Protip: using the hand library for other poses

[English Bob]

I don't remember seeing this before, but those of us who date back to Poser 4 (if we care to admit it) may remember having to use the camera, hand and light libraries to hold MAT poses once the 'official' pose library was full. MAT poses are old hat now, of course, and the modern Poser library no longer has a hard-coded limit on the number of items it can contain. Anyway, here's the tip:

The hand library can contain poses which affect other body parts.

Why might this be useful? If you have a collection of partial poses which pose just an arm or a leg, this is a way to apply them to either the right or left side without having to save two copies. The library will ask you whether the pose should affect the right or left. I probably use partial poses at least as often as I use full-body ones, since pre-made poses hardly ever seem to have all the features I want. I often apply a full body pose and then customise it by adding partial poses, for example to make the figure's arm reach for or hold something. Or scratch their head, although that's a pose I adopt myself, more often than my Poser people do.

How can you make your own? Save the pose as usual, remembering of course to use the 'subset' button to select only the body parts you want to include. Note the following points however:

• This trick only works on poses saved from the right hand side of the body.
• As implied, you don't need to include any hand parts at all - it works equally well on legs.

Once the pose is saved, change its extension from PZ2 to HD2, and move it to your hand library along with the associated PNG thumbnail and the XMP if you're using Poser 11 or higher.

Hope this will be useful to someone, and if you already knew about it, well, good for you.