Who is actually animating with Poser 7?  And better yet, who is getting great results from using animated layers?  I've experimented, but haven't got the hang of it yet.

So, if you've got something that's working for you, post it here if you please.

Second the motion!  I experimented with layers in 6, where they were
sort of halfway working; tried again in 7 and couldn't find the "handle",
so to speak.  Can't figure out what the purpose is.

Would be really nice to see a jumpstart tutorial, showing how layers
take the place of ????? in earlier versions.

I'm not even sure what the ????? is!  Do layers allow you to change
camera selection within one PZ3?  Change parenting within one PZ3?
Turn IK on or off within one PZ3?
If not those things, then what's the advantage?

I'm feeling a little dense here but since I'm only about 6 to 9 months into my gig, I guess it's okay for me to ask this without being ridiculed much...  What layers in Poser 6?   Do you mean Animation Sets? They're a bit different than layers I think. hmm.

I do test animations now and then for the various characters I make and sometimes think are good enough to sell.  I don't usually need to use the layers in Poser 7 though for those.  The Adventures of Oliver Queen is done in Poser.

The developers apparently started to implement Layers in 6 then decided
to put it off till 7.   By setting a keyline in Poser.ini you could see the Layers
tab in the animation keygraph, and you could create layers but they
didn't do anything in 6.

The Animation Sets have been present for a long time, and seem to be
purely connected to the VRML export system.   They don't affect anything else.

Yeah, the sets I knew. The other info I didn't. Thanks. Learn something new every day. :)

Quote - Who is actually animating with Poser 7?  And better yet, who is getting great results from using animated layers?  I've experimented, but haven't got the hang of it yet.

So, if you've got something that's working for you, post it here if you please.

I am new to Poser, only been using it for 6 months and before that I was using Iclone for about a year and that is the extent of my 3D experience. Iclone was a piece of cake compare to Poser. Every thing seems 10 times harder but the superior output is worth it. I have found if I use a BVH file or any animation preset included with Poser that I can, for example, make an arm do something else in a second layer which will override the preset. The trouble is normally animate by hand and I almost never use BVH files, so I don’t have much use for the layer feature, but I am glad it’s there. Sometimes I make a trial animation in the second layer and then I can easily delete it if I am not satisfied. Obviously you can’t delete the base layer.
My only use for poser is animation (I have never made a still except as a test) and I haven’t found any likeminded Poser users. I think people interested in animation exclusively, use other software. 
Anyway below is a link to the last Poser movie I made. It’s only my second one and a remake of the first one, so you can see I haven’t had much experience. I am posting it here because I did use the layer feature (sometimes) and it seemed like an appropriate answer to hindsitestudios good question.  What ya think?
http://stevedraun.org/duke/duke_fs.htm

Oh, there's a few Poser animators out there...at least 12 of them. And it might make more sense to not call it layers and what it really is; non-linear animation. The whole thrust of NLA is to not require you to keyframe all actions on one timeline. It's like musical scoring; you lay down a fundamental rythym (base layer), then start adding, building on that base. I'm still in the experimental stage myself, but so far it seems that using the layer scheme avoids some of the more common issues in linear animation (like what happens to someone who keyframed a sequence with spline interpolation, tweaked one key eeeeeeever so slightly, and suddenly had a spas dance on their hands). The NLA implementation seems to add the needed spline breaks to prevent this...although I haven't really tried to force the issue to happen. That said, it -does- require you to plan, and break old habits.

I have tried to get the hang of Poser 7 animation layers because I really want to better isolate the animation of individual parts or figures in a scene -- some of my scenes have lots of moving parts, and things get confusing quickly -- but so far nothing has worked the way it should. Yes, I can get a figure to walk and chew gum, but anything else throws my work out of sync. There's supposed to be a new book specifically on Poser 7 animation (I think PhilC is the author) coming out in May. Even sooner would be better for me.

if layers are for blending morphs/motions for bodyparts, then that explains what the mysterious "blendtype" parameter (mentioned in an appendix) might be.

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.

Animation is about all I use Poser for.  My approach: create the animated scene in P6, sliding rows of keyframes around in the animation graph if I need to alter relative timing of one or more body parts or figures or props.  Use P7 only for rendering the animation.  P7 renders animation frames in firefly about twice as fast on my rig as P6.  But by building the scene and running dynamics in P6 before importing to P7, I can avoid P7 problems like the "point at" bug and issues around multiple cloth sims.  Someday if some of these P7 bugs get fixed I'll re-try building animations in P7 and give animation layers a try.  However, my sense from P7 SR1 is that problems faced by animators are given lower priority.

Attached Link: Animation Festival

fabulous! I wonder if they need any of stuporman? jeez, I better check and see if that name is trademarked :lol:

So none of you use BVH motion files...?!? (And I'm not talking about the `catered' ones from Eclipse...) I've tried (using MotionBuilder) but I have yet to get them to work properly. When I import, the motion is all messed-up, (to the point that I don't believe it's usable,) and when I export, MotionBuilder can't even open the file. I'd really like to use a more professional animating application like MotionBuilder, but, despite Poser claiming that it's compatible with BVH files, it just doesn't appear that it truly is.

I haven't had any problem with them. A couple of important points though. First, I'll try them on a low res figure (for rendering speed). When I import them there's adialog box that asks if they should be aligned with the X axis or the z axis. I'll apply it to the figure one way and render it to see if that works. If not I delete all the animation and re-import it using the other axis. I've never not had one of those options work. Then I add the text "X Axis" or "Z Axis" to the folder they're stored in so in the future I can get it right the first time. Another thing you have to watch out for is that they don't always interact with the floor properly. If so I'll select sections of the motion graph and move them up or down as required (reshaping it).