Hi,
        I've just gotten poser 8 as a gift, and have no prior knowledge in this area of graphics design. Does anyone have some tips as far as:
What free downloads I should get first? Essentials, as such.
How did you learn most? Just by experimenting? Any essential tutorials?
Will I need any other programs to use in conjunction with poser, as far as eventually creating my own clothing etc.?

Thank you for answering and I hope I'm asking in the correct place.

Quote - Hi,
        I've just gotten poser 8 as a gift, and have no prior knowledge in this area of graphics design. Does anyone have some tips as far as:
What free downloads I should get first? Essentials, as such.
How did you learn most? Just by experimenting? Any essential tutorials?
Will I need any other programs to use in conjunction with poser, as far as eventually creating my own clothing etc.?

Thank you for answering and I hope I'm asking in the correct place.

You dont need any freebies yet,everthing you need for now is there
Just get your  boots wet and jump right in,youll need a paint program one could be Adobe but there are loads out there.You should with out doubt read the manual.Tutorials are all around you on the web,just type into Google "Poser tutorials" and youve got a wealth of information at your finger tips.
Dont forget the forum here everyone will try ot help you out so dont be afraid to ask even the most basic question.Have a look at the poser forum rules so you wont slip up as  I did once

And most of all enjoy!

Thank you for your reply :) I am fairly comfortable usng GIMP so I'd imagine that would do :) I shall have a search around for tutorials and such, and will definitely have a look at the forum rules.

As far as creating your own clothing and stuff, a good place to start would be either Blender or Wings3D. Both are modeling programs and both are free :o). If you've never modeled before, Wings3D would probably be the one to start with.

Dr. Geep's site would probably be the very best place to start if you've never used Poser before :o).

Laurie

Thank you for the link, and I've downloaded wings3d :)

Another newbie here, thought I might as well drop in and wave while I'm waiting for poser to download.With my connection I can see a lot of coffee being quaffed but I'm sure it'll be worth the wait.Hello all, hello other newbie pk!

Erm I have a very very technical first question, might as well ask it here........where are the Poser forum rules,I can't see 'em?
(Prays that rule number one isn't " Never ever ever ask where the Poser forum rules are")

You just broke the first rule. 

Actually, if you look at the forum listings, at the very top there is a sticky post which Acadia has very generously put together outlining important tutorials and methods.  This is a growing list and some threads will comprise of pages and pages of information for both novice and expert.  Before getting too involved with Poser, visit that thread and start learning correctly from the beginning.  Welcome aboard.

Quote - You just broke the first rule. 

Doh!

Cheers.Good to be here.Thank you,sound advice, I shall now head stickypostward and absorb.Actually,download has finished so maybe I'll install Poser first and then dive into the sticky before I get stuck.

never talk about Fight Club...that one I know...;)

There's a boatload of freebies here in, well...freebies...;)

Surprised no one's mentioned Daz 3d for Freebies. They have a whole stable of free charaters, starting with the Ubiquitous Vickie (V1-V4), Aiko, Michael (1-4), just search under free stuff (or got to models, and search 'lowest price first'...thankx for the tip). There's also a lot of spendy stuff, as well as the Marketplace here.

ShareCG is another good place; a lot of the add-ons you'll need (hair, textures, props, clothes, shoes, etc) can be found here. Evil Innocence is good for freebie clothes for many of the charcacters, Most Digital has some too...heck, I've mentioned about .003% of the sites so far, apologies to anyone I didn't mention...

That's a good start. Don't be surprised if your Runtime swells into double-digit Gigabytes in time...

Oh, Rule #2 - there are no stupid questions....

I wish I'd said that.. The Staircase Wit

anahl nathrak uth vas betude doth yel dyenvey..;)

 All the major sites host freebies of one type or another.  RuntimeDNA has their own section and so does Content Paradise.  A unique feature @ DAZ3D, every Tuesay they offer one or two freebies before they go on sale the following week.  They are often very well made and from prominent vendors.

At the risk of starting a flame war...

Go to Daz3d and download Victoria 4 and Michael 4 first thing. They are the two most widely supported characters (the native Poser characters being somewhat under-supported, but that's another story.) The figures are FREE. The morph++ packs are not. HOWEVER, join Daz's Platinum club, and they are quite cheap. The reason I say this is, the base figures are just short of useless... all of the character sets you see at Daz and here at Rendo require them.

After the characters, it's what you like. You'll need hairs, clothing, et al. Some of this is available in the freebee's section. Check that out first, but be aware that while many freebee's are good pieces a great many ARE NOT. Don't condemn Poser because of shortcomings in the free materials you try out.

To disagree with a poster above. You DO NOT want to try and design your own clothes et all in the beginning. If you don't know the design softwares, they'll run you off from the hobby far faster than Poser will. Go with any of the incredible multitude of pieces the talented artists have created already. Lean one step at the time, Poser being the first step.

Lastly, DO render at "Final" quality with the "Use Displacement Maps" box checked under "Render options." DO NOT play with IDL lighting until you find your way around the system. This is an extremely powerful tool, but one that throws nebees into a tizzy of frustration if they begin the learning process for Poser trying to use it.

Finally, don't be afraid to ask for click by click help. There are plenty of us here more than willing to give it. (People like me, who are retired and don't have NEAR enough to do!) 

There's no reason not to learn to model and learn Poser at the same time if you'd like to do both. It's when you blend the two that you have to know your way around both. So, learn Poser and learn to model if that's what you want, but when it comes to putting your creations into Poser then that's where it takes a little more knowledge.

The easiest clothing to model is dynamic clothing (that's where I'm currently at). They are only basic props and don't have to be cut up and rigged like conforming clothing. Personally, I would start with just static props and work my way up from there. Just take your time and it'll all come eventually.

Laurie

 LaurieA,

You are obviously far more talented than am I. Wings almost made me give up on Poser as well! To me its' learning curve is far worse than Poser's.

...and for my money, dynamic props are far easier to get good result with rather than conforming ones... the process, simple as it is, just seems arcane to new Poser users. I really wish I'd seen PoserWorld's tutorial video on dynamic clothes back in the beginning of my Poser days. Dynamic clothes RULE!

Oh, I've fallen in love with dynamics myself ;) It's so easy too... You just can't get as natural looking results with anything that conforms...

And Wings? I couldn't model my way out of a paper bag, but I found Wings to be one of the simplest and easiest to understand modeling programs that I've tried. Blender just made me run screaming...lol.

Laurie

Sspeaking of Victoria 4 and Michael 4 and the anatomy muscle morph ++ packs and skeletons, I downloaded them a few weeks ago to use in Daz studio but now I'm wondering ,does anyone know if I can use those same installers to put them into my Poser directory, or are there versions of V4 and M4 and their morphs specific to each program?
I did have a quick look at the daz site but I'm none the wiser to be honest.

I mean obviously I can go get the Poser versions of the base models if indeed that is what is necessary as they are free but I'm hoping I won't have to shell out for the morphs again. Well I won't be,the penny jar is a little on the empty side for the moment.

 The same installers work for both programs. Just remember to intitalize them ande you'll have no problems.

Also, for the files that aren't compatible to both, Daz normally supplies both versions in your account downloads :o). If your downloads have dropped off your account, just look for the order in which you ordered them and request a download reset. It'll be up again in a half hour or less.

Laurie

Wow,speedy reply! Err 'initialize' them? Sorry if I sound a tad dumb but I nearly lost the plot installing them in daz studio trying to get everything in the right place and even knowing if I had all the right downloads.Managed it in the end but it wasn't as straight forward as I imagined.
So yes, 'initialize' them? Do you just mean send them to the right directory during the installation or something else?

*Edit -Problem solved (well maybe!The proof is in the pudding) think I've found the info I was looking for at daz. Just wasn't looking hard enough.
Thanks both for all advice though.

I apologize in advance for any broken links.  This is an old bit of information and I haven't visited the links in well.... years.

The following is a great deal of information to process, but it's only meant as a guide and not to be memorized.  I have it broken up into sections. My advice is to read it through once, print it out and keep the print out next to your computer for reference as needed.

Here is an essay of information that I have been compiling which is geared to the brand new user. **It has links for free characters, tips on clothing, file organization, newbie tutorials etc.
**
V3, M3  and Aiko are free.  3D Models Pack  Free from Daz at Download.com

You just need the morphs packages to change their shape. 

A picture to show you the file structure of a Poser Runtime can be found here:

http://www.daz3d.com/support/faq/index.php?id=94

Basically, what it boils down to in a nutshell:

If you are looking for a Character or a piece of clothing/shoes, in Poser you will find them in libraries/character. These files have the extension cr2 (uncompressed) and c2z (compressed)

If you are looking for hair, you will find them in either library/character/hair OR library/hair

If you are looking for character texture addons, hair textures, clothing textures, you will find them in library/poses. These files have the extension pz2 (uncompressed) and p2z (compressed). Sometimes on the rare occasion, a merchant will package their textures so that they go into the "Camera" folder (.cm2 files). If that is the case then you can either apply them from there, or do what I do and change the file extension to .pz2

If you are looking for props, they are located in library/props. These files have the extension pp2 (uncompressed) and ppz (compressed)

Sometimes you will find clothing and hair or shoes in library/props too, depending on whether the item is actually created and saved as a figure, or it was created and saved as a prop.

Figure (cr2) items like hair and clothing are "conformed". Figure items like wings are "parented"

Props are parented. Some props that are made for a specific figure will seem to go where they are supposed to and "stick" without you having to do anything. Those are called "smart props". You can use those on other figures, but you have to use the XYZ trans dials to place it where it belongs on the different figure. Then you need to parent the item to that new figure's body part.

If you are just starting, it's best to get started on the right foot. DO NOT just install files into the runtime! That will only lead to frustration because you won't be able to find anything, and not all files are packaged equally and land up all over the place.

Here is a link to a tutorial on using multiple runtimes.

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=9060&start=0

http://www.drgeep.com/p5/run/run.htm

Another tip is to never just unzip or install anything directly to your runtime. Always unzip or install to a separate folder. Then browse through the folder to have a look at the structure of where things are going and make sure that it's in "proper runtime structure" so that when you move it to the runtime, they get into the proper folders.

