from aux camera I get this view, and from main camera that I want to work with instead, I only get background flat.  I push and dolly and still find nothing. is there a surefire way in such a situation to point the camera at a target and see it?

drawn

It's possible that you need to reset your main camera.

Switch to the main camera. then go to edit>restore>camera

if you want it to point at something specific, select the camera so it shows in the parameters window. Then in the Object menu, go to point at, and pick the item from the list that pops up. But be warned, the camera will always point to that item no matter where you move it. So if you point it at Ben's hand and move the camera, it will turn to face the hand. And if you move Ben's hand, either by moving the hand itself or moving his whole body, it will follow the hand.

If the camera is blocked by a wall (in other words, if the camera is OUTSIDE of the room you are trying to render), there are three possible solutions:

-- Try setting the HITHER setting of the camera (in Properties) to zero. Sometimes that fixes it, sometimes it doesn't. Or ...

-- Hide the wall that is blocking the camera. Or ...

-- Move the camera so that it is no longer behind the wall

The dog's head is partially inside the house, so that needs to be fixed also.

behold, a MESS! and I created it with my mini mouse, trying to follow Red's directions. 

Is this the first real mess you've ever seen? be honest now

How may I push this boy through a big complex house with floors and furniture and get him to the place that I want? tell me please. this is Lovecraftian madness...

drawn

Never forget about the undo. If you see something suddenly go crazy because your mouse was being difficult, use undo and that should fix it.

I can't do much testing at the moment because I'm rendering something.

I hope you didn't save this as a mess. If you didn't go back and reload it. If you did, and have on the autosave feature, try loading one of those and seeing if it's still good.

Not gonna try to explain how I screwed it up. gonna do it again. Not going to walk figure thru house that led to mess. Want to first find location and camera at it then mark it some way so I can load kid and place him right there and then stage my shot.  

Any advice?

drawn

It appears you are filling the entire house with props that won't be directly visible in your render scene. This method creates an excessively large file and is not required. Focus on detailing only one or two rooms that will appear in the final render, rather than furnishing the entire house for convenience. When using Superfly rendering, be mindful of the way material shaders react to the ambient lighting. Content from older versions of Poser is not optimized for Superfly and may require additional tweaking to appear accurate in the final image.

hgorre, good suggestion. That house comes both totally furnished and unfurnished. I've been using the totally version. Now I'll use empty and only furnish the areas I need! thanks!

it worked! thanks, hb!