was trying out some new maps today and somehow hit the wrong key....anyway, what I found was that by using the up/down/left/right arrows, I could move my posette from one position to another in incremental steps (or tweaks). Now it's a while since I read the manual, but I don't remember ANY of this stuff! So I messed around with it a while and the deal is this... open a posette, turn off IK, limits and any locks, add a pose, then keep hitting the left and right arrows until something happens. it seems to be slow to start, but once it gets going, you should be able to go from the pose in which you opened her (or him), to the new pose in tiny steps. second - if you use the 'home' and 'end' keys, you can move from the first pose to the second in one jump. now, this had me baffled for a while, but I eventually discovered (about 3 nervous breakdowns later) that to add a new pose, you have to select the 'home' key. then you can tweak from the newer position to the second one. if you select 'end', you can add another pose, and tweak between your new home pose and your new end pose. wildly complicated, but I finally cracked it. on top of that, if you hit 'enter', posette will do a box-tracked animation of the whole sequence (I already knew that one). The other thing I knew was that the up/down arrows take you through the sequence of body parts, change cameras, etc, but this pose tweaking is totally new to me! so, maybe I'm getting excited about something that everyone else yawns over, but s**t....I think it's amazing. someone like Schlabber could work miracles with this! Posetweak RULES!!! additional stuff - messing with the keys - hitting spacebar/esc/alt/right arrow takes you through the menus (to get into a menu, use down). that was another novelty to me, probably keyboard freaks know all this stuff, but that one doesn't work in others progs. you have to use alt/menu letter. hope I haven't bored you all to death with this stuff, but I'm soooo excited!! so, tell me...am I a complete cretin or what? maclean

New one to me. Got to give it a try. Sounds interesting. Thanks!

Well, I already knew about the "enter" command by accident. I was playing around with an amination I made and I brushed my enter key and all of a sudden it started playing the animation. I'm confused. what do you mean by "select the 'home' key"? Is that the same as press the home key?

And is that a transmapped catsuit you got there? It's really cool. where can I get it?

blau, yes "select the home key" does mean press it. just my Scottish way of saying things! the catsuit is what I was doing when this whole thing started. if you're interested, I was trying out 'negative reflection maps' (which I call blackchrome maps). basically, all I did was invert a few reflection maps to see what would happen. it's interesting, but not quite there yet. if I get it sussed, I'll post it. maclean

Okay played with this and see what is happening. The left arrow - right arrow move the animation frame one frame at a time left or right. The home key takes you to the first frame and the end key to the last frame. Enter runs the animation (in box setting or whatever preview setting you have selected. Silly me, when you first described it I thought it was all happening in a single frame, somehow cycling one pose on top of another. Oh well.

Cretin? Don't be so hard on yourself! This is really cool, guy -- thanks for sharing this with us :o) Jim Moore

Okay here is another shortcut. If you setup key frames in the animation, the tab button will advance to the next key frame. Thanks again for posting this. I find the keyboard shortcuts easier to work with then clicking on the little arrows to advance the frames in animation. Like Jim said, really cool!

yeah, this is basically an animation thing, which I don't do much of, so maybe that's why I never came across it. but for inventing new poses...wow, it's great! I already found the 'tab' key shortcut, shadownet, except I didn't have animation open when I was doing all this, so all it did was take me to the first pose. re the catsuit, I just found the most incredible combination of bump maps and 'blackchromes', and once I get it organised, I'll post the entire circus in one package. believe me, the possiblities are endless!! maclean

I don't see anything on my quick reference card that shows how to do this so you have really discovered something that it too cool! What a nice guy to share with the rest of us Cretins....lol Marque

wait... hitting the up and down arrow keys cycles through the body parts?? i gotta try that one! (always wanted to tab through them.)

Maclean you deserve a medal for sharing this. An accident it may have been but the angels were guiding your fingers. Like some of the others I am not into animation so maybe those that are know all about this. Nerd and Rob Whisenant check this out it may have significance for your discoveries on EMCs I just tried a very simple little experiment and it worked beautifully. Load up your P4 figure select a pose (I chose one of Schlabbers standing models with arms behind her head) Enlarge e.g. her breasts to say double (I wanted to be able to see the effect), save the pose in your pose libray and say yes to the inclusion of morph channels. Bring the figure back to the basic pose, load another pose (I used another Schlabber standing pose with hands by her sides) this time reduce the breasts to smaller than normal and save the pose and morph channels into the library. Okay here goes, clear your figure, load up a new P4 fem and uncheck (inverse Kinetics, etc. by the way if you don't you get some other interesting effects) Pick one of your two saved poses, apply and then hit the home key, apply the second pose and play with the arrows and watch her move from pose to pose and watch her breasts change size incrementally. This has incredible potential, posing hair for instance or cloths, by simply loading up two poses with differing morphs applied a whole range of suble morphing effects and poses can be achieved. which can be saved as poses and MT's. Wow my mind is boggling. Just think using this method we can with a little bit of planning recreate the million dollar plus scene in the film "a Werewolf in London" where a man metamorphosises into a wolf, in Poser. Thank you maclean. STORM

wow, storm!!! I'll pass that medal onto you! how did you ever come up with that one? it's incredible! my mind is utterly boggled at the possiblities. tweaked morphs on demand! what a blast! gotta try this one ASAP. just goes to show that cooperation and sharing pay off for everybody. maclean

