i'm new to poser and animation entirely. umm. about making an animation, how long would it usually take?

for example, lets say i want to make an Alyson raise her hand up to her face and look at it. how long does it take to make it happen and correct all the errors and make the animation go nice and smooth? are there specific steps to take other than manipulating the parameters???

I do it this way, others may do it differently.

1. Time the action doing it yourself. say 1 second to lift hand and 1 second to move it a but.  2 seconds total at 30 fps is 60 frames

2. Position the figure in a neutralpose at frame 1 and keyframe all actors.

3. at frame 30 position figure with hand raised, and any other pose changes and keyframe it.

4 at frame 60 next pose, hand moved a bit , maybe head tilt , keyframe it.

5 run the anim in preview and see where its rough.  We want the nad to stay in place for a bit so go to frame 20 , and copy paste the hand and arm keyframes from frame 30. Also past them to frame 40.

keep adjusting and adding new keyframes till its smooth enough.

I would allow 30 minutes for that , you might take a couple of hours, but thats ok.

If you have enough keyframes start using the graph editor to check how smooth a curve you have and make small adjustments in that.

Quote - I do it this way, others may do it differently.

1. Time the action doing it yourself. say 1 second to lift hand and 1 second to move it a but.  2 seconds total at 30 fps is 60 frames

2. Position the figure in a neutralpose at frame 1 and keyframe all actors.

3. at frame 30 position figure with hand raised, and any other pose changes and keyframe it.

4 at frame 60 next pose, hand moved a bit , maybe head tilt , keyframe it.

5 run the anim in preview and see where its rough.  We want the nad to stay in place for a bit so go to frame 20 , and copy paste the hand and arm keyframes from frame 30. Also past them to frame 40.

keep adjusting and adding new keyframes till its smooth enough.

I would allow 30 minutes for that , you might take a couple of hours, but thats ok.

If you have enough keyframes start using the graph editor to check how smooth a curve you have and make small adjustments in that.

 

 

so u leav it at 30fps?

Moving the arm and hand only will make the animation look stiff.  I usually move every visible body part, even if only slightly.  Twist the neck a bit, tilt the head, turn the torso.  Even the smallest incidental movements will add realism.

oh ok. how long would it take to do a simple 10 second animation then?

and if going by 30 fps, how many frames do i wait till i actually move a part? or do i move parts every frame at 30fps???

Attached Link: http://img812.imageshack.us/i/m0s.mp4/

The frames per second doesn`t really matter (you can use 25 fps if you want or even 15 fps if you are making a simple animation for the web etc).

Poser uses keyframes, so if you are moving a figures hand to their face you would make a keyframe where their hand is near their face, depending on what you are actually doing you may also have earlier keyframes getting the hand into the proper position.

It is probably easiest if you just try making some simple animations as tests to see how it works and to see how long it takes to render.

You can use fps other than 30. 30 is standard for video, film would be 24, you can go lower for computer playback but whatevr you use will set the timing.   If you use 30 fps then a 10 second anim will be 300 frames , and an action that takes 3 seconds will cover 90 frames. You add keyframes only as needed, not every frame since the computer will handle the between frames.  

For very realistic movements you may use a lot of keyframes for very subtle movements.

Its probably best to start small and work up to bigger projects.

In the uk, 25 frames per second is the standard for video, but my point was that if artchitect is just starting in animation then timing is not the first thing that he will have to learn.

I wasn`t trying to be argumentative.

Animating with Poser has a learning curve - trial and error is the best way to learn. I'm still learning, and I've been at it for a decade.

Anyway, depending on the quality settings and the size of the picture (1280 x 720, for example, which is 720p hi-def), the longest part of the process will probably be the actual rendering. A minute animation = 1800 frames, after all. I mixed sketch-renders in with my latest, a three-minute (and change) video, to speed up the process - http://youtu.be/A93N0GST4zE. Came out looking okay, save one or two spots.

Also, remember that the camera and video editor are your friends.