---

Once you get your files installed, the next thing you want to do is to start making things :)

Here are some great newbie tutorials that will get you through the bare basics. They are for Poser 5, but it is still the same in newer versions:

http://trekkiegrrrl.dk/tut1.htm

http://www.poserguide.nimprodaction.com/issues/issue2/cover.htm

http://www.poserguide.nimprodaction.com/issues/issue3/cover.htm

http://www.poserguide.nimprodaction.com/

http://www.canary3d.com/tutorial/3d-intro.htm

http://www.ebonshire.net/tut-posb/index.php

http://www.cooltuna.com/poser/poser-tutorials.html

Dr. Geep Studios ( Basic to Advanced Tutorials. Periodically offers free classes for Poser)

http://www.anniescorner.net/posertuts/GettingStartedinPoser5.htm

Getting Started in Poser

Video Tutorials

---

If you don't have the Daz  V3 or the V4 figure, you should pick one or both. I'd personally suggest that you go with the V3 one as it's been around for years and there is a TON of freebies around for her, as well as a TON of stuff in the various Poser stores.  It will be a couple of years before V4 catches up with clothing content and stuff, especially FREE stuff  and  V3 stuff won't work on V4 because they are different figures. There are work arounds to getting clothing from a figure to fit another figure. I've included information on that further down. 

Victoria 3

3D Models Pack  Free from Daz at Download.com

Victoria 4

But if you want to change the look of her face and body, or use any of the available character addon packages, you need to buy the head and body morphs.

The V3 head and body morphs are here:

http://www.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=3008

There is also "Michael 3".  He is available free at the link above at download.com.  Again, like Vicky, you need the head and body morphs to change the shape of his head and body. Those can be found here:

http://www.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=3009

If you have both figures, you can get both of their head and body morphs in one package, here:

http://www.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=3010

NOTE:  You can use the textures from the character addon packages without having the head/body morphs. 

If you want to change the look of the head/body and have the head/body morphs, do the following:

Install the head and body morphs. 

Locate the morphs you want to use in the "Poses" folder.

Find the set of morphs you want to inject IE:  Full Body, Full Head.... or just certain parts. 

Left  click the picture

Click the Single Checkmark at the bottom of the page.

Go to your Parameter Dials and start turning dials.  (make sure that you have the part of the body you want to adjust as the active one IE:  Morphing the ears, make sure you have the had selected.

Also, you can find many, many free morphs and textures for Vicky, and Aiko, and some even for David and Michael.  So you don't have to turn any dials if you don't want to.  Here are a couple links to get you started.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php?user_id=55140

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php?user_id=178490

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php?user_id=105158

Using ready made character addons is pretty easy.   You need to have the figure and it's head and body morph packages installed.

Load up the figure IE: Vicky

Go to the Poses folder, and instead of looking for your morphs from the packages, look for th character you want to use.  Left click the image that has INJ, click the SINGLE checkmark at the bottom and the morphs for that character's look is injected into your figure.  No dial turning necessary.  Of course if you want to tweak the settings you can, but that's not mandatory.

Next locate the textures (if the package has some). They will be usually in the same library menu as your INJ that you used.   Left click the image for the texture and use the SINGLE checkmark to apply it.  If you don't like that texture, apply another one overtop. 

You can even use a texture from another package.  IE: Morphs from package A  and textures from package C.  Or morphs from packag A, texture from package C, eyes from package D, lips from package E.  the combinations are endless :)  If the packages have their head morphs seprate from the body ones, you can mix and match morphs too. IE: body morphs from package A with head morph from package D.  That allows for even more versatility.

There are lots of sites out there that has free V3 character addons, and some that have for Aiko, Michael and even David.

---

Hair, clothing and textures are all figure/item specific, which means:

Michael 3.0 needs hair and clothing and textures made for Michael 3.0
Victoria 4.0 needs hair and clothing and textures made for Victoria 4.0
Victoria 3.0 needs hair and clothing and textures made for Victoria 3.0
Victoria 2.0 needs hair and clothing and textures made for Victoria 2.0
Aiko needs hair and clothing and textures made for her.

Like figures, a texture made for one hair style can only be used on that hair style.

Clothing is also specific when it comes to textures. A texture for a pair of pants, won't fit all pants... just the pants that it was made to fit. Same with all clothing items.

Sometimes you can manage to  clothing item to fit another figure by tweaking of dials and increasing or decreasing the scale percent, but that doesn't always work. Sometimes a clothing item for Victoria 2 will fit Victoria 3, but their joints are different so posing a figure wearing clothing not made for it specifically will be hard.

Some figures can share items more easily than others, here is a link that will help sort that out:
http://market.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=2682279

There are 3 types of clothing:

Dynamic:  This is clothing that you use inside the Cloth room. It takes longer to work with and there is a bit of a learning curve, but it's not too bad, but the results are more appealing in that the clothing actually looks more natural instead of "posed and stiff".  I have included information about this type of clothing further down.

Confroming- Non Morphing:  This is clothing that you conform to a figure. The clothing is made to fit the base figure.  If you change the shape of the figure you will also have to refit the clothing, which isn't always easy if there aren't any corresponding body morphs in the clothing.  Plus posing a character in positions where they are not nearly upright is difficult.  But many prefer this type of clothing over dynamic.

Conforming-Morphing: This is the same as conforming-non morphing, only there are morph dials that you can turn that have corresponding body morphs for easier fitting.  This is the preferred type of conforming clothing because it's easier to fit.

Using a clothing item on a figure that it is meant to be used on, after you have added morphs and adjusted the shape of the body,  can be problematic because the clothes are made for the default figure shape and not the new morphed up shape. So the clothing no longer fits and you get parts of the body showing through the clothing after you add morphs and change the shape of the body.

There are programs that can help fit clothing from one figure to another, or even from the same figure to one that has been "morphed up" using their morph packages.

The Tailor, which can be bought here:
http://www.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=677

Wardrobe Wizard (I use this one and it's great). It can be purchased from PhilC's site here:
http://www.philc.net/WardrobeWizard.htm

Clothes Converter, which can be bought here:
http://www.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=3069&cat=131

Things like hair can be used across all figures just by tweaking the scaling and trans dials and then parenting the hair to the figure.

Poses are something else that can be used across most human-like figures with just a bit of tweaking to dig out a hand, or fix a shoulder.

Dynamic Clothing (more information):

A nice thing about dynamic clothing is that you can easily use clothing on various figures.Here are some tutorials on how to use dynamic clothing in the cloth room:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2665209

http://www.philc.net/CC_sampleVideo.htm

http://www.poserfashion.net/howvic3dress1.htm

http://drgeep.com/p5/cr/cr.htm

Here are some links to some great FREE dynamic clothing:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php?username=mapps

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php?username=svdl

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php?username=Stegy

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php?username=carib98

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php?username=teyikung

It's also possible to make conforming clothing into dynamic clothing:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/tutorial/index.php?tutorial_id=868

And it's possible to take a conforming outfit and work with it in the cloth room so that parts of it act dynamic.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2517340&page=1

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Organization in Poser is very important.  Libraries grow quickly and it soon gets to a point where you can't find anything.

So far as organization goes...

You have 2 options that can help you with organizing and being able to find things:

1.  Create sub folders inside the library folders.

This is the preferred method for many. It uses one single runtime with lots and lots of sub folders within the main library folders, in order to organize the content.  The learning curve is minimal. If you can right click and create a new folder and drag and drop, you can do this.  The learning curve is knowing what folders you can move files around in and what folders not to touch.

You can move around the files inside the library sub folders. 

Don't move, touch or rename files or folders  in the top level of the library folder that carry the name of the merchants, or the "Morph" or the !DAZ  folder because those are morphs and need to stay where they are.

Just work with the standard ones inside the Library folder such as camera, faces, hand, pose, props, hair, lighting, character. 

Leave the files inside the geometries and texture folders alone.

Right now you have a hodge podge of files for various figures in each folder plus props, poses, lights etc.

Open the character folder and create sub folders for each of your figures IE: V3, V4, M3, D3, Aiko, Apollo etc.  Do the same for each of the other library sub folders.  You can also create other folders too, such as "Poses" or "Props" or "Backgrounds" or "Hair" etc.

Then go through your files in each of the library subfolders and move them into the appropriate folder for the figure they belong.

Things like lights, and poses and hair and props are universal items really, and can be used across figure, so I like to have those separated instead of filed by "figure" because I often use V3 poses on Aiko and hair for Posette on V3 etc.

You will run into a problem for items that are for more than one figure. Like where do you file those?  For exxample an outfit that is for V3 and M3 and Aiko and SP3: where do you file them? If you put them in the V3 folder, then you forget that they can be used for M3 and Aiko and SP3 too. It was this complication that prompted me to move onto using external runtimes (described below).

I did it this way at one time and it worked well enough,well except for items that could be used on a few figures like I described above.   I decided I wanted even more organization, and I didn't like having one huge runtime because it was impossible to really burn it to a CD/DVD without having to break it into bits and pieces.  Plus it took Poser forever to load because the runtime was so big.  So I tried option 2 below.

**2. Multiple External Runtimes
**

This is my choice for organizing my installed content.  I did the first method first and it worked for awhile, but as my content grew, it became cumbersome, so I switched to multiple external runtimes, which works out great.

It's really pretty easy.  The problem is that most people over think it.  

Just remember that an external runtime is exactly the same as the runtime in your Poser folder, only it's just sitting in a different location.  

It functions exactly the same way. 

And files are installed / added to them in exactly the same way. 

And they have the same folders in them as the main runtime does. Well almost the same folders.  Scripts for example have to be installed into the main Poser runtime and won't work from an external runtime.

Here is a sample of an external runtime.  Simply download it and unzip it. You will have a folder called "Runtime_Sample"

www.divshare.com/download/8531562-1f6

Find a place on your hard drive that you want to have your external runtimes living. For me it's on my partitioned drive D.

Make a folder called "Poser Runtimes"

s263.photobucket.com/albums/ii124/Acadia_ca/

Then simply copy that sample runtime you unzipped into that "Poser Runtimes" folder and make as many copies of it as you want to.  Change "Runtime_Sample" to whatever name you want.  Here is what I named some of mine:

s263.photobucket.com/albums/ii124/Acadia_ca/

Then all you do is simply install your content into whichever runtime you feel it fits best into.

Once you have finished installing your content look in the Runtimes where you have Daz characters such as V3 or V4 etc.  Go into the Library folder and look for the !DAZ folder.  Make a COPY of that folder and place the COPY in exactly the same place in the main Poser Runtime. 

Poser looks there first so by placing a copy of them in there, you are helping Poser out.  Don't delete the !DAZ folder from your other runtimes though. That defeats the purpose of having external runtimes, which is not only to allow Poser to work faster, organize your content better, but also to not lose your installed runtime content in the even of a crash because hopefully you have also saved your external runtimes to a couple other places for easy access in case of the need to reinstall.

Hope that helps.  If you have more questions, just ask.

