Hi, this probably sounds like a stupid question, but is there any way to change a talking character's emotional tweaks in mid-stream, say if she's sad for a minute and thirty seconds, then becomes angry at 1:31? Using the animation pallette and talk designer there ought to be some way, but I can't figure it out. I'd be very grateful if anybody could shed some light on this issue.

Again, I'm running Poser 7. I'd like to upgrade, but I'm pretty broke right now.

In the Edit Keyframes panel, you can remove keyframes for the parts you want to animate (like changing the eyes, opening and closing them, adding a frowning forehead, whatever) and add the expressions you want. Just dont change whatever mouth movements the Talk Designer has created.

There are columns for body parts like head, neck, etc, but I don't recall seeing columns related to parts of the face. Or do you mean using the parameter dials to change the expression without changing anything in the mouth, then creating a new keyframe? I'm only running poser 7.

 

Quote - In the Edit Keyframes panel, you can remove keyframes for the parts you want to animate (like changing the eyes, opening and closing them, adding a frowning forehead, whatever) and add the expressions you want. Just dont change whatever mouth movements the Talk Designer has created.

 

Open the Edit Keyframes panel (that's the key icon at the lower right). Youll see the list of all the parts of the scene. For a human figure (like my Young John), click the triangle to his left, and youll see all his individual parts unfolding below. I clicked the "Head" here, and the head bits are now visible. I selected "Eyes Open - Closed." If there are keyframes here at the part of the animation you want to change, erase them. Then use the parameter dials to open or close his eyes wherever you want that to happen in the animation. You can do the same with any other body part. Just dont, as I said, alter his mouth movements for his talking. What figure are you using?

Quote - Open the Edit Keyframes panel (that's the key icon at the lower right). Youll see the list of all the parts of the scene. For a human figure (like my Young John), click the triangle to his left, and youll see all his individual parts unfolding below. I clicked the "Head" here, and the head bits are now visible. I selected "Eyes Open - Closed." If there are keyframes here at the part of the animation you want to change, erase them. Then use the parameter dials to open or close his eyes wherever you want that to happen in the animation. You can do the same with any other body part. Just dont, as I said, alter his mouth movements for his talking. What figure are you using?

 

Will it be necessary to change the parameters for each of the many keyframes in a row, or does the manipulation you describe change them all till the next point where you decide to make a change?  I'll go ahead and give it a try just changing once in a row for the body parts in question and see what that does.

It works! It works! It works!

Thank you SO much!

Someone on another forum had suggested that I work with morph targets, about which I am totally ignorant, and when I looked them up in the poser 7 reference manual I found it entirely unintelligible; painful even to read, and I nearly despaired at ever finishing this project. Now I have some hope.

One thing that still vexes me is how simply manipulating the parameter dial will automatically create a keyframe at whatever point on that green grid you're at. The aforementioned reference manual says, in ALL CAPS on page 120:

"CAMERA ANIMATION MUST BE ENABLED FOR THE CURRENTLY SELECTED CAMERA IN ORDER TO AUTOMATICALLY SELECT KEYFRAMES. IF ANIMATION IS DISABLED, YOU CAN ADD KEYFRAMES MANUALLY..."

Well, I un-clicked "Animating" in the Main Camera's Properties, but the #&$^%@ thing still insists on creating those keyframes automatically. I want to do it manually, however tedious that may be, because I know how totally a single mistake can screw up an animation. Is there some other way of enabling/disabling it, or did that damn reference manual simply lie to me?

 

 

 

 

I believe when you unclick"animating" in the camera properties, it only affects the camera, not other things. So moving the camera will no longer make a keyframe, but moving other objects will.

Animating requires a lot of experimentation. Lots of complex stuff going on. (Well, Poser as a whole requires a lot of experimentation!) So keep playing...and asking...trying different things...

dnstuefloten (or anybody) I've been able to change facial expressions throughout a short trial by clearing a body part's whole row of keyframes in the animation pallete, (and found that going through the motions of that is necessary even when that row appears to be empty, otherwise any new key frame will fill the rest of the row...) but I've found that for the six minute, 11,000 frame project I'm working on that my mouse simply cannot select that row to its end no matter how carefully I click and manipulate it. I've spent half the day trying to do that with no success whatsoever and I am completely stymied.

Is there any command for selecting and deleting a whole row? Clicking around, I can't seem to find any. I see no way of proceeding unless I can get by this hurdle.

