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Poser - OFFICIAL F.A.Q (Last Updated: 2024 Nov 08 8:41 am)
Mostly I want to bring the app up to date with the current state of Poser features (compressed files, dependent parameters etc).
No chance of a Mac version I'm afraid. I don't have a Mac to test on and I don't know anything about Mac programming. I'd like to bring in a Mac programmer to do a port, but apart from not having a clue how to find one, I'd be really uneasy about not being able to test the ported app myself.
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I've thought about using Java, but I don't have any experience with it (or any developer tools for it). At the moment the whole thing is written in Visual Basic 6. I started looking at teaching myself C++ and rewriting it in that and decided that the investment in time would be way too much. The product has never been what you could call "commercially viable". The user base is small (about 200) and I put a stupid amount of time into writing the first version, so I need to keep the extra time I commit to it down as much as I can. I've reluctantly come to the conclusion that that means keeping it in Visual Basic 6 :-(
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Hmmm... Maybe Mac users with IntelMac and BootCamp will be able to use it?
My new Mac I got just 2 weeks before they released the Intel Macs. No, I didn't know it was coming. ;(
Has anyone tried running it in Virtual PC on the Mac?
I have this guitar strap that could really use ERC. Just thought I would ask. ;)
bB
Thanks nruddock. Those tools look cool and I appreciate the offer :-)
BastBlack, I've heard people suggest trying it in Virtual PC before but I have no idea whether anybody has actually made the attempt. IEPU is a pretty standard windows program so I'd expect it to work. If you have Virtual PC yourself, you could try the free demo version of EPU and see if that works. I'd be really interested to know.
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I've used EasyPose Underground with both Parallels and VirtualPC using WinXP as the guest operating system. Works great.
Haven't found any bugs in the current version worth complaining about. I suppose it might be nice to add more support for "conformingTarget" (e.g. mastering ERC from a "standard" but not loaded in EPU figure), but the "Deep Slave Editor" does well enough for that.
Support for the "valueOpKey" structure would be great.
If you need someone to test Macintosh (via emulation) compatibility, I'd be happy to do testing for you.
Cheers!
-Kerwin
I don't know of any bugs other than if you don't have the x,y,z rotate field names filled in prior to selecting the "rename all rot dials" button you will get an error and crash.
I love the program and use it for my body part and dial naming assignments. I think I've mentioned it before, but it's been a while, I'd love it if you could have the ability to pre-name the x,y,z scale and x,y,z tran buttons like the rotation bottons. It would really save a LOT of time for me. I'm constantly typing in SIDE-SIDE, UP-DOWN and FWD/BACK for the transition dials and WIDER, TALLER and THICK/LONG for the scale buttons.
OOHHHHH PLEASE INCLUDE THAT!!!
Cheers,
Davo
Quote - I've used EasyPose Underground with both Parallels and VirtualPC using WinXP as the guest operating system. Works great.
That's good to know. Excellent :-)
Quote - I suppose it might be nice to add more support for "conformingTarget" (e.g. mastering ERC from a "standard" but not loaded in EPU figure), but the "Deep Slave Editor" does well enough for that.
That's a good idea. I haven't used "conforming ERC" myself so I haven't looked at how it works, but I'll look into it and see how hard it would be to set up.
Quote - If you need someone to test Macintosh (via emulation) compatibility, I'd be happy to do testing for you.
Watch out, Kerwin - I might take you up on that. :-)
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Quote - I don't know of any bugs other than if you don't have the x,y,z rotate field names filled in prior to selecting the "rename all rot dials" button you will get an error and crash.
Heya bud :-) It's been a long time. Are you still on the same e-mail addy as you were before?
I can't duplicate that error. Maybe I fixed it already and I just don't remember. I'll take a closer look at the error handling code anyhow.
Quote - I'd love it if you could have the ability to pre-name the x,y,z scale and x,y,z tran buttons like the rotation bottons. It would really save a LOT of time for me. I'm constantly typing in SIDE-SIDE, UP-DOWN and FWD/BACK for the transition dials and WIDER, TALLER and THICK/LONG for the scale buttons.
Hmmm....yeah...I vaguely remember you asking for that. OK, I'll take a look and see what I can do along those lines. I've made the interface bigger, so I've got a bit more room to play with now.
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I like EPU. I like it a LOT. In fact, my most recent freebie (will appear in freestuff here shortly) wouldn't have been possible without EPU.
There's a few minor glitches I'd like to report, only one of them is sort of a bug:
I'd love to see the ability to add to existing EP chains. If I forget to add the TwistBef dials, for example, I can only strip out everything using a CR2 editor and start afresh, or add the TwistBef parameters by hand.
Stripping out existing EP chains would also be a great added functionality.
I'd also love to see a hierarchical view of the body parts, instead of just a list. That way it's easy to select whole branches of a hierachy.
