i have noticed walkdesigner on poserpro locks the character, not allowing any alteration. i have locked parts of characters( to hold things and such) prior to appling the cycle but i am wondering is there a way to unlock, to allow for tweeks?

thanx in advance

In the menu under Figure, you can lock and unlock it. not sure if that's what you mean though :)

no that isnt what i mean.

at least for me (and i dont think it was like this before in earlier vers.) poserpro 2010 when using the walk designer after appling the walk to the figure to the path, the figure is locked. you cant reposition anything below the neck. when the figure was not locked from start.

ty for the response

no it does not really lock the character, but it looks that way.

What is does: it generates an animation, which by default ends up in a separate animation layer. You can set that at the bottom of Walk Designer. Just open Window > Animation palette, use the Layers tab in there, click "Walk Andy2" of whatever the generated layer is called, and you can access the details in the Keyframes tab.

But in order to move a bodypart, you have to discard all the keyframes for it over the required time-range. Walk designer has made a key for each bodypart, for each rotating attribute (twist / bront-back / side-side) for each frame during the entire time-lapse. When you check the appropriate option in the walk Designer, it will even make them for (and hence 'locking') the head as well.

Or to free up your character for a while: in Layers tab, UNcheck the Include in playback option for the specific layer. Then you can animate in base layer. Or use the Walk Andy2 layer and you can move body parts in there (changing the walk animation, btw).

And so on. At least you know where to look, now.

what about that graph thing in the animation tools?

can it be used on limbs?

it's sneering at me cuz i don't know how to use it effectively.

. . . that "graph thing" is probably the most powerful and important feature in the Poser animation toolset :)  Well worth becoming familiar with and a lot of fun to work with once you get your head around it.

i had a feeling it's important.

layers! of course. now it makes sense. thank you! yes i do know where to look.

as for the graph, yes very very important- i use it often. very handy with imported motions. but it too seemed locked...

while on topic, sort of

Y trans for a walk path?.

i was doing something yesterday and had my scene set up so i loaded a walk path and realized the path was lower then the walking surface i created. something for uneven ground perhaps for uneven ground? or is that all in the tweeking?

thanks again.

you can set / adjust the control points of the walk path at any XYZ, height included, and you can even animate them (for whatever use that may be). And you can do it in the tweaking, and/or both.

Tip: as WD creates keyframes for every frame in the timeline, you might want to experiment with Animation > Resample Key Frames first to lose the unneccesary ones before you end up in a tweaking nightmare.

hmmmmmm

i tried changing to the layer and editing the body part, it pulls up the motion graph, which is fine. however i didnt see any change in potition and just to check i made some extreme changes.

when i go to animation palette i have base layer, layer 1 and so on. it seems the WD is on the base layer. if i dont have it create this new layer for the animation will i have more control.

as for the height, how do i change that?

I'm just finding out things myself BTW so for more experienced people: please step in.

In the meantime:

 - although looking through the Main cam gives the suggestion that I can change the Y-position of a Walk Path control point, the Front etc cams reveal that I cannot. So a Walk Path remains at the ground level (and I have to alter Y-moves otherwise)

 - WD does generate a series of animation keys, one for each frame (!) with rotate keys only, except for Hip which has XYZ translate keys as well, unless "walk in place" is checked.

 - I would set WD to make an animation on a separate layer indeed. Then I would run Resample Key Frames to lose the majority of the intermediate keys, leaving me far less keys to manipulate.

 - In order to make the animation flexible in Y, I will have add keys in the Base Layer AND set the Walk layer to ADD-mode, instead of Replace which overrides.

To change the height of a figure relative to the ground. edit the Body Y tran keys on whichever layer WD has put the animation. As already suggested resampling keyframes can speed up the process. I usually start this process by converting all the Y keys to straight (orange) interpolation and then adjust if needed. The graph is particularly useful here as you can visualize the shift in terrain.

When using layers, it is important to only have keyframes for the individual parts you are working on, if you're figure is not moving when you alter the key, it may be cancelled by a layer above. Unlike the base layer, frame 1 can be deleted in higher layers.

Avoid getting any camera keys anywhere but the base layer.