Hi

START HERE

And see the other tutorials in the list to the right of that page

for now just forget about all this frame per second debates& render settings  etc.

these videos I did are to get a beginner familiar with the actual poser animation tools to get you animating in poser.

Cheers

Quote - how long would it take to do a simple 10 second animation then?

using iceboy's tutorial as a guide, it would take 10 minutes to create each frame (no props, empty scene, default lighting, preview mode).  hence it would take 101030/60 = 50 hours (1 week) to set up the movie (no props, empty scene, default lighting, preview mode).  unless various shortcuts were used, e.g. bvh or prepackaged pose files.

it takes a year or two to learn how to do this IMVHO.  in a commercial movie, they may allow 15 minutes per rendered frame, but they are gonna cut alotta frames and they've got hundreds of gofers working on it.

Where is Iceboy's tutorial? I don't see any links to it in this thread.

Attached Link: Lucy talks about Donald.

It really all depends on the animation and how much experience you have at it.

When I started it took me a long time to do 10 seconds of simple animation.

Now I can do 4,500 frames of animation in 6 to 8 hours if it's a character walking to the camera then standing still talking while moving about in a natural manner.

I don't render my animations, it just takes too long, and if you are going to use them online you can't upload anything really high resolution anyway.

Instead I work and export them bigger then I'm going to use them and the look good when shown the size they are going to ge used.

I usually create my environment by using a background image or video with a few props in the foreground to add depth, then with lighting effects and sound added it looks pretty good.

It's possible to make the character look like it's walking in the picture and not look like it's a background image at all.

Let me make clear that I'm no expert at this, I've only been working with the animation thing for about 6 months but it is possible to do fairly complxe animations in a fairly short time once you figure out how it works.

It's also possible to spend hours, and hours trying to get a fairly small thing like hair movement to look the way you want it to.  I've gone buggy trying to do that.

So how long it takes really depends on you, and how fussy you are.

There's a sample at the top of the page, I spent about a week working on and off doing this one, maybe 20 to 25 hours. I've gotten better at the walking and lip syncing since I did this one but this shows the things I've described.

Remember I don't claim to be a pro, but I am having a lot of fun doing this.  

I always wanted to make movies and if you stick with it it's possible to be your own writer, director, producer and production designer. LOL

With Poser and Adobe Premiere Elements you can do almost anything you can think of once you get the hang of it.

As to your original question: At my current level of skill I could do a video of Lucy in an environment raising he hand looking at it and then looking at the camera and winking in about 15 to 30 minutes and as one of the other posters said, you have to move every part of the body to make it look natural.  People just don't stand still.

Give it a go, I guarentee you'll have fun doing it.

Good luck!

Mike

"using iceboy's tutorial as a guide, it would take 10 minutes to create each frame (no props, empty scene, default lighting, preview mode).  hence it would take 101030/60 = 50 hours (1 week) to set up the movie (no props, empty scene, default lighting, preview mode).  unless various shortcuts were used, e.g. bvh or prepackaged pose files."**

**{RANT ON}**I have not seen" Ice boy's" animation tutorials but this estimate of 10 minutes to create each frame is beyond ridiculous!!!
GOOD GRIEF!!!Suddenly I feel compelled to apologize to Bagginsbill for any critical remarks I have made about his frustrated ,harsh admonishments of
people who DONT read what is being asked  by a poster and offer "technical advice" that is so far removed from being useful or helpful that it boggles the mind!!

{RANT OFF}

To the OP please clarify if you are asking about RENDERING A 10 SECOND animation in posers render engine

or CREATING A TEN SECOND animation in poser.

once that is clearly established we can proceed to help you without all of this obvious confusion& misdirection Displayed here thus far .

Cheers

Attached Link: Lucy test file

I had to try it...

30 minutes from the time I started to the time I exported the finished video from Premiere as a WMF file so that it was small enough to upload.  About 20 minutes to do the animation itself and export it from Poser.

