or Using Scripts To Control Figures ... One of the major things that I nave never liked about Poser is that all the actors in a figure have to be positioned seperately. I created a simple figure and PoserPython scripts that demonstrate that this is no longer the case. The figure is just a fly-wheel, a link and a piston simulating a very simple motor. By running the script on the figure, the link and piston are positioned correctly as the wheel spins. There are two flavors of script. One increments the wheel 15 degrees each time the script button is clicked. The other will spin the wheel through four revolutions. This one is basically an animation in real-time without having to render. I've make an animated .gif file of the figure in motion. I used the first script to set a position for a keyframe every 5 frames and bump the wheel to that position. It's a little rough since I don't do much animation work. It's also pretty big (493K) so I'm putting it at a seperate link. You can see it here: http://bushi3d.com/images/Machine1.gif You can also download the scripts and the figure here: http://bushi3d.com/PythonScripts/Machine1.zip Though this is a very simple demo, it does show that complex motions in a figure can be accomplised using scripting. I see a lot of applications for this technique. I hope to have a more complex example done in the near future.

This is very clever and exciting Bushi. Scripting and such goes way above my head but I hope you pursue this further as it could expand Posers animation capabilities greatly. Colm...

it has been a years of concern, that walk designer is used for crearting walk style animation on the fly, but there are many many other movements need this function, I assume python script can take this. BTW I have been thought of using BVH data to analyse some basic human movement and categoriez them for easy use. waving, sitting, pondering, triping, shaking head... just too many to come up with. both should help us shorten our learning process for realistic human movement.

Thanks Bushi. You are awsome. You've always been there the last few months to show me how much I still need to learn!

Thanks all! Colm - Yes, I agree. It would be a powerful technique if developed. I'm thinking as a next example I'd do a classic 50's type flying-saucer. Using script-control it would be possible to do things like having the doors for the landing gear open and the struts deploy all together off a slider-bar in the script window. Scripts like this could save many hours when posing and animating figures and poseable props. It's not limited to new figures either. You could write control scripts for any figure that works in Poser 4. pro - I don't see any reason you couldn't implement similiar scripts using data like you're collecting. I used some simple trigenometry during runtime to do this script but I could have also just used a list of values for each setting to do the same thing. My approach is a little less cumbersome for small angles. With a large number of part changes like you'd see in a movement like sitting, a list would probably be a better option. Hypatia - We're all somewhere along the learning curve. Just remember to help those you can. :-)

and again bushi leads the way....why am i not surprised? you have had my respect and admiration for quite some time now... keep strokin...

JAFO - Thank you, that's very kind. I do seem to be on the 'bleeding edge' a lot. Probably more from a short attention span then from anything else. ;-) I DO like pushing the bounds. Sometimes it works, more often it doesn't. This one could be big though. The problem seems to be that most folks haven't really figured out what scripts are much less what they can do. My thought is that if I keep throwing real examples out there eventually scripting will catch on. It pretty much parallels when I started talking about making poseable props in Poser 3. There really wasn't much interest till I figured out how to build them and posted examples. After that the ball really got rolling. Hopefully, history will repeat itself here.