I'm working in Poser Pro 2014.  My units are set to feet.  But if I select a figure...where do I see how many feet long/high/wide it is?

Is there a tool that lets you measure the distance between two points and display it in feet? 

Poser lets you set your units of measure and use them for xyzTran, but I haven't found any other place that displays them.

Download it, rename it to remove the .txt extension and import into Poser as an object file.

Then save it to your prop library.

Set Poser units to "centimeter".

Now you can directly measure things in Poser just by scaling the prop along the y, x and z-axis.

As it is 100x100x100 centimeters big, scaling it to 157% along the y-axis makes it 157 centimeters tall.

Scale it to 65% along the x-axis, and it is 65 centimeters wide.

Scale it to match the things you want to be measured and you can directly read the exact dimensions just by looking at the scale dials.

You can also make it transparent or change it's display style to better measure things.

:-)

Attached Link: A FREE Scale for Poser

cheers,
dr (bob) geep
;=]

Just curious because I can't check right now, but are Fireangel's measuring tools calibrated the same as these?  I've always used the 10 foot prop when modeling, wasn't sure if I'm using the same scale as everyone else.

Poser has a very small work space.

If I load a Poser mesh in C4D it's micro small ,I half to inlarge by 10,000 to 20,000 some where around there.

In CGI it's best to use the metric system.

CGI Computer Generated Images.

I usually just load a box, reduce one or two sides to 1% to make a plane or a rod, and read the dials. sometimes it comes handy to use a front or left cam (non-perspective one).

surfaces of complex shapes (in cm2 or so) can be derived in Hair Room (it tells you hair density and nr of hairs, the ratio is the amount of surface), and perhaps one can find a trick with auto-balance to measure volumes directly.

A lot of things are in units, like bump/displacement depth in materials room, camera focal distance, hair density in hair room, and so on.

Poser geometry is exported in PNU (1 PNU=262cm).

This thread is funny, I hope Smith Micro reads it and I hope they find it embarassing.

It's like someone posting on a new car forum:

"I've just bought the 2014 model with ABS, traction control, automatic everything, but I can't figure out how to tell what speed I'm doing"

Replies:

"Well, it doesn't actually have a speedometer, but you can count how long it takes to pass two telephone poles, and calculate it from there"

"Or you can ask a friend to drive behind you, then phone him and ask what speed he is doing"

"I open the window and throw out a knotted rope. I count how long it takes for 100 knots to run through my fingers, then I read the speed off this handy table I have stickytaped to my dash"

Quote - Poser has a very small work space.

If I load a Poser mesh in C4D it's micro small ,I half to inlarge by 10,000 to 20,000 some where around there.

In CGI it's best to use the metric system.

CGI Computer Generated Images.

Let's not confuse things here, import/export scale issues have nothing to do with the OP's question.

Inside Poser, if you have your units set to feet, then the poser world can be measured in feet (by the methods described by other posters above).

if things were that easy...

"Inside Poser, if you have your units set to feet, then the poser world can be measured in feet ". In most cases, that is. In some cases, it's not. There are various parameters in materials room / lighting and in cloth room which have their own units (mm resp cm), independant of your own settings. And while geometry is exported in PNU, materials seems to be exported in inches.

Ops issue is: there is no distance-measuring-tool. To support SM or any scripter around: let's define 'distance' first. Between origins, between center of mass, between "heart of the matter" (whatever that is), is it the closest distance between the outsides of objects, and do we have to take displacement maps into account?

And so we want to measure along curves as well, what's the length of a Walk Path? And can I measure circumference, hip width, breast size?

Just a few thoughts. Poser is an artists tool. Painters don't measure, tailors do. So, what do we need it for, in the first place?

My cube uses Poser's internal scaling that is hardcoded into it.

Set Poser units to centimeter. Load a prop or a figure and move it 100 units up using the yTrans dial.

That distance is, according to Poser, 1 meter, because if you set the sytem units to centimeter, 100 units are 100 centimeters or 1 meter.

That's how I made my cubic meter cube, which then, because of the metric system that divides by 10, can be directly used to measure things by reading it's size percentages.

The advantage of a cube is that you can just as easily measure very big things like a car or a plane with it as very tiny things directly in all three dimensions.

Everything I use in my Poser world is scaled to real world sizes, from furniture to figures to props to vehicles. That way everything is in scale with everything else and nothing looks out of place.

As for circumferences or curves, that's a bit more complicated, but I could just as well construct some calibrated cylinders. I simply never had the need for it.

I think PhilC also has a tailor's tape prop that can directly measure irregular circumferences.

