Hi! Until I actually commited some real crimes, here are few problems I'm trying to solve:

1. I was working on some complex animation. During it, I was enabling/disabling IK a lot for hands and feets. And some point I realized, that if I disable or enabled IK now (left hand, for sample, which is parented to some Skythe), hand animation goes crazy in the frames FAR before where Iam now. WHY?? This hand has many keyframes already set, how come if I disable IK now, it affects those already set keyframes at all?

1. Probably, somehow related. Animation on frame 0-177 is fine. Then, I set ALL keyframes to frame 178. Now, I import animation from 179-220. 179-202 is fine too, just from another file.

Combined result is - 0-177 gets mesed up!! Why? Frame 178 has all FRAMES SET! How come, some animation after 178 actually alters frames before that? Is that IK magic again??

I'll appreciated all the answers, as my anger is rising in geometrical progression.

Actually, is DAZ animation system similar to Poser's (if I buy extra plugins or something?)

Maybe I should just migrate to DAZ, what do you think? As I'm planning to work with animations alot. Is DAZ better/worse in perspective of animating characters?

Poser is like a woman Ryu, you got to know how it ticks and then you will appreciate it.

DAZ has a plugin that gives you the keyframe editor but WITHOUT the graph editor, for me it is useless.

So Poser all the way for me.

I think the reason 0-177 messed up is because you only set keyframed 178. You should have keyframed all of 0-177 before importing the next batch. It created a chain reaction for sure you used the spline section (green one).

And yes if you Turn on/off IK, the limbs suddenly jump. That's just the way it is. A workaround will be to create a second figure and hide everything but the hands and foot that will serve as your guide. Color them differently as well.

Did you set any break splines?

Ha ha, thanks, **TheOwl, **actually when you put it this way, I want to learn Poser no matter what :)

PhiliC, there are few break splines. I actually never did use that technique, they come from imported animation. On second thought... maybe I should blame myself, not poser? I'll go RTFM about breaskplines.

Hmm... So it is true about IK. Well, it least now I know, that I HAVE to workaround, and will not look for straighforawrd solutions.

Thanks for the answers!

Keep in mind how movies are made, TV too. 2 to 4 second shots, then camera or some other change. Your movie can be hours long but the poser scenes can each be 2 to 4 seconds and since they should usually be rendered as frames and composted, just like real movie making, not to mention crash insurance, the shorter shots will make everything easier to manage.

Poser uses spline interpolation by default.  The movement at a keyframe will be exactly what you specify BUT the position at other frames depends on the curve calculated to join the keyframes.

This leads to things overshooting or going in odd direction when you just wanted a stop. Thats where break spline comes in , set breakspline whenever something stops or reverses direction.  This is not quite true for all cases. You can use extra keyframes to control the spline.

IK is not an animated parameter. Is either on or off for the full animation.

When you make keyframe, make a hold body keyframe. This way will keep arms and legs joins in position when you disable/enable IK.

This video tutorial may help.

http://www.philc.net/animation1.php

Hi All
What the OP is experiencing will NOT be solved By applying spline brakes ...unfortunately.
 spline breaks will prevent "overshoot" when using different interpolation methods in the same animation yes

But while animating a Skate boarding sequence for a Paid film project  ,to My Dismay, I recently Discovered that poser IK is an ALL or nothing Scenario.

if you have a 300 frame animation for example and have your guy squating at the knees using IK for his feet for the first 120 frames,

if you then try to Disable IK starting at frame 121 forward everything goes  previous haywire!!
No matter if you put in spline breaks or not
I would love to be proven wrong on this but my workaround was to not use IK and manually animate the bending of the shins and thighs.

Oh and Ryu, combining animation data from different sources in poser is a non starter!!!
its techically possible but not realistcly practical
for that you really need a NON linear animation system Like DaZ aniMate+ which I use also

Cheers

ryu, don't kill yer family, and if probs with IK, do as wolf hinted: one vid layer with IK fades in/out of other vid layer with no IK.  very advanced topic.

I've been working on a commission and encountered these same problems. I've dealt with them by not using IK and by splitting the animation into multiple files. (For example, if frames 200-210 make frames 190-199 go nuts, then I put 200-210 in a different file). I've found that also splitting up the animation makes for less strain on my computer during rendering (i.e., my computer only has to render all night instead of rendering all night and half the morning, until it locks up).

I agree wholeheartedly with TheOwl's analysis. The video I'm working on has turned out to be far harder to make than I thought it would be, but every subsequent animation I do is faster and easier because I remember what I learned during the last one.