Just starting out using to animate and I was wondering if there is anything that I should be aware of not doing. Ive read all the manuals and .pdf files but they always leave out the obvious. Should you use the cameras or dials while setting up poses for animation or just use the graph editor, stuff like that. At the moment I feel like Im just about to go for a swim and you know your tipping your toe in seeing what the water is like and whether you should go for it. Just thought if people had experiences of animation jinks that I should be aware of it would be a great help.

There's at least one animation tips thread that's been posted within the last couple of months. I don't have it bookmarked here at work but you might find it if you use the search function and look for "animation."

my favorite tip: Stay in constant and linear until near the end and add spline judiciously. Once you start throwing in the spline work, it is hard to make important big moves, you will end up with a mess. Graphs rock. ::::: Opera ::::

I'm wading in the shallow end. The water is a little cold but you get used to it. I use the animation pallette a great deal, telling where to start and stop splines, where to be linear etc. I will use the graph only when something goes horribly wrong. The graph allows you to see what's happening in a way that makes sense. Leave IK off. But turn it back on for posing subtle movements and fluid motions...then turn it back off again when you're done. Do little chunks at a time, I'd say no more than five seconds a shot. Much more than that and you're going to generate too many ripple effects to keep track of if you need to change anything. Plus, it's a lot easier to render small chunks and stitch them together later. Animate preview-window-only frequently to check your timing. "Retime animation" works pretty well actually, don't be afraid to use it if you're movements come off to slow or too fast. Use a 640x480 preview window if you can, or other derivative of that dimension since that is what clips should fill. Anything else will give you a cropped result anyway. Experiment a lot with magnets and waves to get realistic ripples and gravity effects where needed. Use "Inhale" morph at intervals to bring your models to life. Same with "Blink" (No more than five frames to cycle blink on and off). Stay away from BVH files and walk designer if possible, they make every frame a key frame, which makes it extremely difficult to tweak. That's about it from me. -WTB

I agree with 5 frames for blink.

Stay away from BVH files and walk designer if possible, they make every frame a key frame .... That's what the "Resample Key Frames" function is for, WtB.

Ooooh, something I'd missed :) Thanks LD

Just be warned that resampling can play holy havoc with spline interpolation. But as you're probably well aware, almost any change in keyframes can have that effect.

NEVER NEVER EVER put in your Mimic work before doing the rest of your animation unless you want a whole WORLD of pain.....

I use almost exclusively Spline except I will throw in a Constant at times for a few frames. I see that most everyone likes Linear. I choose Spline because I like the nice and even flow it has. The big problem that you have to watch for is if you don't Spline break, your pose will keep going into an extreme pose. I don't know why you would use a constant unless you are wanting to hold a pose for a number of frames. I use it sometimes, or I will copy the body, or body part and paste a number of frames down the line where I want to pick up the action again. I've never used Linear except more as an experiment. And I know a lot of good animators use it, I just like Spline and the consistant flow it gives. I've seen some nice animations that people have, but I can do anything I want in a complete Spline animation with Spline breaks. I have some little tricks that keep me from always having to use Spline breaks so much. Spline breaks at times can be too abrupt for the natural flow of a movement.

I start with Constant. I set specific key poses - for example the start of the arm movement and then the end of the arm movement. The I convert them to spline. By starting with constant I prevent movement of anything until I really want it to move. I don't use linear unless it's the only thing that works. People don't move linearly. Spline breaks are critical as well. I sometimes use constant keyframes on non-changing elements to simulate 'markers' in the timeline.

WTB: "Leave IK off. But turn it back on for posing subtle movements and fluid motions...then turn it back off again when you're done." Ooooh...I was under the impression that you either have IK on or off the whole way and any change of it applies to the whole animation. Have I been wrong al this time?

No, you're not really wrong. The IK function is either on, or off. But you can turn IK on to assist in adjusting a pose at a specific keyframe, and then turn it off again once you're finished adjusting.

Oh okies :) I was getting all excited here thinking I've been missing out on a new feature. Thanks LD

Another tip: as you develop your skills and preferences, keep in mind that many tasks which seem repetitive and tedious have probably been simplified with a python script. For example, there's Emphasizer by ockham which allows you to modify a specified range of keyframes with a set multiplier and/or offset value. His latest version even adds a random adjustment for more realistic variability in long, initially over-repetitive movements. One doesn't have to master python to make use of some of the great scripts out there (I'm far from a python expert, but there are about a dozen scripts I use all the time).

Good luck!

Message edited on: 04/04/2005 21:10

Often, when a twist and a bend is needed in the right positioning of, say a shoulder, and since only one of them is retained, I do a save of the pz3 and go back to the KF to add whichever was left out - is that what you all do? or is there some nifty trick aside from using the previous or following KF
for the extra motion? Often the latter just doesn't look right.

Message edited on: 04/04/2005 21:27

Thanks you all for replying to my plea, I have saved the page and am looking over and up everything in the manuals and pdf files. When you talk to you people you realise just how far I have to go. Hopefully it will be fun getting there if not a little frustrating at times. Hoping your all having a nice day and happy posing and animating.

