I have to create a substantial number of animations of a figure seated in an office chair.  Currently the chair is just a compound prop with a base as the parent, and the seat, seatback and fives coasters as children.  I would like to be able to create pose files for my figure, and would like them also to affect the chair.  I don't want the chair to be the child of the figure, as it would be hard to maintain placement on the ground when the figure is being posed.  I'm thinking the chair may need to be converted to a figure before pose files can be applied to it.  Does anyone have any experience with this?

Not sure what you are asking.  The chair can be animated as a prop and well as any character.  Are you trying to make poses that will save in the Poser library?

If so, than I think the chair prop may indeed need to be converted into a character.

Best Wishes,
Rªnce

Yes, and I'd like to be able to pose both the figure and the adjustable chair (currently made of props) with a single pose file.  This is for a client, and I want it to be as simple for them to use as posible since we are sharing rendering duties.  I know I could make each animation a scene file, but for storage reasons I was looking to avoid saving the background props repeatedly.  I've not experimented much with multi-figure groups, and am not sure how to create pose files spanning multiple figures.

Would it just be simpler to animate the figure and chair outside of their intended environment, and save them as scenes?  Then could the scenes of the figure and chair be imported into the scene containing just the room?     

Well, even IF the chair were made into a character you would need  to save two poses: one for the figure chair and one for the character.  I do this sometimes as well.  Just use a naming convention for the files 1 Figure, 1 Chair, 2 etc.  Each figure, both the character and the chair could then be selected one at a time and the poses applied.

Saving the combined poses into a scene file works well too, but make sure your lights and camera settings for the final scene are saved separately to the library so they can be easily re-applied.  I've had issues where the lights and cameras change but I can't think now when that happens: when I'm in my final scene doing the import or when I'm in my 'pose' file and import my final scene.  Best to save as many elements as you can and re-load.  Also do test renders of single frames to make sure lights/camera/render settings haven't changed and match up in each file.  Usually I work in a number of smaller files.  Edit Memorize and Restore works well to be certain the last frame of one file matches the first frame of the next file ...

You will have to develope a work flow and then try to stick with it.  It can get pretty complicated but it seems like you're asking the right questions.

Quote - I've not experimented much with multi-figure groups, and am not sure how to create pose files spanning multiple figures.

It's not possible to apply a pose to multiple figures at once. By "pose" I mean a Poser script pose, as in a pz2 file, it may be possible to pose multiple figures via a python script.

A pose applies to one figure only, plus any prop, light, or camera parented to it, but not to another figure parented to it.

You could parent the base part of the chair to the BODY of the figure. That way any pose you save for the figure will include a pose for the chair. That's fine as long as you don't need to translate or rotate the figure's BODY actor. The downside is that if you move the figure's BODY the chair will move with it, so you could only translate of rotate the figure via its hip. Parenting the chair to the BODY should be a viable solution in most situations, so long as you are mindful of the restrictions on moving the BODY.

Apart from the above, the solutions get more complicated. A Python script might be able to pose multiple figures, or a combination of unparented props and figures at the same time. You could try asking in the Poser Python Forum, if such a script exists or could be made.

An even more drastic solution might be to edit the figure's cr2 so that it contained an extra actor in the hierarchy above the BODY. The chair could be partented to that new actor, leaving the BODY actor free to move without affecting the chair.

Quote - Would it just be simpler to animate the figure and chair outside of their intended environment, and save them as scenes?  Then could the scenes of the figure and chair be imported into the scene containing just the room?

That should work, but I recommend deleting all lights from the scene you intend to import, before you save it. I find that importing a scene that contains lights can cause conflicts with lights already in the scene you are importing into.

Thanks for the help, I finally decided on an approach.  My scene, with figure, is only about 4,200k.  I am simply creating all of my scenes from a base scene and saving them out as scenes.  When the chair has to move, I am just writing the values that change.  It seemed easier than making a figure of the chair.

But any project of any size will present its own challenges, and a number of Poser quirks have presented themselves while working...

Using IK with poses is still maddening.  If you don't turn IK off, things move.  Things like to move when you turn it back on as well.

No matter how many times I fix it, I keep running into a situation where my locked lights want to drift and spin around.  They will start out in the proper position but move and rotate slowly throughout.  The funny thing is that applying a single-frame light set to the end frame will consistantly changes their positions on the first frame as well.  Not sure why this would happen.

And what's up with the casual man figure?  I really thought this figure would be good enough for this project but he has a number of serious issues.  (I know he is old, but I couldn't really find a decent "normal person" figure in business-appropriate attire anywhere.)  I knew there were no numerical values for the grasp parameter, but didn't know that it doesn't show in the animation palette either.  The project involves a figure typing with slightly different postures, and being able to edit the grasp parameter would be just dandy... 

Also, for some reason PoserPro seems to only intermittently update the datestamp when writing files.  It seems really fond of keeping either the earliest date for that filename (even when it's a newly posed file), or possibly is carrying over the datestamp from the existing file used to make the new one.  I have files with dates ranging all throughout the time I have been working, and I know some of the files' dates are much earlier than when I actually did them.  Anyone else having this behavior?  I am writing each file to both harddrive and thumbdrive seconds apart and explorer shows the files as having been made days, maybe even weeks, apart.  It's making it really hard to verify that old files are indeed being updated, and that new files aren't reverting back to older states of completion.

Also, the parameter dials reporting incorrect values when IK is turned on.  Not ideal for this project.