Oh yeah, never install anything directly to your runtime. Always unzip / install to a folder on your desk top so you can see what is in side and what the folder structure is.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Wow,thanks for all the info Arcadia! Just a quick scan through tells me it's all going to be very useful/essential to know. I'm slowly working my way through the Poser tutorial guide pdf  learning program basics and interface and so far for the basics at least it's not the steep learning curve I thought it would be. Mind you, somewhere in the back of my mind I can't help thinking that perhaps I'm not even in the Poser foothills yet never mind caught a glimpse of the mountain!

But yes,without a good grasp of the filing system and some sensible organizing I can see confusion raining down on my head sooner or later. It took ages just work out where my V4/M4 morphs etc were.I just thought I'd made a botch of loading them until I found them under poses.

Hey Kaos! Sorry, I feel like I've hijacked your thread a bit,not my intention, just new here myself and hunting for good info and help. atb

At the risk of sounding somewhat purist in approach...as a newcomer to 3d it might be wise (if you haven't already), before tackling anything else, to take some time to grasp the the basic principles of what this medium is - what it's core elements are and how they interact with each other. These principles apply more or less to all the various 3d apps, high and low end.
I only mention this as understanding the fundamentals can save you a quite a few headaches later on as you're coming to terms with exactly what Poser is capable of and what it's idiosyncrasies are.
At the very least it might be an idea to keep a few of the following principles in mind whilst exploring Poser in these early stages.

I'm talking about things like:

• what a mesh object is (the difference between vertices and a polygons, how objects are UV mapped so that you can apply textures to them etc)
• cartesian coordinates and how they define where objects, lights and even some aspects of materials are in 3d space and how you 'translate' or move things around with confidence.
• what shaders and materials are and how they define the surface properties of objects like diffuse and specular (shine) reflectivity, bumpiness etc (very important).
• 3d lights (lights in general) and how they interact with (mesh) objects and shaders/materials  and cast shadows in renders in  order to reveal form.
• What a renderer is and the vital role it plays to interpret all of the above to give you a nice image at the end of it all.

You don't have to understand everything in all it's minute detail, but a good grasp will help I'm sure. It's easy to get sucked into playing with rigged figures and their wonderful morphs and clothes and forget the basics.

I'd suggest playing with some simple primitive objects like spheres and cubes to start, with a single infinite light with Raytraced shadows, and see how some of these basics apply in Poser.

Just a thought.

 

PoserPro2014(Sr4), Win7 x64, display units set to inches.

                                      www.danielroseartnew.weebly.com

Quote - Just a thought.

And a good thought too. There's no harm in diving into a program and running around like a kid in a toy shop grabbing at stuff to see what it does,after all that's how I learned a whole chunk of Photoshop in the beginning, but sooner or later you have to go back and learn the whys wherefores and therefores or you tend to end up with bad habits, frustration and a limited grasp, and the longer you leave it the harder it is to go back to basics.As with any new skill  It's about striking a balance, a bit of playfulness and creativity mixed with perseverance, practice and study.

Actually that probably only applies to creative software.Flying jet planes, paragliding and scuba diving,definitely read the manual first...

Unfortunately you can't take the Poser reference manual as gospel for quite a lot of things. This software has changed a great deal over the past few years and there are many features that were never fully explained in the first place and that are now virtually obsolete. I know it's been a difficult job to update given the nature of the app and the position in the marketplace it occupies, but it's often a cause of confusion for the new user with certain aspects.
On the flip side, these forums can offer the means to fill in those gaps and innacuracies presented by the manual. I've learned by far the most about Poser right here with the good help and examples of the generous folk that reside here. Be wary though that there are often approaches that harken back to previous versions of the software that may or may not be of useful relevance to the version you are using right now - I find this a lot when using the forum search feature and find myself reading threads from 4 or 5 years ago. It's an ever developing beast.

 

PoserPro2014(Sr4), Win7 x64, display units set to inches.

                                      www.danielroseartnew.weebly.com

Hi all,

Welcome peaceful_kaos & Bailliere, thanks for starting this thread, I've already learned a few things!  I'm also a new user, as new as new can be in fact, :-)  I'm still waiting for PoserPro2010 to arrive in the mail ! (any day now)  I'm a music composer/musician and write/record music for film and animation here in my home studio. Been trying to learn 3D modeling and animation for just under a year now, and a tough one at that, not as easy as I thought it would be! :-)  Our animation team has a website, will read the forum rules and see if I can post it here sometime soon.  Seems like a helpful community here, I like the atmosphere so far, nice. 

I was reading this thread and had a couple of questions. I've downloaded V4.2 and M4 but not sure what the other files were for. For M4 there was M4 Base, DS Materials, M4 Presets, and (power loader, but said only for Daz Studio so I didn't download that one).  For V4.2 there was V4.2 Base, V4.2 Poses, V4.2 Power Loader.  Since I don't have my Pro2010 package installed yet I have only a basic idea what these files are for and what to do with them. Right now they're just sitting in folders on hold until I install PP2010.  Can anyone briefly explain?

Also, what is the Morph++Packs mentioned above, and what is their purpose/function?

Thanks, much appreciated!

Musikman

Hello Musikman and welcome aboard! I've only had Poser for a few days,I took the plunge while it was going cheap (well cheaper anyway) and I can't leave it alone. Burning the midnight oil with it tonight.
Someone else here will no doubt give you a far better explanation than me but of the downloads you have ready and waiting,M4 base is actually MIchael 4 basic model himself (same goes for V4.2 that's the Victoria base model)
Morphs are an add on extra that you have to buy,(maybe some are built in to the base model ,to be honest I've lost track now as to what was free and what I had to buy because I originally started off using them in DAZ3D a few weeks ago but just didn't take to the interface) they allow you to manipulate body parts to create different characteristics, thinner ,fatter more or less muscle,different facial expressions etc (see Arcadia's post further up the page about morphs with links for where to find them) Poses I think is a set of pre created instant poses you can use as a starting point rather than start entirely from scratch I suppose ,though just from my own brief  experience you'll learn more from posing a figure from scratch.

Anyway,like I say someone far beyond my feeble understanding will probably fill you in.My only advice would be to read through  the reference manual and the tutorial manual but don't stress about it,one step at a time and easy as she goes,and as you've already discovered,this forum is an Aladdin's cave of friendly advice and info!

In a nutshell, Morph++ packs for both V4 and M4 are injectable poses which gives the ability to change the overall morphology of each character into something else uniquely different than the base model.  By spinning dials within their properties, you can add and subtract musculature to the mesh, and alter both body and facial features.  In essence, you can create an endless list of characters for your scenes and situations.

I appreciate everyone taking time to help with all this startup stuff. Seems the file system is important to learn, and things need to be installed in all the right places. Creating unique characters sounds like alot of fun once everything is finally in place. I've been learning a small bit of modeling using Truespace the past few months. I've not gotten around to attempting to model a character from scratch yet, but I've heard it is one of the more difficult things to model. 
I can pop out a music track pretty quickly, but learning 3D modeling is a whole different ball game! I'm hoping I'll be able to apply some of what I learned from the TS program over to Poser.  I know it's gonna be a slow learning process, but great to know there are experienced users here who are willing to help make it go smoother. Thanks again.

Quote - In a nutshell, Morph++ packs for both V4 and M4 are injectable poses which gives the ability to change the overall morphology of each character into something else uniquely different than the base model.  By spinning dials within their properties, you can add and subtract musculature to the mesh, and alter both body and facial features.  In essence, you can create an endless list of characters for your scenes and situations.

I told him that already! ; )

(Although to be fair, your explanation does have a certain edge in the clarity stakes....)

First day on the job here, just installed Poser Pro 2010, can anyone please lend a hand? 
Poser install seemed to go smoothly, but I have now loaded V3 and running into some confusion, have a few questions. Before I go ahead and load V4, M4, M3, etc...and the rest I want to make sure I know what to do.....  

 

1. When I’m in Poser in the pose room and in the Figures library, under !Daz People, why is there a V3 Blank SAE, Vicki 3 to Vicki2 SAE, and a Victoria 3 SAE??

(I thought I only loaded one, Victoria 3?)

 

I don’t know what is supposed to be included with V3 Base, so I’m not sure whether I installed everything ok….. 

 

2. From what I can see I have “All Morphs Inj”, “Expressions Inj”, “Full Body Inj”, and “Glute-Hip-Abs Inj” Seems I’m missing the Head Eyes, Ear-Nose, Chest-Breast, Muscularity, and quite a few others, according to Daz’s documentation. Did I read Acadia’s post correctly, that V3 Base does include a few morphs, but I have to purchase the full morph package from Daz to get the rest of them? 

 

3. Why are the “Expressions Inj” in the Pose folder instead of the Expressions folder, and since these are morphs, is it ok to move them or not?? (According to Acadia’s post above, I shouldn’t be moving morph files, but they don’t seem to function from where they are now)

 

4. In the Pose Library I have a folder !MAT V3, which has items like, Arm Gloves, Arm Gloves off, Stockings, Wet suit, etc…..obviously clothes, are they ok where they are, or should they be moved to another folder somewhere?  

 

5)There is nothing in the hair library for V3 at all, so I assume that is extra stuff that is not included?

 

Just installed the program today, so I’m only guessing here that maybe the Daz V3 installer dumped everything into the “Pose” library or folder and I have to figure out how to separate it all and move to the right folder??

 

Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

The Daz base figures are free. Any morphs you want to use for them you must purchase. Things like hair, clothing, shoes, etc. do not come with the model or the morphs and must also be purchased separately.

Poser be expensive as hell...lmao ;o).

Laurie

First, don't move anything! 

This will save you the heartbreak of having to reinstall everything. 

1. V3 base comes with all those figures you mentioned; V3 SAE is the actual base model, V3 blank SAE is the basic mannequin model, and Vicki 3 to Vicki 2 SAE is a model which accepts V2 skin textures.  The model to use is V3 SAE.

2. Yes, you absolutely need to purchase the head and body morph packs to change the physical appearance of V3.

3. Expressions Inj is an injectable morph pack which adds different types of facial expressions to V3.  It would make sense to place this into the Expressions folder, but because it populates V3's properties with spinning dials which controls the level and intensity of facial expression.  The poses in the Expression folder only applies just one expression per icon.

4. !MAT V3 folder only contains textures which are applied to the V3 base model.  They are referred to as second skin, they are not really actual clothing models.  They should remain where they are because they are called MAT Poses or material poses.

5. Hair is not part of the package; they are obtained either through purchase or free.

The installer does not arbitrarily dump content into Poser.  They are placed into those folders for a particular reason and many of them have absolute paths to additional content and geometries not visible in the library.  Until you become more familiar with how content is distributed within the runtime folder, I would suggest leaving them where you find them.  Since you are also starting with a very robust version of Poser (PoserPro 2010), you should pay very close attention to the information posted in this forum.  Much of it will be over your head, so be prepared to ask plenty of questions.

