When I do an animation sequence and meticulously pose my character for each frame, why is it when I play back the animation the character's joints will sometimes go awry? Say for instance, I did a sequence where a character jumps up and lands and his feet on the way up suddenly went in all directions and as he landed they still were distorted and even an arm was way off the pose I had it in. Why does that happen and what can I do so it doesn't happen again. It's frustrating to have to go back in the frames and change the figure to make it right again. Please help. Thanks.

When poser figures the animation moves between the keyframes, large positive or negative values for the joints can make it act weird. Ok, I am not sure if this is the fix you are looking for, but it is worth a try. Under the animation commands there is something like "reconfigure key frames" not sure of the command name, I don't have poser open at the moment. That command will smooth out your animation I believe. Maybe one of the animation masters can give you a better answer. -Trav

It's possible turning off IK will fix. Also heck all the graphs for the offending joint. If you have a whacky looking spline, convert it to Linear Interpolation. You have to check all parameters ie bend, twist,etc. I ended up buying Lifeforms because Poser's Spline Interpolation causes such unwanted tweening deviations when interpolating tween curves. Pack

You can edit and delete the offending keyframes in the key frame editor. Unfortunately tweening is not as great as we all would like. Especially with character animation. It's pretty much down to playing around with the raw animation and the editors until you get it right. We will be doing a major revamp of the animation forum in the very near future. We will be including a lot of tutorials for beginners and upwards. So look out for that. I would like to take this opportunity to encourage animators to use the '3D Animation' forum for this sort of query in future. If anyone would like to contact me personally at colm_j@yahoo.com with suggestions for improving the '3D Animation' forum please do.

Also try turning on Quaternions int he animation menu. You maybe suffering from Gimble Lock. Also turing off IK will help.