Quote - let's define 'distance' first. Between origins, between center of mass, between "heart of the matter" (whatever that is), is it the closest distance between the outsides of objects, and do we have to take displacement maps into account?

Allowing me to click on 2 points and displaying the distance between them would be a good start.

Quote - Poser is an artists tool. Painters don't measure, tailors do. So, what do we need it for, in the first place?

It started as an astists tool, then it morphed into a tool capable of creating realistic worlds populated by realistic figures and realistic props, alas, with eyeballed scale and proportions. It's time it had a proper measuring tool.

Painters don't measure? Maybe for abstract seascapes that's true, but most painters have at some stage used a thumb on a brush-handle with arm outstretched. Ever tried to set up a three point architectural perspective without the ability to measure? If you want to get proportions right, measuring is a no brainer.

Quote - Poser has a very small work space.

If I load a Poser mesh in C4D it's micro small ,I half to inlarge by 10,000 to 20,000 some where around there.

In CGI it's best to use the metric system.

CGI Computer Generated Images.

Let's not confuse things here, import/export scale issues have nothing to do with the OP's question.

Inside Poser, if you have your units set to feet, then the poser world can be measured in feet (by the methods described by other posters above).

There's always a chance a Pro 14 user uses other app's.
Even Rox's scale is small with GoZ.
Most App's have what they call feet n inches but they don't want 1 1/16 they want 1.0625

FireAngel's measureing tools work fine.  Got a choice of units, but I use feet-inches.  Close enough.

Measuring units aren't important.  They can be switched back and forth all day without causing any problem.  mm divided by 25.4 gives inches.  Inches multiplied by 25.4 gives mm.  The standard inch was adjusted years ago to make that work out exactly. 

Doric.

Fact: Poser has an internal unit of measure called "Poser Native Units"

Fact: The creators of Poser have (arbitrarily) related the internal unit to real world measurements. The relationship is as follows:

1 PNU = 103.200005 Inches or 8.6 feet or 2621.279785 mm or 262.127991 cm or 2.621280 m (the data is limited to 6 decimal places and rounded)

Fact: Poser uses these units to give either an absolute distance (in XYZ coordinates) from the center of its universe (0,0,0), a relative distance between two specific centers (i.e., a body part origin and a body origin) or an offset between current location and default location.

Fact: While Poser does contain some primitive sizing guilds, it does not contain a tool or system for measuring "geometry boundries". (the dimensions of a box surrounding and tangent to a 3D object, group of objects, or object sub-section)

All this means that there is no easy or precise "Poser Native" way to measure an object's size and that has lead to scale problems that will probably never get rectified.

See, none of the original figure creators seem to have used any absolute scale when setting up their geometry in Poser. Instead of using Poser measurements, they all got their size cues from the original Poser 1 figures with each generation being just a bit bigger. That's why The original P1 woman was 5'10.5', the P2 woman was 5'11", the P3 6'1", Posette also 6'1". Then came the split with between Zygote/DAZ and Poser with its many parent companies.  Vicky 1/2 came in at 6'4.25", and V3 at an even 6'4". Vicky 4 came in at 6'3.75" Meanwhile Judy was 6'2.5" and Jessica was 6'1"...probably taking cues from Posette.

I think it was about that time at least some people finally noticed how big the figures were getting. Miki 1 was 5'8.25" and, I believe, the shortest "mainstream" adult female figure up to that time. Terai Yuki(2) was a touch under 5'10".

The G2 girls are all around 6' and Alyson is 5'8.25"...just like Miki.

This all, of course, has had an effect on the whole of the poser universe. When you're making a chair, for instance, what size do you make it? Do you accurately reflect the real world measurements? That would make the chair look small when used with, say, any of the Vickys. Do you make it to fit V1/2? That would make it large for Miki.

See what I mean? The problem gets even worse for the creators of whole environments, like Stonemason. Exactly what character or characters fit the environment?

Lucky for me, I render in Vue, which has the basic ability to measure geometry boundries. I know the exact size of everything imported from Poser, AND they are all imported at Poser's actual scale...so I know how big everything is in Poser as well. This means that if I want to have Miki join a naked Vicky in a temple with a sword, I can have everyone and everything in perfect scale.

I've used a lot of different measuring tools, but for characters I now load the cone from the primitives menu and rotate it along the Z axis 90 degrees. That puts the tip of the cone directly at floor level, right between the character's feet. Move it along the Y axis until the tip of the cone is on the tip of the head, read the number in the Y trans field. Just like a tape measure. Michael 4 is about 6'7".