sanity check for the software And an insanity check for me when I have to wade thru it all with a text editor, or find disk room for it all, or sit forever or have to read a book while a slow dialup line takes "an age and a snail" to download it all. > Disk space is cheap My laptop has only 4 Gbytes, and it is already over a half full. A meg here and a meg there, and a gigabyte is soon gone, particularly since the minimum data cluster size seems to be c.32000 bytes (hex 0x8000). And download time is not cheap. PLEASE LET POSER 5 WEED OUT ALL THIS REPETITIVE RHUBARB OUT OF CR2 FILES. And there is still a case for keeping a model short enough to zip small enough to fit on a floppy. Floppies still have their uses.

(3) What are all the channels for? A typical joint (the 2nd segment of my flamethrower model's fuel hose) has all these 23 channels which my Poser 3 put in it: twistX tube3_twistx; taperX taper; smoothScaleX tube3_smooX; smoothScaleX tube1_smooX; zOffsetA zOffset; yOffsetA yOffset; xOffsetA xOffset; scale scale; scaleX xScale; scaleY yScale; scaleZ zScale; twistX twistx; rotateX xrot; rotateY yrot; rotateZ zrot; xOffsetB xTranB; yOffsetB yTranB; zOffsetB zTranB; translateX xtran; translateY ytran; translateZ ztran; curve curve - Are all these needed? Which could I delete manually without making my Poser 3 throw a fit? - What is the difference between "translate" and "offsetA" and "offsetB"? Why are all three needed? - Do we need such repeat-in-advance channels as e.g. "tube3_twistx" which merely repeat information which is also in segment tube3's channel "twistx"? - And bulking all this is the endless repetition of such things as "max 100000" and "trackingScale 1" which could be listed as defaults once and for all at the start of the file.

Will he have to do it by poking about in the .CR2 file with a text editor? If so, how? I had to do that when I wanted to move my Gerry Anderson UFO alien's base-of-helmet rotation joint's rotation axis off straight. (He is in the Poser Fun Stuff.)

To access a file in a .CR2 file, do this, it is well known, even on a PC:- actor head:2 { objFileGeom 0 0 :Runtime:Geometries:maleHeadOnly:finalHeadOnly.obj } where e.g. :qaz:wsx:edc is Mac language for qazwsxedc , the filename being relative to the Poser directory. But if the geometry file is not in the Poser directory tree, what is Mac language for an absolute file address e.g. d:spacealiensGrey.obj , and will it work in Poser on a PC?

A corrigendum:- - Put the flamethrower on a man's back. - Parent its tank to his chest part. - Apply the above-described pose-type file.

It would also help if I could issue along with the flamethrower model a pose-type file mentioning BOTH the nozzle AND its user's hands and finger parts. In that file there would be a new special cr2 language command "DragToRelative" with coordinates (x y z) and orientation angles (xrot yrot zrot) relative to a specified other part, e.g.:- actor nozzle:1 { channels { ... DragToRelative lHand .012 .034 .065 123.5 32.6 33.87 DragToRelative rHand .053 .023 .056 321.8 34.6 45.84 ... where the six numbers are x y z xrot yrot zrot in that order; the fingers are posed relative to the hands by their ordinary "rotateX" etc cr2 commands. Then the user could do this:- - Put the flamethrower on a man's back. - Parent its tank to his chest part. If applied it tries to attract its wearer's hands to the place of operation, and then as above. It would be useful if a conformable garment model could include parts which are attached to it but do not try to conform to its wearer. Then I could define my flamethrower's backpack plate and harness straps as a conforming garment (if I could tell it to keep the backpack plate rigid), and its tank and hose and nozzle are merely attached to it and are posed by other means. That would make it easier to pose any device that has backpack straps: flamethrower, backpack helicopter motor and rotor set (where I would need to be able to pose the rotor and any large control levers separately), blowtorch with backpack cylinders, garden sprayer, rucksack, parachute, scuba diving breathing set, etc. (Some of these are in the Poser Fun Stuff (to find them, text search for "appleyard"), but I had to make their backpack straps etc as posable "tails" of several segments.) And it should be possible to pose it and its backpack straps fully if it not being worn but lying on the floor or whatever.

I found why that propeller above was so big: the sharp edges of the blades were represented not by one line of vertexes but by NINETY parallel rows of vertexes with 89 rows of microscopically thin faces between them.

My heavy boots prop is in the Poser Fun Stuff. They go just above the ankle bones like army boots and not right up the shin like jackboots or women's kinky boots. They are one piece each; I find little need to swivel model's the ankle joint about - a movement which is rather restricted in real life when I am wearing heavy work boots.

"Mowgli" is one of those mysterious names on the startup screen of Poser 3, rather than Rudyard Kipling's character. (Where such a surname as "Windos" come from, anyway??)

I see the Stealth Bomber and my first thought is that it wouldn't need many polygons to model it because of all the big flat surfaces and straight edges on it.

I had this with a flamethrower and a blowtorch where a large rigid object was child of a multi-segment hose with the curve property. With the flamethrower I parented the nozzle to the last but one segment of the hose, rather a disreputable hack. With the blowtorch I interposed a very short non-rigid non-curve segment.