Ok, thanks hborre, I haven't moved anything, so I guess everything is in the correct place then.  The Daz install instructions said if you have poserpro to choose the Daz target, then choose Poser install path (as follows below), so that's what I did:

If you are using Poser 7 Pro, you must choose 'DAZ Studio' as the target path and then manually indicate the installation path (c:/Program Files/SmithMicro/Poser 7 Pro).  Make sure the Poser 7 folder is the last part of the path.  If a different folder is used, like 'runtime' or 'downloads,' the installation will not work properly.

Now I did try installing Michael 4, but got an error message early on in the process so I aborted and left it alone for now.

As for the Expressions Inj, they didn't seem to change anything when I loaded them, but I'm early on in the process here so maybe I'm doing something wrong. So the difference in the poses in the Expression folder compared to the Exp Inj is because they are setup for  individual facial features as opposed to controlling the face expression overall?

Believe me, after much reading today I've had many questions, just didn't want to crash the forum's server! lol

I'm going to have to pick my battles and figure out which video tutorials to watch first to get familiar with things, I'm also reading the manual. Thanks very much for the info, I'll leave all the files where they are for now, I was just looking at Acadia's post about setting up and organizing files, but decided to hold off since I didn't quite understand the method completely.

The reason M4 Base flagged an error is it's installer is looking for Poser.exe which does not exist with either PoserPro or PoserPro 2010.  For the pro version, PoserPro.exe is used.  My suggestion: create a dummy Poser.exe using notepad.  Open notepad, save the document as Poser.txt.  No need to type anything.  Change the txt extension to exe.  The icon will change to a Poser icon.  Find your PoserPro folder and move the dummy Poser.exe within.  Don't worry about overwriting the original file, it is named differently. 

Now, when you install M4, the DAZ installer will find the dummy Poser.exe and will properly load the content into their rightful places.  There should be an automatic initialisation at the end of installation. 

The expression inj will not physically change anything on it's own.  You did nothing wrong.  It will create additional dials in the model's properties.  If you have a problem conceptializing the set up, let me know and I will screencap what to look for.

BTW, as a matter of proper version terminology, there is no such Poser version as Poser 7 Pro.  That has been a common mistake by many and it is not correct.  The current version names are Poser 7, PoserPro, Poser 8 and PoserPro 2010.  There will be less confusion when you reference to your particular version.  Now, be careful.  There is a Poser ProPack which was released after Poser 4 and bears no association with the current Pro series.

I would never have known about the M4 installer looking for poser.exe, thanks I'll give that a try and see if I can get it installed. So from what I understand, unlike V3, M4 and V4 don't come with any morphs at all included, and I have to purchase their respective morph packs, correct?

Quote - The expression inj will not physically change anything on it's own.  You did nothing wrong.  It will create additional dials in the model's properties.  If you have a problem conceptializing the set up, let me know and I will screencap what to look for.

That would be great, thanks, no hurry though, as I've got a boatload of info to weed through anyhow, but it would be nice to see how that setup all works. Much appreciate your taking the time to help out.

Ok musikman, today I will illustrate how to load V3 into your PoserPro 2010 scene and apply a morph inj from the Pose folder.  Of course, I am assuming that you haven't gotten to this stage yet or haven't figured out how to approach the workflow. 

When you open PoserPro 2010, you will be greeted by a blue robot who goes by the name Andy.  He is just a default figure and you can easily click on him to highlight and press delete on your keyboard.  Puff, gone!

In the screencap above, you follow 2 steps:

1. Click on the Figures folder, which is circled and labeled 1,  and navigate to the DAZ People folder.  Within you will find the V3 figure icons.  For your purpose, V3 SAE is the model you want to use. 

2. Double-click the icon to load Vicky into the scene.

Next, open Vicky's Properties panel as illustrated above.  This panel contains dials which control body movement and morphs.

Notice that Vicky's Hip is selected in the panel by default.  You can change that as illustrated below.

Changing body and body parts in Properties.

Now, I want to inject a full body morph into Vicky.  The example musikman posted *Expressions inj* is already loaded into Vicky by default.  So I will just change it up for better illustration. 

The image above shows the workflow for loading a Morph Inj file.  Select the Pose Folder in the Library, navigate to, in this example, !V3 All Morphs Inj folder (Labeled 1) and double-click on the icon (Labeled 2).  This will inject all morphs included in the V3 body morph package and, as you see, nothing has happened to Vicky.  She remains unchanged.  However, her Properties panel becomes populated with additional dials and morph descriptions.  That can be seen below.

Properties populated with new morph settings.

As you can see, I selected a random morph from the Properties panel and set it's dial value to 1.  This activates the morph and changes Vicky's overall appearance.

Precaution, don't over do your dial values (i.e., > 1) or you will get rather unpleasant morph distortions.

Thanks hborre, extremely good of you to take the time to post all the pics, much appreciated!

Today I will unfortunately out and away from my pc until tonight, so I'll give it a go then and let you know how things go. Seems relatively simple now that you've posted the steps. I did load V3 into the workspace already yesterday, and I saw some dials over on the right side but don't remember accessing/opening the Properties panel from the dropdown menu, as there were already some dials on the right, just  didn't see any of the extra dials. Gonna try your step by step and I'm sure I'll get it right. btw, do you use PoserPro2010 or a different version?

I was having problems with PoserPro2010 loading and running very slowly yesterday, even crashed a couple of times, but has not happened since. I'm exploring whether I need to update my video card's drivers, could possibly be the culprit, although my other programs seem fine, so I'm wondering if there are some settings in poser that might be draining video resources.

 

Definitely make certain all your drivers are current and programs updated.  Presently, I have P7, P8, PoserPro and PoserPro 2010 installed on my computer.  Whatever issues I had with P8 were corrected with the Service Releases.  I rarely experience creashes and when I do, they are largely my fault. 

As a word of advice, if you start experiencing unexpected problems down the road, always suspect an OS upgrade or application upgrade first.  Too often, users dismiss a simple security updates and find that Poser suddenly and unexplainably crashes.  Consider those problems when troubleshooting.

Hi hborre,

Tried the procedure, and all went well until I got to injecting the morphs. Strange....two things I noticed comparing what's on my screen to your screenshots.....Next to my file !V3 All Morphs Inj, I have a number (1), you have (14), therefore after I double-clicked to inject all morphs, my dials also don't look as yours do, I don't have Muscular 1, Muscular 2, etc....(see pic attached) .
 
One other thing is that I don't have the thumbnails in a window to the right of my files, the thumbnails come up right inside the file that I open, and instead of a picture it says "No Preview", it does that with all the folders, not just V3. I was wondering why it's like that.  (See posted screenshot below)

As far as my video driver, I've been checking to see if there's an update but all I could find was a hotfix, and I'm not even sure what version my vid driver is. I have an ATI Radeon Sapphire AGP 512MB, which comes with the Catalyst Control Center. When I look for the listing in the control center there are two version numbers, I believe one is for the Control Center itself, the other is the driver version, but it's a 50/50 shot which is which. Sapphire support is not helping matters, I get three word answers basically telling me to go to the website and find it myself, nice huh? Will work on getting that straightened out, maybe that will help. I know my windows is current, and I'm using IE 7, so should be all set there. I asked tech support if there was an update, or "fix" for PoserPro2010, but he said the only one has something to do with 3Ds max compatability, which I don't have anyway.  Do you know of any updates to PP2010?

No Preview

In your Properties Palette, switch your current_actor from Hip to Body.  The shrugging man icon is the result of an rsr format used in previous versions to represent the library image.  That format is longer supported.  PNG is it's replacement.  Many older content still have only rsr, some current content will contain both for backward compatibility. 

The program P3DO explorer was developed for Poser in mind.  There are 2 flavors, a free unlimited version and for purchase which contains other perks.  This program contains an RSR to PNG converter, exactly what you need to change those images to the new standard.  Link below:

http://www.senosoft.com/

I understand that there is also a free converter in the free section here @ Rendo. You should find it here:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php?section_id=34&

Your Poser interface appears to be PoserPro which I find strange if it is PoserPro 2010.  There is an icon at the bottom of your library which we refer to as a Klingon toothpick.  That opens your library view options. 

I have a 2 monitor system and most of my extra palettes are moved off to the second monitor.  It increases my Preview window real estate and makes my workflow easier. 

Let me know how you make out and if you have any problems.

Thanks for the conversion program links, will get to that as soon as I straighten out my video card mess, turns out my driver is nowhere near the current version, so I've gotta update that & see if it takes care of Poser running sluggishly.  Hopefully I'll be able to run the file conversion software without a hitch, I'll let you know how that goes.

I did change from Hip to Body (I think), and I seem to have more option dials now,  but still not showing the same dial option of "Muscular" as you do in your screenshot. Also still have only (1) next to my !V3 All Morphs Inj and you have (14).  Reading back on your post I think it's because I didin't purchased the additional full morph package from Daz for V3 and maybe those are only included in the full package and I don't have them? 

Quote - This will inject all morphs included in the V3 body morph package and, as you see, nothing has happened to Vicky.

I do get the basic idea though, and thank you for helping, I appreciate it.

This is the link for V3's head & body morphs:

http://www.daz3d.com/i/3d-models/-/victoria-3-0?item=3008&spmeta=rl&_m=d

If you decide to purchase, keep in mind that you may need to convert all the rsr's to png format. 

Another total newbie here ... I see I have already put my downloads to the runtime in the wrong way (copy/paste under Runtime with names of download on the folders) :unsure: ... I will have to do that over I suspect.  Perhaps that is why they do not appear in the alterations(?) room?

I am running Poser 7 32bit on a 64bit machine.  It was very reluctant to install it (very balky it was), and I will get Poser 2010, and Shade 10 soon!

I need the tutorial which says ... this is how you put a figure you want into the modeling space (where are those libraries?) ...  I suppose they are under the menus on the top, and I should just go and look under each? ... Not only newbie but clueless newbie .. (I'll get there it will just take a bit.)

Is there not some tutorial with the program which is for people who are opening it for the first time?  I hope there is one in Poser 2012. 

My ISP has put limits on my upload and download ability monthly ... (I think 2 gigs) ... So I cannot do the candy store download thing ... fun as they are.

Thanks for the great tips and links!!

Hopefully I can put something from Poser into my gallery page in the not too distant future.

Acadia, thanks for the images ... Pics really are worth a lot of text.
hborre, ditto on the screen shots ... very reassuring to have it visually there to refer to.

