Hey people... first of all thanks for reading this.. Its now 4.59AM. I just stopped working on my new character.. Its also the first time i tryed the animation feature. Well this is my problem.. i'l try to explain it good: I got my character, Michael 3 I did this clicked on frame 30 : twisted his head -30 clicked on frame 100: twisted his head +30 clicked on frame 160: twisted his head 00 clicked on frame 200: bend his head -25 So, this would make him look to one side.. then to other side.. then get back to normal pose that is "look forward" and then bend his head a litle down.. right? So far so good.. So then.. i played with his arms and the camera.. trying to make Matrix Style.. he hould look both sides.. then bend his head a little.. then we would bend down, then the camera would rotate and focus on his hands.. but when i rendered it.. the animations were all together.. But after 4.5 hours of work.. i decided to render the animation to see if there was some mistake... the mistake was that the moves were all mixing... How can i fix this.. i mean.. this was my first animation.. it toke me more than 5hours of work.. i come with this problem.. and all this because.. i had read Poser help and there it says: " Poser uses a technique called keyframe animation to simulate motion based on a series of still poses.. You set up a series of poses at different points in time.. These are the keyframes.. Poser fills in the gaps, creating the illusion of motion.. this keeps you from having to move your figure each time you want to create a motion... " I hope i could explain myself.. Thanks for reading all this..

When you move to a specific frame and manually change a channel's value, a keyframe is set for that channel only. So, twisting Michael's head at frame 160 only sets a keyframe for the Twist value. When you moved to frame 200 and bent the head, that created your first keyframe for the Bend channel. Poser is interpolating the Bend value from frame 1 to frame 200.

If you want Michael's head to bend only from frames 160 to 200, you'd have to set a Bend keyframe at frame 160, also.

Notice the plus/minus buttons on the animation controls? These will record/erase keyframes for all channels simultaneously.

You might want to try linear interpolation, rather than the default spline interpolation; it's easier to predict changes. The interpolation mode can be chosen from the Animation Palette. Linear-interpolated frames are represented by gold blocks in the Palette; spline-interpolated frames are green.

Hi Fredzz, WATCH OUT for those insideous "overshoot" and "undershoot" conditions. Check for erroneous parameter values using the "graph" window. Just a thought. cheers, dr geep ;=]

Yeah posers spline interpolation really sucks. Just the other day I loaded a character and ONLY animated the feet walking and also moved the waist to keep up with the feet. The result was that the charcter flew into the air, came back down and then started walking. I've never had a problem so severe in Truespace or MAX.

Attached Link: the eagle

Poser still has one of the easiest to use set of character animation tools it has a comprehensive Graph editor and Dope Sheet(aka "animation pallette") First of all you can easily prevent "overshoot" by setting some place holder frames before and after your main key frames this is done in the graph editor where you should be animating anyway. put poser in bounding box/lit wirefram mode so you will have realtime feed back close all other pallets and open the dope sheet for easy access to ALL of your channels and open the graph editor and set your animation length (number of frames) to an amount you think you will need (You add more later if needed) and set key frames in the **GRAPH EDITOR** for the channels you wish to animate.

Hm.. im a little new to poser.. so here's my question.. Do i need to delete all moves i made.. or i can go.. lets see.. i could go to frame 160, where his head start bending and click on the plus sign.. and then, everytime i want other move i would go to that fram.. click on the + sign and bend / twist or do whatever i wanned, right? or i need to start my animation again.. By the way.. could u guys explain better the linear interpolation ,spline interpolation and that stuff..? Cuz well.. poser is kinda hard.. and i would get it.. if i had a nice explanation of a nice guy =) Thanks very much :D

LInear is hard motion. IN other words when you want the foot to go from point a to point b it does so at a constant. Whereaas spline interpolation causes the foot to overshoot a little and the speed is not constant. its the intent of spline interpolation to offer a more realistic motion. Problem is that sometimes(more often than not) those "overshoots" are extreme. I've set "placeholder" keys in the past and I still got all f'ed up. If your animation is all f'ed up then yeah, start over. but if its not too bad you can set key frames and change things with what you already have. But be careful because if you make 1 small change your poser dork could soon be auditioning for a role in the exorcist. Posers spline graph and "dope sheet" are at best mediocure(spelling?). For one it would be great to animate the body parts in layers(think photoshop). A little OT. Posrs walk designer is poor as well in that lets say you want to walk the character for 150 frames. You setup your walk path and unfortunatley the path is either too long or too short. Te character is basically just translated down the path while doing a walking motion. But eally the character is "moom walking" All be it in a foward motion. I suggest downloading Caligari TrueSpace. Its interface is easy as all get out. practice animating some of the boned characters it provides and you will get the hang of it. TrueSpace isn't perfect but it animates better than Poser. The animation concepts are the same across any 3D animation tool. Its just that Truespaces's is less sloppy.

You can also download some Poser Python scripts that help with animation. One of the most useful is the "de-skate" script, which helps to solve the problem of feet sliding when using walk designer.

im not gonna work with walk designer.. thanks anyway :)

To avoid this problem in future, use the add keyframe button to add a keyframe to the whle figure. To fix this problem, use the Animation palette. You can use the mouse to click and drag and select a vertical line of keyframes. You can then copy them to the frame required. You can even drag a selected group of keyframes for fine tuning. You can also select a horizontal line of and element and apply the appropriate transition. I mostly use linear- wish that was the default!- and use spline sparingly. When creating an animation, I'd recommend picking two points- set up the first pose and the last and then do what's called in-betweening. The easiest way to do this is pick a mid point and adjust it to the correct position. Then keep picking mid-points between the key frames till you are happy with the result. For example, a person jumping from point a to b. Create the pose for the character when he's about to jump at point a in frame 1. Create the pose for the landing at say, frame 30 (you can always drag these keyframes to a different point later if it's not right). Now go to frame 15. You'll find the character is midway between the two points, so set the height and the pose you want for the mid jump position. Note- The Y parameter would be a good use of the spline effect. You'll probably need to go to frames 7 and 22 to create inbetween poses and then keep fine-tuning till you are happy with it. How many in-betweens you create will depend on how complicated the motion you are trying to capture is. A wak often has very small gaps between key-frames where-as the movement of a car in a straight line would not require any in-betweens. Hope that helps!

A Wak is a type of walk, if you were wondering! :0) P.S. There are loads of boks on animation, but a really smart, very visual explanation of the basics of animation are covered very well in a book called The Animator's Workbook by Tony White.

...and boks are a type of books! :0)