Ok.. (embarresing question)...for many years using poser, I am at the point to ask this question when I should know this already. I still do not know it. I have to get this out of my way. What is the true meaning of Inverse kinematics. I always have to uncheck IK, in able to move my characters about. I read in the manual that it is the best thing. And people use it (I think they do). I can never figure this out, why is IK used and why is it so important?

Attached Link: http://www.euclideanspace.com/physics/kinematics/joints/

***"What is the true meaning of Inverse kinematics"***

You really want to know? It can get quite technical. ;-)

Here's another interesting read about motion capture and skeletal animation, which briefly touches on the importance of IK:

Siggraph Paper On Acclaim's Optical Motion Capture System

Quote: "Inverse kinematics was a great breakthrough for 3D character animation, providing a "goal-directed" approach to animating a character. It allows the artist to control a 3D character's limbs by treating them as a mechanical linkage, or kinematic chain. Control points, connected to the ends of these chains, allow the entire chain to be manipulated by a single "handle". In the case of an arm, the handle would be the hand at the end of the arm."

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Tools :  3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender v2.74

System: Pentium QuadCore i7, under Win 8, GeForce GTX 780 / 2GB GPU.

Ah...good stuff. All clear now.. Thanks maxxxmodelz.. :-)

In praxis IK is a way of keeping the hands or feet "nailed" in place whilst other body parts are moved, or of translating a hand (or foot) and having the arm follow the motion, rater than the hand pulling away from the wrist. Whilst IK is on you can parent a hand or foot to some other item in the scene, this is handy when a sword or similar must be held in both hands, eg parent the sword to the chest then parent both hands to the sword, or parent the sword to one hand and parent the other hand to the sword. I think IK chains are also used by the Walk Designer. Most characters load with leg IK on by default, I find this a PITA, so I set up my most used characters to load with leg IK off. here is one way: Back up the cr2. Load the cr2 in a text editor, use the Search function to find "inkyChain" the name in this line will be something like "rightLeg", add an underscore "inkyChain right_Leg" do the same for the other leg, save the file back to disk. Load the character in poser, turn off IK, save it to the same pallet as "Z". In a file management utility (eg Windows Explorer) find the original cr2, copy its name to the clipboard, then delete the cr2 (you did back it up, yes?), select "Z.cr2" and rename it using the name stored in the clipboard. This last step was so as to preserve the original thumbnail, if you had resaved it in the previous step using the original name the thumbnail would have been overwritten.