Hello all!

 I'm entering the difficult world of animation and I had a couple of questions. If you could answer one or two of em I'd be greatly appreciative!

1. Should I worry too much about timing at first? I noticed when pressing play to preview my animation it moves very slow (Skip frames off).. and I can't really tell if it's the correct timing that I want. I'm running under the assumption that the timing can be fixed easily later on through the "Retime animation" option. Is this smart? Or should I do my best to get the timing just right as I go?

2. Workflow. So far right now I'm just keyframing the poses... using the paramater dials, refining things, making sure no intersections.. everything lined up properly. I'm not worrying about the different splines or graphs right now.. my plan was to go through the animation once it's done and use the graph... smoothing em out. Is this a mistake?  How do you do things?

3. I'm considering the idea of using DAZ Studio (I prefer the interface among other things)  to create the basic animation.. then importing that into Poser to tweak and fine tune it, using the graphs and splines to add smoothness.  The thing I'm worried about is that if I take it into Poser.. and start messing around with the graph editor (Which I have no experience with btw).. that it'll ruin my animation.. putting body parts out of place and causing intersections. 

4. I'm wondering about the graph editor. I know its purpose is to alter the timing.. but should I be using it to change the parameters as well? For example the bend of a hand.. should I be opening up the graph editor and using that for how much something actually BENDS? Direction I mean. Or just for at what speed it bends.. where it slows down/speeds up..

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 Thanks in advance to anyone who replies! Looking forward to your replies. :]

There are several ways to modify the timing, but they are all "big hammers"
that modify everything at once.  It's best (and hardest!) to get the timing right
first.   Poser's internal player doesn't work well for this purpose .... I find it's
usually better to make a clip using the "Make Movie" action in preview mode.
This takes very little time, and gives you a better sense of what's happening.

The keygraph is definitely helpful once you get used to its limitations.
Best of all, it lets you isolate sections and change them to linear, constant,
or spline interpolation.   I find it's usually best to start with everything in
linear mode, because it's less prone to weird overshoots than spline mode.
Then, if a movement seems like it should be more rounded (i.e. starting
gradually and ending gradually) you can change that body part to spline
interpolation for the frames where it should be rounded.

One general tip: most individual motions happen a lot faster than you
think they should.    Try them out with your own body, and you'll find
that a bend which seemed like it should take 3 seconds actually takes
1/2 second.   (Some people don't have this perception problem; if you
find after trial that your natural estimation is already good, disregard this! )

1. use the graph editor to correct overshoot, e.g. arms and legs. the graph editor is yer friend - learn to love it :lol:

 Prelude: a stopwatch, a full length mirror and the Animator's Survival Kit are all extremely valuable tools.

1. You probably will want Skip Frames On which (in theory) give you a real time playback based on the complexity of your scene. Your animatics pass will be to work out broad strokes of timing - translating a character from point A to point B for example. Once you're satisfied with that, you can introduce final details such as hand movements and "secondary movements" such as fat jiggling. Work broad, then refine.

2. Overall I have no problem with your workflow. See point one.

3. Theoretically there is a possibility that some things will get lost in translation fro one program to the next. To me, the only reason this may be a problem is: sounds like you're planning to render out of Firefly? If so then you will have to translate your shaders and if you need to redo your animation curves too, it seems like you're doing 4 times the work necessary. I mean, your best choice would be to try the conversion between programs on a test animation, maybe one that's a little demanding, to discover any potential pitfalls. Personally I would try to keep all the animation within one program or the other.  

4. the graph editor is for timing AND intensity of movements. Obviously the distance between keys determine the speed of your hand movement. The vertical will represent the magnitude of your movements and the spline types of the keys determines how keyframes transition from one to the next.

Epilog: As they say in my line of work, stop nuking it (and just do it). It's not difficult at all once you invest the initial time understanding how everything works. My first two step walk cycle took three hours. Now I can produce a better two step walk cycle in 10 minutes.

if you don't want to render animation each time you change something (to see the result) then make head invissible (at least my computer plays at normal speed in prev mode when the figure's head  is off) - it can save a lot of time:) - of course you can still use "skip frames' but that is not so good

4. find in manual about graph editor as much as you can (don't miss CTRL and ALT keys) - as Miss Nancy says it is your friend so start with it from beginning.

Thank you for the replies guys!

 I've looked over the manual and seen a couple video tutorials.. but I'm still a little confused about the graph editor. I'm still supposed to turn dials in the Parameters right.. or do I do all of that work in the graphs tab?

 Can someone give an example or two of using it for an animation?

 Much appreciated!

Er.. I mean an example with actual human figures btw. I've seen an example with a bouncing ball but knowing how it's used in an arm motion or other body motion for example would be much more clarifying.

Attached Link: http://www.philc.net/animation1.htm

Quote - Er.. I mean an example with actual human figures btw. I've seen an example with a bouncing ball but knowing how it's used in an arm motion or other body motion for example would be much more clarifying.

Some of my animation work
using the graph editor

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4uD8HArvNY

When I try to animate human figure I'm almost always following some simple rules (they work for me):

• I never make "twist" on the hands - make it on forearm
• never make "side-side" on forearm - use "bend" of forearm and twist of shoulder instead
• never (almost) use "twist" on collar

Each part of the arm has 1 parameter less to animate and it's OK - to many parameters and sometimes things get pretty bad.

