http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2451854&username=Teyon&page=2&member&np

I also like the ones picked out above. 

When you make the next Poser figure I really hope that you add in extras such as the ones you did for Rex.  Attached links:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2488782&username=Teyon&page=2&member&np

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2454488&username=Teyon&page=2&member&np

For # 2 if you are using Poser 9+ use the Object Menu --->Add Constraint. This will attach an object to an other object/part. So using as an example a project I did a couple years ago.

One of the scenes required a Ninja Crow to throw a ball at some Pirates. The scene jumped from a view of the Crows and the view of the Pirates. Workflow was

1: Added the Ninja Crow and applied a BVH of a pitcher throwing a ball.

2: Added the ball object and placed it behind and to the left of the camera.

3: With the ball selected go to Object Menu and click on Add Constraint. Select the right hand of the Crow as the object to constrain to. In the parameters of the ball will be a new dial set at 1. There will be an outline box that you use to move the ball into position on the hand.

4: When the constrain dial is at 1 then the ball will follow the hand. When at 0 it will move to the location set by the XYZ trans dials. When dialed to a value between 0 & 1 it will be somewhere in between.

5: As the arm of the Crow was pointed to the front most position I started to move the ball constraint dial towards 0. This has the effect of making the ball leave the hand and appear to fly toward the camera.

So try it using Andy and a ball and spinning the constraint dial to see the effect.

I thought about some more and since you have the recorder and it is free you can make as many recordings as you want and only rent the processing portion for a month or three when you get ready to make the motion files.  Not as nice as having the software all the time, but if you only do small projects / short then it could be a valid soluation.  The recorder files can be viewed at any time,, within the recorder or even media player.  Just looks weird having 6 images playing playing in multiple view ports.  I am sure that with a little practice you will be able to view a recording and have a pretty good idea if it will make a good BVH file.

A:  I have used the first version with Poser and it does export in BVH for sure.  it has been a while since I have used it but if you follow the videos they have it should work with no problems.

B: I have been able to get good results most of the time.  However make sure you have good lighting and not too many shadows as that can cause issues.  I had one spot in the studio where the lighting was not the best and would end up with one of the legs jumping because the software would choice the wrong leg and mistrack.  There are options in the software to reduce some of these problems.

C:  I have 6 of the PS Eyes and two Kinects and have been able to get better results with the PS Eyes.  Although that maybe due to version that I am currently using.  The issue I ran into with the Kinects was the reflects in the room would cause the depth to change.  This may have been due to the black curtains hung around the room as we were using it as a temporary TV studio and the curtains may have the wrong type of IR properties.  Have not had the time since we moved back into our proper studio to do more tests as it is being used for the students projects.

D:  You really need to have active USB extension cables as you need to have all the equipment out of sight of the computer that is doing the capture.  Also you need to have a blocking screen to hide behind as the calibration is taking place because the software does a look at the scene and removes items that are in view.  So if you have a chair it will be removed when it does the calculations on the movement,  but it is best to have as clear an area as possible, because each object will block that much more of the possible tracking area.  As far as the computer you need to have a very fast write speed to the hard drive.  I have two SSD's in a raid 0 configuration.  Also you will need a video card with as many cores as possible.  The software records the motion from your Kinects or PS Eyes and uses the Video Card to process the vector data to make the motion, so the faster your video card the faster you will get the final result.

Having said all of that you really need to look at what you will be doing with the system.  I bought my copy back several years ago when Content Paradise had a 50% off sale.  With their current pricing I would want to ensure that I have all my shots lined up and ready to go to justify the cost of the software for the hardware I have.  If you go with the lowest cost option it uses a single Kinect and for that I would just get Poser 2014GD version and have the live feedback in Poser.  however the higher end versions do work (at least in the version of the software I have) and it does have a trial version so you can see how the processing works

Primorge The examples were meant to be extremes.  In the case of self defense  the fact is it is still illegal, just that the penalty is will be waived because of circumstances.  You can not just kill someone and claim self defense without it being investigated, because if you could no one would be convicted of murder.  As far as the pictures the fact is someone does own the copyright.  Whether or not they are active is beside the point the proper thing the company should have done is sign a statement releasing the content into the public domain if they did not wish to keep the rights.  That is if they went out of business by their own choice.  If they filed for bankruptcy then their assets were sold off to pay debts and the person/company that bought their assets now owns those copyrights.  Whether or not you agree is not the point.  As I said before the proper way of doing this is to find the copyright owner and get permission or wait until goes into the public domain. 