This is making me crazy! I'll try to explain it: I'm trying to change a speaking character's facial expressions throughout an animation via the animation palllette, by CLEARING an entire row of a facial part's 11,000 frames- NOT just the highlighted keyframes, but ALL of them so that row is truly EMPTY, then tweaking my character's expression as she speaks.

And it works, yes truly WORKS with the "Smile" feature,  but when I try to add some expression to the "Sneer Right" column, no matter how many times I tediously select the whole row and clear it- making it to all apearances as empty as I made the "Smile" row, any addition to it will fill the whole row to the end with dark green frames, causing her expression in a very few seconds to become a grotesque caricature of herself. It seems that having that row filled will cause that expression to keep increasing. Any attempt to adjust by adding or subtracting the precise number I subtracted of added earlier will only throw it off more!

Does anybody understand what I'm trying to say?

Is there any fix for this? So long as that "sneer right" row operates under the same principles as the "smile" row, what I'm trying to do OUGHT to work, but it doesn't.

I've spent virtually all day on that one little thing and gotten nowhere and I'm a nervous wreck.

I've already spent two weeks on this project and it would kill me to abandon it now. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

One thing I could suggest, so that you bring the enormity of the animation down to something you can work with, is to break the sound file into separate pieces, animate them as separate files, then bring them all together in a video editor. 6 minutes is a long animation, and smaller chunks would make the process easier on you.

I suggest breaking the sound file into 1 minute (or wherever there is a pause in the dialog) sections and work from there.

EDIT: this will also allow you to change camera angles, add transitions, or focus in on facial expressions or body parts (like the eyes), and give your animation a bit more life.

Rokket, Thanks. I've considered that already, but the liklihood of my being able to paste those parts together and retain smooth movement of a cat walking in the background (which is a vital part of the animation,) seems nil at best. However since posting my last somewhat hysterical (and not in the funny sense) message, I've quite by accident stumbled on a way I think will allow me to achieve the effects I want. It seems that the grey flatline feature of the spline controls will clear out those frames following it, stop the wild contortions of my character's face and allow me to manipulate her expressions like I'd intended. Also, I need a new mouse. The one I'm using is so unresponsive.

For reasons I'll spare the readers here I've since childhood had a huge mental/emotional block against reading technical manuals. It causes me actual physical pain, so my approach to learning any new softwarehas always been to just bumble around with it till I can make it work. But the folks here and on a few other forums have been very helpful and I do appreciate it.

 

Quote - One thing I could suggest, so that you bring the enormity of the animation down to something you can work with, is to break the sound file into separate pieces, animate them as separate files, then bring them all together in a video editor. 6 minutes is a long animation, and smaller chunks would make the process easier on you.

I suggest breaking the sound file into 1 minute (or wherever there is a pause in the dialog) sections and work from there.

EDIT: this will also allow you to change camera angles, add transitions, or focus in on facial expressions or body parts (like the eyes), and give your animation a bit more life.

You seem to be experimenting, which is what youll have to do with all this animation. But 11,000 frames! Youre really straining at the edges of what is possible. I rarely go over 600 frames--a twenty second segment. You can save the Poser file with a second name, and use your mouse to move keyframes to have the new animation begin exactly where the previous one ended. This is a bit tricky too, and youll need to experiment a bit...

When I want a change in expression, I will keyframe several frames before the beginning of the change, and several frames where the expression ends. Then I make the change somewhere in the empty middle. This creates a natural curve.

Ive attached a screen shot to show you want I mean.

Then I suggest you look at something else--the graph (Window/Graph at the top bar). In the following note I'll show you how this looks...

The graph will show you how quickly, and exactly where, the expression changes. You normally want a curve, not an abrupt change. The green spline is usually best for this, but it can go crazy if you dont anchor it properly at beginning and end. To see the graph section, first select the expression you are changing (in this case the mouth sneer/pout), then open the graph. If the graph line is rising and falling all over the place (as it is wont to do), youll need to set the keyframes more carefully.

The graph is your animating friend...I use it all the time...

The easiest way to select all the frames you want is to click on the first frame and hold the  shift key down and scroll to the last frame and click on that one while still holding down the shift key.  Now all the frames are highlighted it is a simple matter of pressing the minus button to remove the keys.  Just did it with PP2014 and a 500 frame BVH file, so it should work for you. 

Thanks, but I've tried that again and again and I simply don't have the coordination in my hand any longer to manage it. I've found that I can achieve something of the same result with the grey spline control on the upper right hand corner. At least it works for my purposes, which is good because I was getting truly desperate.

