Hiyas. I faced a problem (da-daa!): I have a small animation where Mike grabs a bottle of whiskey from the ground and is supposed to take a sip from it. After several days of real-life testing I figured out how I want the movement to be done. As Mike is taking a hold of the bottle, I'm trying to set Mike's hand as bottle's parent. Image shows it doesn't quite work. I reload the file (thanks Curious Las for not giving me multiple Undos), use my head and decide to 1)select Mike's hand and 2)use the "Set figure parent..." 3)where I select new figure parent as the bottle. That doesnt work either. Am I missing something? Not sure if the text in images are correct -I lost track which one is other's parent:) -Hilt

One big limitation of Poser is that you CAN'T change parenting in the middle of an animation. There are two solutions: split the frames, or play with scale. In this case I think splitting the frames would be best. Start the motion with the bottle on the ground, unparented. Run up to the point where Mike has his hand fully grasping the bottle. Make this the last frame by setting the number of frames equal to this frame. Memorize everything. Save the PZ3. Go back to frame 1. Restore everything. Cut the frame count down to 1. Parent the bottle to the hand. Then add more frames and continue the motion. Save this as a new PZ3 name.

Yes, I thought I'd run into worst case scenario like that. "Worst case" as I'm rendering the animation in Vue D'esprit, which is synonym for "hard accurate positioning".

Time for some serious concentrating I guess:)

-Hilt

Let me see if I can explain this? You'll need 2 of the bottles. One that isnt parented and one that is. Thats easy. Place it in the spot that you want. Memorize it and add to library and then add second. When he picks up the bottle (choose best frame) switch the bottles. There is alot to it but maybe you get the basic idea. Worked well for me once. This should be renderable in VUE. Just have the bottle you are not useing way, way off in 3D space.

Here's an old solution I learn't from Grey in the old PFO. This maybe what lynnJohnathan is trying to describe as I don't get what he's saying. You need two bottles, one parented to Mike's hand and the other on the table. The bottle in Mike's hand should be scaled to 0% in frame 1 so you can't see it. At the frame Mike's hand grasps the bottle, set a key frame for both bottles. In the very next frame we switch the bottles by setting the scale of the bottle in Mikes hand to 100% and the standing bottle to 0%. Hey presto! That's it!

Instead of scaling it to 0%, couldn't you just make it invisible in those frames? I haven't tried it so I don't know it it would work though :o)

I suppose you could use the transparency material, which can be animated in poser 5, to do that, but I'd've thought setting scale to 0% would be easier.