You are better off to do the scaling in AutoCAD--Poser doesn't handle large scenes very well. One Poser unit is about 10 feet. If you are working in inches, try a scale factor of 120. A scale factor 90 will make the male figure about 50 percentile size, that is, 5'9". Cal

I guess that would explain it, thanks. I'm doing my rendering in MAX, so I was able to overide the materails there. What a pain! Cal

Motherboards vary in the amount of RAM that they can address. Make sure you check into that before you run out and buy more RAM. Cal

No problems with PPP on NT 4.0 either. Cal

Scott, thanks for the explanation on the zones; makes sense. Blood, Pro Pack has a joint editor that lets you go in and change the joint order, all of that, with inside the program. I've never used anything else, so I didn't realize it wasn't a regular Poser feature. Jim, do you know what joint order Mike uses? Cal

Hi Scott, Thanks for the link and the information. I understand all of your points, thanks. Changing to XZY joint order completely fixed my problems with the shoulder; a couple of minor tweeks to the fall-off zones and I'm set. I was expecting problems with conforming clothing, but it seems to work fine. So far I haven't found a down side to the new shoulder joint order. The default order is pretty close to useless for any pose that has front-back near 90. I'm surprised that folks can get anything done with the default joint order. As far as axis names go, I just with they would display an axis tripod, as in MAX, so you can see tell which axis to use without trial and error. Any idea why the default fall-off zones are so large? For example, the zones for the shoulder extend way past the elbow. Cal

Thanks. If I had ever known that twist had to be first, I had forgotten. However, XZY joint order seems to fix the gimble lock problem (at least in this instance) and avoids the problem with the deformation. (I thought that I tried XZY before and it didn't work.) Honestly, I tried for hours to get the arm into position by coming in from different directions, playing with the collar, etc.. I can't get it done; I'll be happy to send you the file, if you like; maybe I'm missing something. But the bottom line is, it shouldn't be that tough to get to a desired pose; humans don't have a gimble lock problem, neither should Poser figures. As for using a different pose, that's not an option here. This is for a technical animation and the position of the torso and hands/arms is important. On top of that, for the animation and I will need more control over the arms than I have with the default joint order. You definitely have a LOT more knowledge about this whole issue than I do, and I really appreciate your help! XZY joint order SEEMS to be the answer here; can you tell me what problems XZY is going to cause? That is, what things am I going to need to fix to it. Thanks again! Cal

Well, 30 minutes isn't a lot of time to compose a thoughtful reply, particularly if one pauses to try a few things out. And once one has invested considerable time into a post, it is VERY disconcerting to have it disappear into the ether, but you obviously don't care about that. What's worse, you have to loose a message or two before you figure out what the time-out period is. I can't even hit "back" on the browser and get back to the text; it's gone. (Probably because your CGI script is more interested in refreshing the banner adds than anything else.) The data in the form goes somewhere; what do you do, just throw it away? Thanks. If you are trying to promote two line posts in broken English, full of misspellings and discourage substance, then you are right on track. Here's a suggestion for you: try reading your replies before you hit send. Your reply to me translates into, "Your suggestion has been quickly evaluated and discarded as unworthy of further consideration. Have a nice day." I'm confident that it will never get passed on and thus never fixed. Cal

Yeah, I figured that out. So I guess you aren't interested in improvement ideas, SORRY TO WASTE YOUR TIME. Cal

Thanks for the link! I think that has me pointed in the right direction. I am working with a figure on a racing-style bicycle with "ram's-horn" handle bars. When I tried to move the figure's hands to the curved part of the handlebar, I discovered that they CANNOT be moved into that position with the default joint order. The joints go into a "gimble lock", where both twist and bend are doing the same thing; bend no longer functions to move the elbow away from the body. To demonstrate the problem, take the default P4 nude male or female (I haven't check the other figures, but they probably behave the same way) and set the shoulder front-back dial to 90. This will make the arm extend directly out in front (sort of a Roman-salute pose). Now try to lower the arm directly to the side, keeping it parallel to the body's median plane; it can't be done, it can only be rotated along its long axis and rotated back to the Poser neutral position. Bend should move the arm at right angles to front-back, but it does not. No matter how you get into the "Roman-salute" pose, front-back is the only dial that will move you out of it, and you are restricted to one plane of motion; needless to say, real people don't have this limitation. (Frankly, I'm surprised that people haven't noticed this before.) Changing the joint order to YXZ fixes the "gimble lock" problems, but messes up the joint parameters, causing part of the upper arm to be left behind when the arm moves. As I begin to dig into this, the main problem seems to be that the joints now have the wrong attributes associated with them. Front-back now has the twist attribute associated with it, which is probably why the deformation is messed up; any idea how to re-map that? Thanks for your help! Cal

I re-zeroed both collar and shoulder many times, there was just no getting to the desired postion. Changing the joint order to YXZ seems to eliminate the gimble lock. However, when I made the change, I got a warning that I might need to "readjust joint zones", and the upper arm is obviously not blending correctly. I was hoping someone had tried the joint zone thing and could give me some idea if it was worth a shot. Any ideas? Cal

Using the joint editor fixed the gimble lock problem, but created more, as you can see. The meaning of the rotation dials has changed and the deformers are all messed up. Has anyone been down this road before? (I'm not really feeling too adventurous at the moment.) Cal

You can also change visibility from the Hierarchy Editor (under the "Window" main menu). Click the littly "eye" icon to toggle visibility of any element in the heirarchy. Cal

Attached Link: http://yarchive.net/space/spacecraft/gimbal_lock.html

My guess is that it has to do with the way/order that the joint rotations are applied. I've seen this before in 3D Studio MAX. (The phenomena is similar to a "gimble lock" that mechanisms such as gyroscopes can experience.) It might be possible to fix it if the base orientations of the joints can be changed. I just don't have the time or energy to dig into it right now. Looks as if I'm going to have to scrap Poser for this project and dust off my trusty old copy of Humanoid. Cal

Yes, I did work with the collar, but I wasn't able to get the arm into position. (I was, however, able to completely mangle it--even with limits set to on). I haven't tried this with any other P4 figures, but this seems to me to be a real problem. The human arm can position the hand in just about any orientation in an entire octant of space, apparently Poser does not have that capability. Thanks for the suggestion. Cal