Very clear explanation. I've been using Poser for 2 years and never understood the bump map; because of your clarity, I now see that creating bump maps can solve one of my perpetual problems. I often need to make small ins and outs on the surface of something like an electronic device, to look like bezels and buttons; I was using Amorphium to make those, but that made it difficult to get "registration" between the colors and the surface shapes. Altering the coloring texture into a bump map solves that problem automatically.

I know nothing about horses, but I just couldn't resist trying.... When I superimpose the Poser horse over your picture, it appears that the real problem is in the Poser horse's neck, not the legs. When I change the ZScale parameter on both neck parts and head to about 122% -- and then fiddle with the Taper on all three parts to compensate -- the horse can reach the ground. Also, try bending the chest forward to about 10 degrees, and bend the shoulder joints of the front legs to compensate. Again, I don't have any understanding of horses, so this shift in posture and scale may be impossible, but it looks okay to my naive eyes.

...your first action upon experiencing a moderate earthquake is not to check your house for damage, but to fire up Poser and create an animated demonstration of how the earthquake felt. (And that's not hypothetical; I did it just a few weeks ago.)

Two possibilities occur to me: 1. (Most likely) You did the animation first with Figure:UseLimits turned on, then the second time had UseLimits turned off. 2. You may be seeing the result of Poser's spline interpolation, which can 'run backward in time'. In that case the best cure is to use the keyframe graph, to put Spline Breaks at the start and end of the actions you really want. Once the interpolation has moved everything around, it can be very hard to even locate which movements you made, so it's generally easier to just restart entirely, using Spline Breaks immediately. 3. I suppose you could have a corrupt PZ3 file, but that's really unlikely.

Bought it, played with it, love it! The construction kit is a great idea. Virtual equivalent of the kit houses formerly sold by Sears and Aladdin. Any chance you might put out a 1930's version, in the style called "Moderne" or "Streamline Deco"?

I'm with x2000 on this. In the last 15 years or so, prosecutors have found that witch-hunting is great fun, and a good way to gain votes from radical feminists and radical Christians at the same time. On many sex-related subjects, from child molestation to workplace "sexual harrassment", a mere hint of accusation is enough to destroy and convict. The rule of law no longer exists in those areas. So a certain amount of self-censorship is necessary for survival, just as it always has been in totalitarian societies. (And every society is insanely strict about something. The subjects of this insanity just vary with history and geography.) If nothing else, self-restraint makes it possible to be genuinely outraged (and to stir up sympathy) when the witch hunters finally get around to burning you.

A few hints: if you're going to do animations, you should definitely get -- and learn -- the Pro Pack with Python scripting. Python enables you to do a whole lot of things, including collision detection and repeated or mathematically-controlled moves. Also, start out immediately using the keyframe graph. At first it may not seem like the easiest way to go, but it's the only way to get realistic moves. Positioning the figures directly (by eyeball) is only good for the raw first approximation. I agree that DIVX is a good (and free) compressor. In the "make movie" steps, when Poser gives you a choice of compression styles, it depends on what compression codecs you have installed. EG, if you haven't installed DIVX, Poser won't give you that choice. For speed, set your Display setting to "textured shaded" and make the movie in "current display" rather than "current render", until the very last draft. Making a movie in full render takes MONSTROUS amounts of time. The "current display" will be adequate for many purposes. For some uses (such as multimedia presentations or "interactive textbooks", which is my specialty) you can get by with a flip-card style of animation. (Make a series of single JPGs and let each show for about 1/3 second.) This works surprisingly well for short simulations, and is easier to do than a true animation. ....ockham

It's a fact of human nature that people will grab and hoard when they perceive scarcity or potential shortages. This is physically different on the net because there's never a shortage of actual material; bits don't come from mines or wells. But the result is the same. Seems like an opportunity for somebody to play the role of "antique store" or "surplus store". Such a store would make a contract with each popular creator or source website, paying the source an agreed-on price for one copy of every available product, on condition that the surplus dealer will be able to sell the products only AFTER the original dealer stops carrying it. This would have two good results: products would remain available, and (if the surplus stores become well-known and trusted) customers would then feel confident that products would be available later, and therefore would be less inclined to grab and hoard.

One extra comment: the Python aspect doesn't require knowing Python in advance, but I suspect it does require a general expertise in programming. I'd never even heard of Python before, and was able to master enough of Poser's subset of Python to do what I wanted very quickly .... maybe one day of learning. But I've been programming for a living in C for 15 years. The Python is wonderful if you want to set up animations in ways that can be defined mathematically, such as moving props around according to the laws of physics, or introducing randomness into character movements. I use both of those, and Python has been a godsend for my purposes. But if you primarily make static renderings, it probably won't do you much good.

RAR has one special advantage over ZIP: with RAR you can make self-extracting 'split archives' out of big files. This makes it possible to post video clips or PZ3 files in eGroups message areas, or to send them via email when the email service has restrictions on message size. The receiver needs no special software; just download all the sections, then run the .EXE section, which reconstitutes the original MPG or whatever.

I'm trying to create a ghostly ectoplasmic horror fantasy piece in which people can walk through walls, punch a fist all the way through another character's head, and contort into excruciatingly twisted positions with overlapping limbs and inside-out body parts protruding 18 feet out into space like a nightmarish Klein Bottle Universe as imagined by Salvador Dali on LSD. Poser won't let me do any of this! It insists on maintaining ordinary 3-dimensional space. What good is it?

My favorite fantasies involve ice skating, slipping and skidding on snowy landscapes, but I can't figure out any way to make Poser characters glide smoothly in various directions when attempting to walk or dance. Every step maintains perfect traction, as if they were wearing cleated boots.

This is something that should be possible using Python scripting. The Python setup that comes with Poser ProPack includes a wide variety of system interface actions; if you can use an MCI command to access the slider box (or joystick or similar) you should be able to transfer that action to a pre-selected set of parameter dials in Poser.

The Dover edition of Muybridge says that his exposure time ranged down to 1/6000 second, but the actual interval between frames was 60 frames per second at the fastest, up to several seconds per frame at the slowest. The index of this book gives the time interval for each sequence "when it is known", which seems to be only about a quarter of all the sequences. If your edition doesn't have any of this information, tell me which sequence you're looking at, and I can see if its interval is given in this index. ...ockham

What you're seeing is a common negative result of the Spline interpolation. Let's say the first time you turn the model's head is in frame 200. Poser runs the spline forward and backward from that point, resulting in Exorcist-style head spinning. The cure is to use the keyframe graph setup to place a "Spline Break" at the points where movement of one element begins and ends. You have to do this immediately, before Poser has a chance to extrapolate both ways. Another cure, even more tiring but also less error-prone, is to set up the animation in short segments, each with its own PZ3 file, then join together the AVIs after Poser is done. This prevents Poser from messing anything up outside of each segment, and makes it easier to correct interpolation problems when they do arise. .....ockham