Whenever I get a post to my gallery or see a forum post that looks like spam I always report the post as spam, but in addition I then check the user account too. If the user account also smacks of a spam account I report that as spam too (the account being created the same day as the spam post is a good, or should I say bad, sign. The spam posts and accounts I've reported do seem to get removed quite quickly)

Perhaps Renderosity needs some sort of 'good behaviour' period before allowing any newly created account to add any links of any sort anywhere ? Good behaviour could be as simple as not posting any comment that gets reported as (and confirmed by a mod/admin as being) spam. 

But it looks to me as if the bots are already pre-empting that idea. I got two new followers yesterday. Both are new user accounts created yesterday. Neither has posted any spam comment to my gallery. Both have a user icon that looks like a (fake?) company logo. Both have a link to what looks like a (fake?) company website - no way I'm going to click those links! Neither 'company' has anything to do with what Renderosity does (one pretends to be medical, the other cybersecurity). Both are apparently following 9 people. One has included three social links. I was going to report both as spam accounts because I'm fairly sure that's what they are... but neither has (yet) posted any spam to my gallery so I haven't reported them. Yet.

And the title of the story was... ? And the author ? The reply sounds oddly AI generated to me - but please forgive me if you're a real person ! ;o)

If anybody's interested, and also for my own cross-reference, the additional work that went into creating this is documented in posts #146 to #177 on the HiveWire3D topic

Update uploaded

Multi-figure bookstacks for Poser (release 2) (renderosity.com)

Just about to upload an update version, release 2

The following renders give a hint at the flexibility of this approach, a few examples of what you can do by simply loading a bookstack, in this case tthe Stack08 (2figs).cr2 figure and then running the reset and/or randomize and/or material helper scripts.

The (non-interactive) reset script makes it into a very tidy stack of curved hardbacks (the odd shadow here is, I think, due to the books being very small and not using ray-tracing for shadows)...

then just run the (non-interactive) randomize script  to get a jumbled stack....

Next run a material helper script to change to the classics and the interactive randomize script to select full 360 degree rotations....

...and the interacive randomize again to select only hardback geometries, twist and shear morphs, and small rotations...

...and again, but selecting just paperbacks, all morphs, position and size, and very small rotations - and run the material helper script for Pulp02

A COUPLE OF SEUSSIAN 256 BOOK STACKS, JUST BECAUSE...

I love scrolling this picture, but I think it needs some birds, mountain goats, etc...

FIGURE STRUCTURE / HIERARCHY

The BookStack4 figure has six bones/bodyparts in a chain:

Body > Stack > Book1 > Book2 > Book3 > Book4 > TopOfStack

The first bone/bodypart (Stack) and last (TopOfStack) have no associated geometry and all their parameters are fixed (force limits is set and the minimum/maximum limits are the same) and the dials are hidden. The reason for the 'Stack' bone is explained in post #67 of the HiveWire3D topic (basically the joint parameters are different for the first bone and I couldn't do what I needed) and the reason for the TopOfStack bone in post #66 of the HiveWire3D topic (basically ensures that a nested child stack will respond correctly when the thickness of the top book changes).

The remaining four bones are for the four books. Here's the hierarchy for a single figure:

and four a stack of two figiures, the second being parented to the TopOfStack bone of the first.

If anybody's interested in how this came into being then posts #54 to #135 of "My rather infrequent, and possibly apocryphal, 'books project'." topic on HiveWire3D has all the ins and outs.

Basically a Poser figure containing four stacked books, each of which can be independently swapped, morphed and adjusted (within limits).

Figures can be stacked one on top of another to create larger stacks.

Stacks of 4, 8, 12, ... 60, 64 books are included, along with a 128 and a 256 book stack .

Since manually adjusting each book in a large stack is impractical there are PoserPython helper scripts to randomize, reset, and change textures. These scripts can be accessed directly from proxy CR2s alongside the stacks.

*** WARNING: DON'T USE POSER'S BUILT-IN 'DELETE FIGURE' WITH THE 'DELETE ATTACHED' OPTION CHECKED FOR STACKS LARGER THAN 40 BOOKS AS THE DELETION TIME IS HUGE AND POSER WILL EFFECTIVELY LOCK UP FOR HOURS. USE THE INCLUDED 'DELETE LINKED' SCRIPT WHICH ONLY TAKES A FEW SECONDS EVEN FOR HUGE STACKS ***

Created in Poser Pro 2014. Tested on a Windows 10 PC in Poser 6 and Poser Pro 2014.

The freebie's been approved, so here's the link to it in the Renderosity Free Stuff - Multi-figure bookstacks for Poser (renderosity.com)

Please feel free to post here any comments (good or bad - constructive criticism preferred), suggestions for improvement, and/or questions about this freebie.

Ah, I think I see...

When I delete a nice big stack with my script it deletes very quickly - but I can't undo the deletion !

When you use Poser's built-in delete with 'delete attached' it takes a very long time, but you can undo the deletion. So I'd guess that what's taking the time is Poser setting up and saving the data for this undo ?

So the question now becomes

Which Poser version was the first to support calling of PoserPython files in mapped runtimes from runPythonScript ?

My nagging thought was spot on - when I moved my scripts from the desktop runtime I had them in to (backslashes changed to forward slashes simply to post on this forum) C:/Program Files (x86)/e frontier/Poser 6\Runtime/Python/poserScripts/ it worked perfectly, Mac syntax and all.

This is something I clearly knew 12 years ago as it's in the readme of my first freebie with a PoserPython script* - "2 - Copy the contents of the 'Poser Default Runtime' folder from the downloaded zip file to your DEFAULT runtime (These are the PoserPython scripts, which are called from PZ2/PP2 files - if you have several runtimes, then in order for the calls to work it appears that the PoserPython scripts MUST be in the main runtime, i.e. under your Poser installation)."

*South East Asian Duel (Poses, Prop, Scripts) - still avaiable at ShareCG

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm very rusty on all this - what's the difference between runPythonScript and runPythonScriptEx ?

I've also just identified a nagging thought - didn't Poser 6 require Python scripts to be in the main Poser runtime, not mapped runtimes ?