Hi all, I am learning animation (as a hobby) and it seems to me that there are a lot of "better" programs to create animations. I have worked through most of the poser features and there are some things I just cant get on with. Primarily the ability to smoothly scrub the time-line to help tweak the keyframes.

The tutorials I have been using are buy a very talented chap called Jeff Lew (if anyone remembers killer bean hes the artist that created it). Anyway in Jeffs tutorials he uses Animation Master, and it looks like a fantastic very easy to use tool.

Heres my question, I know that Poser models are or can be rigged differently from other standard models (such as max or maya), so does anyone have any experience of creating rigged models (stick men?) that have the correct dynamics/bones that will allow an exported BVH file to be imported and work fluidly with Poser.

Or, is it even possible to export the poser bones and import them into a tool such as Animation Master, where the animation can be worked and then (via BVH) be exported back to Poser for props and final renders...

Hope that doesnt sound too confusing....
any advice would be much appreciated.

Which figure are you using in your animation? If it is high polygon then yes the animation scrubber will not be smooth unless you have a very high powered machine. Suggest using one of the many lower polygon figures that come with Poser. Once the animation is completed simple save the pose then apply it to your required figure.

Thanks for the reply PhilC, I am using V4.2 but have hidden wireframe turned on, so the machine shouldnt struggle. Current PC specs are Intel Core 2 duo with 2GB, will be a Core 2 Quad and 8GB by the weekend, but I am not convinced that the Poser scrubber can be smoothed with hardware uplift, even if I heavily reduce the quality of the preview window and turn off frame skipping the scrub is just nasty, particularly if I have the dope sheet open....

Have you tried it with one of the low polygon Poser 2 figures?

No I havent, I dont think I have any to try. Is it safe to say that if I find these figures and use them that they are rigged the same as V4 and that the animations will work without any additional tweaking?

I guess I am not sure if the Poser 2 bones are exactly the same as the V4 and Poser 7 models??

some of the poser figures vary in their groups/body part names,
e.g. apollo max and v4.2 differ somewhat from the lo-res p2 figures.
some bvh apps allow one to attach a bvh skeleton to an unrigged obj file
of the kind found in the poser runtime/geometry folder.  a bvh previewing
app might still be slow with v4.2 even in wireframe mode, due to the gigantic
number of polygons.

Quote - some of the poser figures vary in their groups/body part names,
e.g. apollo max and v4.2 differ somewhat from the lo-res p2 figures.
some bvh apps allow one to attach a bvh skeleton to an unrigged obj file
of the kind found in the poser runtime/geometry folder.  a bvh previewing
app might still be slow with v4.2 even in wireframe mode, due to the gigantic
number of polygons.

I was afraid that the Poser models may vary, although I havent tested it, thats pretty much why I wanted to try and re-create the V4.2 skeleton inside another app and then create the BVH file from there to import back into Poser 7.

Am I overcomplicating things here? I just want to be able to have a very smooth timeline scrub to speed up the animation work, its a bit unproductive to have to create preview movies to see how the animation is going to look in realtime, because although that shows the end result, you cant narrow down the frames that need work....

Thanks for your replies...

To my best understanding legacy content has always been available with each progressive version of Poser. In some versions it can on the accompanying CD in others it was offered as a free download.

The Poser 2 female has the same body parts and hierarchy as V4. Poser 7 and Poser Pro have the universal pose feature that will take into account variations in the zero poses of each figure making it possible to accurately transfer poses from one to the other.

V4 has 66,830 polygons
The P2 figure has 2,389 polygons
Smoothness of the animation scrubber will be in proportion to the number of polygons, particularly if a display mode is chosen that does not require textures.

When I need to create an animation I use the low polygon figures then transfer the motion over to my final figure prior to rendering.

To be really minimalistic you could replace each of V4's body parts with a suitable scaled box and use that :)

Or just change the display to box tracking and stick with V4. I've just tried that with 2 x V4 plus the P2 and it scrubs up clean as you like :)

OK PhilC I am convinced, didnt realizer there was such a huge difference in the poly count, now all I need to do is go find a P2 model as a stand-in for V4, any ideas where I can find the old gal?

Thanks very much for the pointers...

Poser 6 or 7 it is in a folder in figures called poser 1-5 

Great info.
cheerio  lululee

Even tho I have a powerful machine that hardly hiccups scrubbing high polygon scenes, I'm still probably going to practice what PhilC suggests just as scene hygiene from now on :)

I tried PhilC's suggestion using the low poly P2 model and it makes a huge difference, I havent tried to export a BVH file and apply to V4 yet... but the performance difference is massive...

