I shall try that! If it works, then there's definitely chocolate.

Thanks! I did try that. Oh well.  And mostly I like that Poser lets me do things in the same manner and with the same abilities and restrictions as I would experience in a really well equipped photography studio, including lighting and camera controls, and all with models who never get tired and don't charge by the hour. I used to own a small photography studio, so I find that bit rather cool. But I had definitely gotten spoiled with the magic of invisible cameras, photographers, and lights. At any rate, this is definitely a limitation that I'd have found in a RL studio. Sigh. Never slowed me down in a RL studio, so I should just shut up and quit complaining.

My biggest problem is that it's been over twenty years since I last used Poser, and that makes for a steep relearning curve, not to mention that things are just flat out different than they were back with Poser 4.

Thanks. I was kind of figuring that angles would be the best I could do. Sigh.

Ah. It's the mirror. Hmm. Anyone know how to make a mirrored surface not do that?

This is the definition of the mirror surface:

Well and that's a part of the Material Room that I've not explored before! Thank you very much. That worked very well for me.

That is amazing! As a retired "programmer/systems engineer/whatever title they came up with" (I wrote code, ya ken?), I'm quite impressed, most especially with the organizaion and layout of your code, and -- that it's a complete, all-in-one-place solution. After the earlier explanation about Poser Units, I was thinking about an invisible object, placed at height of "1" in the current units. The height to be measured in script will yield the conversion ratio directly. But it requires a cooperating "known" object. If I placed the object in the my library, loaded it from script, measured the height, then deleted the object, all in script, then it would be ALMOST an all-in-one-place solution, but I like yours better because it IS an all-in-one-solution...

Thank you!

Thanks guys! I have script now to duplicate a piller and arrange them all into an evenly spaced matrix. Very cool, but needs a little work, like a dialog box to set matrix spacing. But so much fun learning all this...

Aha! I was not aware of poser units. Thanks!

AWESOME! Thank you for the fine details. God, I hate feeling like such a newbie. I'm actually a years-and-years-and-years software techie, so it's a bit embarrassing to be so lost.

Thank you so much. You've made my weekend!

Hmm. Trying to select the actor fails with:

Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "C:\Program Files\Poser Software\Poser 13\Runtime\Python\poserScripts\My Light Scripts\LayoutColumns.py", line 5, in <module>

    actor = poser.Scene().SelectActor("pillar3")

poser.error: Error parsing SetCurrentActor()

Usage: <NoneType> SetCurrentActor(<ActorType> actor)

Could it be that I've built my prop badly? It consists of multiple pipe sections and a couple of toruses.

Hmm. Thanks for the tips. I am finding, with a little exploration, that I do seem to be able to do a lot more in Poser than I remember, so that's good. And I will go google Blender and read up on it. Thanks again!

Can someone recommend an adequate modeling program?

Sometime long ago, like maybe 20 years ago, I built some articulated props which I cannot, for the life of me, remember how I created. They're complex enough that I don't think I built them in Poser. This is one, fully articulated. The chain bends, the lock unlocks, the cuffs open.

Somehow I don't think I built it in Poser (4, btw). I have this vague thought that maybe it was Dazd (Daz3d?) but I really don't know. Effectively, after a 20 year haitus, I'm pretty much a newbie again. So any suggestions about what app to use would be greatly appreciated.

This is what I see on my system:

These are my normal settings. Do I have the setting you're referring to? Pixel samples? Although I do have that already cranked up a bit, so I'm guessing that isn't it. Sigh. I do hope this isn't somehow because my video card doesn't support something.

Another questiion: When I set the subdivisions to 2, the edges and corners of the cubes become rounded. Is there someway to keep them crisp?

Ah. Is this the setting you mean?

The "Render" setting?
This combination seemed to work well for me

Hmm. How do I increase the pixel number? Is that one of the renderer setting?