Setting up joint centres in Poser is a chuffing pain in the arse in Poser Pro 2012. Back in Poser 6 when I typed a number into the Joint Editor, the little cross thingy would move to a new position. Now, it often doesn't, or it moves a whole lot more than expected. Additionally, the centres could be adjusted to within 4 decimal places, but now, anything more than 3 has no effect and sometimes even 3 places doesn't do squat.

Could this be anything to do with (now) using inches instead of PNUs, as I used to? Or, is it just another "improvement"? I am not thinking of, in fact cannot at present, upgrading to a newer version of Poser so if this is something that can be dealt with in Pro 2012 I'd be grateful for the advice.

Oh, and although it's probably nowt to do with it, I use Win7 Pro 64 bit.

Can't edit me first post for the mangled second paragraph. I'm sure you get the sense of it, even though it's badly written.

Hello Sam,

it's the different units setting. 1 PNU equals roundabout 100 inches.

As for setting joint centres: I do it with then mouse, looking with one of the six orthogonal cameras. I find it much faster than guessing numbers.

Peter

Thank you for the advice. I'll try changing my settings; however, I thought 1 PNU = 10 inches. Also, wouldn't changing back to PNU make it less precise, since it's a bigger value to start with?

Reporting back... Changing back to PNUs has done the trick, so once more, many thanks for that.

Using the mouse wouldn't give me enough precision ; I'm using a 4k monitor so the increments are really tiny. Typing numbers in seems to be a lot more reliable to me. Even stuff like building poses or positioning things has always been about typing in numbers for me.

I used to use PNUs all the time but using inches seems to make more sense for building scenes and, since BB uses 'em for creating materials, it makes things easier to relate and convert.

Guess I'll have to learn to switch from one to the other as appropriate.

Hello Sam,

You can find out the PNU/inch rate yourself: Load a promitive and translate it exactly 1.000 PNU in any direction. Now switch the units to inches and see what the dial reads now. That's the exact value.

However, I think working with smaller-scale units is better. Poser produces rounding errors in the last one or two decimal places when saving or loading (that's why you sometimes see dials which have a value of -0,000). So the less decimal places are necessary for maximum precision the less this matters.

Peter

pikesPit posted at 5:29PM Tue, 25 April 2017 - #4303467

Hello Sam,

You can find out the PNU/inch rate yourself: Load a promitive and translate it exactly 1.000 PNU in any direction. Now switch the units to inches and see what the dial reads now. That's the exact value.

However, I think working with smaller-scale units is better. Poser produces rounding errors in the last one or two decimal places when saving or loading (that's why you sometimes see dials which have a value of -0,000). So the less decimal places are necessary for maximum precision the less this matters.

Peter

Heh. Never thought of doing that. Obvious when it's pointed out. Anyhow, yes, it is approx 100 inches. 103.20000458, according to my Poser (Pro 2012). Dunno where I got the 10 inches malarkey from.

pikesPit posted at 7:02AM Wed, 26 April 2017 - #4303467

However, I think working with smaller-scale units is better. Poser produces rounding errors in the last one or two decimal places when saving or loading (that's why you sometimes see dials which have a value of -0,000). So the less decimal places are necessary for maximum precision the less this matters.

This is not an accurate recommendation. The Poser DISPLAY Unit set to inches has only an effect on the GUI. Internally and in every file format, geometry coordinates are exclusively stored in Poser Native Units, which is because the native or "internal" unit is, by definition, the Poser Native Unit and NOT the Poser Display Unit. (PNU vs. PDU)

Furthermore, the disparity between 103.2 vs. 103.20000458 is the result of truncation of precision when the data is stored as a 32-bit float vs. a 64-bit double, compounded then by additional issues when converting to decimal representation for your viewing pleasure.

By way of demonstration, I made a scene with a box, which I moved to yTran = 103.2 inch and saved. I also reset and then moved to yTran = 1 PNU and saved. The two files were identical, except for the movie file name (which is the file name so they were different). The value written in the file was 1 - just the digit, no 1.0000 etc.

As well one should note that the internal unit for the material system is inches, not PNU. No explanation is given as this detail isn't in the manual - instead it is something I learned from saving Poser materials and looking at what they have in them.

BB, you're on record as saying that the final decimal places were important in shader calculations, and I've cited that thread elsewhere. However I was made aware of the accuracy of the IEEE754 floating point arithmetic used in the UI code a while back, and I should amend my article on scale to take that into account. Am I right in thinking that the 0.00000458 discrepancy is connected with the material room's use of inches rather than PNU elsewhere? It won't matter to most people, but I like to know these things. You never know when a seemingly insignificant fact may become important.

(Edit: I can't seem to cite the exact post in thread 2765126. 'Twas ever thus.)

So, what causes my problems with rigging? I'm definitely finding things easier to cope with, having changed to PNUs. Another factor, maybe?

Perhaps it's the external mouse driver?

Yeah, and the default value for SSS is in mm...... Don't ask where my grey hair comes from. LOL.

tonyvilters posted at 8:46PM Wed, 26 April 2017 - #4303600

Yeah, and the default value for SSS is in mm...... Don't ask where my grey hair comes from. LOL.

Grey hair is heredetary. I got mine from my kids.