Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=2478343&Reply=2479504#11

Right-click on the Taksbar at the bottom of the screen. Choose Properties. When the Properties dialog appears, UNCHECK the option that says "Group Similar Taskbar Buttons." Done. If you really don't like Windows making decisions for you, also UNCHECK the "Hide inactive icons" option down at the bottom under Notification Area.

Hi Stormy! - Step 1: Take a DEEP breath. :-D Poser is easy to learn and use, but it WILL take some time. Patience is a virtue. Before you go off and download lots of add-on stuff, you should probably give yourself some time (a week?) to just play around with what's built in to the program and learn your way around. There are lots of helpful people and tons of helpful information here, but you just CAN'T digest it all at once. It'll take you a while to learn enough of the lingo to even understand what people are telling you! So here are FOUR REALLY BASIC TERMS to get you started. #1 RUNTIME - Inside the folder on your hard drive where the poser program "lives" there is a folder called RUNTIME. And this folder is the skeleton and circulatory system of Poser. All the figures, props, texture, poses, hair, faces, etc. etc. live somewhere in the sub-folders of the RUNTIME folder. You will become VERY intimate with the structure of these sub-folders. Part of the RUNTIME folder is what Poser shows you in the Library on the right side of the window under Figures / Props / Poses, etc. So when you DO install things correctly into the RUNTIME folder, you don't have to import them or anything. They just "show up" somewhere in your Library, and you can go in there and bring them into your scenes. While every RUNTIME becomes unique, some details of the structure are the same for all installations of Poser. That is why many ZIP files you download can just be unzipped into the RUNTIME folder and everything will go where it's supposed to be. If you see a 2nd RUNTIME folder INSIDE your RUNTIME folder, it means you unzipped a file that should have been unzipped one level up, in the program folder. (C:Program FilesPoser 6 or whatever.) #2 GEOMETRY - It is important to realize that, because of the way Poser works, many of the items you use that seem like a single thing are actually stored in multiple pieces. The actual data that makes up a figure's shape (called the "mesh" in some 3-D programs) is called the geometry. It has an .OBJ file extension, and goes into the GEOMETRIES sub-folder of RUNTIME. But the geometry itself is not enough for Poser to use a figure (or prop or hair or...). Poser uses other files that tell it how to work with the geometry, and these are what you see in the Library window as Figures, Props, Hair, etc. As a newbie, this is only important to you for 2 reasons: Reason 1 is that without the geometry a character will not work. Victoria by DAZ is one of the most popular figures for Poser. When you buy or download Victoria, you get both the Victoria geometry file and the Victoria figure files that show up in your Library. (On your disk, these figure or "character" files have a .CR2 extension.) You will see many other "Characters" for Victoria available for download. These are alternative figure files that change the way Victoria looks, but they do this by working with the geometry that came with the base figure. If you don't have the base figure, you don't have the geometry, and none of the characters will work. Some popular base figures are Victoria, Michael, David, Stephanie Petite, Aiko - all from DAZ, and non-DAZ characters Apollo Maximus, Laroo, H.E.R. and MayaDoll. You'll also see references to Posette and Dork - the base figures that came with Poser prior to P6 - and Jessi and James, the new base figures that come with P6. Each of these figures includes a base geometry that dozens or hundreds of other characters (many of them free) will be based on. Reason 2 is that geometries must always go in a specific place in your RUNTIME and that place is determined by the character's creator. The other files can be moved around as you see fit. For example, if your Figures Library has a "SuperCats" folder that was created when you installed a cat figure, and you want to put the cat from that folder in the "Animals" folder for the sake of organization, you can do that. But if the GEOMETRIES folder