| | Actor Predeclaration is the practice of bringing a Poser object into existence before defining any of its parametres.
Generally geometry is loaded at the same time, but this is not a requirement.
In it's simplest form, actor predeclaration occurs by simply stating the object and thus abjuring its existence:
actor BODY
{
}
In the more complex forms which include Geometry Loading as a part of predeclaration, various techniques for loading geometry will occur here.
It is also possible to define non-heirarchy-dependent? properties in the predeclaration, such as name?, though this is rarely done in practice and Poser will rewrite the definition information to the Definition? block instead when it resaves the items included.
Note that there are some types of things (magnets and other deformers, lights, etc) which can be defined without declaration and work, while others will not work without declaration. However, at the point of declaration the object of whatever type begins to 'exist' (and thus does not begin to exist until defined if this is left out). This means that heirrchical structures can be damaged by leaving out an object in the declaration. For instance, a light will load up fine without being predeclared, but if that light has a child prop, the prop will be parentless and the file will not load up as intended.
In general it is best to predeclare everything that is a Poser object (actor, prop, light, camera, etc) and then define them even if declaration is not technically necessary.
Poser will predeclare any object when it writes a file.
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