Curious of opinions on this... if one were to download a hard to find scanned digital version of a book/magazine by a deceased artist, who did the artwork as 'work for hire', for a company that is long defunct, and said book/magazine is out of print and actual existing material copies of said book/magazine are currently of negligible monetary value within the relative market... is this significantly an act of piracy, or even just regular old piracy?

 

The basic answer would be yes it is piracy.  The assets, which that picture is, do belong to someone/company.  Even if the person/company no longer actively is selling that asset it is their property and they have not given you the right to make copies of it. 

Here is a simple pair of questions:

Is it illegal to kill someone?

Is it illegal to make copies of materials and distribute said copies that you did not create and do not have the Arthurs permission to do so? 

 

The questions are very simple and the correct answer is YES.  The fact that you can do something does not give you the right to do that thing.  The penalty for your actions will vary depending on how bad it is, but the penalty is not a reason to do something either.

The odds of the original owners of that picture/article in your example coming after you is very small.  The fact you found it worthwhile to make the copy in the first place shows that it does have some value.  The correct course of action is to track down the owner ask permission and follow their wishes.  If they are not going to let you make copies then you have to wait until the property becomes public domain.

The problem with your physical records is you believe the value is the record itself and not the music it contains.  I am sure there are a couple of people that buy the record to have the record and never listen to the contents, however the vast majority buy it to listen to the music.  The music is the thing that has value and the record is only a means to get the music to the listener.  Pirates could careless about the format that the data is delivered in they only want the data.   Do you really believe that you can not go on the internet and not be able to download a copy of the music that is on that recordset?  And the argument that the record is better because it is analog and not digital does not hold up, because a digital copy will always sound the same each and every time.  Play a vinyl record and each time more of the high frequencies disappear due to the needle cutting away the very thin pieces that make up that high frequency, that is why most people when they bought a record in the long past made a cassette tape version of it and play the tape until it wore out.  

And this benefits Internet users...how?  :/

 

Well since in the US at the moment and probably will spread to the rest of the first world the internet is now an utility and the way it is paid for will be changing.  The first 500KW of electricity costs 9 cents a KW, the next 300KW costs 12 cents   the next 250KW costs 16 cents and anything above that is charged 25 cents.  Thus the more you use the more you pay.  Currently most people pay a fixed amount to have unlimited access.  It is this unlimited aspect that causes the problem since it does not cost anything more to download 5 bytes or 300 terabytes. 

So under the plan I listed above your ISP will be allowed to charge (all made up numbers to demo the point) 0.1 cent per Megabyte of data from validated websites this money will be used to offset the cost of operating the utility much the same as your water or gas bills.  And 10 cents for un-validated websites.   The excess funds to be paid into a holding account for artists that can prove their content was downloaded without being paid for.  This practice has been going on for many years with the sales of blank VHS tapes, Audio Tapes and blank CD/DVD's.  Part of the price for the blank media has been sent to the content providers to help offset the cost of lost sales.

How this will help the individual internet user?  Directly it will not show, indirectly the content creators will be rewarded and thus be encouraged to make more content.  Basically this is a way to change the way people act.  If someone downloads a movie and it does not cost them anything they will do it because it saves them $20 that they will not spend at the store to buy that movie.  However if the downloaded movie will cost them $40 then they will think twice about doing the download.  Much like I use to do when I lived in England.  I could call the local CompuServe number @1200 baud and pay local telephone charges or call the number into London and connect @9600 baud, but pay the long distance charges.  Sometimes I called London because the cost was less and I knew I was going to download a big file so wanted to have the fastest transfer or if I was just browsing I would use the local number and save money that way.  

