Hi all,

I'm struggling with simple animations within Poser because the Poser-generated frames in between keyframes are very unpredictable.

Here is an example : I'll have a first keyframe on a model with both arms lowered. Now I'll raise the model's arm in front of him, create a 2nd keyframe, lower the arm back to the first position and add a 3rd keyframe.

But when I play it back, I realise that instead of going down - front - down, the Poser added frames have his arms go all the way up, or in the back.

How can I make it so the arm only moves within the specified area, and not all over the place ?

Thank you for your answers, forgive the newbie question I'm very new to this.

Someone else with better knowledge may jump in to help but how long is your animation?

Total length is 3 seconds, duration between keyframes is 1 second

Try extending that time to 10 seconds.  Three seconds is very fast for that motion.  IIRC, the frame counter is in actual seconds but I would need to verify that information from the manual.  Setting the number of frames from 1 to 10 should be sufficient time to see how the model responds to the poses.  Frame 1 is your starting pose, frame 10 is your ending pose, and frame 5 should be your intermediate pose with the arms out front.  Frame 5 is the point that needs to be keyframes.  You could simply reposition the arms at frame 5 without keyframing, I think Poser will internally interpret the change especially if it's going to be an up-and-down motion.  The keyframing will come into play if you raise the arms and hold them in that position for an extended period of time.

Thanks for the advice, I'll try it !

It seems to me that Poser extrapolates on simple movement, taking more complicated paths to get from keyframe A to B.

Maybe that could be adjusted with the velocity curves.

This what a Spline Curve does in Poser.  In the above picture each of the Keys is at Zero except for the one with the green line (frame 75) it is at -100.  If you got rid of the Key at 75 then the line becomes flat.  Poser will draw a line between all the points and make the "Best" possible curve to do it with.  Even though it is not what you want. The Easiest solution is the use just Linear Lines.  And the easiest way to that is to collapse all the figures on the animation palette and drag a selection box around all of them and then click the Orange Linear check button to change all Keys to Orange from Green.  Th downside is that all movement will be at the same speed, however you can put in two extra keys one just after the movement starts and the other just before the movement ends and place them so that it starts slow and ends slow.

Putting in extra keys is something you are going to have to do no matter what, so you might as well use a method that will give predictable results.  The other thing is it is best to use the pose dials to make movements and not the Pose window. The dial will only affect a single channel whereas the Pose window will affect dozens of channels.  Th Pose window is best for static shoots, where you don't care how the parts get into place.