Urk. I tried to type "your-username" within angle brackets, but the editor thought it was formatting stuff and left it out. I actually wanted you to look in /Users/your-username/Library/Application Support/Poser/11, rather than the shared one, which just has licensing stuff in it for Poser. The one under your own home folder has the actual preferences for Poser that we need to check up on. It may also have older preferences saved in folders that start with 11_datestamp. These are saved every time you install a new version of Poser on macOS, an older one will probably still have your LibraryPrefs.xml containing all of your other libraries. You can try copying one of those back over the top of the 11 folder's files, but make sure to do it when Poser isn't running, as Poser will overwrite things when it exits.

The next thing to ask is what files do you see in /Users//Library/Application Support/Poser Pro/11/? Is there a LibraryPrefs.xml file in there? What are its contents? If that file were missing, or corrupted or truncated, you might see something like what you do.

In my Poser>Window menu, I see this:

The tick next to the Libraries item tells me to expect the library palette to be visible, somewhere. What does yours show? I ask, since the Library Palette may be docked or floating, and if it's floating, it's possible that it could be behind Poser's main window. Dragging the corner of Poser's main window might reveal the library, if it is visible and just hidden behind, but we need to establish whether it's supposed to be visible at all, first.

[Edited]

Actually, now that I look closer, you have the docking icon and refresh arrow circle at the bottom right that implies that the library palette is visible, but empty. Strange.

What happens if you click the refresh arrow circle at the bottom right?

Also, what happens if you undock (make floating) the library palette via its top, right dropdown menu? Does it show anything different. Can you resize it when it's floating?

Hi @Christolking, can you report what macOS version you are running, please? Some screen shots would be helpful, too. ⇧⌘4 to capture them.

Apart from the main application runtime, which typically shouldn't contain any content, The Poser 11 content would normally reside in /Users/Shared/Poser 11 Content. If something has happened to your Poser library preferences to corrupt them, you might see no libraries in the library pane. Can you provide a screenshot so we can see if the library buttons at the top are visible at all or completely missing. If they're present, you could try adding back the Runtimes.

However, if something has gone drastically wrong, it might be simpler to try reinstalling Poser 11.3.818.

It's also worth noting that BOTH None and '' (empty string) evaluate to False in a boolean expression. That provides a simple way to distinguish between a useful returned string to be parsed (any non-empty string will evaluate as True) and a non-selection ('' OK) or cancellation (None). Python design has its own logic, and it takes some getting used to when coming from other languages.

Similarly with lots of other Poser Python API methods which can return None instead of an empty list. As in adp's second example, if a method could return None instead of an empty list, make use of None evaluating as False, and iterate over a list conditional like:

for item in ListMethodThatMayReturnNone() or []: # The " or []" CAN be iterated over without error, while None cannot
    pass

Oh Yeah! Nothing succeeds like a budgie with no beak. Sorted. Remote QM now rendering on 8 threads in CPU upgraded iMac.

Thanks again, Charles.

Now I just need to blow enough cold air into this iMac to stop CPU throttling when the cores heat up.

Thanks Charles. Can you confirm where that number is initially derived from? Does QM or the QM installer determine the default number by asking the OS what kind of CPU is available? The 4 threads was correct for the i5 CPU, so I didn't expect it to change after I replaced that with an i7, but it certainly may have been the case that QM was running while I was making changes, and overwrote what I'd saved when it exited. I will try your suggestion and see if it sticks.

Words fail, but the heart still feels. Vale Sean

Conservation of energy says to me that you cannot have full transmission in both directions and get any reflection, additionally with real glass there will be some absorption.

If by two-way-mirror, you mean a partially reflective sheet of "glass", then a shallow box with BB's Tricky glass shader should be the starting point.

With the tricky glass, where you mix a GlassBSDF node with the TransparentBSDF node, default Glass has its own inherent Index of Refraction, about 1.45. That number, essentially, is what determines how much reflection and refraction happen at the glass surface. Push the number up to the point BB determined emulates metals, between 10 and 20, and you get a more or less completely reflective surface. Come back down to the levels of diamond, 2.1 and you get much more surface reflection than ordinary glass. Plugin 5 as the IOR, and you get something that gives roughly equal transmission and reflection.

You've got partway there, but a one-way mirror gives total reflection on one side and partial reflection on the other, which is Normal dependent. For a two-way mirror, it's just partially reflective in both directions, so you just want a constant factor input. If you want it to be something other than 50% reflective in both directions, though, then you'll probably need to blend based on the normal as well.

All good answers above. Poser is trying to tell you that there are problems with the shader. Any time you see dotted lines connecting nodes (only ever in SF) that means you can't do that because reasons. Additionally, even more helpfully, up in the top right hand corner, between the Announcements and the library icons, the messages speech balloon is yellow, almost certainly with the messages telling you about not connecting Blinn to Alternate Diffuse, etc.

Here's a direct link to Ken's tutorial video on YouTube: Poser Tutorial 5 - Precise Scatter Placement as well.

there is one good reason for having an MT5 instead of an MC6. In the material room, you can apply an MT5 to the currently selected material, which you can't do with an MC6, since the mat room won't prompt you which material to apply it to, just apply it as it specifies.

Each different, major version of Poser stores its preferences in a different, logically named location. Between different major versions, there are no conflicts. However, the question about running 11.x and 11.3 separately runs into the problem that they will both use exactly the same location for their preferences, and hence one version will overwrite any changes that the other has made, and vice versa. Assuming that you could even run them both at the same time, which I doubt, due to license/lock files, they would be fighting over the preferences again. They cannot be configured separately.

As was said above, P11.x and P12 would be fully expected to live happily on the same system. I can't speculate whether there would be any kind of licence conflict between the two, however, but I assume that users would get a new key for P12.

@catsy_lu yes, you can! In your Poser Prefs file, which lives in "/Users//Library/Application Support/Poser Pro/11/Poser Prefs" on macOS, and can be opened with a text editor, you can do the same thing. But you don't need to make any changes there if you already know what the URL is.

If you're running Poser Pro 11.3.740 or later, you can just enter ContentLibrary in your browser (or click the link). The version numbers contained in the link may prevent operation on older poser versions, hence the need to get Poser to tell you what it thinks the link should be.