OMGoodness, I think I am going to invest in a USB removable drive to put all the runtime libraries in ... will Poser 2010 let me do this? ... It seems the best option all round.

I want to do Animations .. that is my goal, and this is going to generate massive files I think, just another reason to have them on a Removable USB drive.  --- I am far from that goal now, I cannot yet get a figure to come into the adjustments room ... but I am not giving up.

There are 2 flavors of compressed content files immdeiately available: DAZ installers and compressed (rar, zip, etc) files.  The DAZ3D installers will automatically load content in their appropriate folders given manual direction to your Poser folder or external folder containing a runtime folder.  Notice, I said an external folder containing a runtime folder.  This external folder may be named anything you like for purely organizational purposes but, again, it must contain the runtime. 

Most for purchase compressed files found here and on other sites have the runtime hierarchy already correctly set up by the vendor.  This is either manually done or with the assist of 3rd party software.  However, I have come across freebie content not adhering to this convention which can cause many headaches in locating rogue textures, clothing, figures, etc. 

The recommendation to newbies, inspect compressed files thoroughly before uncompressing into rutnime folders.  Create a temporary folder, uncompress your content, and check the content.  Afterwards, move that folder into it's permanent  residence.  If the content was correctly setup, you should find everything under their appropriate category when you open Poser.

@WCSally: BTW, I am going to correct you before you get into a habit, the Poser version you are referring to is PoserPro 2010, not Poser 2010.  You are the second individual to make that mistake in the forum.  And I do mention this because in the future you may need assistance with a problem and someone will ask for the proper version.  There were too many confusing moments when someone posted they had problems with Poser 7 Pro and were chided about which actual version they used.  This is just to make sure that we address the problem correctly because there are distinct differences between the regular Poser and Pro series.

Being technically correct is more than half the battle in confusion; Thank you for the heads up. 

I will be getting 2010 Pro (some people running it have commented on DA, that is has nice perks as to background and organizational ability)..

Because the first project is about unicorns and flying horses I have The Mil Horse, & The Black Bull both from DAZ,    The EXE just put them in a extract dialogue, it had nothing but a folder in the same directory as the exe file.  I put them under run time.  Win 7 is not the same as WinZip, it shows you very little!

I just made names for them under run time, and extracted them there.  The same with Harmony and Verde from Rosity, and the Mane and Tail Pack, and the Equine Pose pack with textures -- I put under the Mil Horse folder (???).

OK, just looked --- There are runtimes within runtimes, and more runtimes ... it is all under one runtime, with a Daz  Downloads folder at the top.  If I knew how to do a screen capture .. I would.
I have PS on here (but I am totally newbie to that as well (I can run PSP well --but it will not load, period!) -- the items work differently, and are not where I expect, but it is cool.).

It is to the point to say that the 64 bit system is fighting a robust 32 bit Trojan (PE_xxx) (older monitor?) -- and winning at the current time, and I have no wish to get in it's way.  I have fought that infection for 10 years and will be ever so happy to be rid of it.  Because of this, I am reluctant to force any permissions on the system .. and my Poser Product currently is the 32 bit  regular version.    I have the image from the tutorial on folder arrangement, I will see how well they correlate, but minding your warning, I will not delete or change anything until I can manage the screen shot.  
 
Thanks.

Hello WCSally, and welcome! 

If you want to do a screenshot, this is how I usually do it, very easy...just get your screen setup with what you want to snap a shot of, then hit your "print screen" button on your PC keyboard (usually found to the right of the F12 key). Once you've done that, the screen shot will be on your clipboard, just open any photo editor program you have and go to Edit/Paste as new Image. Your screenshot should now be visible in your photo program, do a "save as" give it a name, and you're all set! 

(btw, you might want to edit out any personal information that might be visible in your final pic, like serial numbers, etc...wouldn't want that posted for public view.)

HTH!

Musikman

It has never worked before ... but one can always try again!

I was just off to download a version of PSP which will do great screen captures, and is the one I usually use; but it has too much of the PE_rascal tied to it, and so it will not load on this new system.

Trial version of the new PSP3 might be OK.

Thanks, I'll try that first. 

Hborre,you mentioned...

Quote - The DAZ3D installers will automatically load content in their appropriate folders given manual direction to your Poser folder or external folder containing a runtime folder.  Notice, I said an external folder containing a runtime folder.  This external folder may be named anything you like for purely organizational purposes but, again, it must contain the runtime.

 
When you say external folder, that means it can be on an external hard drive, correct? For example I can create a folder on my external HD and name it,  G:Poser Free Stuff, and as long as it has a subfile directly under it called runtime, ie..(G:Poser Free StuffRuntime) then I can store content I download from Daz or from here, and that folder will just show up in Poser? Just want to be sure....

If you notice my screenshot of my PoserPro2010 program directory, the runtime folder I've marked #1 is completely empty, the other marked #2 has all the content in it. Does Poser set that up kind of as a "user" runtime empty area to use for downloaded content ? If I follow that structure and set it up the same way on my external HD, will that be ok?.....so for every download I can make a new "runtime" folder on my HD, or do I just need one on my external HD and put everything under that one?  I know Acadia has explained it, but I'm still having a bit  of a time trying to visualize what it would look like, and I'd like to store any massive files on my external if possible. Thanks, appreciate the help. 

OK, mine is not nearly so nice and tidy ... and this is probably because I had to direct the unzip where to put stuff, and was only guessing at best!

It took two screen shots to get the full runtime  line of folders:
Click the image to enlarge it, and click the Pink TV to download it:
(being in scraps it will likely not come up full size .. I cropped out the rest of the screen)

http://wcsallysally.deviantart.com/art/Runtime-1-160266976

http://wcsallysally.deviantart.com/art/Runtime-2-160267089

If Acadia went into this .. I guess I missed it, i will rescan the thread.

Thanks

They seem readable ...  I guess I will go and Aiko and V4 .. too.

This does not really look like the Gif I downloaded from the how to do your folders site .. but it was for version 5? ... maybe they are the same, makes sense they would be.

Thank you again,
I am looking forward to learning all this amazing software!!
(and, Musikman, I see that folder labeled tutorials in there ... Yahoo!!)

musikman, I see 2 runtimes in your download folder which is not good.  However, you mentioned that runtime 1 is empty, i.e., no content in it whatsoever.  As far as I'm concerned, you can entirely delete this runtime folder.  In the example screencap above, I have created a Victoria 4 folder which contains a runtime folder( both circled in red).  Whenever I extract zipped content into that folder, the runtime will go directly into 'Victoria 4'.  In PC's, you will be asked if you want to replace the runtime.  Select yes, all you will be doing is adding content, not overwriting any critical files. 

As you see, within the runtime folder exists a Libraries folder (circled in blue) which contains each folder that appears as categories in Poser (category folders in green)  I purposely opened the characters folder hierarchy to reveal 2 other vendor folder.  Those vendor folders contain their specific content developed for V4.

If you are in the market for a very good screencap program, may I suggest Snagit.  It will allow you to capture any image on your desktop and internet.  You can save images in a variety of different formats and you can perform quick edits.

I an guessing that means my 9 folders named runtime are way out of bounds?

I named the folders at the top of each set from the unzip/exe .... so those may be delete-able
The EXE did not just place them, it asked and I did not want to lose them, so I labeled them.

Maybe I should just make the external folder now?  Copy these all out and leave only what the DAZ and Poser put there, and then .. when you run the program, how do you direct (what do you direct?) to those folders to open the content ... (really in the dark here).

Depending which Poser version you are running, adding runtimes differ.  With versions earlier than Poser 7 (Including PoserPro) , you need to navigate to the upper most level of your library palette.  On the bottom of your library palette, you will find an Add (+) button for adding runtime folders.

The image above shows how to add runtimes in P7.

In P8 and PoserPro 2010, the add library button is located upper right of the Library palette.

**VIRUS FOUND! ** Just wanted anyone in this thread to know that when I clicked on WCSally's posted links I got a virus on my PC, so I recommend you don't click on them. Although my virus scanner's files are updated daily, it wasn't able to stop it or clean it, so my PC is pretty much toast now and probably going to be quite awhile before I can be productive with it again. Great way to start off learning poser, right! :-(  Hope no one else got that, those links should be removed immediately.

Hmm. . .
I didn't - they are just JPEG files on DeviantArt.com.  Didn't trigger my scanner or Noscript

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I don't know why I got the virus, all I know is I got it when I went to that link, and then clicked on the thumbnail of the screenshot. No disrespect to WC, but just to be on the safe side I wanted to warn in case anyone else could end up with it.

hborre, thanks for the folder chart, when I get my PC cleaned of the virus and reinstall all my programs I'll let you know and come back here to reference your images. What a day it's been!

You say that "extra" empty runtime folder in my screenshot (#1) is "not good", then why do you think the PoserPro2010 install program created it?

So, from looking at your pics, once I create a runtime folder on my external hard drive, I just have to go into the PoserPro2010 program itself and use the "add runtime" button to let poser know where to find my external hard drive directory that I created, is that right?

Another question looking at your directree, does your Victoria 3 folder also contain a runtime folder with all the same subfolders that you're showing in your V4 folder setup? In other words for each model's core folder, V2, V3, V4,M4, etc...each core folder has its own separate runtime folder within it, or is there only one runtime folder for all of the models, hope I'm making sense with the question, sorry.

If I'm understanding this correctly, each has it's own runtime folder and when you download and unzip stuff for V4, you tell the install program to send it to the V4 folder, and same for unzipping V3 stuff to V3 folder. I'm just confused about saying "yes" to replace the existing runtime folder, won't that also delete or or rather "replace" all the existing content in the subfolders that reside within the existing runtime ?  

I think Poser is a very cool program but it does have kind of a complicated filing system!

Answer 1: The Download Folder in Poser is an extra folder which contains its own runtime.  I'm surprized that your content runtime did not replace the original.  However, that will not present any problems.  It will show up in the library as an empty folder.

Anwser 2: Yes, you can tell PoserPro 2010 where your runtime is located, either on a local HD or external.

Answer 3: Each of those folders you noticed in the post image has its own runtime folder within.  Basically, the library hierarchy is duplicated for each folder.

Answer 4: On PC's, directing the OS to replace a folder only adds content to the folder unless it finds a duplicate file within (i.e., readme's, license txt, etc).  Earlier MAC versions completely deleted the original file and replaced it with the new.  I don't know if that has changed.  Keep in mind, the authors create unique content folders within the runtimes to identify their products.  Notice in my image under Victoria 4>Runtime>libraries> Character, there are 2 vendor folders.  The other category folders may contain more or less content depending on the type.

