how serious you are about 3D.
I guess though that most users here are just part time hobby users so you guys and gals will have to put up with it and keep a-grumblin' and a- grumblin'
It's been happeing for years and people have been posting complaints like this for years
If you must use a gaming card, cut down on it's patheteic implementation of opengl and use a less intensive document preview window mode as already suggested...
If you are seriously concerned..GET A DEDICATED OPENGL CARD. :)

Quote - Just get a decent opengl graphics card and throw away your gaming card which was NOT made for any serious 3D work.
It's that simple.
It depends on just how serious you are about 3D.
I guess though that most users here are just part time hobby users so you guys and gals will have to put up with it and keep a-grumblin' and a- grumblin'
It's been happeing for years and people have been posting complaints like this for years
If you must use a gaming card, cut down on it's patheteic implementation of opengl and use a less intensive document preview window mode as already suggested...
If you are seriously concerned..GET A DEDICATED OPENGL CARD. :)

ATI Radeon X1600 with 256Mb  How does that rate..?

Quote - DUH!  Turns out the "Fix" for this is to use "Fast" Tracking and not "Full" tracking, per SM.  Works great. 

That's not a real solution, that's a workaround......

Quote - Just get a decent opengl graphics card and throw away your gaming card which was NOT made for any serious 3D work.
It's that simple.
It depends on just how serious you are about 3D.

If I was really serious about 3D, I wouldn't be losing my time with Poser... :-p

I can't believe it's 2009 and they've never given us a keyboard shortcut to increment the dials (ie, click on the dial, then use the keyboard to change value) . Every video and audio program I've worked with (which is many) has had this kind of interface for years now.

Seeing as how the program is called "Poser" and the bread and butter activity is posing using the parameter dials -- why must it be so difficult to pose figures precisely? I have thought this is an absurd situation since I started with Poser 3.

Yep, I'd like keyboard shortcuts too that operate on the currently selected dial, could then map then to an external device. Would be great to be able to spin the parameter dials with the mouse wheel for example...

Thank you Dizzi, I look forward to using that when I upgrade to Poser 8.  I'm guessing a lot of people would find your script very useful.

@Dizzi

Quote - With the attached simple script (for Poser 8) you can select a parameter from the list and then change it via the mouse wheel (while pressing shift key) and change the value added/substracted keeping control key pressed... (Made that because I hate entering values, too ;-))

Brilliant! Thanks very much for that...

As a plug, have to say your Advanced Library is brilliant too, use it all the time.

Since this is slowly drifting OT, I'll add my 2 cents: Poser indeed lacks posing tools!

What I am missing is something more efficient than looking up the body part in a list spanning several screens (V4/M4), enter a value, change body part, enter another value, get back to the first because they are all inter-dependent, and so on for half an hour.
Just try posing a somewhat complicated pose, like someone putting his/her arm around the shoulders of someone else, and you'll understand what I mean...

For instance, all parts of a given limb* should appear on the same panel (for instance selecting "Left Arm" should allow you to pose all parts of that arm, from collar to hand, without having to change panels hundreds of times).
And before someone retorts such a panel would be incredibly long and thus unusable, I'm talking about a dedicated posing panel, used to pose things, which means it only has the XYZ rotations of the body parts (go to the old individual ones for morphs).
Now add to this posing panel the already existing feature to group (and thus fold/unfold groups of) dials, and I don't really see why this hasn't already been implemented. Too easy, most likely.  :-p

But I'm confident; I see several people in the Poser team seem to actually use it, which means they are likely to know its purpose. Not much software is as lucky as that. If they all go like me, "what does really need an overhaul and how can it be done", Poser will most likely soon be purged of all its hereditary flaws (or at least the worst ones...).

• How does Poser know what parts any limb has? After all, there aren't no 2 figures using the same rigging. We could include this information in the CR2, but it wouldn't work on the "old" content (99.9% of your runtimes). So I'd suggest to take the easy solution, and have that same rigging allow Poser to populate that panel "on the fly": Go down the root bone, and create new panels each time you meet more than one child bone. For instance, after loading a generation 4 DAZ character, we would get following "posing" panels:

• Hip, abdomen, chest, neck, head (the "torso" panel).
• Left/right collar, arm, forearm, hand (the arms, 2 panels)
• Left/right fingers, 5 times (fingers, ten panels. Still easier to use than 30 individual ones)
• Left/right thigh, shin, foot, toe (the legs, 2 panels)

Don't know about you, but I would be dancing in glee if I could pose only using 15 (instead of 51) individual panels.

Yep, I wish the figure and actor drop down lists were better managed. They were designed several versions ago when characters and models were a lot simpler. Now, with all the individual body parts a figure can have you have a list filling the whole page - would be good if it could be grouped or even if the list could be several columns wide rather than one single, page long column.

Well using the new dependent parameter tool you could create dependent parameters for all the rotations you like and then put them in groups you like on one body part (or a prop).

But thats something that was done with PoseMagic already a few years ago.

