Quote - Wanna see something?
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=43&t=432320

Not very applicable, but on the topic.

Very applicable.

There's some gobsmacking stuff there.

Maya is free for personal use, so it may well be worth me playing around with that - It will at least teach me what I need to do.
The muscle primitives seem a great idea.

thanks for all the replies

Mice and keyboards can be a real pain -literally.

Getting your forearm, wrist and hand at the right angle, height and position is not easy, and on some desks is completely impossible.
something to try is a laptop 'tea tray' (the sort of thing you put on your lap to eat your chips whilst you watch the footie)  as a mouse-mat, it's a cheap option which can often help.
Another thing if you can't splash out too much cash is to get a similar object with a solid base, (even a bit of MDF) and a cheap camera tripod - drill a hole in the middle of the board, do some surgery to fix the camera screwthread to it. and you have a customised mouse mat which will work at any angle or height.
It will take a bit of extra work to get it so your wrist can rest, but it's not going to bust the bank (pick one up at a car boot sale if necessary)

Ergonomic keyboards are a must.  I know a lot of people don't like them, but they really help.
I absolutely loathe the standard straight things - we are just not designed to use them.

The choice of rat is also important.  get a decent sized mouse, trackball or whatever that fits YOU - spend £50 on it if you need to, but don't sacrifice your health for a miniature rat that you can't use.

I'm using a wireless keyboard and rat setup at the minute - that's because I now have to use a plasma display for my screen after a car crash messed my neck up, and a wireless system is great for sitting on the sofa working.

It's a Microsoft ergonomic kit.  Laser 5000 mouse and a fancy keyboard with it.
The ergonomics of the keyboard are good - but htis is one area that microsoft actually gets right.  If only they could produce software as good!
The mouse is slightly larger than some others, and fits my hand quite well.

Also look at some other input devces.  There are vertical mice around, and I can recall seeing a 3D input tool (a sort of 6 dimensional rat) advertised in 3D World.

Best advice (make sure you check with yourdoctor) is for frequent rests, Ice on the affected part, and good nutrition - you ain't gonna heal if you ain't eating properly.

Gentle exercise, and massage the muscles if you can't get toa therapist (there's enough info around the net to find which muscles control these tendons - go look!)
combine that with whatever sort of hardware setup you can afford, and you won't go far wrong.

Quote - Most cases of Carpal Tunnel Sydrome start at the neck and can be treated with alternative treatments other than surgery.

This can often be the case.  Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is one of htose oddball things which can actually start anywhere along the chain.  If it's in the neck it's usually Thoracic Outlet syndrome - working on the scalene muscles can help that.
Other things are the actual muscles themselves.  remember that the muscles are thactive part in all this - if they become overdeveloped, scarred or otherwise out of balance, the position of their tendons is going to change, and this will lead to the tendons becoming inflamed, i.e. you get CTS.

Get to see a devent physical therapist - either a good physiotherapist or someone like myself (I do Sports & Holistic Therapy, which basically means I treat every man and his dog...well ok, not his dog) mainly with massage techniques.

It can have a really profound effect.  Geting everyone involved, from your GP to a therapist can really pay dividends.  TENS are great for easing the pain, and other forms of EMS (muscle stimulation) can help with gentle exercise in order to keep the muscles working.

Ultimately you need to get the root cause diagnosed.  Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is more of a symptom than a cause.

Thanks for all the replies.
I only need standard human parts, so the daz skeleton is fine for now.
Dismembering it by using the group function worked fine - I'll be playing around with this for a while.

Thanks for that - I'll give it a play later on.

I hope the special price for Poser 7 users is very special.

Personally I think they have a cheek selling this as a separate entity - especially when the paint is barely dry on Poser 7.

Just a couple of pointers on the transformers..
as mentioned, the 'toy' variety may be in reach, but I just saw the article in 3d world magazine - bumblebee has:
7,608 geometric pieces
1,511,727 polygons
8,094 textures

So I guess I'll just drop that one into my laptop huh? :tongue2:

Reformatting is taking a sledgehammer to a walnut.