I might add that one advantage of using an image or video for a background it that they do not need to be rendered to come out at their origianl quality.

If I had tried to render this I would still be at it tomorrow! LOL

Also I have a bunch of premade Lucys so I didn't have so spend any time creating the character.

Mike

Quote - Hi

I had to try it...

30 minutes from the time I started to the time I exported the finished video from Premiere as a WMF file so that it was small enough to upload.  About 20 minutes to do the animation itself and export it from Poser.

Thank you for the Demo Sir

10 seconds of Animation

in about an hour ...not "50 hours"

Cheers

Quote - 30 minutes from the time I started to the time I exported the finished video from Premiere as a WMF file so that it was small enough to upload.  About 20 minutes to do the animation itself and export it from Poser.

excellent work, mike!  apparently, in skilled hands, it can be done in less than a week.  perhaps O.P. would benefit from a brief tutorial on your methods.

THE FREAK

Loaded Daz freak4 into poser at 7:48pm new york time

Completed simple  HAND KEYED animation 7:59pm new york time
rendered openGL render and uploaded to youtube 8:03 new york time.

any questions???

CHEERS

Quote - THE FREAK

Loaded Daz freak4 into poser at 7:48pm new york time

Completed simple  HAND KEYED animation 7:59pm new york time
rendered openGL render and uploaded to youtube 8:03 new york time.

 

any questions???

 

 

CHEERS

LOLZ! umm, as for your previous post, i think i meant "creating animations". btw i did a simple 10 second animation. there are flaws but i attempted to cove them up... http://youtu.be/95uhTlhoN_c

and here are 2 five second ones http://youtu.be/gFyCNTeQtuw

http://youtu.be/ovvpPMDuGaI yeah...i'm not so good...

so...how did i do on those???

Pretty neat!

I liked the idea of text in the window, never thought of that, makes me think about using balloons with copy in the animations.  Kind of a Batman thing.

Now you just keep going and trying new things.  There's no end to what you can do.

I just got Lucy a car!  Now I'll have to figure out how I'm going to use it in a video.

I'll be interested in seeing what you do next, half the fun is seeing what everyone is doing.  As I said before I'm pretty new at this too.  

I think the figuring it out is the fun part, once I've done it I have to find something new to add to it.  I spent days on the Adobe forum for the last on figuring out how to do transparency etc.

Mike

and. when i try to move a body part at a certain point in an animation, it kinda goes wrong. some of the frames before the frame in which i moved the part make it so it's going for that position. like, let's say i want to move a leg slightly, the frames before that make the leg move until it's in position. and i dont like that. is there some type of button that allows me to prevent that???

Break spline should fix that or linear section.

where is that located?

You select the body parts that are affected (as shown) at the frame you want to fix and the break spline and constant section are ringed in the picture,  you click on one of these to affect the selected part of the animation.

It is actually quite an easy thing to do.

o thanks. that helped. and also, in order to do it, i had to slightly change certain parameters in order for it to work.

in order to manipulate a certain part successfully without flaws, do i really have to manipulate it throughout the whole animation??? cuz it seems like i had to for it to work...

You usually just have to change the affected area, so if 10 frames are affected that is all you change.

throughout those 10 frames?

Attached Link: Lucy Walks

One thing that I have found doing this it don't change your mind.

Plan out what you are going to do and work from the front of the animation to the back.

If you start going back and changing it things start to go wrong.

You don't want to put a break spline every place that makes the animation look jerky and unnatural but you do want to put in a lot of key frames.

I would suggest that you try going to the animation drop down and select Resample Key frames.  Tell it to put a key frame every 15 frames for everything.  I.e. every half second.

Now the arrow buttons on the lower right will move you from key frame to key frame.

Pose your starting frame at frame one, hit the button to move to key frame 2 and pose all the elements of your figure that need to move, then move on to key frame 3 pose it again, etc.  Keep running the animation as you go, to check how it looks.