So something new:
I've played with my mouse wheel posing tool a bit and added some more features, this may help you a bit, too (probably not too much yet, haven't grouped the body, but that's the next step).
 One can now change multiple parameters of the same actor (e.g. rotate x and y at the same time), change (multiple) rotations of multiple actors of the same figure at the same time (like rotate hip and chest at the same time) or rotate&translate any selected actors which are below the universe at the same time (move 4 chairs and the table up one room ,-)).
 Pressing ALT while using the wheel will change the offset from 1 through 9 (so adding 0.3 instead of only 0.1 is possible now).

Quote - Well using the new dependent parameter tool you could create dependent parameters for all the rotations you like and then put them in groups you like on one body part (or a prop).

Yes, but I was actually speaking about ways to improve the way Poser works.
Else, yes, I could of course re-rig all my content to fit into Poser's shortcomings, but I'd rather not... :-D

Great stuff, thanks Dizzi... keep 'em coming...

Quote - Yep, I wish the figure and actor drop down lists were better managed. They were designed several versions ago when characters and models were a lot simpler. Now, with all the individual body parts a figure can have you have a list filling the whole page - would be good if it could be grouped or even if the list could be several columns wide rather than one single, page long column.

I may be missing something because Poser 8 does group their FBM morphs into Full Body, Upper Torso, Lower Torso, Breasts, Arm-Hand, Blute-HIp, and Leg-Foot and each of these areas are further group (eg Full Body has Athletic, BodyBuilder, Emaciated, Heavy, Lithe, Muscular, Perfigure, Pregnant, Rubenesque, Smooth, Thin, Toned, and Voluptuous. 

However, if you download a V3, then you get a string of morph adjustments that aren't grouped unless you use ABG's prepared morph package that does group items for at least V3.  Jan

I mean the figure/actor drop downs for selecting which is currently active.

When you're posing something, why not use the Posing Tool? It took me a long time to get used to it, but it's been in Poser since..er.. Poser 6 or 7? Not sure.

It makes posing so much easier - with the mouse. More intuitive than spinning dials. 

Quote - why not use the Posing Tool?

What do you call the "posing tool"?

Many good ideas here, but I found the real problem and possibly the fix by accident.  Last Friday my computer crashed and  tech support had sympathy but little help.  Since I use my computer for business I needed to recover pronto so I bought a replacement. My old computer was 3.0 Mhz, 32bit, 4 GB RAM, 80GB HD, XPProfessional.  The new one is 2.7Mhz dual cores, 32Bit, 2 GB RAM, 500GB HD XP Professional.  Carbonite provided crashed files and after re-installing my progys I was amazed to find P8 dials operating very smoothly and normally (not jerking).  IMHO dual cores solved the jerky dials and two render threads really sped up IL renders.    Best wishes for happy holidays.

I use the posing tools, the dials, entering numbers directly and also direct manipulation with a Space Navigator/Pilot Pro. Have no issue with the posing tools really other than trying to use the mouse directly usually ends up with another actor/prop being selected and moved instead...

Still would like the figure/actor drop down selections better managed rather than a long list the height of the screen...

Quote -  This one. Officially called the Direct Manipulation Tool (was doing a render earlier so I couldn't remember the exact name of it)

Ah, okay. No, I don't like them, too imprecise, and getting quickly useless when you have several fully clothed figures in your scene.
I admit this is just a style of work, but I'm used to dialing stuff (or even typing in values directly).

Hi Dizzi. I download the two text files and the silly question is; where do I locate them for the shortcuts to work?

Quote - IMHO dual cores solved the jerky dials and two render threads really sped up IL renders.

I already have dual cores and it doesn't help (except for rendering, of course)...
I think you're experiencing the improvement of a second core and (most important), a clean, fresh installation of Windows. Windows gets slower over time as it "ages", accumulating more and more junk, almost broken files and tiny problems, much like humans do...

The main parts of Poser 8 aren't yet aware of additional cores anyway; AFAIK only the two renderers are (It's easy to check, fire up the Task Manager and check the CPU load graph while working. Most of the time it will peak at 50% (one core working full, one doing nothing), although, since the app is not multicore aware, the tasks will continuously switch from core to core (negating any CPU cache benefits, since the required information will always be on the wrong cache - the other one...); But if you check the graphs, you'll notice their pattern is complementary (one is the negative of the other, meaning that when core 0 works, core 1 is sleeping, and the other way round). It's very well visible on CPU intensive tasks like loading or saving a compressed scene file.

Quote - Best wishes for happy holidays.

Best (although late) wishes to you too!

Quote - Hi Dizzi. I download the two text files and the silly question is; where do I locate them for the shortcuts to work?

I've described here how to run Python scrips using shortcurts.
And to not further disturb this thread, here's the latest incarnation of my script
All further changes will be posted to this board of my forum ;-)

Edit: In case you just want to know how to run the scripts: remove the .txt extension (that's just so they can be uploaded here) and then you can start them from Poser's File menu (Run Python Script, select the scripts).

Thanks Dizzi.