Ok, I'm a little stumped! I want to make an animation of two characters playing "catch", but it seems complicated. I'm not proficient with animation yet, so bear with me. How can I keep the ball in the character's hand while he "winds up" to pitch it to the other person without having to move it frame by frame along with the hand itself? Same thing after the other person catches the ball... how to then keep the ball in his hand after the catch? Maybe there's something easy I'm missing. I tried to enable Inverse Kinmatics, but it doesn't seem to work, unless I'm doing it wrong. I know there must be an easy way, but what is it? Using Poser 6, by the way.

Multiple balls.

One ball parented to the pitcher's hand ... when he "releases" it, scale it down and move it inside the hand so it's no longer visible.

One ball "on the fly" ... off-camera until the pitcher releases, then it snaps into position and is keyframed through its parabolic arc, snapping offscreen again just as it reaches the catcher's hand.

One ball parented to the catcher's hand ... scaled down and hidden inside the hand, which scales up and becomes visible at the moment the ball is caught.

You'll need spline breaks to pull off some of these instant changes.

WOW! Thank you, Little Dragon! This sounds a little advanced, but I think I see what you mean. Coupple questions: how do I make a parabolic arc? Is this like a path the ball will follow automatically? Will I need to keyframe the ball's trajectory, or is there a way to automate that part? Also, I'm not sure how to do spline breaks. I know where the animation graph is, but how do put breaks in the lines? Thank you for the quick response!

in case it helps, this tutorial may help as it runs through the method Little Dragon mentioned and should certainly get you through how to do the ball transfer (may also cover the question about the animation graph)

on the trajectory not sure - personally, within Poser, I'd probably put in an object as a reference (eg. a cylinder primitive) then key frame it - there's a python script in the Free Stuff here that applies gravity, so may be worth a look - not sure if would help, but may at least be worth checking out

Message edited on: 10/07/2005 03:13

Spline breaks are created by clicking the spline-break button on the animation graph or palette. It's the rightmost dark-green button, next to the interpolation modes.

Thank you both for the info! Much appreciated. I've been working on it, and I think I might have it now.

Attached Link: Towards Walk Paths for Props

One way to make a prop follow a parabolic curve is to use a Walk Path and the Walker3D figure. See the link above for details. Another way is to use one of VK's figures, from this URL: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12351&Form.ShowMessage=2327074 Ockham made a Python script that could also do the job, but I don't have a link for it.

Attached Link: http://ockhamsbungalow.com/Python/Gravity.zip

Here's the script. It's sort of primitive, but it does create a trajectory complete with bounces.

Here is a crappy little animation I did to illustrate Little_Dragon's point: "One ball parented to the pitcher's hand ... when he "releases" it, scale it down and move it inside the hand so it's no longer visible." And also to show a parabolic path made using a Walk Path and the Walker3D figure. I made the ball parented to the hand and the ball following the path diffrent colours so that you can see where the transition takes place.

Here is another animation mad using walk paths and the Walker3D figure.