Thanks Maclean. Another thought just entered my (by now) frenzied lump of jelly that calls itself a brain. If you play with this you notice that there are a number of incriment poses between the first and last (about twenty from memomy). However, instead of running through the sequence all the way, stop at say pose 5 and save it and the morph targets as a new pose then re-run the sequence again from the first pose with this new pose as the end pose. I have not tried it, but this should give a much more suble transformation sequence. One could then take the new saved pose as the next start point and redo the above saving the next no.5 pose as a new end point and get a second very subtle sequence etc etc until one ends up with hundreds of frames for a dozen or so sequences running between the very first two poses one used. Put all these together and..... I don't know anything about animation but this could be of great use to those into it. For instance one could, using a number of sequences generated by the above start changing the morphs, perhaps expanding the chest, if it works it could simulate breathing, or the effects of gravity on the muscles of a runner's face. Putting all the differing sequences together (which starts and finishes with the same two poses one first used) one could introduce breathing, gravity and a whole host of other effects really easily and quickly to produce highly realistic keyframe animation. Maybe all this is already being done by the animators and I am meerly stating the obvious. I dunno. STORM

WOOOO!!!! I'm too tired to even think about this. it's 4am in Italy and I'm working on maps. but you might be onto something. are you sure the rate is fixed? guess it must be. will try it out tomorrow. (slumps to floor in a heap of quivering exhaustion) maclean

Oh wow! Lot's of neato stuff I missed while I was away. This is really cool. Thanks to both pf you for discovering and expanding on this. Casey

Incredible! Thanks a lot for sharing. These definitely are a major improvement in posing. Why doesn't MetaCreations document things like these?

I don't animate much either, but these shortcuts sound very cool! As for this part by Storm: "For instance one could, using a number of sequences generated by the above start changing the morphs, perhaps expanding the chest, if it works it could simulate breathing, or the effects of gravity on the muscles of a runner's face. Putting all the differing sequences together (which starts and finishes with the same two poses one first used) one could introduce breathing, gravity and a whole host of other effects really easily and quickly to produce highly realistic keyframe animation" This is exactly the effect JCM gives, except all you have to do implement it once in the CR2 and it will all happen automatically from then on. See more on it at Whiz and Nerd's sites, andor do it with three clicks and a number in CR2Edit. I would LOVE to start seeing some models using this, the excitement shown here is impressive, and it is SO easy to do if you are any good at all at making morphs or utilizing existing ones. I'm not, but there are sample pics of a JCM'ed figure here, and the CR2 is free: http://members.fortunecity.com/dwilmes/BreastJCM.html And here is a lousy animation: http://www.neca.com/~dwilmes/bounce.zip Dan http://www.neca.com/~dwilmes/cr2edit.html

Hi Dan Just been to your site and downloaded Cr2Edit(sent you an e-mail.) I have been looking at the morph channels in Pz2 files and as you say its just one figure that changes everything for a morph in the Pz2 files as well. Off the top of my head it strikes me that JCM's could be further refined by use of the morph chanels in Pz2 files and by the use of macleans incrimental posing discovery. I don't know enough about Jcm's but from what little I understand this seems to be possible, generating a double control effect on morphing and posing. Cutting and pasting sections of poses and morph chanels is so easy and fast it could easily be used with Jcm's to refine effects. I dunno, maybe I am spouting a load of blt as it is nearly 4AM here and I am dog-tired. STORM

Hi Storm, by now you have the reg. version and have had your questions answered. CR2Edit automates the cutting and pasting and control-ratio choosing that creates JCM. And you can create pose files for any part or parts in combination, the JCM will go along with the pose, just click on the body parts you want to include, watch the hourglass for maybe half a second, and you have a new pose file that will only effect the parts you have chosen, not the entire figure. Dan

have been playing with this, tweaking the morphs, and some of the effects are pretty impressive, I must say. using various face morphs (heroine, big nose, ears, etc) you can get some amazing pseudo-animation effects. it's all still a bit unpredictable (at least for me). sometimes it takes a while to get going, or I get the wrong sequence of poses, but it's still pretty mega-mind-blowing just to watch it. someone needs to do a mini-tutorial on this one. maclean

Well, MacLean - I'll read this all at home and let's see if I could make miracles with this ... :-) Thanks for the compliments You'll hear from me ...