As one who was one of the original 12 animators (take my word for it - it was an old thread [grin]) I welcome you to Poser animation. There are actually plenty of us. Many of us animate our characters in Poser but render the scene in other apps. If you click the "Animations" link under the "Features" menu at the top of the sidebar you can see a wide range of Poser animations. Mine can be more easily accessed via my "Experimutations" and "The Demos" links in my website (in my sig below) but if you go to the Animations section you'll see my work there too. You have to go the the oldest page cause I have the very first animations in that gallery. For financial reasons I haven't upgraded to Poser 7 so I'm afraid I can't provide direct help with your question about layers. The idea has potential but .... @sdraun Since you asked... I like the idea behind the animation. It was nice to see someone do a whole scene rather than just a single motion or two. I enjoyed that you used different camera angles to flesh out what was going on - it came across much stronger. You set up the scene and then let it play out and I felt I was a part of it! I do have a couple of suggestions - for what they're worth... 1). You could take a still picture, apply it to a square plane, and place it vertically at the edge of the floor to create a background that moves with the camera move. If you did that you could (relatively) easily create the back wall for the bar instead of having to model a whole set or just having black. You could even create several and place them in different places facing different directions so that you fake a full environment when the camera cuts to a different shot. Obviously if you just import the still as a background image it won't move when the camera does and that'll look odd. 2). There were a couple of moves that seemed slow - for example the eye blinks. I encourage you to stand in front of a mirror and watch yourself do things at a natural speed. I'm constantly amazed at how quick a head turn or arm motion is and constantly have to speed up my own animated motions to reflect real speed. 3) I thought it was great that you had the characters react to the young lady - watching her move. One thing that I noticed, though, was that they'd remain still when the focus was on her. Sometimes you can set a head to move up and down gently or a waist (or arm) to sway back and forth very gently to create a subtle secondary motion. You can add tremendously to the realism with just a little animation effort by adding touches like that. Changing their facial expression to a "WOW" or "OHMYGOSH!" occasionally would also add to it. It's very clear that you put a lot of work and thought into this. I hope you understand my suggestions are merely suggestions and are attempts at throwing out helpful and encouraging ideas. I'm no God or Guru or Dark Overlord that you should fear and obey. My wife, on the other hand, is another matter... [grin] ...but she doesn't post here.

Before they made me they broke the mold!
http://home.roadrunner.com/~kflach/