Much like the subject line, I find that Poser slows to a crawl when using multiple animation layers in the animation palette. Animation layers are of course extremely useful for animation purposes, and I am quite fond of them.

I am curious is anyone else has come across this issue and if there's anything that can be done about it.

If I have a base layer and add a talk layer to a scene that is usually okay, but if I want to add more layers (for say facial expressions or extra camera angles), well that's where things start to clog up.

I don't recall this being an issue prior to Poser11.

Animation layers have been messed up since Poser 10. I have submitted several help tickets on the problem both at Smith Micro and here at Renderosity. I believe the problem has something to do with a field called KFD. If you look into a saved scene and track down where the layer movement information exists you will see there are TWO values, instead of the one as you find on the Base layer. It seems (looking all the way back to when layers was introduced into Poser) that the KFD field has always been there and it appears to have been an attempt to provide a toggle between Adding and Replacing of the Layer. The problem with that is the design is only useful for Two layers (the Base and an extra). If you have Poser 9 you can see what Layers should be doing according to the user manual.

The setup to see the issue is start a new scene and move an object on a channel at the last frame (I use a box and use the Y-Trans).

Open the Graph editor and you will see a line going from the start value at frame 1 to whatever the value you moved the object to.

Make a New Layer with a start of frame 10 and end of Frame 20. Go to Frame 15 and just click add a Key Frame.

In Poser 9 this makes a straight line at Zero with a start middle and end Key Frame

In Poser 10 or 11 It places a Key Frame on the Base Layer line at whatever value frame 10 is at the moment. At frame 15 it drops some random amount and creates the Key, then goes to Frame 19 and returns to the Baseline value before dropping down to the Zero line. The last keyframe at 20 CANNOT be moved up or down it is stuck.

If you were to look at the values of the Key Frames in a saved file It looks that instead of putting in the value to be used in the replace or add field they put in the value of what the Base layer was at the point of the Key Frame and then KFD is a value to return it back to Zero. In Poser 9 it would be something like Base is 1, Layer 1 is 0 (which adds or replaces the Base Layer) and does not have an effect until you put in a change. In Poser 11 the Base is 1, Layer 1 is 1 and KFD is -1, which if added give you 1+1-1 =1.

The problem comes when you have more then 1 extra layer as it has to add all the layers together figure out what the combined value should be and then place that value into the Layers Key Frame value and KFD offset. It gets really bad when you consider that layers can be turned off to not affect the playback (useful to see the "Base" movement) or can be changed from Replace to Add.

So I can fully understand way it gets slow as there is a massive amount of useless processing going on trying to fit into some dumb concept that was designed for TWO layers max.

I really don't think the current programmers have any clue about this and since the original programmers broke it back in Poser 10 probably don't have any code samples to refer to see how it should be working.

Thank you for that detailed analysis, I am grateful for it. I am glad that it's not just me but also a little pissed that no one has addressed this or at least put the word out to stick to two layers if possible. Animation is one of the few areas where Poser actually still beats out DazStudio (animating in Daz Studio is as much fun as eating sandpaper) and here the devs managed to mess it up and didn't care enough to fix it.

Animation is one of the few areas where Poser actually still beats out DazStudio (animating in Daz Studio is as much fun as eating >sandpaper) 

Daz studio has a functional nonlinear motion clip system much like Iclone and Autodesk motionbuilder.?

It also has a modern graph editor the can display multiple channels at once. and four options for Audio based lipsynch. and it works with all Daz figures.

Talk desiger" only works with the long abandoned Smith micro figures in their Default face morphs ?

A third party from the Maya community has developed an Iphone based facial mocap plugin for Daz studio already being showcased on youtube to be released soon.

https://youtu.be/x70igdC2uqU

I animated in poser since poser 4 That IMDB listing, in my forum sig, was for a hand keyed Poser 6 animation for a film client.

I dumped poser for good after poser pro 2014 I now use Iclone Pro to retarget to Daz rigs to render in blender.

https://youtu.be/7hSW7H8RVjY

Poser 11.x is at least one decade behind Daz studio and Reallusion in character animation?

I would agree with you Wolf that there hasn't been much development in Poser animation tools for a decade, but I am hard pressed to think of anyone who enjoys animating in DS (as opposed to say, using DS for character creation and then porting the figure elsewhere. That said, I am interested in exploring other options, and I would be interested to hear about your experience with the DS to iClone to Blender pipeline you're using. Pros, cons, costs, that sort of thing.

You mentioned "four options for audio based lipsynch". I wouldn't mind checking them out if you can name them for me. The only DS based one I've used so far only worked with the 32bit version of DS. The Facemojo system you mentioned looks really neat though, and I look forward to seeing more of it in action.

Hi I did a review of the various audio based lip sync options excluding "Anilip2" which I don't have ($90 USD Arrrgghh!) ?

https://youtu.be/kNdBNdduydQ

I create major body locomotion in Iclone and retarget custom BVH to Genesis in DS where I add facial and secondary body motion before FBX export to Blender for realtime render with EEVEE. ?

Thanks a bunch for the review and yes, I took a look at Anilip2, but at that price...

It's a pain in the butt, but what I've done in the past is use lipsync on an old 32bit copy of DS, save the file and then open it in 64 bit DS and start animating from there.

It sounds like your pipeline is a bit of a process too.

If I may ask, was Mimic pro 3 just for DS or was it for Poser as well? If so, did you ever try using Mimic Pro 3 in Poser on a GF2 or GM2 imported into poser?

I ask as I've tried my hand at making a talk designer file for GF2 (to use on GF2's imported into Poser), but I cannot get the mouth open-close or blinks to function properly, just phonemes.

I never used it, but I believe Poser used to have it's own lip syncing software called Talk Designer. Like I said, I never used it and I believe i heard it is broken or discontinued. I can ask around if no one else can answer that.

Hi

I still use the Genesis2 Models exclusively because I am a clothing content developer who has no need for the Daz store content that is mostly for G8 the days.

Also the G3/8 figures behave erraticly when FBX exported to blender and have other "issues "?

That said , I have never bothered with "DSON" however I have exported the G2 figures as Poser Cr2 files from DS as a poser Cr2 is required to use the Old Mimic Pro 3.

Mimic pro3 was originally a paid poser utility as it predates the Genesis figures by several years.

As You asked, I just tried to use a mimic pro talk .pz2 on the G2 male in poser pro 2014.

His lips seemed to move very slightly but certainly not the correct way they talk on a native G2 male in DS.

Kind of Moot really as the mimic pro software has long been EOL, as I reported in my review, so if you do not already have a copy you will never get a copy.?

someone reported that the Lafemme model ships with a poserTalk designer XML /VISEME file. That might be an option for P11 users who are willing to only user her default face shape when creating talking animation. ?

Thanks for trying it out, I appreciate it. Also yes, that's about the same result I get with my improvised talk designer file for GF2, sadly.

As for LaFemme, yes she ships with a talk designer file, which works no better or worse than it does on other poser figures from what I've seen. I've used it on morphed LF faces (i.e. not her default face shape) without issue. It's not a perfect system but it works as it does.

https://twitter.com/ChimeraFortysix/status/1205804008000106496 (the account is nsfw but the post itself is sfw)

Well at least they updated talk designer since PP 2014.? Looks like Lefemme could be your lead actress for poser.

I just received an answer from Jenn Blake about Talk Designer. Here's her response:

_Talk Designer has been included with Poser since Poser 5

Window Menu> Talk Designer... Not all figures support Talk Designer, but users can create VISME files for any figure with moving parts._