Yeah, I RTFM :-), but the FM was a bit short on that theme.

By chance I discovered the existence of the P Node and what it does (kudos to Castle Poser), and immediately had 239 ideas to milk it for teh lulz. But before teh lulz comes teh work (sigh). And what is very unintuitive to me (save for all the rest of Poser :-) is how the nodes are passing the values to the upnode, because the upnode has a pre-set too. For example, say the P Node is set to x=0 y=0 z=-1 and plugged into the transparency node set to t=0.5, and my pixel is at X=1 Y=1 Z=-2. What transparency has the pixel? z-Z or Z-z or t(Z-z) or t+Z-z or...The possibilities are endless. This holds even for such a innocuous thing like an Math:Add node - you don't have two inputs A and B and an output C=A+B, no, sirre, you have two surplus parameter dials on A and B. (And I didn't even began to ask how colors are piped upstream... :-)

So I would be very indebted for any link to a better, more voluminous FM.

THX,

&S

if you want to learn more about nodes search out all of BagginsBill threads (here and at  err I forgot the other site he lives in!! some one else will know)

maths node has value 1 = A value 2 = B and the output is C so not sure what your asking

colours use a "tuple" (RGB where each part is a number from 0 to 1) some nodes average out the 3 I think where others use vector math (I might be wrong on that 'cos I dont use poser much nowadays)

hope that helps a little

The p-node retuns the co-ordinates of the point in universe space in 1/10th inches units: x-co-ordinate in red channel, y-co-ordinate in green channel, etc. so to have say output 1 at 1 foot use multiplier 1/120 = 0.00825

note Poser units are 8.6 foot. 

input values for the transparancy channel are scalar.

color inputs are converted to scalar by averaging the rgb channel values, so your output will be -1*(0+0+-2)/3 = 0.666667, your transparncy therefore should be 0.5*0.6667 = 0.333333

Inputs outside 0-1 are clamped to the nearest limit. 

THX! Actually reading your post (already forgot I asked :-) would have cut down the experimenting time. In the meantime I think that plugging in X into a node preset to Y always gives X*Y. But that needs moar experimenting :-)

Exactly, if you type 0.4 in the input box, and your input level is say 0.5, the result is 0.5*0.4 = 0.2.

The displacement channel is an ideal method to visualise the results. Use a unit square, horizontal, plug your equation (with U and/or V dependency) in the displacement channel, render, and watch your own 3-D graphs.