Attached Link: http://www.daz3d.com/i/tutorial/tutorial?id=89&_m=d

Attached Link: Poser File Organizer

Page 93 in the P6 manual outlines how to save a material collection. its a very simple process though. Once you have all your materials set, click the + button at the bottom of the library window, a selection window will pop up, select material collection, than click OK, that simple.

Previous to poser 6 if you had props that you don't expect users to parent to a figure you simply provided a pp2 prop file for each material option. after all prop files are not very large unless they have a lot of morphs. with poser 6 Efronteers finally added a multiple material file that will work on all content, its the material collection, and you can save and load them in the material room.  You can also convert a mat pose to a material collection fairly easily with a text editor, and I believe that EF included a python script which converted mat poses to material collections.

Mat poses don't load onto props unless they are parented to a figure in Poser as far as I know, I know its true up to poser 7 and assume the same is true in Poser Pro

P6 for the most part is a bug fix for P5, they added a few new features but IMO for the regular upgrade price wasn't worth it, but for $30 bucks why not.

No the millennium figures do not come with P6 or any version of Poser those are DAZ figures.

External runtimes work just the same in P6 as with P5. and you should have no problem just pointing P6 to your P5 runtimes.

actually most people who use the cintiq, use it on the tabletop, tilted to about 30 degrees or so, about what you would generally tilt a drafting desk to draw on. I have tried them out at siggraph, and they are really nice, wonderful to work with. I have considered purchasing the cintiq 12 wx which is just under a thousand but ultimately decided that I wouldn't get enough use out of it to justify the cost so sticking with the trusty intuos 6x8.

Quote - Why can't they release a figure that will work in all versions of Poser? Oh my bad that'd make too much sense.

there is actually a very good reason they decided not to go that route, the smoothing alogrythm of Joint falloffs changed radically enough between Poser 5 and 6 that there is visible difference in how the joints bend, for the mil 4 figures that shows up particularly in the shoulder collar area. DAZ had a choice of making the joints work Ideally in P6 and P7 and not so ideally in P5 or Ideally in P5 and not so ideally in P6 and P7 obviously the former was the better solution. should they have just set the poser version # to 5 and hope that people accepted the lower quality joint falloff there? Perhaps, but they prefered to make it clear that the figures didn't work as well in earlier versions.

Attached Link: http://artzone.daz3d.com/wiki/doku.php/pub/software/figuresetuptools/start

As for how good or easy the tools are, if you can rig in poser, the studio tools will be a breeze and it gives you a lot more features than the Poser tools offer.  the skeleton generation tool is not quite as beginner friendly as the setup room in poser (its more akin to the original method of using a phi file)  but frankly once you learn how it works it is actually a lot faster. all of the other tools just blow away what is available from Poser. take a look at the video tutes to get an idea of what it can do.

yeah I'm glad they dropped the internal magnets as well, particularly considering that I do like to use your IPP to work with Figures in C4D, and the poser magnets aren't compatible with C4D.

As far as the huge difference in clothing quantities, no I doubt M4 will ever be the clotheshorse that V4 is, but than when has a male figure, (in real life or CG ;) ) ever been able to keep up with the females in that department. But it is only 2 weeks into his life so I wouldn't expect much yet. I already have the Barbarian outfit out for him and the updated version of the BTBW Biker is waiting in the wings. and I have a 3rd package started.

Yeah the new figure tools are really excellent. I particularly appreciate the new features of Morph Loader Pro, particularly the Reverse Deformations feature which allows one to export a posed figure, create morphs on it in my modeler, than import it using reverse deformations to subtract the  currently applied joint rotations and morphs. thus the easiest way to create JCMs that I have yet found. I havnt tried the new morph creation feature in IPP though, will it do the same thing?

I explained why I said that though. At the risk of repeating myself, I think the joints and base shape are easier to work with than many of the figures in the past, and the new JCM system is easier to fit clothing to. Perhaps not a monumental thunderous difference to some but I found him a pleasure to produce content for. They quoted a number of merchants who have worked with M4 and the quote of mine just happened to make it into the newsletter in question, I'm sure you will see other quotes showing up elswhere.

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - Is there any specificity on why this 'ease' is so mentionable?  Is there some feature of M4 specific to making clothing?  I don't see anything at Daz specifically about this.

Correction: Maybe this refers to the M4 Morph Magnet Fits.  But doesn't V4/A4 have the same?  Yeppery.  So, it's only easy if you have this product as well. ;)

no M4 has no built in magnets, and I don't use magnet kits to create morphs, I don't find them accurate enough. I just find his joints easier to work with , the jcms easier to work with because there are fewer of them that actually have to be precisely matched, primarily because he was built so that most of the JCM's actually move the mesh inwards rather than outwards (though this is now less of an issue now that DAZ has released their studio rigging tools with MorphLoaderPro).

Ehem.  Yes.  This is a separate Morph Magnet Fits product.  Or didn't you read carefully?  This is a set of magnets to provide 'morphs' for fitting clothing figures to M4 (I suppose):

http://www.daz3d.com/i/3d-models/new-releases/m4-magnet-fits?item=8062&cat=421&_m=d

Vindication.... ;P

yes that was why I added the second part of my first sentence. there have been clothing morph magnet kits out for several years, Netherworks has a bunch of them, and they are great for product end users to add morphs quickly. But unfortunately like the automatic morph transfer tools they aren't quite up to the level of creating morphs by hand, I use the magnet tool in C4D for example to hand sculpt the morphs in my clothing.

Quote - Is there any specificity on why this 'ease' is so mentionable?  Is there some feature of M4 specific to making clothing?  I don't see anything at Daz specifically about this.

Correction: Maybe this refers to the M4 Morph Magnet Fits.  But doesn't V4/A4 have the same?  Yeppery.  So, it's only easy if you have this product as well. ;)

no M4 has no built in magnets, and I don't use magnet kits to create morphs, I don't find them accurate enough. I just find his joints easier to work with , the jcms easier to work with because there are fewer of them that actually have to be precisely matched, primarily because he was built so that most of the JCM's actually move the mesh inwards rather than outwards (though this is now less of an issue now that DAZ has released their studio rigging tools with MorphLoaderPro).

that was my comment and I stand behind it, I have one package out already and one ready for release, should be out soon. and am working on more, I think a lot of merchants at DAZ who had him early wanted to wait for the very final version, to make sure the rigging and morphs were locked in, and they were tweaking him a bit even shortly before release. give it a little time there is plenty of stuff in the works but for a lot of merchants it can take a month or so for completion of a package.

Quote -  Is the lack of cr2 magnets in M4 a good thing or a bad thing?

A very good thing, the magnet concept was a good one for some uses, but it just didn't work as smoothly with clothing as we would have liked. so clothing makers still ended up having to do JCMs. the new JCM system for M4 is very easy to work with, most of the jcms actually adjust the mesh inwards so there is a lot less need for fiddling with them in clothing.