You might also check out Xurge 3D:  http://www.xurge3d.com/products
Several good possibilities for SciFi armor for M3.

The Phibuilder help file refers to ftp://ftp.metacreations.com/pub/Applications/Poser/goodies/advanced_techniques.pdf > which of course no longer works. I didn't see any "Advanced Techniques" document, but there was a poser 3 Advanced Tricks and Tips manual that was provided as late as Poser 5 (it's on the CD in the Documentation folder). This also appears to be available from the e-Frontier web site; look under the downloads tab and try Poser 3/Windows/English. (And on looking at the PDF file there, its title page says "Poser 3 Advanced Techiques Guide" [sic] so this is probably what you want. It has sections on creating hierarchy files, adjusting joint parameters, setting limits...)

You also have the ability to "nudge" an object using the arrow keys, which may give you more control than the mouse but less trial-and-error than using the numeric fields. Check somewhere around pg 148 in the manual (or just use the text search feature in the Adobe Reader to find nudge): "Press and hold the Command/Ctrl key, and then press the arrow keys to move the object in the active plane." You can also use the shift key to get smaller increments.

There's some real funky stuff at: http://gianp.free.fr/carrara/indexcarrara.html including shader formulas for some amazing shapes. It's in French, but it's still pretty interesting and understandable. (This came up on the Yahoo forum a while ago; I don't know of any other good formula reference sites. If you find any - let us know.)

It's a magic constant. e=2.718281828... It is used in various formulas like natural logarithms (log to the base e rather than log to the base 10), but I'm not sure of much more. It's been a long time since I had to deal with it.

A couple of other notes -- First, you can name cameras. Once you select a camera in the instance list on the right, you can give it a private "personal" name by typing something at the top right where it says, for example "Camera 1". Warning: it seems to take a while for the name to sink in. I've had to flip back and forth between cameras, and windows, before the menu of cameras on the left actually gave me the right name. (Known bug, Eovia is aware). Second, in the rendering room, you can select the name of the camera you want to do the picture from. I sometimes get something all set up, go render it, and discover it's using the wrong camera... :)

X2000 also used to have an interior fast-food restaurant scene, "McT's", but I don't see it on his site any more. You might drop him a line and see if it's still available.

OS-9 it doesn't even ship from Apple anymore. I think it does - they just don't install it by default. My dad just got a MacMini, and classic was available on the install disk as an extra. You just can't boot OS 9 any more. Not sure about Tiger, but there are compatibility problems with that anyway.

I just went through this... :) As Mr. Mongo says, maconverter is still available and does work (there is in fact a link to it in the CuriousLabs FAQ pages for P6). Start it up and drag your props folder in. I set the various options to say "just make me a thumbnail, thanks" and it worked fine. It doesn't actually make the PNG files, but it does adjust the RSRs so that the next time Poser opens the folder, it will make all the thumbnails for you automatically. One thing that confused me on the Mac: if you happen to be a Terminal user, after conversion 'ls' shows all those RSR files as zero-length, which is not actually true, so don't worry. I also heard that the upcoming P6 SR1 is supposed to take care of this and will understand the PC-type RSR files. In the meantime, it's a manual process.

The spec (thanks EnglishBob) was quite useful, and actually pointed me to the answer to my second question. I poked around in the CR2, found a "locked 1" entry, and traced it to the totally obvious and completely overlooked Object -> Lock Actor menu entry. So that problem is solved, and I'm happily tearing apart CR2s. Thanks all -- I appreciate the help.

Dan - thanks for the pointers, but "Qarbon" (which the basic - and apparently useful - tutorials are written in) fails miserably for me on all my possible browser combos. Which means -- EsnRedshirt - write faster! :)