hey guys. anyone have any good tutorial links about animating in poser 7? something more then entry level though. or has anyone seen any good books which some of you may have used? all I know is I am tried of all my animations firing at once! lol.

thanks everyone!

This doesn't quite answer your question, but I've found these books to be very helpful in learning animation techniques, timing, scene planning, and such. I've been able to apply a lot of the information to Poser animation.

• The Animation Book by Kit Laybourne
• Animation: From Script to Screen by Shamus Culhane
• Stop Staring by Jason Osipa
• Physics Based Animation by Kenny Erleben, et al.

I've learned a lot more from these books than I've been able to glean from the web.

The Manual includes some good basics on the different Tool Sets in Poser, including Animating. I would do those first. Smith Micro Site also has some Tutorials specifically on Animating in Poser that are pretty basic.

 Animation in Poser can mean one of two things - (a) how the graphs and splines work or (b) "animation theory".

As far as how the graphs and splines work, I hate to say that the Poser reference manual is probably your best learning tool, in spite of the fact that I feel the Poser manual is not very well written.  That is, however, my opinion which may not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.

As far as "animation theory" goes, I personally am not a big fan of Stop Staring, though it is extremely popular. You should be aware though it's sort of written for Maya and includes best practices for modeling faces primarily, which of course does not apply for third party Poser content.

In my limited experience, I'm thinking "the Animator's Survival Kit" by Richard Williams is the best animation book out there. The author basically hires all these animation guys from the 1930's / 1940's to work in his studio to share their knowledge during their twilight years. And as you know, the Disney animators from the 30's created the 12 original principles of animation. So the shorthand version of that is that you're learning from the masters.

$0.02

Hi, blaack-widow
My 2 cents:
Having no formal training, I basically taught myself animation from scratch, over the last 6 years. During that time a friend of mine, being one quarter shy of an art degree he often reminded me, also endeavored in the same vein. He spent lots of money on good quality dvds, books, and was always finding some way to verbally show his superior understanding. I had neither money nor time to buy (or borrow, or read)  these things, I was too busy quite frankly shellacking him in everything we attempted to do together, animation -wise. Now, all these years later, he is lots of money in the hole, and still can't animate his way into or out of a paper bag, and is not making money on art, period. My career has (finally!) just begun but already I've won an animation contest (for category  "Best Use of New Technology", with a $250 cash prize) judged by an industry pro, and a small growing trickle of income every month is coming in due to my animation work. My approach is simple: hands on, hands on, hands on. Sure, I read manuals and tutorials, you have to. But I almost always only read and explore things that are related to my immediate goals, the urgent task at hand, to overcome the obstacle that keeps me from doing whatever it is that I've decided to do.

But on the other hand, you could spend a LOT of time absorbing the excellent "The Animator's Survival Kit", and it might help you 5%, (and perhaps make you feel really classy and well-rounded, like it did for my friend)  but it will not help you with the 95% software package specific idiosyncracies that can only be absorbed...that's right, HANDS ON.  Be prepared to spend major blocks of time at the computer, with roughly 20% of that time screaming at the apparently deaf and merciless monitor.

So my advice, for what it's worth, is to start with some SIMPLE things and get excited about making it happen, and don't stop until you've animated it  (Just don't expect the animation layers feature to work in Poser 7 or PoserPro, because it  just  doesn't). Then just keep building on your accomplishments. 
I can attest that Virtual Training Company has some excellent Poser video tutorials, for $100 you can get the 100 hour Poser 7 course.  I'm thinking about doing that myself, one of these days...when I can find the time away from all this darned animating :) 

very best  wishes
Eye

blaa, "all my animations firing at once" - what does that mean?  maybe the experts can help with some specific tips for a specific animation problem.  there is one book called "character animation in poser" or similar, but most of it is about what one needs to know first, before even trying to do animations.

The best peice of advice I can give you is to learn from real life.

Watch how people move. Watch weight, ease, timing. Count how long an action takes from start to finish. Count the amount of actions it takes to complete a move. Break things down into their contituent parts and start one move at a time. Some actions start slow and pick up speed, some start fast and ease to an end. But they will all have a begining a middle and an end so those will typically be your primary keyframes.

As for technical info on animating in Poser, the manual pretty much has everything you need as does the SmithMicro site - They have a few tuts online as well. Poser is not all that complex a tool for learning animating, albeit somewhat convoluted.