I've dabbled in animation when working with dyanamic clothing, but is it possible to do an animation without having to use dynamic clothing? I want to take Aiko from a default zero pose to a finished premade dance pose. What I would like to be able to do is to do the animation in Poser, then render off selected frames from the animation, so that people in my graphic groups can use them to assemble into animated .gifs if they want, or be able to use them as individual images. The only thing is that I don't know how to do animation in Poser without using dynamic clothing and doing a simulation in the cloth room.

For what you want to do, with conforming clothes
or no clothes, just

(1) set Aiko in the zero pose

(2) Set the frame count (red arrow here) to your
desired maximum. By default it's 30, which is
probably good for this purpose.

(3) Use the animation controls (green arrow here)
to go to last frame.

(4) Apply the dance pose.

Then you can slide the animation slider
to the various frames and render at each frame.

Message edited on: 10/12/2005 23:25

You can also render the whole animation as still images and then just pick out the images you want to use.

I also discovered that if you do one figure first, then import the second figure as an imported pz3 in the scene, you get some pretty interesting movements - like two people dancing !

Could you expand on that Infinity? It sounds interesting!

Yes, Infinity, could you explain it?

Thanks Ockham. That does sound easy enough that even I can do it :) I'm going to try that now. Xantor, how do I render a whole animation as still images? Do you mean to save it as an animated .gif and then use animation shop to save the frames that I want to use? Infinity, that sounds a bit too complicated for me at this stage, but I will keep it in mind for once I get the hang of animation. Thank you for the idea.

In the animation menu select make movie and select image files to save the animation as still images, then you can make an animated gif out of the frames when they are rendered.

Well, I came across this purely through accident (I ain't no expert !). I did one simulation with one figure. Saved that. Then I created a new scene with the second figure. Made the simulation for the second figure. Then imported the first saved file into the second scene. Moved the animation slider, and the figures go through their movements. You can grab shots of frames you like, or animate the figures doing their moves. It's fun.

Oh, I should add - needs a little practice to achieve the right animation of both figures going through their moves. Especially getting them to avoid cutting through each other's bodies ! For now, it's just a fun thing I can do with my Poser 6 - entertaining myself, that's all.

Thanks Infinity - I'm going to give that a go :D

I've never used dynamic clothing for animation (I've still got Pro Pack). Do a search in this forum for Dr. Geeps Animation and Graph Editor tutorials. Also stop by the Animation forum and check out the FAQ - it's got links to all sorts of resources. And don't forget to check out Renderosity's "Animation Outlet" where there's a lot of animation samples (but very little with dynamic clothing so far).

I had to stop the renders at frame 22. I now want to go and finish rendering the balance of them.

Using Poser 5, how do I continue to save frames as still images, from a certain point of the animation (starting with frame 23)?

Message edited on: 11/06/2005 20:41

In the render settings there should be a thing to set the start and end frames of the animation, you should be able to set the start frame to 23 and then continue the render.