Can anyone put me on to any good tutorials on camera-work & control inside a prop building? I've gotten several great buidings (both purch & free downloads), & I'm finding it hard to back off to frame many scenes without backing thru a wall. And jumping back & forth between views when I import a prop, trying to get it into the room I want & placed correctly can make me nuts in short order! I'm fairly new at interior shots, & trial-& error is so time-consuming. I know the technique to make certain walls selectively transparent, but that only works when the model is mapped or grouped that way. If there was a tutorial on which camers/focalpoint/etc to use to make use of the (sometimes) wonderfully detailed interiors of some of these buildings it would be a godsend to me! Thanks for any help!

I hate to say it, but the trail and error way is about the best way to go at this. I don't know how many time I would get this killer angle and only to find the camera halfway in a wall. Another way I do this is to get the peolpe posed and lit first. Keeping in mind the dimentios of the room they will be in. then bring in the building, then adjustfrom there. One thing I found to help is ot turn the ground shadow off that way you see better when the body parts start going into the floor.

Try the hither function.

And try as you might, in many cases you are just going to have to use a ridiculously wide lens -- and suffer the fisheye distortion -- or just move a wall. (Hey - they do it in Hollywood!) If they are not built or mapped that way already, and you are not a modeler (as I am not) you can usually take it into UVMapper, find the offending wall, and assign to a new material so that it can be made transparent. I suspect this may, perhaps, be even easier with the Grouping Tool in Poser, but I can't help you there. (never tried it)

You know I just thought of something, isn't it possible to get where you want to go, by clicking on maybe one of the groups, locate it's coordinates through the joint editor, then position your item with like coordinates? Sharen

One of the reasons I like to produce room kits rather than completed buildings is that it's otherwise difficult to get the right camera angle inside a building with four immovable walls. Aside from all the suggestions given, try contacting directly the merchant who sold you the building and ask him or her if he can make a wall transparent or removable. I've often accomodated my customer's special requests, and I'm sure that if it's not too involved, your merchant can do the same for you. azl

You really should think the way they do in Hollywood when making a film, i.e. use the buildings for exterior shots and create your interior shots by building your own room sets to suit your scene's needs.

Either making the wall transparent, or choosing the ""not visible" option from the object menu.

You know what else I thought of, you say you have 3D Max, you can import it into there, as the .object, and can select the walls you want or the roof for that matter and delete them. 3D max will be able to pull the object file apart for you. Sharen

This will show you how, I've used it to put lights inside rooms. You don't need the lamp although it's great, you can use the tutorial just to get the light positioned. Marque http://www.renderosity.com/~azl/

I want to thank all of you for the great insights into the question. I have enough leads & hints to occupy my free time for quite a while! Many thanks!

The only camera in Poser that can easily manuver through building props and the like is the Dolly camera. Try it, that's what it's for. -JH.

Thanks, JeffH, It does offer much of what I need, but I keep feeling there may be Camera features & benifits i haven't encountered by fumbling around with them. Wish I'd found a really thorough tutorial. :( Thanks for the suggestion.