I agree that the animation support in Poser is sub par. I think there are numerous reasons:
- Poser has been through multiple owners, and none of them have been fabulously well-to-do as software houses go. They've had to be stingy with resources and they've put them elsewhere. That was their choice. Poser does have the walk designer. The idea behind this is kind of obvious: let the users create & share (sell?) their own content, so we don't have to pay to make it all ourselves. Unfortunately WD isn't up to the task... or the user base isn't. (Just joking!)
- Creating a good animation app is REALLY REALLY HARD. Part of the difficulty (non-resizable windows aside) is mapping what goes on mathematically behind the scenes to an intuitive interface in the front. Poser gives you access to a lot of the guts you need to do animation - but nobody likes working with guts. Guts are messy. But for programmers they are easy - just put 'em out there and let the users struggle up the learning curve. This at least provides a powerful solution, even if it's one that's not easy to learn or convenient to use.
- On the other hand, what would an absolutely awesome 3-D animation inteface look like? How would it work? I'd bet you could ask 20 people here and get 20 different answers. Partly this is not a tech problem, it's a creativity problem. It's all well and good to say "make it easier!" But the devil is in the details. HOW can it be made it easier? 3-D onion skinning? Physics-based bone structures with weight balancing? Integrated mocap? Nobody - not even the big boys - have really solved the 3-D animation interface usability problem yet. And the answers that they have come up with are either highly processor intensive (simulation), hardware intensive (mocap) or have a learning curve at least as steep as Poser's animation system.
I'd love to see a topic brainstorming on what an Uber-WalkDesigner replacement might look like (with proof-of-concept illustrations and public domain code samples!) May EF would see some good ideas & get inspired.
