Hey, Just a little informal survey for my own nefarious purposes. I was wondering which tool most people use in poser, Twist, Rotate or Move. I know they all have different uses, but I imagine most people have a preferred one. Reason I'm asking is, I never use the tools. I always use the parameter dials to move/rotate, but the first thing I do when I open poser is press 'T' to get the Move tool (mainly because it's the least offensive on the eye. I never use it). And since I'm working on a furniture pack where almost everything is rotated with Yrot using the Twist tool, I'm curious to know how much it's actually used. mac

PS Now that I think about it, I'd love to know what percentage of poser users use the tools as opposed to the dials. I guess for posing hands and arms, tools probably work fairly well, although I can't remember the last time I did it that way. Come to think of it, I'm not even sure when I last posed a figure. A year ago? Well, I'm not a typical poser user. That's why I'm asking. mac

I use the Move tool more than either Twist or Rotate, mostly because its a lot trickier to control just what axis something is moving around with Twist or Rotate. With Move, you're moving it in the plane of the screen, so what you see is what you get. :) Dials, however, are my first choice in most situations. April Follies

Almost exclusively dials for me. I only ever drag body or hip to move figures around. For me, trying to pose limbs using the tools usually ends up with pretsels! -- Mark

I use Move, but only when I need to shift something WAY across the screen, like spotlights. Then I shift between Aux and Main cameras, with one positioned on the side of the scene and pulled way back, and move that sucker fast. For fine tuning, I then use the dials.

I generally use Dials for all my posing, using the "move" tool solely for selecting the body part as I find it quicker than selecting from the menus, especially on the lower limbs where you have to scroll down. I hadn't untill now realised how redundant the tool bar is for me, I might even remove it all together, and give myself a larger window area to work in :)

Dials for me (: Genny

Dials do rule. Especially for posing and lights. NEVER use the trackball for lights. :-) I can't imagine posing figures without using the dials. I use the move tool for the same things Patricia described, but that's about it. I have a special hatred for the paint bucket tool (or whatever it's called.) It has a habit of mysteriously becoming the activated tool...suddenly Poser wants to recolor something that you didn't want recolored. Love them dials.

w r t i use em as needed... probabaly less T... the dials i pretty much ignore unless im moving something that requires # input or more precise/smaller incremental positioning... i would imagine, since i use poser for animation, not stills, most people stick with lib poses then tweak them as needed... i can see the dials coming into play alot more in that case... in my case, i just keyframe and tween most of my limbs about so its alot faster to just take it and move it to a new position elsewhere in the timeline. ~;)

I use dials 99% of the time. When I do use the tools, I use Move most, and then Twist or Rotate only if some prop is turned weird and my mind can't see what direction + combination of rotate dials is needed to get the thing to turn the way I need it (you know, when Zrotate doesn't make it rock back and forth and Yrotate & Xrotate appear to do the exact same thing). I only use the trackball for the camera, going about 75% trackball and those other graphic doohickeys there and 25% dialing.

I use the Move tool to point to the items I want to work on, then use the actual DIALS to do the "moving". Very rarely will I drag something on the screen because Poser interprets my movements vastly different from how I want them interpreted.

I use dials 70 percent of the time. I use the move and rotate and camera tools when I need to adjust the details on the hands, face etc. Once I get a close up I am back to the dials. I seldom used the move rotate tool when in "Main Camera" Mode.

Amazingly, I use Twist and Rotate all the time and just keep an eye on the dial settings to make sure I don't bend them in crazy ways. :) I use the dials mainly for moving the Hip and fine-tuning poses. Haha, the only time I ever use the dials for positioning lights is when I'm trying to bring a runaway spotlight back into the viewing window. Strange how we all have such different ways of working within the same program. ;) SnowS

I use the Move tool sometimes to get an object into the right general vicinity, when the necessary move is large and involves 2 or 3 dimensions at once. But aside from that one specific action, I'm all dials.

Only used them by accident. I wish they would go away. Take up too much space. Emily

I use the dials, and use the move to select the part. that way I can think of the individual parts and thier placement as they relate to thrt whole arm say. I break down the pose to that. so for me it's all dials baby...

Wow! Thanks for all the responses. Seems I'm not in such a minority as I thought using dials only. I've been building furniture with the rotation order yxz, so that opening doors, windows, etc, is all done with the Twist tool and not Rotate. In fact, I've disabled the xz dials on most body parts to avoid the famous Gimbal Lock crisis. The bottom line is that a user who depends on the tools has to use Twist for almost everything, but this doesn't seem to be a problem. judging by the above posts. marvlin, 'I hadn't untill now realised how redundant the tool bar is for me' I realised it a long time ago and double-clicked it to name only, then shoved it at the bottom of the screen. If I do want a tool, I use the kb shortcuts. After all, there are only 5 or 6 of them. Hardly a feat of memory to remember the letters. xoconostle, 'I have a special hatred for the paint bucket tool (or whatever it's called.) It has a habit of mysteriously becoming the activated tool' I get this too and I it's from accidentally pressing that stupid WINDOWS key. Either that, or I hit 'C' instead of ALT. Since I'm continually using ALT to access the menu, I do that a lot. mac PS Do you all know that holding down ALT with any tool and dragging in the doc window, gives you the camera trackball effect?

LOL@emily. I just saw your comment. mac

Dials only.

I use the move tool to select body parts, but I'm a dial user too!

The grouping tool is the only one I use on that bar, ottherwise it's dials only.

I use rotate and twists almost exclusivily unless I need to move something, then I use dials. Also a trick I do is pose a figure then, use the move/IK tool and grab an arm, leg or head and give the figure a slight yank in the direction they appear to be moving. The IK breaks up some of the static "posed" look of the body. For example if they are throwing a punch, I pose them as well as I can then grab the punching hand and pull it a bit in the direction of the punch. This seems to smooth out the characters pose and looks more like the figure's body is working in unisen instead of being seperately posed parts.

I use dials exclusively but I do exactly like Maclean. As soon as Poser opens up (after 60 seconds of waiting, sigh) I switch to the Move tool. But I never actually use it. I switch to it because it's easier to recover from an accidental drag with the Move tool than the Rotate one. My hand shakes a bit so accidents do happen.

spit, ctrl Z is your friend... ;)

just the dials here, too.

Thanks for the tip about the Windows key, maclean! I think you hit the nail on the head. Gotta watch out for that. BTW I realized I also use the rotate tool for rotating entire figures, but never body parts. SnowSultan, you're right about different methods, but whatever works best, right? I have to laugh when I remember the first few times I worked with Poser, ignoring the dials, creating The Elephant Dork.

I use whatever tool Poser has active to select parts, as I t use dials for actual adjutments. Seems to be the rotate tool most of the time. The tools are just a waste of space on the desktop for me, as are the camera dots, I never use them, either.

I use Rotate all the time, to start a pose, then I use the dials to refine it. Sometimes, I use the move tool to get a character moved over, but not very often. Melanie

I used to use the tools, but some transmap hair and similar items tend to not respond to axis changes, so I started using the dials. Since the dials have numerical values, I'm using those a lot more for the finer work. Coarse adjustments I still use the tools for where possible.