I'm so fustrated with P5 right now. Once the left forearm box pops up, forget it. Even saving your work is hopeless, as the pz3 loads up with the left forearm box bug or is stuck in an infinite render loop. Here's the routine... Select "render". "Left forearm" box and "loading textures" box pop up. Pretty much locked here. Followed by lots of interface glitches as you try to regain contol. You can sometimes still exit and change rooms. Also a "check mark" is by render options in the pull down menu?! What's strange, is I can work for hours without a prob and then sometimes (like tonight) crash constantly. It seems to happen more frequently after applying light settings. On happier another note, I'm absolutely in love with the new features of P5. I've had so much fun in the material room. Have you seen how well some of the the new materials look rendered with the P4 engine? Pretty amazing that they can get all that to work with the P4 renderer. Hats off to the gang at CL for such great work. My fingers are crossed that all this will work out at the patches arrive. OK I feel better now :) Oh yeah. I have an Alienware PC with AMD Athlon 1.4. Geforce 3. WinXP. latest drivers.

It's evident that P5 has some real problems with window focus and UI events going astray. I hope they get fixed in the first update. :-/

LOL....OT I was just reading this post when some stupid pop up ad music score started playing HELP ME in the background. I think it is a sign. And yes, I've had the appearance of the dreaded left forearm box too. It is really hard to believe they who tested and approved this program thought that was a little bug. I know a lot of problems in Poser 5 come from my lack of experience and not having super mega equipment, but surely no one deserves the curse of the left forearm.

Almost as "fun":

Say you want to tweak some facial morphs. So you click on the window with the parameter dials and adjust the value. "Nah-h-h, that's not it." So you press Ctrl-Z to get the old value back.

More often than not, IT DOESN'T WORK. You used to be able to do this in P4. Just like you used to be able to tweak a dial, then immediately type Ctrl-M or Ctrl-; to switch the camera view. Those rarely work anymore, either; at least, they usually don't work for me.

Then you notice goofy things like the main Poser UI window LOSING FOCUS when you click in the parameter window. Or untitled window buttons popping up on the taskbar when you click on parameter values to edit them. What the hell!?

It's almost like the UI programmers who did the changes for P5 have only a rudimentary understanding of Win32 GUI programming. How else to explain glitches like this, and the total disasters that occur if, God help you, you click in the wrong place at the wrong time and end up with windows that won't go away, windows that don't get refreshed, renders that don't appear...

It's a mess. Again, I hope somebody over at CL has a handle on these problems and is fixing them, because having the UI inevitably hijack and subvert just about every one of my P5 sessions does not instill a feeling of confidence in the software. :-(

I've been having the "Left Forearm" problem too. Very strange. Is there a patch in our future?

well, Solar & dcasey, me three, same prob w/ a Pent3 1.0ghz & 512mb of mem

Oh, jusr saw the thread about the patch due Sept. 30...don't know if this is one of the 'fixes' or not.

It seems to happen more frequently after applying light settings. Now that you say it, I realise that this is the case for me to. I have no render problems with the default lights, but after I appy a new light set I have a fifty-fifty chance of a render crash.

Same here on changing lights... that has proceeded several left forearm lock ups on my system... sounds like a trend to me ;).

press Ctrl-Z to get the old value back. More often than not, IT DOESN'T WORK Actually, this happens more often then "more often than not"... it ALWAYS happens. Pressing the keyboard shortcut while on the Parameter Dials palette will not work. This is yet another focus issue with Poser 5: 1) Click on the paramter dials. 2) Adjust any setting. 3) Without moving the mouse, press a keyboard shortcut key (Undo/ Ctrl-Z, Save/ Ctrl-S, Render/ Ctrl-R, etc). It will never work because the "focus" is on the Parameter Dial box, not the Poser application itself. The work-around is to click on the main Poser window (or title bar) to give it focus and THEN press the keyboard shortcut key. Of course, by then, you've already moved the mouse, so you might as well just use the menu. I still want to know how this PROBLEM get through their testing? Did NONE of the pre-testers use the keyboard? Did NONE of the beta-testers use the keyboard? (Or were they sloppy again and couldn't delay the release date to fix this issue?) And, yes, I have reported this to the CL tech support people- I sent an e-mail and filled out their online "bug reporting" form. --John

Actually, this happens more often then "more often than not"... it ALWAYS happens.

That's what I originally thought, too--but I have actually seen Ctrl-Z start working with the parameter window active. I don't know how or why, but I was able to repeat its use several times. I'm guessing that the times it stops working or just never starts to work (i.e., most of the time) the window messages are getting lost in space.

Also, I have observed that even when Ctrl-Z, Ctrl-M, Ctrl-;, etc. don't work with the parameter window active, Ctrl-N always seems to work. Bizarre.

I note that clicking on the main Poser window and then typing Ctrl-Z to attempt to do undo a parameter dial setting has never worked for me.

Thanks for letting us know you've submitted the bug report; it saves me the trouble of distilling my frustrated rant down to professional language and sending it to CL for consideration. :-)