Hi everyone,

thanks, that was very interesting.

I am planning to use Windows 8 (64 bit) on the new system since my current computer has XP (32 bit) and only 2 GB of RAM. Poser 9 needs a lot of time to start up and then I can't do much before it crashes or freezes.

I like XP a lot but it seems one can't stay with the old stuff forever :-(

Kyraia

If nothing else helps, you can install Wireshark on one of your machines to find out if the two of them are talking to each other.

Good morning everyone!

Here in Munich (Germany) its now Tuesday morning and over night this discussion evolved much more interesting than I thought.

Quote -
You can't fight cell phones and you won't be able to fight online activated software, it's only a matter of time. Your choice is only when you decide to go aboard the ship, not if you will do it. :-)

Well, that's not sure.

There are two possibilities:

1. Software activation is a fad, a temporary fashion. Like "they do it so let's do it, too, because the zeitgeist says it must be a great idea". After a while they realise the idea was not so good after all and stop doing it. Like it happened with Poser 5, or with music on CD. I don't know the situation in the US but at least here in Germany they used to put so much copy protection stuff on their CDs that they vrtually became unusable. The sales declined dramatically, so they stopped it and now CDs are "clean" again.
   Its the same with Vue: e-on has lost me (and probably many more poeple) as a customer for new products. But if its a matter of the zeitgeist than nothing you say and nothing that happens can change their minds. But it will happen eventually of its own volition because the zeitgeist changes from time to time. So we just have to wait a bit.

2. Software activation is a matter of business, of cash and calculations.
   In this case the question for the software company is, whether the costs or the benefits are higher.
   The costs: you lose some customers.
   The benefit: you lose some thieves, too.
   There have been endless debates about how much software thieves harm software porducers. Some say they the benefit might be even higher than the harm, but in the end its a matter each company has to decide for itself.
   DAZ3D sells it's content plain without activation and even without serial numbers. You can freely export and modify their stuff. Its really a pleasure using it and I have bought a lot.
   With e-on its the contrary and besides from older versions of Vue I never purchased any content from them.

And there is also the freeware and open source realm, beginning with all the free stuff here on Renderosity. Let's see how things turn out in the future.

Quote - Just for my curiosity, what's the problem in activating software online? It's just a step in the installation process, as easy as the input of a serial number. Did you try e-on's activation process? It's very easy and fast.
 

Let's say you go to McDonald's and buy yourself a coke but then the waiter says "Hey, you can't drink that coke just like that. You have to activate it first. But its simple. You just have to enter all of your personal data and hand over to McDonalds the full controll about where, when and how you drink it."
Maybe I am just too old to get used to this.

But there is more: what happens if the activation server is switched off permanently? People who own such software normally can continue using it on the computer where it is installed but once they have to change, their well payed software becomes worthless. This has already happened  in the past and it will become a frequent bother in the future. I bet it is just a matter of time when, for example, Microsoft refuses further activation of XP. Or (smaller) companies may just close down. This closes down all of their software, too, if it runs only after activation.

With Vue its kind of amusing. They give it away for free but you can't use it.
And by the way - the documentation on the e-on site about this topic is really poor. In the end I had to downlod all of the trial version just to get the manual and to find out how it is supposed to work. The feature list is endless (and quite impressive) but information about licensing and activation is really hard to get.
Vue used to be a really great piece of software, but activation is a no-go for me.

Unfortunately, this frameset stuff doesn't yet work as expected.
To see the freebies, click on the navigation link
"POSER-Bereich ( freie und kommerzielle Modelle - free downloads and commercial modells)"

Thanks.
I have been using Wings3D a lot but I never realized it has a 3D text feature. Cool.
However, neither Wings nor Elefont support Japanese :-(

Maybe you can use a "fake prop". Take a square and apply an image of a wardrope to it. This may save lots of memory ressources.

Well, if I uncheck "Loop" the anination plays only 1 time but still return to frame 1.
What I'd like to have is it halting at frame 30 (or whatever the last one is).

I have tried it out with atmospheres and I have to manually locate every atmosphere set (like sunshine, sunshine1 ...). But once Vue knows where the set is I don't need to locate it again even after a restart.

Stolen or not ... you might as well see this issue from the opposite point of view: the companies steal from us:
the problem with activation is: you cannot use your software for which you have paid a lot of money  if the company doesn't activte it. Maybe they are being sold to some investor from Mars who decides to stop this product line.
This has not yet happend frequently but it will be a big issue in the future. There are still people out there who use DOS software. If activation had been invented 20 years earlier they would not be able to do use it any more. And this is theft.

Thank you, Agiel.
That means, I have to look for a different software. There is no way I buy software I have to activate.
Too bad, I liked Vue quite a lot.
I hope at least Poser remains free of this plague in the future.

As for the setup, my book consists of 3 actors: spine and its children front and back. Since the spine is the parent of everything, I tried to place its center into the center of the book (the geometry). And voila: it rotates about this point as expected.

The reason why I wanted it to rotate about the bodies center point also is another unexpected behaviour which I'll post into another message once this one is clear to me.

However, it isn't. I loaded a Victoria, who rotates about a point in her center. Now, I selected "body", placed the center point to y=0, and now she rotates about this pont on the ground. Why does this work with a Victoria but not with my book?

So that's the way how it is done! Until now, I always edited the cr2-file. Thanks.

tan alpha = y/x
alpha = arc tan {y/x}

But there is no built in math function for arc tan
in the material room.
Maybe you'd be better off using an image. It is
quite easy to create one with the Photoshop gradient tool.