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Camera plane controls go crazy...

English Bob

Adventurous
Historically I've usually done my camera positioning using the trackball, and the 'Move Y and Z' and 'Move X and Y' plane controls.

However sometimes the plane controls swap functions - I'll go to the Move X and Y control as I have done a million times before, and it starts zooming in and out as if it had become the Move Y and Z control instead. Then I try again and it's fine. I suspect this happened in Poser 9, but I didn't use that much, and it's really become a nuisance now I'm using Poser 11 a lot. Poser 7 never did that, so I assume it's to do with the change in interface. There does seem to be a general sluggishness sometimes, for example when I change a dial value but it doesn't update until after it's had a cup of tea or something.

I haven't found a way to repeat the problem - it usually crops up when I'm trying to get something else done, then as I say it fixes itself so it's hard to get a handle on it. I haven't seen a furore about this on the forums, so maybe it's just me, except that it happens on both my PCs. Is there a setting somewhere? A hotkey I might have pressed by accident?
 

Gadget Girl

Extraordinary
Contributing Artist
Hmm, tried to replicate your issue, but I haven't been able to. Of course I'm on a mac, so my controls are a tiny bit different. However, although I use the camera trackball a lot, usually I use a right click to do that sort of movement. So maybe it's related to that? Just a guess.
 

Miss B

Drawing Life 1 Pixel at a Time
CV-BEE
I have both Poser 9 and PoserPro 11, but I've never used the trackball to move my cameras, so not sure what would cause that to happen.
 

English Bob

Adventurous
Thanks for looking, anyway, folks. If it was a widespread problem I would expect to have seen other people posting about it. Maybe I'm the only one left using those old Poser 3 style controls? :)

I may raise this with Smith Micro support.
 

English Bob

Adventurous
It happened again today. Although I tried going over the same steps (I thought it might be connected with going from parameter dials to camera controls), I couldn't get the problem to repeat. Argh. :mad:
 

Gadget Girl

Extraordinary
Contributing Artist
It happened again today. Although I tried going over the same steps (I thought it might be connected with going from parameter dials to camera controls), I couldn't get the problem to repeat. Argh. :mad:

Sorry to hear that. Those are the worst problems because you don't know if it's you, Poser or the system.
 

English Bob

Adventurous
I feel sure it must be Poser, because Poser 7 never did this; I'm running P11 on the same systems, and still go back to P7 from time to time. Of course the words "I feel sure it must be..." have often preceded an apology when 'it' turned out to be nothing of the sort. :oops:

I sometimes have to tell my colleagues that if I can't replicate their problem, I can't fix it. I can't very well go to SM and ask them to perform the same impossible task...
 

Gadget Girl

Extraordinary
Contributing Artist
I feel sure it must be Poser, because Poser 7 never did this; I'm running P11 on the same systems, and still go back to P7 from time to time. Of course the words "I feel sure it must be..." have often preceded an apology when 'it' turned out to be nothing of the sort. :oops:

I sometimes have to tell my colleagues that if I can't replicate their problem, I can't fix it. I can't very well go to SM and ask them to perform the same impossible task...

So true. I often found it difficult to convince people to 'do the thing' that causes their issue. Sometimes it's user error, but sometimes just seeing how it fails gives you that Aha! moment on how to fix it.
 

English Bob

Adventurous
I found the answer, with the help of Smith Micro support.

Holding down the CTRL key modifies the action of the controls. The Move X and Y control becomes a Move Z control, the Move Y and Z control becomes a Move X control, and so on. In other words, each control is modified to move only in the axis that it didn't previously affect, and it was that behaviour that I was seeing. The tooltip doesn't change to reflect this, so it's confusing if you don't realise that can happen.

Although I wasn't deliberately holding CTRL, in every case I had probably just used it to access a keyboard short-cut - I use those a lot, especially for switching between cameras. It seems the interface can sometimes be sluggish to respond to the CTRL key release, and thinks it's still pressed when it isn't. Poser 7's interface was a bit snappier and didn't have that problem.

Of course they should pep up the interface, but at least I know what to look out for next time.
 

Miss B

Drawing Life 1 Pixel at a Time
CV-BEE
I wouldn't have thought that would be the issue, but I'm glad you got it figured out. Certainly something to keep in mind if it should happen again.
 
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