Hi,

I was wondering does anyone have any tips animating snake crawling. Or have a long cylinder rigged figure follow a path. 

I know poser 11 had path follow feature. But I will just like to use poser 13.

Thanks

I don't do a lot of animation myself. 

But if I should do it, I would do something as I have done with my "Salmon" as a fish kind of moves similar to a snake. Obviously, the big difference is the huge amount of bones in the snake compared to a fish, which makes it difficult to animate.

What I did with my fish is to create morphs for controlling the movement easily.

So in this case, these 3 morphs control several bones at once, so you don't have to animate each individual bone.

Here you can see how that would work

Swimming fish

Depending on the snake model you are using, it might already have such morphs, otherwise, I would suggest making those first and then using those to animate it. You can then link it to a path afterwards and if you spend a bit more time on it than I did with my fish animation, you can probably make it crawl. Also depending on the scene you are making, using some clever camera cuts would probably make it a lot easier as well.

Thanks, but I already knew about all of this. I just thought that might be an easier way,

This isn't perfect, but magnets can go a long way for this sort of thing, especially if the focus is more for cinematic type scenes rather than trying to have a perfectly functioning rig.

For this i setup a series of magnets rotated opposite directions and have the snake pass through the zones.

's

ShaneNewville posted at 9:04 PM Sat, 10 August 2024 - #4488292

This isn't perfect, but magnets can go a long way for this sort of thing, especially if the focus is more for cinematic type scenes rather than trying to have a perfectly functioning rig.

For this i setup a series of magnets rotated opposite directions and have the snake pass through the zones.

's

Thanks Shane dude! ? I just want to know is that a solid prop or rig? And are the magnet zones intersecting.

It's a static prop.

Have your snake prop in the scene and create several magnets, manipulating them so that the snakes form is as desired. Re-parent the magnets to the universe. Translate the snake to the edge of the frame or however you want it to traverse the scene. On the final key frame translate the snake prop through the magnets. Here it's just a simple z translation. The zones are only relevant to the set up of the deformations of your choice. It's important you re-parent the magnets to the universe...

Thanks everyone I think I got it now.

I do have one question. It gets a little tedious if you have multiple magnets. So is there a way to have multiple zones associated with just one magnet so I can have them all have the same settings?

Thanks

Uncanny_Film posted at 11:14 AM Wed, 14 August 2024 - #4488378

Thanks everyone I think I got it now.

I do have one question. It gets a little tedious if you have multiple magnets. So is there a way to have multiple zones associated with just one magnet so I can have them all have the same settings?

Thanks

Ah sorry. didnt get notification for any replies.  But yea, what primoge sald.

As far as I know there isn't any easy way to do something like that.  It def gets a little tedious to manage all the mags. 
This isn't want you asked, but one little thing i like to do just to help a tiny bit is move the Mag under the Mag base in Hierarchy just so its 1 less thing to have to move around.



If you really wanted to go through the work (which doesn't seem worth it to me...but whos to stop you :D)  you could try to setup something with dependencies (if you right click any dial) and have like 1 master magnet and make it so any time you move one of its parameters, it would also change on the other magnets.  But you would literally have to set this up for every single dial on every magnet.  In most cases its better to just get used to mags and how they work and make the best of it, even as tedious as it seems.   Its still a lot of work to set the mags up for every scene you animate, but Ive found that it often gets done faster by just doing the work instead of spending time trying to come up with work-arounds.  Work-arounds are great though if you can find one that efficient.  This is something I learned working with (and I say this without a doubt) the greatest Poser animator to ever walk the planet. 

Not sure why the image disappeared from the previous post.  Think the forum is bugging out