Hello everybody, I'm working on a simple animation of a man sitting on a chair...it is almost finished except for the feet which go back and fourth on the floor during the animation. I need to fix them in a precise place for all the frames. How can I do? Please help me...

Select your figures left foot Go to Window -> Graph (Shft+ctrl+G) This is the spline editor. It is very scary, but it's the secret :) delete all the little hash marks by slecting them and then clicking the minus sign, or selecting them and then clicking the straight line in the bottom left series of buttons. In the upper right, you'll notice a drop down. You'll want to zero out all three directions (bend, twist, turn). Then do it again with the right foot. You can actually do fine adjustments of Everything in your scene using this. THe problem is that you can only do one thing at a time. It's scary, tedious, and a pain, but the result is awesome...

Actually, you can open the keyframe editor and delete the keyframes from all but the first frame. Drag select the keyframes to select them all then hit the delete key. Do the same for the other foot and you will be set. Deleting the keyframe deletes all the animation data from the foot. You can also expand the element (foot in this case) and delete keyframes from just the animation tracks you want. ynsaen is right about the graph editor being good for fine adjustments to your animation. I use it extensively to adjust movement on my characters. Cheers, Joe

Isn't this an IK question? (inverse kinematics) Turn it on from the Figure pulldown menu.

gmadone: Great question! I was going on the assumption that the IK is turned on for the feet since it is on by default in most cases for Poser figures. All the figures that ship with Poser are that way. Even if IK is turned on the foot can still be animated giving the floaty foot syndrome. In this case, deleting the keyframes for the feet will fix the problem. If the IK is turned off for the legs they will not be "pinned" at the foot. This means that any animation in any of the elements for the leg has the potential of moving the foot around. In this case the keyframes will need to be deleted for the offending element (element that has the animation data causing the movement). Cheers, Joe

I'm no newcomer to Poser. But I feel for the originator of this string, as I've been fighting a curious "feature" of Poser since Poser 4 was a baby (and into SR4 of Poser 5). Has anybody figured out how to switch between IK and non-IK for segments of an animation without screwing up previous hard work? Works fine for static images, but have yet to find it useful for animation. I sometimes use IK to first approximate the position of a limb target. It is also good to have on when playing with limb params further down tree (like subtly changing the collar without moving the hand). But it does TERRIBLE things to the rotation/bend/twist params of the hand! So, if I've used IK to help me establish a rough pose, I turn it off and fix the hand params. It'd be nice to use the strengths of IK/non-IK modes when posing key frames in an animation..... but, like I said above, Poser won't let me limit the number of frames that gets affected whenever I change modes.... so things REALLY screw up! When using IK continuously in an animation, I find limb angles "jumping" from frame to frame. So even staying in the IK mode, which would SIGNIFICANTLY HELP TO PREVENT SKATING (if it worked properly), isn't terribly helpful. I've e-mailed Curious a while back now, with thoughts of what might be looked at to fix the problem (including increasing the precision of the IK algorithms). But they've never offered me the courtesy of a reply. (ARE YOU LISTENING, CURIOUS LABS, THE FOLKS WHO CLAIM POSER IS A SUPERB ANIMATION PACKAGE?)

I have always used either IK or non-IK to do my work. If I know I want to use both in a particular animation sequence I tackle it in one of 2 ways. This may not help your situation since I never try to mix the two by using Ik and then trying to turn it off and adjust the same area of animation. I have found that (like you stated) they don't play well together. I have adjusted my way of thinking to tackle the situation and come up with the best workaround that I can. Anyway here is what I do. 1. I storyboard the animation and decide which areas that I want to use IK. 2. I start animating the scene. 3. If I have IK on for this sequesnce, I animate up to the point that it is no longer required. 4. Save the scene for backup 5. Drag select ALL the elements of the figure out to the end of the current animation. Example I have animated out to 60 frames so I select all element for all 60 frames. 6. Then I select the "add keyframe button in the animation pallete. This adds keyframes to all elements for all the animkated frames. This LOCKS them into place. By doing this the interpolation between keyframes can't get messed up because there is no space between the keyframes to interpolate. 7. Now you can turn of IK and animate the non-IK section of the animation and lock it into place using the same steps to add keyframes to all elements. One drawback to this is that you need have your animation complete and not plan on changing it in the future since you (for all intensive purposes) are gluing the animation into place. Here is the second way I do it. I will assume that the first part is animated with IK on. 1. Animate the sequence with IK on out to the point where no IK is needed. Lets say it's 60 frames. 2. Save the file as scene01.pz3. 3. Save a pose of the figure at frame 60. NOT ANIMATED... Just a single pose at frame 60. 4. Delete all the keyframes 5. Turn off IK for the figure 6. Save as scene02.pz3 7. Make sure you are at frame 1 and apply the saved pose. 8. Now continue animating with non-IK. 9. Repeat this process when you need to go back to IK. When you are finished with the animation you can splice the frames together in an editing program. Advantage: you can adjust the animation in the differant files because you haven't baked them with keyframes. I hope this helps. I know it isn't a simple sollution but it works for me. It may not even be the best way to do it. I just allows me to get my work done. Cheers, Joe

Thanx for the reply, Joe. I pretty much discarded the first approach for the reasons stated, and will play with the second idea. But working with IK is still bad news for Poser Animation - even when working with the package's built-in walk designer. On too many occasions, the knee angle of the model "snaps" from a non zero value (slightly bent) to a zero value so that a jarring discontinuity occurs in the animation... or the knee joint snaps from vertical to one side, or something else that COMPLETELY ruins the continuity of the animation. As the feet are being locked from skating, this means having to search through many other parameters, hopefully (haven't always been succesful) to find where I can tweak a parameter so that it won't be noticeable, but so that the knee joint won't snap around without control. Has anybody else seen this phenomenon?