Taomation opened this issue on May 02, 2018 ยท 8 posts
3D-Mobster posted Wed, 02 May 2018 at 4:21 AM
Will just start by saying that I don't live in L.A., just to get that sorted :D
But animation is very difficult and as you say there is not a lot of good tutorials available for animating in Poser, as far as I know. But I think you can get help by watching tutorials made for other programs, as the basic concept of animation is pretty much the same regardless of software. Obviously these applications might have more advance tools than Poser, look differently etc, but the overall concept remain the same and you should be able to do all of it in Poser. So hopefully this won't scare you off.
Also I think a lot of people might underestimate how long time it take to animate and expect cool animations in a very short time, not saying that you are like this, but I think its healthy to always keep that in the back of once head, because it can be very frustrating doing animations. I have only worked a little with it my self and are not an expert in the Poser animation room by any means. But i know the feeling of adding key frames here and there and then suddenly everything screws up. From the description of one of the tutorials, it is estimated that you have to spend approximately 1 hour to make 1 second of character animation, this obviously depend on what you are making, but just to make it clear that it takes a long time to do.
I know that what you are seeking help with, is the Poser animation window, but I think you are going about it a bit wrong. Because its a tool, which is crucial to master, if you want to make anything, but animating have a lot to do with principles and knowing the theory behind it and if you know these and how they work then at least from my understanding, the tool you use to do it, is less important. Because all these different 3D applications share a more or less common way of working with animating, and its no different in Poser.
So what I would suggest is to start very simple and go from there.
For instant start with a simple Sphere which you make go up in the air, let it hang there for half a second, go back to the ground and do a couple of bounces, wait for 1 second and then roll off or something like that. Even though the animation doesn't make any sense, I think it would help you get used to the different keys, timing etc. And just keep expanding from there. And leave the characters for a while...and when you feel that you are somewhat familiar with that, then make a walk cycle.
But anyway that is just my advice, here are some tutorials that I think explain the workflow well, keys and so forth. As mentioned these are not done in Poser, but in other applications such as Maya, which I my self have no experience with either, so I don't base this on me actually knowing these programs either and therefore have an easier time understanding them.
Tutorials