 

Quote - The easiest way to select all the frames you want is to click on the first frame and hold the  shift key down and scroll to the last frame and click on that one while still holding down the shift key.  Now all the frames are highlighted it is a simple matter of pressing the minus button to remove the keys.  Just did it with PP2014 and a 500 frame BVH file, so it should work for you. 

Thanks. That darned thing keeps popping up whether or not I want it ;/ Is ther any way of making it just go away?

I seem to have hit on a way of modifying my character's expressions and keeping them from spinning out of control by use of the parameter dials and the spline controls. Probably not optimal, but it's the best I can do with my limited patience and attention span. I have put poser to good use making still images, and have a certain amount of experience animating objects with it, but once I have finished this project, I swear to god I will never, ever use talk designer again.

But thanks for your help. (I'm following your suggestion to break it down to a number of smaller segments.)

 

Quote - The graph will show you how quickly, and exactly where, the expression changes. You normally want a curve, not an abrupt change. The green spline is usually best for this, but it can go crazy if you dont anchor it properly at beginning and end. To see the graph section, first select the expression you are changing (in this case the mouth sneer/pout), then open the graph. If the graph line is rising and falling all over the place (as it is wont to do), youll need to set the keyframes more carefully.

The graph is your animating friend...I use it all the time...

Before you go completely bonkers from going about it in a way that drives you nuts, experiment with using additional layers for emotional tweaks, etc.

You don't have to delete a single frame from the base layer to add things like blinks, laughs, kisses, etc. The changes can be suttle, or extreme.

You can define the Frame Range that each layer affects and how it Blends into the base layer. You will want to use the Replace option for some things, and Add for others.

Layers can be flaky sometimes, so save often. Name them something you will actually remember.

One of the best aspects of using layers is that you can turn them off.

Which means if they are all turned off, your base layer has never been changed at all.

Very simple tutorial...

http://my.smithmicro.com/tutorials/2380.html

Thank you. That will be very useful.

 

Quote - Before you go completely bonkers from going about it in a way that drives you nuts, experiment with using additional layers for emotional tweaks, etc.

You don't have to delete a single frame from the base layer to add things like blinks, laughs, kisses, etc. The changes can be suttle, or extreme.

You can define the Frame Range that each layer affects and how it Blends into the base layer. You will want to use the Replace option for some things, and Add for others.

Layers can be flaky sometimes, so save often. Name them something you will actually remember.

One of the best aspects of using layers is that you can turn them off.

Which means if they are all turned off, your base layer has never been changed at all.

Very simple tutorial...

http://my.smithmicro.com/tutorials/2380.html

I have tried and tried and TRIED to delete unwanted frames and they just WON'T go away. I'll try to explain here: There is ONE particular frame near the end of a 600 frame animation that I want to use as the starting point for the next. I select the entire column and move it left so that i'll be frame # 1 , but that NEVER works.  I select all the frames that are not that frame and hit the "delete key frames" tab and all the green and yellow and grey colored squares go blank, BUT THE FRAMES THENMSELVES ARE STILL THERE! There are still 600 of them. I just want that one. I'll select that, close out the file, open an new one and try to Paste, but that does not work, either.

Can anybody tell me how I can save that SINGLE frame?

i'm sorry for the caps, but this %&#@*$?! thing is turning me into a blithering idiot. The only thing I hate more than poser is myself for getting myself into this nightmare. I promised to do an animation for a group of people whose respect I value and I'll never earn it if I can't follow through with my promise. I'm two weeks late already and I'm only 60 seconds into a 6 minute animation. Any help- explained at idiot level-would be very much appreciated. I feel like I'm throwing my life away on this cursed thing. Once this project is finished I am going to uninstall poser from my computer and shred the disc it came on.

Save that frame as a pose and then apply it when you get to that point...

All right. I think I've worked around that, but I'm not sure I can explain or if I even understand what happened. I saved the pose my figure had in that one frame I wanted to keep, set the animation panel pallette at frame 00001 to frame 00001,  removed all layers but the base layer and lip snyc layer (actually that's not totally accurate. The lip synch layer simply refused to be erased....) Then I set up the sound file for the next animation and the number of empty frames changed accordingly. Then I applied the saved pose and it kept reverting, but by setting one of those green spline squares in the first frame I think I made it stick... Damn, this is confusing.

Rokket, thanks, I was figuring that out as you were responding to my rant. Or maybe I was reading your mind.

 

Quote - Save that frame as a pose and then apply it when you get to that point...