Musikman,

Instead of doing a wipe/reload ... run your win install disk, and choose "REPAIR" .. if you were hooked with my issue (they chase me around the web .. I think) ,... this will put Windows back into it's own shell  ... run this way for some time, and update and run your security utilities before you restart.  

If you have any shreds of the PE_ issue on your machine, it is that much faster to hook it with more.

Some good tools:
Sysinternals  .. a suite of 'what is under the hood' of Windows and it lets you monitor stuff. 

HijackThis, RUBotted,  and Rootkit Buster all from Trend have been very helpful for me.
Search for 'Tools' on the home page

hborre,

After loading in Akio, and V4 and the other assorted files which came with them, my folder looks much, much different.  

Many of the DAZ items have been moved about (seems to me).
I did not know that Poser 7 had heuristic folder workings. 

Now my sound it turned off somehow? ... Audio Service is not running it says .. this is very odd.

I wonder if I will have to venture into the bios?

Thank you for the help, I will be back, but I will be back more surely after I have PoserPro 2010
and am secure in the knowledge that the machine is OK.

I will attempt to make my external folders and then see if it runs.

Thank you for your assistance.

hborre, thank you for the clarification, makes more sense now. I'm on a remote pc now, so I'll get back here to review all this once I'm up and running poser again. Thanks for your patience.

WCSally, I don't think I'll be able to do what you suggested, as this was a malware, a nasty one at that, and I can't even get online anymore, had to literally pull the plug. Probably gonna set up things much differently this time around so as to avoid that in the future. I know it was just coincidence that I stumbled upon it when I clicked your link, I was probably already vulnerable and didn't know it, so no worries. What was "your issue", and what do you mean by "they chase me around the web" ??  You have some bad guys looking for you? :-)

Anyhow, hope you do well with Poser, I noticed you've been a member here for quite some time, what other forums/programs have you been using?  3D is relatively new to me, music is much more my thing, only been at 3D for a few months.

Musikman,
It seems I got snagged as well somewhere (most likely Facebook) .. I had to do a Restore point back up, and that changed all my Poser Folders yet again!  
I am finally back up and online (but not going to FB yet -- as the virus is running around there like a wild fire in high winds.  I had about 20 alerts from people I do not know, with the same subject line.

I was lucky, I have updates set so I must OK them, and when the virus loaded (on shutdown) it said it was an Update -- huh? ... and it said where it went in the registry ... so I checked and deleted it, but did not get it all!! .. Thankfully I tossed enough that I am not reduced to taking the PC in for repairs at $200/ a time.     Can you not even boot to safe mode?   If you are running XP .. then HijackThis will fix a lot of things for you, and if you are in doubt .. it will connect all by itself to Trend Micro, and send the report, and they will mail you instructions,  They are REALLY GOOD about hanging in with you and getting things back up and running.  They Keep my XP machines afloat!!  

The bug I got took out Firefox, completely, it cannot even install correctly, It cannot be run, I had to use IE 8 (gasp)  to get other browsers!!  ..  
Firefox now wants to install with higher level priviledges than it should have and the OS says "no, no, no" ... and those raised priviledges come from the OS Language Functions (which is why my spell checkers are acting up, I guess).  Gee, the web is much more complex, but things are nicer as well, Poser is much cooler than the Version 3 I tried out long ago, and the new Photoshop is almost over the top .. geeze.  

hborre, ... 
I think I have it, open the "categories tab" have poser 7 highlighted/selected,  and add the runtimes with the + sign,  from the zip files --- from some back up location where I unzip them.  ... and I should be good to go.

I will give it a try!
Thank you ....  

Advice on running anti-virus scans: if you are going to run a deep anti-virus scan, disable the restore points on your PC.  While it is enabled, it is protected from any scanning programs.  And if you have virus lurking within it, the virus will become active when you perform a restore.  By shutting it down, you allow your deep scan to penetrate those files and clean out any dormant viruses.

WC, sorry to hear you got hit with that too. I'm working on a complete makeover and will be sure to be armed with some virus and malware programs. hborre is right about the restore points, I had not thought of that.  The one that hit me took out my IE, couldn't even open it.  The virus itself even had the microsoft badge logo on some of the popups to try and trick you into thinking your windows security system was detecting something so you'll be tempted to trust it and click on it, but it was all just part of the virus/malware.  Best of luck, hope you get it sorted out. I'm not really a pc guru, so I can't be of much technical help to you I'm afraid.

Hi, finally back up and running again!  My version is PoserPro2010....

I have two separate issues with Daz V4 and V3

1. After creating an external runtime for V4 I tried to run the V4 Daz installer and got an error message:  "Error reading INI File C:Program FilesDAZdzInstall.ini.  The application will exit now."

After searching the Daz FAQ I found this remedy:

To fix this problem you will first need to create this folder on your hard drive:
C:Program FilesCommon FilesDAZThen you will need to search for "dzInstall.ini" on your computer.  This will be in different locations depending on which language your system is using. Then copy the dzInstall.ini ** file* into the C:Program FilesCommon FilesDAZ folder.  After that please run the installer for the product again.*

After creating the DAZ folder I ran the search for the dzInstall.ini file but found nothing.
Any suggestions?

2. See screenshots for this one.......Following the same procedure I've loaded V3 into an external runtime that I created on my external hard drive according to instructions. The installer for V3 did not give me any error messages, but it seems the content got placed into the wrong folders within the runtime. Once I used the "add library" button in Poser, I was able to access the V3 external runtime, but it seems everything was placed in the "pose" folder and when I'm in the poser program I have nothing in the "expressions" library for V3. Is there a way to move the content to the correct folders, and what are the correct folders for each of the content folders that are now all in the pose folder? Where are they supposed to go? Can I do this in windows explorer, or is it done within the Poser program?

Many thanks,

Musikman

Th

Here's the PoserPro2010 Library pic.....As you can see, everything is under "Pose" and when I hit the "Expressions" button there is just [0]V3 shown. Further to that if I try to use any expressions they will not work, however the poses do work ok.

Quote - all of the character sets you see at Daz and here at Rendo require them.

Uhm not ALL. Look for characters who state ""Original Morphs" if you want something that isn't just a dial spin of existing morphs.

I  have characters both free and for sale that WILL work with the base Daz characters because they only contain my own morphs which are supplied!

Not trying to muddle the waters  but a blanket statement like that requires an answer :)

Also I have a few tutorials on my site that may be useful. They were made when Poser 5 came out so they're a bit dated, but 99% of the information in them is still correct, And they're aimed at ABSOLUTE beginners! :)

FREEBIES! | My Gallery | My Store | My FB | Tumblr |
You just can't put the words "Poserites" and "happy" in the same sentence - didn't you know that? LaurieA
  Using Poser since 2002. Currently at Version 11.1 - Win 10.

Okay, let's back up a bit and try to sort this out.  Your first problem, I see that you were trying to install V4 using the installer designated for DAZStudio, the reason for your error message.  I am assuming that you inadvertantly used the DAZ Content installation to create the absolute path.  I recommend using Poser (All Files) for that trick. 

Your second problem is not a problem at all.  Those folders you see in Poses actually belong there; those are part of INJ/REM files created for Vicky.  DO NOT MOVE.  Now, you mentioned that you have no expressions in your library, however, I see that you have 41 files in !V3 Expressions INJ and !V3 Expressions REM.  When you say you have nothing, is it truly empty or are there icons with shrugging men?  This is important, because if it is the latter, what you are seeing are icon representations of rsr image files which are not longer supported by current Poser version.  You will need to convert those using an rsr to png conversion program found in the free section here at Rendo.

Now, those expression morphs will only introduce extra dials into your Parameters pallet, they will not automatically change the facial features.  And, btw, I discovered that V3 SAE already has expression morphs already built-in, no need to INJ those features.

Hi Hborre

I'll try to run down what I did for you. I'm pretty sure I had the correct installer for V4, but I"m only judging by the name of the file, it's: ps_pe069_Victoria4.exe, likewise the V3 installer file is: ps_pe036_V3.exe.  Maybe the filename for the Daz program version of V3 & 4 is named the same? I assumed the "ps" at the front of the file name means "poser" ?

Before my pc blew up I had previously installed V3 using my main poser directory as the target path, and V3 seemed to work fine, there were files in the poses library folder, and there were also files there when I clicked on the expressions library button, which there are not any now. To clarify, you are correct,  there are expression INJ & REM but only within the poses library, but there are none listed when I click the expressions library button, (just [0]V3 showing --**See attached pic) the expressions INJ & REM are are all in the poses part of the library, if that makes sense. (see previously attached pic) I remember about the rsr files and the ones in the poser library for V3 are rsr's with shrugging men, but they were also there the last time I had it installed, and the expressions still worked, just didn't have the png pic showing.

When I try to use the expressions, nothing happens. Prior to installing it this time, whenever I double clicked on any expression, ie....left eye blink, it would cause the left eye to close, and so on. Not doing that now, that's why I thought they were in the wrong folders. Plus this time it's an external runtime on my external HD, do the folders & files look like yours, I mean in the same place? Here you will find the instructions I followed to do the procedure for setting up the external runtime and installing V4:

http://support.smithmicro.com/cs/smkb.cfg/php.exe/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=2257

One thing you'll notice is that my folder heirarchy is F:POSER RUNTIMESV3Runtime, instead of the V3 folder being a direct folder ie...F:V3Runtime as in the instructions. Don't know if that makes any difference. I also noticed that the readme folder got installed ahead of the runtime folder, (see the tree pic) and when the installer finished and tried to display the readme file, it couldn't locate it.

Hopefully I'll get this all straight soon. Thanks for your time Hborre, much appreciate the help.

Musikman

Here I've selected V3's Left Eye, and have loaded the Left Eye Blink morph, but all I can do is move her eyeball, not make her blink. I might be wrong but I thought I remember the eyelid closing when I used the Eye Blink morph with my previous setup, and there were different dials for controlling the "eyelids" that I don't see there now.  You can't see all the dials in the pic, but even when I scrolled down I didn't find anything relating to the eyelids opening/closing.

EDIT: Ok, just figured out I need to select "head" instead of "left eye" and now I see the blink dials and the eyelids close when I turn them.  Sorry for the confusion!  I'm still not sure my files are where they're supposed to be, but if they all work then I guess maybe it's just a different setup than before.

Still have to figure out why the M4 installer is looking for a Daz ini file, it would make sense that you are correct,  I must have downloaded the wrong one?  I didn't see any specific area of the Daz site that only listed figures for Poser, maybe that's where I went wrong?