By the way, would it be possible to add parameter grouping as supported by Poser 5 and higher?
As for compressed file support, I know that there's a ZIP .ocx. With a bit of luck there's also a gzip ActiveX DLL or control, and then working with Poser compressed files is a breeze.
Keep up the good work!
The pen is mightier than the sword. But if you literally want to have some impact, use a typewriter
Quote - renaming the rotation dials doesn't work on my system. xrot remains xrot, yrot remains yrot, zrot remains zrot.
Another dial renaming bug? Gee, I'll have to take a very close look at that routine. Wierd. If you use the rename button in the dial properties box, does that one work, or are they both dead? By the way, do you have European numbering on your system (e.g 1.234,00 rather than 1,234.00)?
Quote - I'd love to see the ability to add to existing EP chains. If I forget to add the TwistBef dials, for example, I can only strip out everything using a CR2 editor and start afresh, or add the TwistBef parameters by hand.
Stripping out existing EP chains would also be a great added functionality.
I've been thinking along those lines myself. You can always rip all of the ERC or all of the valueParm/targetGeom dials out of the file in one go using the buttons in the dial manager ("delete all valueParms" with "free slaves on delete" selected), but if you have non EasyPose ERC in your file, then you'd take that out too. I agree it would be useful to be able to strip out the EasyPose without touching other ERC. The dial names are the only way to tell them apart though, so it would have to just work on whatever dial names you currently have on your EasyPose page.
If I can get that working I'll add the ability to overwrite an existing EasyPose set up.
Quote - I'd also love to see a hierarchical view of the body parts, instead of just a list. That way it's easy to select whole branches of a hierachy.
You mean on the EasyPose page or on the other pages as well? I'd love to do it on the properties page but it would take so much rewriting that I think it will have to wait for version 3.
Quote - By the way, would it be possible to add parameter grouping as supported by Poser 5 and higher?
Yep, that'd be possible :-)
(take a look at the screenshot in my last message)
Quote - As for compressed file support, I know that there's a ZIP .ocx. With a bit of luck there's also a gzip ActiveX DLL or control, and then working with Poser compressed files is a breeze.
Compression support is in and working correctly. It's been a blessed relief for me to be able to work directly with compressed files in EPU and I suspect other people will find it a relief too when they get their hands on the new version.
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Got to test the Rename Dial button. I know that min and max settings work, forcing limits also works.
I use US settings for numbers - most programming languages expect US settings.
I'm a fairly experienced VB6 programmer myself, so if I can help you out somewhere, give me a yell.
The pen is mightier than the sword. But if you literally want to have some impact, use a typewriter
Quote - Here's a screenshot of the new Dependent Parameters tool (the advanced version- there's a simple version for hand setting the parameters)
Ooo . . . shiny. I like this! No more BBEdit! :)
Quote - That's a good idea. I haven't used "conforming ERC" myself so I haven't looked at how it works, but I'll look into it and see how hard it would be to set up.
From what I've found, you substitute "conformingTarget" for the figure name. The syntax is the same as the rest of ERC. The channels are same as a "default" poser figure and skeleton. If you happen to know the target is V4 or V3, you can also access other channels in those figures, but for the most part, I'm usually doing something like accessing "xrot" of "rShin" of "conformingTarget".
Quote -
Watch out, Kerwin - I might take you up on that. :-)
Feel free to contact me via "rabbitroo" "at" "mac" "dot" "com". I'll be happy to test anything you like or just answer what questions I can.
-Kerwin
Hi Ajax,
EPU's my single most used utility.
Nesting dial groups is a great addition.
Would a 'mirroring' capability be possible_ you know if you set up a set of master slave functions in the lHand you could auto set up the same on the right? I realise there might be tecnical issues around negative/positive dial settings.
The only bug I've ever come across is an intermittent glitch with the figure number reset dial. Occasionally it doesn't display and if it doesn't I've learnt not to apply 'reset to one' as it then adds 'ones' all through your CR2 including to each material texture reference.
Quote - Nesting dial groups is a great addition.
You wouldn't believe how much hassle I had making the nesting part work right. Groan.
Quote - Would a 'mirroring' capability be possible_ you know if you set up a set of master slave functions in the lHand you could auto set up the same on the right? I realise there might be tecnical issues around negative/positive dial settings.
I can see the value of that, but yeah, it would be pretty difficult to account for all those left/right direction issues. My gut reaction is "no way" but I'll think on it. Sometimes I come around to these ideas.
Quote - The only bug I've ever come across is an intermittent glitch with the figure number reset dial. Occasionally it doesn't display and if it doesn't I've learnt not to apply 'reset to one' as it then adds 'ones' all through your CR2 including to each material texture reference.
