I probably shouldn't be complaining since the BVH files included with Poser are pretty cool but I wanted to see if anyone else experienced problems when you retime an animation using an imported BVH. An example is one of the Dance Studio bvh files. When I apply it to a figure and then want to slow down the motion using "Retime Animation" sometimes it will randomly generate spazzy motions where there wasn't any in the original-speed animation. Arms will flail and sometimes the body of the figure will go completely horizontal for a frame or two. I can adjust these problems manually but for my own info I was wondering if any one had idea what's going on. thanks

When you import a BVH into Poser, every frame throughout the durration of the animation is keyframed, leaving Poser no room to interpolate any of the animation. When you are slow down your animation, you are spreading your current keyframes over a larger area of frames. This will give you frames in your animation that aren't keyframed, and the little gnomes inside your computer get hard to work on iterpolating or 'tweening' the areas between your keyframes.

The problem lies in the fact that because Poser uses spline interpolation by default, and there are so many keyframes, it causes little loopty-loops in your animation path. Spline animation does great things with a few keyframes over a long period of time, but because the keyframes are still so close together you get these quirks.

To fix it, open up your Animation Palette, drag your selecter to select all of your keyframes in the animation and then hit the orangish "Linear" button in the controls on the upper right side of the palette. Now movements will be in a straight line from keyframe to keyframe, but with so many keyframes you'll probably still have very smooth motion in your animation.

Hope this helps.

same to me will try thy tip later. Thanks.

Thanks very much for the info, Jkeller. I will give it a try. While we're on the subject of BVH files, does anyone have the Motions CD from Daz3D? Do you find it was worth the $90? thanks,

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THANK YOU!!! THANK YOU!! THANK YOU ULYSSES!! I just posted a message on the board about some unknown BVH files I had. Your post reminded that I had bought the Motions CD but never tried it out. I then was checking out the CD when I noticed some of the BVHs were the same as the ones I was wondering about. MYSTERY SOLVED. Well, I still don't know how the heck I got them ... they must have been free samples. I concur with Jim, they are VERY good. They are done by the House of Moves people. HoM is generally better than Credo IMHO and, their BVHs actually work VERY WELL with Michael and Victoria. They are Z-axis BVHs ... don't know if that has anything to do with it. I think it is the skeleton they used rather. That reminds me ... I need to post some news about BVHs for everyone. Anyway ... thanks again!!! -Tim

PS> JK, very nice fix and explanation. Another option would be if you are editing a movie together you could just slow it down in your editing software of course. Regards, Tim

Thanks for the replies. I will be getting the Motions CD based on your recommendations. I'm always looking for BVH files so if anyone knows of any good sources of freebies on the net please let me know. I recently created a movie using two skeletons with top hats doing a synchronized dance, using one of the Dance Studio BVH files. It's part of a company-sponsored event to promote math and science to 8th-graders. It got a big response.

I have 50 Free BVH, based on "non-dance style" dance studio files.

PoserPro: Are they in freestuff?

julien@arrowweb.com, mail me for free.