Thanks again

Musikman

The newer DAZ installers have both Poser and DAZStudio files integrated into one, hence the selection for either flavors.  I just double-checked M4's product page and indeed it appears that 1 installer contains Poser/DS files.  The PowerLoader is Studio specific and the third supplies the material files necessary for Studio.  When you install M4, you will come across a window that will specify which file types to choose.  There is a pull down menu for the selection field, select Poser (All files).  After clicking next, you will be prompted to select a runtime destination.  Hope this helps.

Ok, I just tried to run the same V4 installer again and this time it worked, very strange that I was getting that message earlier today. Well at least it's working now, I'm not going to rack my brain over it at this point! :-)

Does my file setup for my external runtime look ok? I just thought it strange that everything went into the pose library. With the default Poser figures, there are poses in the pose library, expressions in the expressions library, so I thought it would follow the same with the Daz figures.

Thanks again hborre.

That set up look correct.  True expressions are actually pose files placed into their own category.  Those expressions INJ/REM files are simply to inject the morphing capacity into your mesh; dials are created in the Parameter pallet for more exacting control.

Ok, beginning to understand now. So these Daz figures are either setup a bit different from the default poser figures, or I'm not seeing anything in the expression folders for V3 & V4 because I haven't yet purchased the full morph++ package. That must be why the poser default figures have files in the expression folders because they come with a complete set of morphs already.

Well, as long as you're saying the folder and library setups look correct, then that's how I'll install the rest of the figures I get from Daz in the future. At least I finally have some reference point of how things should look. Many thanks!

Musikman

 This is quite an energetic thread, to say the least!  It's refreshing to see all these newcomers thrash about, setting up their Poser gear.  No doubt you'll be rendering masterpieces before too long.  

I have one advice.  When you've got the basic technical stuff nailed try looking for some tutorials and articles on artistic approach.  In Poser you have a figure and a camera, much like in traditional art and photography and therefor same "rules" apply when doing images in Poser.  You can search stuff like Point of View (POV), Balance, Rule of Third, Color Theory etc.   And like carodan said about the principles of 3D, you don't need to master these techniques but they can really help you produce better images.

Welcome to the Poserverse!!

 Vestmann's Gallery

OK, enough hours of not getting Poser 7 to do anything ... I am really, really lost.  I can take Simon out and put Mil Horse in; I cannot load the textures or the forms of the various breeds.

I cannot seem to make it do anything at all .... and I know it is just me.

The help links in this old program are gone (domains for sale) .. or under construction.

Many of Acadia's links are likewise out of date.

I did try Dr. Geep's but he seems to start where the PDF starts ... Cameras, lights, etc and that is not exactly where I am at  .... I am at -- make it look like it is supposed to, --- and then worry about poses, magnets, etc ...   The object must be secured ...  before you add textures ???

I read it, I cannot find select the object (Object Menu / make ?) ...  I will try and read some more, but there must be a way to get over the first bump of how it works ...

I can do things in Shade,  granted it is not the same, but it is 3D.  So I get the lingo, just not the GUI. 

Are there any video tuts for the very, very basic stuff .. the things you need when you first look at a program and OPEN does not even work for you? ... 

TIA
Sally

Sally, give us a rudimentary issue you would like clarified first and we can proceed in small steps.  Apparently, you are overwhelmed about where to actually start with this program, and you are not alone.  You, at least, figured out how to swap figures which is a beginning.  We just need to nudge you in the right direction.

I feel like I have not read enough or checked for tutorials enough.  I feel like I must have missed something / somewhere .... ....
I think Poser 5 came with a book, but it is certainly down in storage where I will never get to it without hours of shifting boxes and furniture. ... No excuse; Google should have been good enough ... I suspect I need hand holding .. oh sad.    Likely true.

I need a little primer on HOW what happens in each room Happens ... like this and that switch must be set, or no amount of clicking will do anything (at least that is where my brain thinks I am). This machine has enough ram it should not lag, but it does ... so I am being very patient.

I can put Mil Horse in the window (mouse click Simon, hit delete key, find Mil Horse and click once ??or twice?? --stress-I should not stress!!) ... I can find the textures which I loaded to the program as you indicated .. but now they do not load to the controls ... They do not show in the library (are there not supposed to be thumbnails of the textures, etc?).  Or is that a later version, this is version 7 and not the pro model.

I cannot get the Mil Horse to accept any of the custom textures (in fact I cannot even see them because it seems I clicked on the Mil Horse's default color, and that is what loaded in place of the Custom Textures which I got to load into the controls on the first try ... but they will not come back.  (and I cannot remember how I got them to load in the first place) ...

[[are other people afraid of breaking the Program if they do something wrong? ... I know it is silly, and I know I should not be affected like that, but I am ... it is another stress thing, it will go away when I know what I am doing.]]

So something is amiss. 

Thanks.

Have you installed the Service Release packs for P7?  There are, at least, three.  I would strongly recommend downloading and installing them before you proceed.  It should clear some of the issues you are experiencing.  Visit the SmithMicro website. 

There is an electronic manual and tutorial PDF embedded in your Poser folder which I also recommend reading.  They will explain each of the functions and dispense tips how to efficiently use them.  You need to go through a familiarization process to successfully learn the basics. 

There is a video tutorial from Lynda.com specifically created for P7.  There is a subscription for the service, however there are free sample moduals you can access for preview.

http://www.lynda.com/home/DisplayCourse.aspx?lpk2=271

OK, have Poser7-CH1, P7-Content Errata, Poser7-CU1, and Poser7-SR3 ... hope that fixes things up a bit.

I have a free 30 day sub on Lynda dot com, but have not used it much as PS is being cranky since the fix, and will not load.  I likely will pay for sub service there next month, so it is really good to know that Poser is also there.  Thanks

I was considering downloading the Poser 8 free trial, but they do not say if they charge your card after 30 days ... and actually, if I were to pay $250, I would rather be buying Pro 2012!! ...

Silly to have to pay another upgrade fee if I could not come up with the $250 for the 2012 purchase in 30 days, and they charged my card for P-8!! ... is that how it works? ... or not? ... there is no way to know if they would do that or not ...  so I left the shopping cart and did not download P8.

OK, off to try some more ... calmly I hope.

Thank you for the assist

Things are looking up, but I have noticed that my mouse or stylus, never seems to do anything but jump about on the screen if it is in a room-- even well away from any actors or props!! -- (i.e. inside the interface); and often it is Adobe Reader's hand which is trying to select the camera controls.

Perhaps (or not) the reason:

I was looking for somthing in my start button menu,  ... and I found a folder at the very top called "(Default)" -- it had Poser in it just as it shows in the normal folder!!

... and then down in the list in alphabetical order was Smith-Micro and Poser, etc  in the very normal fashion  .... 

Surely I should not have two installations of Poser on my machine!! But which should I uninstall .. the one which looks odd seems correct .. but I have never encountered this  before ... and ... I "'ONLY' INSTALLED FROM THE CD ONE TIME" ... REALLY!!  moreover .. when I ask it to open the (Default) folder it just sits there .. nada .. as it were.

I just had to bring this over here and ask ...

 

2.  Legacy items --- are they availabe on the CD like P5, or can (must) they be installed, and can they be? ... after the fact -- since I left them out on the install?

Also is there a URL to store information about how long items stay in the store? 

Could there be a note on store items which must have another item when that Item is no longer offered on Renderosity?  I see I must now join "Daz Club" for a while.  Perhaps everyone else knows this, but such a tag might avoid some confusion later on for others.

TIA ... Sally

You can get the P5 Content updater here if you don't have it on your CD

http://support.contentparadise.com/updates/index.html

 

HTH

MM

Thanks Musikman,

I have the content CD for V5, it is the stuff after 5 and before 8 which I am craving to find. I loaded the P8 content when the Program went on, but not the Legacy stuff.

I cannot actually see much in my library either .. maybe it was the wierd install?

I remarked out the "Defalut" items and Poser runs much better --selection issues went away totally!

But it does not have anything in the library similar to what shows in the Tutorial Manual.  PC will go in for repair and likely new HD in early 2011!!

I am not really wanting to run the install CD again, but if that is the only way to find the missing content ... ??? ...

I have quite a bit of stuff from Shade 8, but it also is not separate ... and not loaded.

 

Do you have any idea why I would get the NO GO icon (slashed-circle) with the Mouse when trying to drop and drag a character from the library to the Pose room? .... It has happened a couple times now, and I really don't know why it does not want to load the actor / pose.

 

Too many things I don't yet understand, but I can now import and clothe, and pose,

HOWEVER ... making the clothes stay on .. I have not gotten that far, the actor translaters off and the clothes stay put ... sad fate for a Poser character.  I'll find it I guess.  .... just patience -- and more tutorials.

Have a good weekend!

 

 

I have never encountered the "NO GO" thing myself, so I can't be of much help there. Did you try double clicking instead of dragging it over? Not sure if that would make any difference but might be worth a try.

As for the clothing staying on the actor/figure you have to use the "conform to" command to make the clothes stay with the figure. In my minimal experience I think you have to "zero" the figure to default pose first (Figure menu/Zero figure) so it's in the basic pose before adding clothing, the conforming will be much more difficult if you have already moved the figure around. Once you have loaded the clothing onto the figure, select one piece of the clothing to test conforming it. Go to the Figure menu again and select "conform to", then select the figure's name. Btw, it does help  to use "conforming clothing" that was created specifically for that figure and many times bears the same name as the figure, and easier than dynamic clothing,  but I haven't had much experience with dynamic clothing so I can't advise much on that.

HTH

MM

Double-clicking will bring the character onto the stage rather than drag & drop.

It is not true that the character needs to be in zero position for conforming clothing to work.  It is actually advisable that the figure is in its final pose before applying any conforming clothing.  In that manner, you can easily correct pokethroughs and make final adjustments before rendering.

I always double click first ... drag and drop is the route of last attempt.

So glad to hear that clothes can go on the posed figure.  However, with one set I do not have any success, and have to dress her in Zero position.  The metal fillagree loads to Zero all by itself.

 

I have not found the way to determine what kind of clothing I have ... but it adjusts with the body morph dials for the actor? ... any! of the body morph dials!!  ...  ???

Figure menu; ... thanks.

What room or camera has the "grasp" command for the hands?

I found it once and now that I need it, I cannot find it again!

I was not in hand camera when it was on the dials ... and yet it has never come up again on the dials ... though I have had to work with hands many times.

Do certain sets of clothing or props come with adjusted dials in them? ... I see some have the translate dials added at the bottom ... which was very helpful!!

It is an amazing piece of software.  Much to learn.

hi all,

I'm not a newby on 3D but I decided to relearn Poser bottom up. Perhaps it's of some help if I share my approach here.