Ooooooouch. I've notice that sometimes a figure that has been created in the setup room and has never been loaded into Poser and then saved back to the library can be missing it's figure numbers. I'll make sure that the reset button gets disabled on figures that don't have a number.
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Hi Ajax!!!
beyondbent@comcast.net still works, you might have had the @attbi.com email.
I also noticed that sometimes when I use upper case letters on the dials I renamed, it comes out lower case when I open the cr2 file up in poser.
Davo
Ajax,
Could you add the ability to set this line in the Cr2:
hidden 0
Changing this to 1 hides the whole dial setting panel from that body group, and makes it so that the user can't click on that body group. This is useful, for instance, if you have an ERC dial controlling all four wheels on a vehicle, and you don't want the user to individually click on any of the wheels.
This is different from the Show/Hide you have in EPU now,
Which sets the on/off, that actually makes the part invisible, this just makes the dials invisible.
name GetStringRes(1024,1)
off <<<<<<
Your specialist military, sci-fi, historical and real world site.
Can do. I've also added crease angle, polygon smoothing and shading rate, which I thought were probably the ones that most commonly need to be adjusted in a bunch of body parts at the same time.
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Another "most used utilites" user here. Couldn't have done half the poser character hacking I've done as quickly as ith EPU.
Also another one chiming in thinking the mirror feature would be a GREAT time saver! Assuming the figure's rigging is symmetrical, then copying the code over, but reversing the dial "x" amounts would be all you'd need, I'd think. I could be wrong though.
Pretty much that's what I do when rigging.. copy the numbers down on the left side, and then duplicate those on the right, but with the "x" amount inversed (positive to negative, or visa versa).
Way too many people take way too many things way too seriously.
Hmmm, that's two requests for the mirror feature. I guess that means I'll have to put some really serious thought into how to build it.
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I've managed to build in most of the requests from this thread. The main one I haven't done yet is the conformingTarget thing.
I've hit the upper limit for how many controls you can put on a VB6 form, so I need to rationalise some of the existing controls to make room for the conformingTarget tool.
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Heh, heh. Yeah, I'm finding it pretty exiting myself. it's been a while since anything like this happened. I think the geom switching tool was the last one (We can all thank the Dystopia city blocks for that - no way was I going to do all that swiching geometry by hand).
I'm particularly pleased with the dependent parameter support. I haven't seen anybody really using dependent parameters yet, but I think once people start seeing what they can do they'll be popping up everywhere. Of course, most of my ideas for using them involve obscure mechanical things or wriggling tails etc, but where I expect them to make the most difference to Poser is in the area of joint controlled morphs. Imagine how much cleaner you could make a joint look if you could control exactly how much a morph is dialled to for each degree of joint bend. With dependent parameters, you can do exactly that.
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:huh:You're welcome, Charlie. (....SMACK!!!!)
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I'm hoping for eary May. I've been working on this thing since late last year and working on it pretty much full time for the last six weeks, so it's getting close. I just have to hunt down and kill a few more bugs and get the conformingTarget thing working.
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Hi Kerwin,
Madlab-4 will be at daz3d and another expansion pack for it will be at renderotica. (Daz of course won't take the adult version stuff).
Here's a link to an image I did with some of the stuff I made for it:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1417370
I made a LOT of stuff for that package and I am so glad that Ajax is making an update to EPU, it's going to save me so much time in the future, thanks again AJAX!!
Quote - Madlab-4 will be at daz3d and another expansion pack for it will be at renderotica. . .
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1417370
Very cool! Looking forward to it!
-K
Quote - Oh! thought of something else.. will we be able to size the application to full screen? On my 1600x1200 screen here, I'm loosing about 1/4-1/2 of my available screen realestate available
Resizing works really well for forms that consist of a main document window and a few toolbars, but for something like EPU, where there are over 250 separate buttons, text boxes, check boxes, dropdowns etc and no central document area, it's not really practical.
I have to try to keep the form small enough to be sure it will fit on the screen of most Poser users. With version 1, I figured 800 by 600 was probably the minimum screen size you could expect to be commonly used by Poser users. These days I think it's reasonable to assume almost everybody has at least a 1024 by 768 screen res, so I've increased the form size up to 1000 by 750, which seems to be big enough to comfortably fit everything it needs to at the moment.
That leaves unused screen real estate for people with higer res screens, but I'm not really sure how I could use that real estate anyway. The list boxes are about the only thing I could usefully make bigger and most of those have more space in the new layout anyway. Also, a lot of the new tools that pop up in separate windows (eg. hierarchy selector, dial group tool, Value Op Key editor) are resizeable, so where I can see a need for working space, I've tried to meet it with a separate window.
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If you use EasyPose Underground and you know of any bugs in it, could you please drop me a note at ajaxsoyyo@yahoo.com ?
I'm working on the next version and I want to take the opportunity to find and kill any remaining bugs that I might not know about.
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