As I said in my prior post this will not stop pirate websites.  However it will dissuade people in the first world countries form using those sites.  For the most part the sales of digital content from places such as Renderoisty and RDNA is directed at people who live in first world countries.  And if you can dissuade the pirating of content in your target audience then your profits will go up. 

Is this idea perfect? No.  However it does place the burden of cost on the person mostly trying to get something for nothing.

 

 

 

Lets look at this from a different angle.  People download pirated IP because it costs them nothing - agreed?  So what would happen if each person was charged 10 cents a megabyte of data they downloaded?  That would work out to 10 dollars a gigabyte and for a standard DVD it would cost about $40.  Much more then the price of going to the store and buying a legal copy.  This would have the effect of slowing down the downloading of pirated content, it would also slow or stop the legal sales of products at site such as Renderosity or RDNA or CP etc.  The solution to that problem can be found in public parking.  I went down to the doctors office and had to park in a car park garage.  They charge $2 an hour for parking and I spent 3 hours at the doctors so the cost should have been $6.  however because the doctors office validated parking it only cost $2.  The same idea could be applied to the internet and legal shops would need to purchase a bond to put up against them breaking the laws and providing pirated content.  Much the same as contractors need to purchase building bonds to ensure they complete the job they contracted out to do.  The contractor fails to complete the job the Bond is paid out from the insurance company and the next time the contractor goes to get a bond it will cost them an arm and a leg it they can get it.  As a store such as Renderosity might have to purchase a $10,000 bond (which is the cost of doing business) they would be placed on a list of companies that allow for validation of downloads so the cost to the end user would be waived.  Since in the US the FCC has just declared the internet a Title II utility they can impose any type of regulation on it they want.

This will not stop pirate sites but would dissuade their customers from downloading content that will cost them more then if they bought it legally.  So even though the sites would exist trying to shut them down would cease to be an issue and companies would not have to worry about getting the governments of third world nations to help them stop IP theft. 

Your freedom to go to any site  you want to would not be impacted, except that it may cost you more to go that route.  The reason for the bonding is to prevent a pirate from setting up hundreds of site since at some point they will run out of funds and they will give up. 

I'm using Poser 9 -- james lying on back. I want to bend the knees up toward the ceiling so both legs form triangles with the point toward the ceiling. I keep trying to lift, but with the first three tools, I seem to only be able to rotate legs."

Right click on James and make sure that IK for the feet is turned off.  The other option is to move the foot which will move the knee.

 Try reinstalling the patch making sure to uncheck install 32 bit version.  fbs7 had the same problem over at RDNA and it appears that if you do not have a 32 bit version installed and you do not uncheck install 32 bit then it messes some files up.  He went all the way to reinstall Poser then apply the patch. 

I have the physical disk version but when I went into check for updates inside the program it gave me the option to download the current downloadd manager after that I was able to download 5.1.

 If your existing Poser 5 and 7 folders where the program is and maybe content if before Vista still exist it is easy to just copy the folder to an external hard drive/flash stick.  After that just run the program from the new location and as long as the computer is capable of running Poser you should have no problems.  I have my Poser 5 & 6 on a flash drive and can plug it into almost any computer and run the program with no issues.  You might want to see if you can find a clean computer  and try to see if your versions of Poser crash on it.  If not then there is probably something wrong on your system.  If they do then you will want to reinstall that version of Poser as probably the program has been corrupted.

Try the RayTrace Preview.  I setup a scene with 11 lights and it shows what the result will be.  Not sure of anyother way to do what you want.

The easiest way to select all the frames you want is to click on the first frame and hold the  shift key down and scroll to the last frame and click on that one while still holding down the shift key.  Now all the frames are highlighted it is a simple matter of pressing the minus button to remove the keys.  Just did it with PP2014 and a 500 frame BVH file, so it should work for you.