1. decide upon a style, and learn about it. I decided to go photoreal, and started reading a bunch of (e)books on portrait group bridal animal etc photography. Lighting, pose, camera handling, and so on

2. select some images in that style and try to recreate them as close as possible. Currently, some of the female nude shots by rianeli (here on Rendo) work best for me. Just a camera, some lights, one V4, pair of sandals and basic hair, and that's it. No dynamics, no clothes, no props, no expressions. Just do it. Continue till you can't see the difference. Then ramp up to more complex shots, few props dynamic hair more complex skin textures (like Fand's shots).

Or, when you're into cartoon style and animation, recreate a simple 2D sequence into 3D. Like the flamengo short in Disneys Fantasia2000. 

3. I never use the Poser library, it sucks, and whatever you do, can't be re-used in carrara or Daz Studio or so. I use P3dO instead, the basic version is free (www.senosoft.com). It rocks, and yarp provides bout the best support available on earth.

4. make images or shorts that tell a story. Rendo already has too much on images that show how to dress up, to pose and to push the render button. Publish on Rendo and explicitely ask for constructive comments. I know all OOhh and Woww will make you feel good, but will not improve your works.

 

Have fun, happy posing.

- - - - - 

Usually I'm wrong. But to be effective and efficient, I don't need to be correct or accurate.

visit www.aRtBeeWeb.nl (works) or Missing Manuals (tutorials & reviews) - both need an update though

Quote - What room or camera has the "grasp" command for the hands? I found it once and now that I need it, I cannot find it again!

I was not in hand camera when it was on the dials ... and yet it has never come up again on the dials ... though I have had to work with hands many times.

Do certain sets of clothing or props come with adjusted dials in them? ... I see some have the translate dials added at the bottom ... which was very helpful!!

It is an amazing piece of software.  Much to learn.

Hi Sally... to work the grasp thingie, you have to be in the Pose room (which is the main one, I guess) and any camera where you can see the hands move should work. The dials for grasp are in the Parameter Dials dialogue... you can find that under the menu Window. It would be in the Parameters tab, and you would have to have Morphs++ loaded for V4 to make it work and have one of the Hands selected. In the Parameters list, it comes under MorphForms.

Most conforming clothing comes with adjustment dials, but you can more - i.e., the ones you actually need - with a nifty programme called Morphing Clothes by Dimension3D. Cheap at the price, it will add those morphs for the figure you want to put the clothing on, which is very helpful!

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Hi aRtBee,

Thanks!

3. I never use the Poser library, it sucks, and whatever you do, can't be re-used in carrara or Daz Studio or so. I use P3dO instead, the basic version is free (www.senosoft.com). It rocks, and yarp provides bout the best support available on earth.

4. make images or shorts that tell a story. Rendo already has too much on images that show how to dress up, to pose and to push the render button. Publish on Rendo and explicitely ask for constructive comments. I know all OOhh and Woww will make you feel good, but will not improve your works.

I have P3do now, will give it a good looking at .. it seems a god send because I will be working the animnations between 3 separte programs .. and I don't think (?) I could save the scenes to work in each without being able to save in Obj. !  Much appreciated.* *

I have not found those "many pages on how to dress, pose and render" .. but now I will increase my looking for them.

I need to find, however, a forum where I can regularly participate, hone my skills, and get constructive criticism!! 

-- I see the gallery item here, which I will use, because it's good site support .. and it is always good to back you software people, (and fun).  But I need the modeling help (really) too, and I am thinking Myrie (?) -- where I purchased Shade 10.  This is an idea, I have not yet done the howdy-dos.

Thanks for your input, see you around, perhaps?

Sally

 

 

Hi RobynsVeil,

 

I must load: Morphs++ for V4.   Maybe this is the issue, I am not using V4, but Aiko from DAZ.

[And I cannot get Sabby's Akiko eyes (this month's freebie) to load either, darn!  --maybe I must be in the face room?  or maybe Akiko is not Aiko compatible?]

 

I thought if I was using the Aiko figure the morps and injs were already in the params? (they are hidden as well, as it says "partially hidden" and the dials are not working --not even showing!!).  I am pretty certain (150%) that the param tab is showing in every window, I have a good size monitor ..

 

I selected the hand from the drop down on the left (screen right) and choose the hand ... but no grasp commands!!  Those built in things in PP .. which are kind of zaney (?wacros?) .. those did not come up either.  I keep thinking I must be in the wrong room, actually.  Most times (95%) I am in the Pose Room. 

 

I did not have a hand selected on the tab in the param dials .... ah ... maybe that is the issue ... a new thing to be certain of!!  I will do that, and see if it is the magic fix!! 

 

 

Morphing Clothes by Dimension 3D .. sounds great ..will check it out!!

How does it compair with the Wardrobe Wizzard?   ...

W.W. is in the pro version and is supposed to do similar, but I have not had any need to use it ~yet! ..

When I do the male figure for the 1st animation I will need to upsize all the female metal fillagree to fit over the musculature and to flatten out over the pecs.  (I won't make him wear scarves -- just a guy type cape and maybe an Egyptain penis sheath.) 

Ah, good to have the links ... and the input ... thanks a bunch!

Hi Sally: if you're referring to Aiko 4, those Morphs++ will work on her too. So, you will need to load them in order to see that grasp dial for the hand.

I believe that WilliamTheBloody might have a morphing tool that does something similar to Grasp... can't be sure, though.

Wardrobe Wizard is designed to make V4 clothing work (fit) on Aiko4, Girl clothing for on Hiro... just about any character you have the WW files for will work.

Morphing Clothes allows you to introduce morphs in existing clothing that might be missing. Let's say you buy this character with dialed wide hips, poochy tummy, and tiny-tiny boobs. And you've go the perfect outfit for that character, but it appears to missing those particular morphs. Well, MC will transfer the morphs from you dialed/morphed Cr2 to the clothing. I consider it my mainstay for bringing standard V4.2 morphs into new clothing I make, or for adding missing morphs in purchased conforming items.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

hi Sally,

some additions:

#3: Daz Studio, Carrara, Vue etc do read Poser scenes, no OBJ conversion required. Bryce has a Daz Studio interface, this gives you an extra route to get Poser scenes into Bryce, and manipulate them to some extent.

#4: although this forum has some very informative debates on handling dynamic clothes, there are not that many tutorials on clothing, posing etc. I'll try to fill in for that but it may take a while. But there are loads of images (in the Rendo gallery and everywhere else) that show half nude young smooth skinned ladies standing in an undamaged temple in a further empty environment holding a sword or so, looking as if they have not a single clue how they got there and what they'll do next. Don't give us more of that, please.

I'm happy to comment any other kind of image, you only have to ask in your accompanying text. Just having "critical and non-critical comments" switched on is not enough, as it's the default in the gallery, and most people don't respond too well on it. Or don't respond at all, which is not very encouraging either.

See you around, I'll be there.

- - - - - 

Usually I'm wrong. But to be effective and efficient, I don't need to be correct or accurate.

visit www.aRtBeeWeb.nl (works) or Missing Manuals (tutorials & reviews) - both need an update though

There is a critique section in the forum for general discussion and criticism on WIP.  That might be a better area to reveal scenes you are currently creating but have not finished yet.

Thanks Robyn, and aRtBee, and hborre,

....

I will not give you poser characters to look at without giving you some ideas to think about ...

That is why I want to do animations .. so the ideas can be conveyed -- but there need not be a treatise or essay or some other long and tedious thing to consider

... (I read lots of books, but I think my kind of person is a minority kind, actually -- although the library does do a very brisk business.). 

 

The Accolytes are like "netters" in Egyptian lore .. forces of nature .. That's why they have to be "almost" invisible .. which Baggins Bill has helped with a lot already.

But they are all needed for the ceremony of life --we are all in this together sort of animation ... (but it will not come accross that way unless you are thinking that way before hand .. how to set the mind set .. that is much harder).   They have a mathematical correlation too, to DNA -- the start and stop codons and the 20 proteins.  This is what happens when you read too much and then think about entertainment.

 

Happy Turkey Holiday you guys.

Maybe next time I will have an image or two to put up. 

Back again I am .. with a new issue!  Sorry to be such a troublesome newbie ... ;-( ...

• [[I had a huge DDos Loaded to the Machine as a Windows Update, it took over 10 days with Tech Support (still under warranty) to get it wholesome enough to go online again.  5,400 registry entries and >500 open ports ... someone was very unkind!!~]]
• Anyway ... Now I will put in a new hard drive, and all should flow without issue for some time .. (and I will find out if the MoBo survived the attack!).

 

The New Question:

I am rebuidling the (whole!) separate folder::  Reloading the DAZ items to it:

My DocumentsPoser_DownloadsName of VendorName of Content_1 (_2 .. etc)

My DocumentsPoser_DownloadsDAZname of content (has bogus Poser.exe in the folder)

All is going well until I  tried to load V4 and it requested the Poser Executable Directory (not taking the DAZ directory with the fake Poser.exe file in it ... like all the installs before it!!) ... so I led it to the "correct" folders (both 64 and 32  bit main folders), and it still does not install?

I tried to install Aiko's download .. and the same thing happened.

I HAVE ALREADY INSTALLED the PowerLoader files (V4 and Aiko) .. could this be the issue? ... ... and one inititalized .. the other did not give an option for initialize on completion.  I think it was the Michael 4 which initialized second last time, and I did not load him this time (yet).

 

Here are the screen shots:

http://wcsallysally.deviantart.com/art/oops-1-190695721

http://wcsallysally.deviantart.com/art/Oops-again-190696039

 

Ok, did one more test with Stephanie: 

"Stephanie 4 Elite Powerloader" has been successfully installed to: "C:UsersSally ADocumentsPOSER_DownloadsDAZ". ... ... this one worked!!

This one:: 9357_23_expa_Stephanie4EliteBase_23 ... .... did not!  Same issue, "Dependency Error!"

I am confused ... sorry ... ... ...

 

Still trying, and thank you for all the great tips, and Arcadia, wow!! Overachiever that you are .. that is a nice collection of helpfulness you typed up!!

 

Best for a Very Happy Christmas .. I hope to be back before new years!

Sally

 

 

OK ... I found / fixed -- the issue!! .... sorry for that long post!!

There was another folder between the Poser.exe pretener item and the DAZ top level folder, so it was not seen.

I just tossed the entire folder and started over .. it looks better this time .. -- I cannot find much of Aiko ...

The folder is well ordered  .. and most all of it seems to be in the DAZ folder in the Library. 

 

WHEW !! ... sometimes do-overs are good.   Initialized, & updated .. ... & OK.

 

Now I cannot get the Service Release 1.2 to see the Poser executable so it will update Poser Pro and the Que Manager.  .. Time for the new hard drive I suspect.

 

Happy New Year, All !!