contains a "SuperCats" folder, you can't delete or rename that folder, or move its contents. If you do, you will break any figures that rely on the meshes inside the folder. #3 CONFORMING & PARENTING - Quick Poser history lesson: In the old days, Poser distinguished between Figures, which had parts that could be posed, and Props, which were just static objects. (On your hard disk, prop files have a .PP2 extension, while figures have .CR2) If you had a Prop that needed to move along with a Poser figure, it could be "parented" to one of the body parts of the figure. So for example a coffee mug could be parented to a hand, so when the hand moved, the mug would move along with it. Or a hat prop might be parented to a figure's head. When clothing was added to Poser, they needed a way to make sure that the clothing moved along with the body that was "wearing" it. So they introduced the idea of "conforming." Conforming is limited to figures (rather than props) since it basically means a figure makes all the same moves that another figure is making. This decision is still with us. It mandated, for example, that all conforming clothing items be treated as "Figures" rather than "Props", which explains why clothing often appears in the Figures library and there is no "Clothing" or "Costumes" library. It also led to a split in the world of hair. Early hairpieces in Poser were simply props that got parented to the head, and they appeared in the Hair library. (These files have an .HR2 extension.) But as more advanced hair pieces with posable parts came along, they were considered Figures, and added to the Figures library (since their files had the .CR2 extension could not live in the "props only" Hair library.) Adding to the confusion (as noted) is that Poser 6 removes some of the arbitrary limits on what kind of thing can go in which Library folder. Maybe this will all be resolved happily in the near future, but I'm not holding my breath. The moral of the story is that if you now find yourself hunting through the Library trying to find things, congratulations! You're already using the program in the same way as some of the most advanced Poser experts! :-) #4 MORPHS - Since there is such a small number of base figures, Poser renders would all look the same if the only way to make images was to pose the base figures. However, you can do more than just pose (bend) the mesh of a Poser figure. You can also distort it. By distorting the mesh of the base figure in creative ways, you can do things like create facial expressions, change face and body features, alter the shape and size of body parts, etc. These distortions of the base figure are called Morphs. Poser figures all come with built-in morphs, and additional morphs can also be purchased and added later. If you put together a bunch of morphs that work together, you can make it available as a Character, and that's how most of the characters you see available for download are created. Morphs are controlled by dials in the Poser interface, just like the bending and twisting of limbs. Some morphs show up automatically, and some have to be added manually. A full discussion of the different types of morphs and how to use them is deeper than I want to go in this posting. Learning all about morphs is one of the longer roads you will travel in your Poser journey. Note that while some characters use unique morphs created by the vendor, some are made by using built-in morphs, or even popular add-on morphs. This means that the character you are downloading is really just a packaged-up bunch of morph dial settings. If such a character is based on add-on morphs, and you don't have those already, the character will not do anything. It essentially tries to set dials that don't exist, because the morphs the dials are attached to have not been added. This is most common with Victoria and other DAZ characters - many of these use the Victoria (Michael, Aiko, etc.) Head & Body morphs, which are an add-on packs available (for $$$) from DAZ. That is why it is important to check what is required when downloading stuff, especially characters. If it just says "Requires Victoria" you can use it with the base figure and don't need anything else. If it says "Requires Victoria and Head & Body Morphs" you will need both the base figure and the add-on morph pack to make use of the character.

