This is atarting to drive me nutso. I'm just trying to animate a ball bouncing a couple of times. I made the ball, since the Poser ball isn't very round, and a couple of morph targets for it. The idea is that it falls, and when it hits the ground it squashes slightly, and bounces back up. Simple, eh? But it always starts squashing on the way down. The "squash" is being interpolated all through the fall, so it is by no means realistic. I thought maybe making the squash morph on it 0 at the frame before the contact with the floor, but that screwed it all up. So, what's the trick? I know it's something I'm doing wrong in the keyframing, but it's got me all screwed up. Thanks.

Mike key frame to the floor then morph. Let the ball fall then the morph. Hope that helps. Ron

Yep set your first key frame as the ball touches down. For example, in a frame of 30 with a bounce at around 15, set the first frame at 14 with squash at zero. At 15 set another key frame with the squash starting. At say 18 set on for full squash, at 19 set a new one to began reversing the squash. Around 21 or 22 set another key with the squash at zero as ball rebounds. You get the idea. You need to proceed any key changes in motion with key frames otherwise Poser sometimes does weird things.

Oh, one more thing. Set the interpolotion to constant for the frames in between the squash. IE: 1-14, 21-30.

Cool, and thanks much for the advice. I haven't done much along the lines of animating in Poser, but I have done some, and I can't think of any problems I've had which have been as annoying as this one. Keyframing, yes, it makes sense now. Thank you. :)

I'm lazy........I just open the graph for the body part and slide it so it behaves like I want it. The Graphs can control the morphs too. ScottA

Hey Mike, just re-read my comments. I need to clarify my last remark. Set the interpolotion to constant for the squash morph settings (only) for the frames indicated. Expand the + to do this in the animation editor and set the keys to contant for this channel.

Attached Link: http://66.70.166.29/animation/mike2.MPG

>"I'm lazy........I just open the graph for the body part and slide it so it behaves like I want it. The Graphs can control the morphs too.<"

NOT lazy Scott ....SMART!!

that is my preffered method of character animation in poser because ti allows broad access to all channels in the scene and it makes it easy to copy and paste
animation data from one element to another
I recently did a lipsync and had to animate the eye blinks for the right eye only and then selected the frames in the graph editor and copied and pasted them to the left eye so they now blink together.

(2.2meg mpeg)

Hey that's pretty cool wolf. OK, I'm intrigued, because evidently the graph is alot more powerful than the way I have been doing it. Are there any good Poser animation tutorials out there anywhere, which deal with the more complex features it has? The one in the manual is pretty lame. Yeah, I want to make a clown walk...uh, huh. I would have assumed that's what the Walk Designer is for. ;)

Attached Link: http://www.enigmastudio.co.uk

I've got a brief tutorial on my (clean) site that deals with this. URL above, ignore the Atmosphere part of the site, still working on that bit! I also have a Yahoo group I'm trying to get going for animators. The group is not connected to Curious in any way and covers animations made in Poser and in Flash. The name of the group is Flash_erotica.

I almosyt forgot about this, but I always try to remember to thank those who have helped me. Well, thanks to all of you I managed to get the ball to bounce as it was supposed to, and learned something about that graph thingie along the way. :) But, the ball bounce was just a portion of what I'm trying to do. Still though, it's even something as simple as that which can explain alot about interpolation. Something like THAT should have been in the animation tutorial in the manual, instead of the clown walk. I mean, POser comes with animation sets and the walk designer anyway, but that tutorial didn't do squat at teaching me about effective and useful interpolation.

Well.......if you knew who wrote that part of the manual Mike. You'd understand why it sucks. ;-) ScottA

Oh I do know, Scott. You bet I do.... ;)