If you do need to make changes do it at one of your designated key frames and you won't get a lot of weird stuff happing.

You don't always have to do this but I think it will make it easier for you at the start.

Learn how to use the key frame pallet.  if you select one frame and hold Alt you can drag it to a new location as a copy, it you just drag it you move the original frame to a new location.  This make is easy to change the timing of the movements or to return to a previous position.

When you have the figure posed at a key fram, hit Alt, Ctrl, A to record the position, then when you move to the next position hit Ctrl, A to make the figure match the last key frame and then pose from there.

Note that every item on the key frame pallet has a drop down, this lets you change one part to the item through the whole animation, i.e. select Neck, look in the drop down for Twist, and you will be able to make changes that only effet twist etc.

Learn the difference between Spline, Linear and constant selection.

If you are working with a human figure you will use Spline most of the time.

Put in a break spline when your don't want the previous movement to be carried into the following frames.

None of this is the only way to do it kind of thing, eveyone works differently and you will find what works best for you. 

Just keep working with it and it will all make sense in no time.

Oh! and most important, make sure that you save a lot!!!

I usually save multiple saves i.e. Lucy Walks 01, and then later Lucy Walks 02 etc.

If you totally screw it up you have some place to go back to.

I haven't been doing this for a long time either but the things that I've mentioned here are things that I found really helped me.

Mike

PS. and keep trying new things, in the linked video my character is standing still and everything else is moving.  At the end everything else stops and she walks out or the frame.

My two minute epic

http://www.ranquist.net/animation/TheGame.htm

Enjoy, (?)
Rªnce

Hi

Very Cool!!!

I love it, gives me something to shoot for.

And some ideas.

Mike

Very cool, indeed. I especially liked the chess sequence, when the game speeds up.

and now i have a newer question. when it comes to altering the material. how do i alter a material in a specific point onwards in an animation without it being altered for the whole animation???

Hi

You need to output 2 clips, one up to the point where the material changes and one that continues from there.

There are a couple of ways to do that.

You can just stop you video at that point and then start a new one using the last frame of the first one as your starting point.

An easier way is to create your whole video in one piece then output just the frames leading up to the change.

Save the file: change the material and save it again, as XXXXX Part 2.pz3.

Now output the frames from where you stopped the first time to the end.

To be really accurate, you can save 30 frames past the change on the first clip, and 30 frames before the change on the second clip, then use a 1 sec transition that overlaps clip one and clip two and fades from one to the other.

Then you will see the material change gradually from one to the other.

Mike

Some materials can be animated in poser and there you just have to make sure that the material settings are back to the default state at the correct time, but it partly depends on what you are trying to actually do.

well at some point in the animation i'm working on,  there is a ball that is supposed to change in ambient color to look brighter from that point onwards...but it didnt work...

There are alot of factors in how long an animation will take you. Dynamic clothing and strand based hair for example. And also post work.

This is an example of an animation that I did trying to learn motion blurring. It's all done post in GIMP, and I rendered the animation to image file (.png) and did the composite in Virtual Dub.

Soooo... the actual animation took about 10 minutes to do because I simply loaded Walk Designer.

The render took about an hour or maybe a bit more because of my render settings. I render to 1920x1080 for a 16x9 HD resolution.

The post comping took about 5 hours to complete.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEgt3KnhN6Y

There are other animations there if you click on my user name...

Attached Link: Changing Ball

I did this just the way I described.

In this case I found the easiest way was to output the complete video in both versions.

Then I cut them in the middle and put the first part of one with the second part of the other.  Then I just applied a crossover transition.

Whole thing start to end only took 15 minutes.

Mike

Quote - well at some point in the animation i'm working on,  there is a ball that is supposed to change in ambient color to look brighter from that point onwards...but it didnt work...

You can change that in the material room, too. There is a tab that allows you to animate the nodes attached to the object. But that can get complicated and is a lot of work. Rendering two different sequences sounds like an easier answer.