I have owned Poser for about 3 months now- not that I've given it my total attention, so I am just beginning. There is one thing, however, that really bothers me. Maybe it's just my inexperience with the program, but it just doesn't seem right. Manipulation of parts in Poser is done by selecting a particular part and transforming it- pull, twist, whatever. This seeems to me to be awkward and terribly inefficient. Why isn't the motion controlled by manipulating the joint intersections? If this were the case, it would be easy to add sensible motion limits- for instance, a "knee" joint could be limited to lateral motion with a range of 0-160 posterior. Of course, this would mean that a more accurate bone system would have to be used. And if they were determined to use the groups for manipulation, well, just make it more realistic- for instance, in the upper leg, have an anterior and posterior section, with the only manipulation as "contract" or "expand"- just like a real muscle group- to properly position body sections. These are just suggestions- I'm no programming guru- but the current system seems to have little to do with real human anatomy. There seems to be little in the way of realistic constraint in Poser- I admire anyone who can get a sensible pose with such a terribly inefficient system. It's ridiculously easy to ruin a figure, and with only one undo (nonsense!) too easy to ruin hours of work. I would have happily returned the whole thing, if that weren't so difficult. Do these things bother anyone else? I like the whole concept behind poser, I just think it needs a complete overhaul of the bone and grouping systems. What do you think?

Part of the problem is that the model meshes in Poser don't have bones. I found it a little awkward at first to move things with twist and rotate instructions, but now it's practically automatic. Now I find the system of bones to be clunky and inefficient. Guess it all depends on what you're used to.

I suppose I would just like the program to be a bit "smarter"- to know what a leg is, and have some idea of what it's composed of, and how it's supposed to move. No, I don't want the program to do it all for me, but if I were to design a charachter creation program, I'd want to make life easy for my customers. I don't like the fact that with each manipulation, there's probably a 90-10 proportion of inaccurate-accurate motions! I hate wasting time- I don't want to have to spend months learning to do what the program should do for itself. Sorry, didn't mean to turn this into a rant! ;) I'm just one of those awful people who uses the word "efficient" too much!

I believe that there is a way to limit the amout of a rotation or bend. I've downloaded models before that had a limited amout you couold crank a slider to.

There is the option of "use limits" this is listed under the figure menu.

Attached Link: http://www.angrymob.net/animation.htm

Believe me, no program moves parts to most desired poses in 1 (or 2 even)grab & move operation. Grabbing a joint, limits or no, would likely cause motion on many axis at once. Then you end up fiddling around unmoving the many minor movements that took place "automatically", when "repairs" are needed. You spend alot of time wondering just what happened. Best to minimize all motion, the way it does now. For animation, you can easily spend 80% of your time fixing undesired interpolations between keys. You have to fish arounfd the many MT Graphs to figure out where the bad twist, turn or translation is. It's very time consuming. Character Studio (3DS Max plugin)has worked out the vast majority of character animation issues, but is much more expensive ($1500- just for the plugin- another $3500 for Max)& much much higher learning curve. People don't appreciate how much Poser does for a very reasonable price. Anything cheaper can't be taken seriously as a 3D program. Just the Poser geometry male/fem models alone is worth way more than the program. Check out market prices for good 3D models as Poser has. There are other areas, such as interpolation of keyframes, that Poser handles sloppily, limits or no, that can be improved on. You can turn IK on for arms & legs, & grab hands or feet with 1 grab & move operation, if I understand your wish correctly.

I see what you mean about joints- I'm used to working with a program that has numeric input- instead of grab and drag, you say x25, y56, z44 to... sort of thing. Curiosity can be educational, though! I was surfing around, and found a page for an up-and-coming (release in fall) program called Reflex-Drama, which seems to be based on biomechanical principles. And yes, there will be demos! (It claims that it will be compatible with major apps.) Here's the url if you're curious. www.reflex3d.com/drama.html