At first, you think you have so much to learn, But will start coming to youin gobbs. It seems like you have a mountain, but all of a sudden you will ba able to do most anything within Posers limits, and then some. Then you'll start doing what you like doing the best and at times be a little rusty on some of the most challanging things Poser can do if you haven't done them in a while.

And don't forget you're making a film. It's partly the reason for that 5-second rule, but try and plan out a sequence of shots. The conventions of cinema are used because they work. People are used to them. And you can, if you're not trying for an ultra-real look, get a lot of the action from the cutting between shots, rather than animating what's in the scene.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=2116014

I proffer the exception to William and Antonia about that 5-second rule. Sometimes you need long shots. Yes, I know the young people have been trained by MTV/Music Videos/Action films to the .5 second shot (!) but in good films you still have long shots. 18 seconds. 27 seconds. Even a minute and a half. This usually comes in conversation, especially reaction shots in which the actor gets to move the entire film with the transition of emotion in his/her face. I have not found it to be a problem to make long shots in a single pz3. You just work on sections of it at a time. It is easy to put firewalls between the sections. Judicious use of the camera panning or dollying in the midst of a long-duration shot is effective. ::::: Opera :::::

Hi Opera I was wondering what you meant by firewalls between each section of animation. How do you do that? Im doing a long stretch and am waiting to screw it up; if I could compartmentalize it for safety itd be great. Rory

Rorsdors, before discussion of firewall keys, as long as we are speaking of safety, might I just re-mention incrementals. That means that you save your pz3 out to a new sequential number often? Just stop work once in a while, hit 'SAVE', then go back in and hit "SAVE AS" and save as the next increment. I am working on an animation with a rhino in it now, so rhino01.pz3, rhino02.pz3, etc. That haveing been said, in a long animation you can place a 'firewall' between one section and another. The main reason to do so is that you do not wish changes (especially 'spline' changes) on one side of the wall to affect anything on the other. The way I do it is simply to select two frames completely up and down all elements and mark them 'constant'. The easiest way to select all is to "fold up" all elements by closing the down-pointing triangles into side-pointing. This collapes everything. Then select by clicking on the first element of a frame, shift-click on the last of the next frame. Hit the 'constant' button. ::::: Opera :::::

HI Opera, I am digesting what you have written and my head hurts a bit :) but I have come to expect that with everything new that keeps coming along. If I could pick your brains a bit more, I have been doing an animation and the scene keeps wobbling a lot. I thought it was the character and went in and tried sorting out x and y and z rotations and positioning but no go. I am using the posing camera to look at the figure as I work but have unchecked its animation tad. I dont know. In the front or side camera I dont get the jerking around just face or posing. Maybe its jus time, but any ideas would be gratefully received as its making me sea sick. Rorsdors

LOL :::::: uploading dramamine ::::: I always use the dolly camera as my 'shooting' camera, and the others to 'zip around' and see how things look from the non-shooting point of view. Unchecking the 'animation' toggle SHOULD make the camera stay put. Is it the camera that is moving or something in the scene. You can put the marker at the first frame, make sure the camera is where you want it, and then delete all key frames JUST FOR THE CAMERA. To do that, close up all hirarchies as above. Click in the SECOND frame of the camera. Scroll to the end and Shift-click on the last frame. This selects all frames except frame 1 for the camera. Then, delete (there is a button for it) Make sure 'animate' is indeed turned off for this camera. Now if you still have wobble, post back. ::::: Opera :::::

I use something similar to the firewall when I render multiple cuts in one scene. I also put constant keyframes on items that I'm not animating (like the ground) to use as markers so I can quickly locate parts of sequences in the timeline.

I think the Pose, Hand, and Face cameras are somehow linked to the figure. And they're not Steadicam rigs.

AntoniaTtiger is right, the pose camera is linked to the figure, to stop the wobbling I locked the hip while posing so the fugue was kinda stuck to the positioning. Stopped the wobbling anyway. At the moment Im just experimenting trying out things, the two frames firewall crates a jumpy cut in action. Would you use it for movement on a figure or things? What I mean is I wanted to pause my figure in the action, but no matter how many seconds I gave the pause the figure just moved about. I used the firewall to give a break in the action but it was a little to abrupt. How do you do a pause? People move and stop for a second its not all fluid movement. And while Im being a complete nuance how do you add animations to an animation youre working on. Would you work a section save it as a pose file, then work on another action and import the pose file at the end of that action, if thats what you wanted one action leading into another? Or is there some other better way of doing it? My figure keeps getting jerked to the default position i.e. the zero x,y,z axis. Hope some of that made sense. Rorsdors

The 'firewall' concept, which I use, necessarily brings everything to a frozen halt for two frames. As I normally always have such movments, it is practical.

To make a movement stop non-abruptly, you have to 'spline it to a halt.' This is where graphs rock! I'll describe it in words, sorry no time for illustrated example this AM.

Whatever is in motion...you place two keys at the beginning of a final motion, two at the end of the motion right before the firewall. You make the two inside keys, and all the others in between them, "spline interpolation". Poser will calculate values for all the frames in between based on a beautiful acceleration/decelleration curve, which you can shape in graph mode.

Good luck!

::::: Opera :::::

Message edited on: 04/17/2005 13:25

Message edited on: 04/17/2005 13:27