I have an Archer , the arrow is parented to the bow. Once he fires I dont want the arrow to be parented to anything. Once it hits the target I want it to be parented to the target.

How do I do this , because it seems an arrow can only be parented to one thing?

I'm not positive, but I think you already answered your own question (parenting cannot be animated).

in scene one, parent to bow. in scene two, no parent (flying). in scene three, parent to target. cut to new scene every 2-5 sec., to avoid losing the audience.

Alternatively, have three arrows, one parented to bow, one unparented for the flight, and another parented to the target, and change the visibility at the appropriate times.

To illustrate my point, there's a tuorial over at the e frontier website in the poser animation section, looking at this exact trick. They use the problem of making someone take off their hat (parented to head, and then to hand), but it's the same principle.

JonTheCelt

Ok thanks for the tips. Ill head on over to that tutorial but quick question.. how do you change visibility mid-animation? im using scale reduction to hide arrows before entering them into the scene. Is that what you mean?

you can change the parenting in mid scene but its in effect for the entire scene , so you need to parent and record the keyframes for that part of the anim , then change and record the next bit , and so on .

hmmm,... I think toggling visibility during animation is only in Poser 7. If you have Poser 7, then the visibility is located in the Properties Tab for that object.... If you DON'T have Poser 7, then you can do some tricks like reducing scale, and/or moving the object "out-of-sight" or "into-sight" in a one frame, keyframed move. good luck jdc

Ther are various ways to toggle visibility... in Poser 7, the visible tag in the propertie menu is animatable, so you can simply do it from there. You can use the scale trick, by setting a keyframe the frame before you want it to disappear at 100% scale, and then move forward to the next frame and set it to 0% - instant vanishment!

A third way to do it, and the way I tend to prefer, is to use the transparency value in the material room. It's done in a similar fashion to the scale, but you have to toggle the animatable switch (the key by the value) in order to make sure it sets keyframes. 

JonTheCelt