The Poser 5 Splash screen was done by artist Will Kramer (www.earthcurves.com). Will does amazing work starting with Poser renders, but he's more of a traditional artist and only uses Poser as his starting point. All the stuff that makes his images cool comes through his skilled and exacting post work. (F'rinstance, all the hair and cloth in his figures is hand painted. He tends to start with nude, bald models and fill in the rest manually.) My guess is that they wanted an image that was more indicative of something you could actually produce with the software. Not something you could produce with the software, plus massive post work, plus heaps of natural talent and learned artistic skill. As much as I like Will's images, I always thought using them to sell Poser was a bit disingenuous. Using Poser by itself, you can't create anything like the polished results that were shown on the Poser 5 box and splash screen.

Note that to get freaky, outlandish actions like walking, driving or swimming, you may need to buy an additional product. However normal, everyday actions like a cow falling from the sky are always free with the base package. :-D

And why you would want the sound of a cow falling from the sky in your sound design portfolio is something I don't know and don't WANT to know.

If you are on a tight deadline, and you actually have a budget, you might want to check out stock footage houses as well. You can buy live-action footage of real people doing most of those things. Also, don't discount the Prelinger Archive - a vast, online library of free, public-domain video footage. You can probably find examples of what you need there, and they are available for download in editable formats. No new skills needed ;-)

It's a nice idea. They call this kind of thing "Web 2.0" but I think Bondware has still got one foot in the "Web 0.5" days. As discussion board software goes, it's definitely not at the head of the pack. Still, if they wind up moving to a different back-end system like phpBB, we might see a lot of improvements coming along "for free" as a result. Big websites are a liitle bit like buildings - unless you tear them down and rebuild, they are always going to reflect the style of architecture that was in vogue when they were built. Flickr & del.icio.us are new sites, built recently, and their style and features reflect the latest trends. Renderosity is more like the Chrysler building. ;-) Before something like tags was added, I'd like to see some more basic and useful functionality put in place - like being able to see a list of all the threads I've recently posted to. :-P But it seems like their focus these days is mostly on building up the features in the Marketplace. Of the thirteen bullet points in Tim Choate's interview, over half are MP and marketing-related improvements.

Che Victoria?! :-) So she can be used for renders that are to be shared freely with your friends at communes like Renderosity, but if you try to use her for a commercial/capitalist purpose, she overthrows your CPU and crashes your system?

I can hardly wait to do my first render! I'll just need the following from the marketplace:

1 - Ultimate Morphing Beret for Che Victoria
1 - Chain-mail Red Star Bikini
1 - Sword of the People's Justice
1 - "Temple of the Robber Barons" Ruins set (from the "Fall Of Capitalism" series)

Message edited on: 11/17/2005 11:12

Also, noticed this from the Comic Book Creator website, when you click on the "Store" link:

Requires Windows 2000, or Windows XP

Sorry, Argon18. :-P

Seems to me that these two programs serve very different purposes. Comic Book Creator takes existing images (such as Poser renders) and assists with laying them out, adding word baloons, etc. Manga Studio seems much more geared to drawing comics from scratch. So it probably includes all the features of the other program (and probably in a more elaborate form.) But if you can't already draw comic images like those in the illustrations here and on the e-frontier website, this program will not magically enable you to do so. Since this is the Poser forum, I assume that a fair number of people are (as I am) still at the "can barely draw stick figures" level of draftsmanship. For someone like me, Manga Studio would seem to be overkill. Especially since, given the features listed, I doubt it'll sell for anything close to $20. My guess is that its price will be much closer to that of Poser or Shade, if not more.

Well, that totally rocked.

Attached Link: http://www.primopdf.com/

Hi Dick/drace - Thanks for these tips! Just a couple of comments: #3 - I'm not sure about editors, who I guess have their own requirements for a page of text, but I recently read that non-justified (i.e. ragged right) text is actually easier to read than fully justified text. I don't recall whether the study found that this applied to professionally typeset text, but it was defnitely true for the abysmal justification applied by most word processers. #4 - Most word processors let you customize how line spacing is handled rather extensively. What tool are you using that won't let you eliminate the space between paragraphs?

Attached Link: http://www.mediachance.com/pbrush/index.html

This little company makes some really cool stuff. Check out their hybrid drawing/painting program. It's rather unique & very impressive.
http://www.mediachance.com/realdraw/index.html

Also, they have a nifty multimedia program builder and a bunch of free photo retouching tools.

This really sounds like the touchpad issue. It's pretty common for the palm of your hand near the thumb to brush against the touchpad as you type, especially when reaching for keys such as B or H. The cursor then jumps to wherever the mouse pointer is positioned. The next few times this happens, take note of the position of the mouse pointer. Is it near where your misplaced text starts appearing? If so, then you are inadvertantly activating the touchpad.

You wouldn't see the mouse pointer moving, because the momentary contact only counts as a "tap" - like clicking the mouse button. It doesn't ususally move the pointer's position.

The driver for my Dell touchpad has a setting called "Palm Check" that is designed to deal with this. It does, but with mixed results. Set too low, it does nothing, and set too high, it makes using the touchpad difficult. But you might want to check if your version of the touchpad driver has this, and if you aren't using the touchpad anyway, you can set it to the highest value. It's possible this value got reset to a lower value when you reformatted your machine. It's also possible that you had "tapping" the touchpad as a substitute for clicking the mouse button turned off, but now it's back on.

The figure is included with the Girl. It's a separate figure from the Girl base figure. It should show up in your library as "The Girl V3UV" or something along those lines.