For torso I try:
-"twis" starts and ends (not always) on chest, sometimes I twist abdomen
-"side-side" - never (almost never) abdomen

Try avoiding 'xRotating" and/or "zRotating" hip while "yRotation" is applied - if IK on feet is ON you will get something which is REALLY difficult to solve and you can spend hours trying to fix it.

Same thing is with feet (while IK is ON) "bend" will swap with "side-side" while twisted but this is much easer to handle (and you cannot avoid this).

Very often (while IK is ON) the figure legs will twist or bend in very strange manner - at first I corrected this by increasing "yTran" of hip and manipulating "yScale" of shins - later I found out quite easy way - just "bend" / "twist" shins or thighs (personally I always "bend" shin and always "twist" thigh - when you get used to it you will quite fast correct such issues).

If you make keyframes try to make them not one after another - let Poser make interpolation between them - result is much better (of course sometimes you have no other choise:). My way is to make them every 10 frames: 1,11,21,.... After this if I really cannot repair something I add a keyframe in between - and in MOST CASES it's enough (but if you have some reference movie in the background then of course you'll need plenty keyframes - even every 2 frames).

Do not remove each overshoot - you will find them helpful (but you shoudn't leave any overshots on feet otherwise they will "float" on the gound)

Hope you will find something from above useful:)

You might also check your timing concerns using the Bounding Box display mode.   Not much use for small details & morphs, like facial expressions of course, but works well for major body parts like arms & legs.

I feel ya. When I first started working with the Graph Editor to do this animation, I thought "no way, this is too tedious". Now, I like it better than the graph editor in Lightwave. But that's just me, I always end up liking whatever I know the best, and my knowledge of editing curves in Poser has outstripped my knowledge of Lightwave. Not that that is saying much...

Still, I did win the "best use of PhotoInside technology" category of hdgreetings Winter Holidays Animation Contest with this (with extensive use of Graph Editor):

Bottom line: dive in, you will get used to it. One of the handiest thing I found was the ability to drag select parts of curves, and hold ctrl to shift values up/down, or just drag to shift left/right.
Also nice is the retime animation feature. I had to use the hell out of that when I discovered, after the thing was done, that I was in the wrong frame rate :(
Don't neglect the animation pallete either, good for big changes and retiming, too. 
Just know this: animation layers do not work, don't bother with them (be satisfied with everything on one layer).

P.S. I will be smoothing out the jerkiness and mistiming of that animation before next holiday season, I had to rush it in. Though flawed, it turned out to be very popular...after all, it's only an ecard, not a major motion picture, heh heh.    

Also, Ockham delivers sage advice about spline interpolation type. I also find that linear is the most useful. Leaving in curved mode will create all kinds of overshot movements, but it's easy to fix even once it's done, just select the curve and change the mode to linear. You can do this in the animation pallete as well as the graph editor.

Animation is quite easy, but misstakes waste a lot of time :)

Bouncing and gravity symulations are very difficult. Check Ockham page:
http://ockhamsbungalow.com/Python/
You can find there some scripts which make your animation more realistic. You can either buy "poser physic" aplication.
If you are not experienced in "edit keyframe" window change all smooth spline section to linear. It makes your animation "rigid - robot like" but poser interpolation between frames can look worse. When you make base keyframes and main animation, change particular body parts in particular keyframes to spline sections. When you have legs IK on, always use line section on feet.

Preview never show you real time with all frames.
I always make few not rendered animations with few different FPS values. It takes few minutes or even few seconds, especially if you turn off shadows.
Before I start render whole animation I also check shadows making few short clips with 3-5 frames (for example "make animation" frames: 12-16 and 47-50).

Check your preview animation carefully, because it is terrible finding hand inside thigh after 24 hours of rendering.

Ref. Adoms advise - he is generally right, but body parts work different way in different characters. Anyways his tips help you avoid "jumping" wrist or elbow.

Even more useful replies! AWESOME! This'll definitely be a huge help as I learn and experiment. :]

  Reading them has brought forth another question...

 Someone mentioned Inverse Kinematics. I was under the impression that IK is bad except in rare situations? Every time I've bought a product the instructions told me to turn IK off...

 I just tried using IK on the arms in an animation I was working on.. in the middle of it.. and it worked fine. But then I turned it off.. and it screwed up the characters hands, from frame 1! Everything was messed up!

_<

Quote -  I just tried using IK on the arms in an animation I was working on.. in the middle of it.. and it worked fine. But then I turned it off.. and it screwed up the characters hands, from frame 1! Everything was messed up!  

If you set keyframes for hands only when IK is on, turning it off removing keyframes. Before turn off IK on hands check again if all body parts (forearm, arm, collar and even chest, abdomen) have keyframes.

Most people advise turn off IK when you conform clothes add morph etc. but when you pose your character, use IK as you prefer. Anyway try to set IK on or OFF in whole scene. If you change IK in the middle of animation it can cause weird effects.
Last tip with IK - if you are going to animate dance set, add toes to leg IK chains.