OK heres an update.

I tried a quick test animation using legacy low res poser models. Creating the animation was a breez, the low poly models makes a huge difference. However, after exporting the BVH file and then loading a new scene with V4 and importing the BVH file created with the low poly models I was disappointed to see that the animation was far from perfect.

The fingers are obviously a completely different rigging set, and so it seems are the shoulders. Althought the animation ran, the fingers were all twisted, and the range of movement of V4 didnt seem to go as far as the low poly models used to create the BVH in that the limits were different. Its also seems the the IK chains are different as I noted a little weirdness in the posture of the legs (having left IK on for the test BVH set).

Although the differences could be sorted using the dope sheet and smoothing the graphs, I dont think that this post work to the BVH file is worth the time saved by using the low poly models. So its a trade-off that doesnt seem to be worthwhile at the moment.

So its back to the drawing board, or back to the stuttering scrub lines even when using hidden wireframe.... and thats on a vista 64 box with 8GB RAM, still waiting for the quad core processor, but not too hopefull that it will make enough difference to make animating V4 smooth enough to enjoy using Posers animation features.

If anyone out there is clever enough, please please give us a low poly model of the existing V4.2 so that we can make full use of the poser animation features...I know a low poly model rigged exactly the same way as our V4.2 will make all the difference.

Perhaps I am doing something wrong, so if I am beeing an ass, I would be delighted to be told so, and pointed in the right direction...

Thanks to all that have contributed to this thread...

   I know that PhilC's BVH helper has an option to correct the hand problem. I believe there is another option to "lock" the hands before you add the BVH pose. That also helps.
  Also, David Hoadley will have available soon a remapped version of Vicky 2 that takes V3 textures. It will be released soon.
cheerio  lululee

Actually there is a low poly version of V4.2. Just download Daz Studio and you can find several low poly versions of V4.2 in its content folder.

Lululee, thanks for your comments, but I think Nightfall has solved it for me, if I can root out the low poly models of V4, then thats all I need... Nightfall THANK YOU!, as soon as I get home I will find them and then figure out how to get them into Poser...

I will take a close look at PhilC's BVH helper, it would be good to make use of the masses of BVH files available on the web...

Thanks to everyone for your assistance and comments.

Nightfall, any chance you can give me a little more detail on finding the low poly Daz models and how to get them into Poser?

I loaded DAZ to find the only available character is V4.2 EZ, then had a look in the folders but to be honest I have no clue what I am looking for..

Any assistance would be appreciated,

thanks.

I too, would like help finding her.
cheerio   lululee

The files are located in "C:Program FilesDAZStudiocontentdatablMilWom_v4b_68498LOD".
V4_LOD_1K.obj
V4_LOD_2K.obj
V4_LOD_4K.obj
V4_LOD_17K.obj

Daz Studio can use them automatically but not Poser.

To use them in Poser,
You need to copy them to the GeometriesDAZPeople folder of your runtime,
then edit the victoria 4.2.cr2 with any text editor or cr2editor,
replace all instances of "blMilWom_v4b.obj" with "V4_LOD_17K.obj",
and save it under some other filename of your choice.

Thank you so much nightfall.
cheerio lululee

nob, it  may be those hand geom-switching dials in P2 that are screwing up the fingers.
night, thx fr tip on LOD v4 objs.  I definitely may hafta install D|S after all these years. :lol:

Soon as poser finnishes calculating the cloth dynamics on the Nightworld cloak I have turned into an OBJ I will give it ago...

Miss Nanacy, I have no experience of older version of poser, but the fingers were definately all messed up, and I also seemed to get some creep, plus the joint limits were different as the pose that the legacy model had was not fully realized whne the BVH was used on V4, in particular the arms on the legacy model were straight down (she was at attention), but V4 had her arms out at about 15 degrees.. quite a big difference. So if the low poly daz vickies work... its definately better than using the older vickies and then having to fix everything...

Nightfall, THANK YOU!!

I havent tried animating the low rez model and then export/import the BVH to the hi res model, but it looks like it will work...

OK test animation works a treat, havent tried hands yet but everythng else translates exactly, in that whatever the low-rez model is doing the exported BVH file makes the high rez V4.2 do exactly the same.

Problem solved, nice smooth scrub line without any lag or fram skipping  whilst working on the low rez model greatly aids in tuning the animations, then once its all done export to BVH, delete the low rez model, load the high rez model and import the BVH.

Thanks again Nightfall!!