Like many others I don't have problems running daz and poser together (although I'm not sure which daz version at the minute).

If you do have problems, I'd advise getting hold of a registry mechanic software program such a norton windoctor, registry mechanic etc, which can solve a hell of a lot of problems with software.

I don't think people realise how many problems there are with files not registering properly or wandering off on their own.  Even on a clean install of XP I would expect at least 50 problems - I've come across over 700 on some simple setups!

Just binned 3 days worth.
If it ain't right, it ain't right.

I've found the best thing is to use the 'save as' a lot - that way when something does go right, you can save it and revert to it if necessary.

Thanks for that - never thought to use a clothify!
This could be just what the doctor (or physio!) ordered.

It never ceases to amaze me how good the free stuff here actually is.
I'm fairly new to the forums, after playing with Poser for simple stuff, but I am now increasingly looking at more complex work, which wouldn't be possible without the contribution of you and others like you - I'll hopefully put some of my own work here soon, but in the meantime, thanks a million.

It's the V3 and M3 skeletons I have at present, and these are based on the fully articulated spine model.
I guess from what I've seen it's either a poser limitation or an oversight on DAzs part rather than a fault with the skeleton model itself- perhaps putting a morph control for the various movements which require scapular and clavicular movements would have been a good idea.

As I'm new to the fancier parts of Poser I won't be doing it myself any time soon!

Edit.... with regards to the posing of the skeleton within M3 or V3 (Well V4) anyone who's tried it will tell you how much fun this can be - bones getting lazy and being left behind (the radius is the biggest problem for me) if you don't do things in a certain order can certainly produce some funny results.

I've seen a few posts about problems getting the skeletons to conform, and have worked around a lot of the problems.  I'd guess that the radius problem stems from the fact that the model is rigged from the wrong direction as far as the radius is concerned. 
It must be difficult getting this sort of thing to work seamlessly, but the radius should be viewed as pointing in the wrong direction as far as the rest of the arm is concerned - it pivots around the ulna at the distal (hand) end, but the rotation of the forearm is controlled from the same place as flexion in the parameter dials - we can't have eveyrthing I guess!

Thanks for that.

I have got the M3 & V3 skeletons, and their clavicles & scapulae do move.
I had played around with these skeletons using the parameter dials, and they didn't do anything,

After your suggestion to use these figures, I went back, and  I found if you use the direct manipulation then the scapula moves with the humerus - not correctly, but it moves!
I guess I'll have to do it by hand if I want it done correctly, but it's a start at least.
Thanks for the input.  Now  to get the rhythm right

Using Poser 7 on an Acer C300 (TABLET pc)
Processor is 1.2GHz, with 1.25 GB of DDR RAM, about 3 years old.
Poser runs ok, rendering takes some time, but I tend to leave it alone and do other things whilst it plays around with that.

If I were to get a new Laptop for this sort of thing, I'd make sure that it came with oodles of RAM, fast SATA disks and a replaceable graphics card (check out 3D magazine this month - it's got some interesting stuff on this)

Make sure that any new laptop has the RAM configured correctly - Acers (like many others) tend to fill all the RAM slots with SODIMMs so that one of them needs to be replaced if you want to upgrade memory.

Mine came with 2 x 256MB of RAM originally, so when I wanted to upgrade to 1GB, I had to remove one SODIMM and put in a 1GB card, taking it up to 1.25GB, instead of just adding a 512MB card if the manufacturers had seen fit to include a single 512MB SODIMM instead of 2 256 modules.

Edit.... Do NOT, EVER get a tablet PC if you want things to run smoothly.  The extra software eats memory like no-ones business.
Oh, and as mentioned above, don't touch Vista with a 10 foot pole.  XP Pro is the way to go

Thanks for that.

I managed to find the nude figure - now I just got to get the skeleton to play nicely.