Not to step on the toes of the people who have created Natural Pose and Susanna...but I was lead to beleive that importing animations into Bryce was impossible without these programs. Well this simply isn't true and for those who don't know these two programs mostly just automate the process that you can do manually. I'm working on a tutorial on step by step how to do this but it may take awhile for me to complete it. (in the meantime I've put my character modeling on hold, hmmm it never fails I get into one project and in the middle something else grabs my attention LOL). So far I've managed a simple fight scene between to Poser characters and a running over terrain scene as well as placing those animation on a cube within Bryce like the screen for a movie projector. It only took a few hours to acheive these 3 things for 3 1 second clips. I'll post when the tutorial is finished, just wanted everyone to know about my revelation on this subject.

Oh almost forgot Natural Pose and Susanna are great programs and would like to thank the creators for making them. Just wanted to let people know they didn't NEED these tools to import their animations. Thanks all.

we'll be waiting...wanna give us a clue?

I want that tutorial I need Your Tutorial Yeah I had heard that it was possible...I always thought that since basically all that we do in 3D is data I thought maybe we could import that 3D as data and the programs would read it but since I am not a computer person I am probably totally wrong but hey that how we learn,right?

The jist of it is (and I have to give credit to both Natural Pose and Susanna by watching how those programs did it, although Natural Pose uses the .pz3 file while Suzanna autmates what I've figured out) You create your animation in Poser using 1 or more characters props etc then export that out as .obj sequence. Now in Bryce we won't be rendering the whole animation at once but more like stop motion (frame by frame), you'll need Poser Bryce and some program to put the .bmp sequence together as a movie. Create the Bryce scene and even animate other objects (make sure your frame rates match in Poser and Bryce). The more stuff you import from Poser the more stuff you have to keep track of. Then set your scrubber for frame 0, import your object file that matches frame 0 from poser and select render animation, set render options to .bmp sequence and render only frame 0 (not the whole animation). When that finishes delete your imported object from poser and advanced the scrubber to frame 1, import object frame 1 and so on until your whole animation is complete. Theres more details on placement, materials etc. But that's the basis of it. You'll need quite a bit of hard drive space for all the objects (this is where Natural Pose is a benefit, it creates small files that it uses).

Here is another thing I was going to try but never got around to it...Ok we could sit there and do the animation with a black background and export each frame of the animation for the figure as a BMP(BUT THEN IT GETS HUGE)jpeg would be better if you are not going to be doing touchups if you are PSD is the way to go then save as a jpeg for final import into Bryce... File it and store in a folder now you would have to make sure that all the lights in Poser matched those in Bryce(for proper lighting and shadows)then import each pic in proper seguence 1,2,3 into the Picture editor and then bring in the alpha channel you would be able to apply too a square and the black would be transparent while the character would show and I think you would have to link the camera to basically the front of the figure for warping of the IMAGE of the figure would be apparent in animations...

**** Reasons why I never tried...****
1.It would take a millenium to export a ten second animation @ 20-30 FPS from poser frame by frame...
2.And importing each pic after touch ups in PSP then into Bryce and applying to each square and then checking...I would be too old to finish it that way...
3.Probably would never look close to real...

***** Options *****

1. Pray your Tutorial works...
2. Win the Washington state Lottery
3. Get the program that will do it...
4. Pray and Hope your tutorial works...

umm... hate to say it mate, but what you're talking about with your tutorial is basically doing what stop motion animators did BEFORE tha davent of computers the point of those programs is to make it so YOU don't have to frame by frame animate, you simply make the PZ3 file, and the Br5 file, and tell the other program to "meld" them, and it does all te rendering, combines lighting, everything, in ONE file the way you want to do it is step by step frame by frame manual capture in bryce, save it, and move to something like say photoshop 6.0 to get a final product of an animated .gif file...20 seconds at 30 fps takes me 3 hours, and that's AFTER the bryce file containing the poser-exported .obj's has been saved as a BMP series...that's just converting the series to an animated.gif...and I shortcut and macro EVERY part of creating the .gif except doing the layer overlay...so I'm probably going to be faster than about 80% of the people out there using your method...to get a .gif...not even a file that can be saved to DVD, VCD, or any streaming media format, OR have sound effects added...what kind of animation doesn't have an integral soundtrack!?!? anyhow...as someone who's working HARD on using these two programs to create his own animated movie, trust me, the automated way is easier, and faster... one thing I AM working on, on the side, as a student programmer...you might be glad to hear about...I am trying to get a professor's help in designing a plugin for bryce, which, if I succeed, I will offer as freeware, or shareware, for a while, while betaing it (assuming I'm legal in doing so ::) that will accept .pz3 matrices, convert them to .br5 matrices, recall texture settings and locations, and "merge" them with your bryce scene (as long as frame rates are equal, and there are enough frames in the scene you've created to contain the animation you're moving in) anyhow, wish me luck on this project :)

Aldaron: I'll be looking forward to seeing the tut when it's ready. It would be nice if python scripting worked for bryce or if you could batch commands in to automate the process. Since computers are getting fast enough to retry some old tricks that were discarded because they were to slow, and since in animation you generally don't need the detail that you do in stills, especially if the camera is moving, I'm sure this is a good idea.

From what I think I read between the lines with Bryce 6... ...well, I hope plugins or a link between Poser and Bryce will not be horribly far away. hopehopehope

psychobud, I know it's faster with the programs mentioned above but essentially what I described is all those programs are doing anyway, they just automate the process. My point was that you don't NEED those programs to do it. Sure it takes a bit longer but after reading everything you have to tell Suzanna I don't think it'll take much longer and personally I think I have more control over things doing it manually. To make a 1 second .avi took me maybe 2 hours and that was the whole process not counting post production. The above programs only render the animation, they don't add sound etc. to the avi file. BTW I'm not talking about frame by frame animating, you create the animation in Poser then render frame by frame in Bryce instead of the usual way of letting Bryce render all the frames of the animation. I'm not saying this is better than Natural Pose or Suzanna (though I think I have more control of some things in Bryce versus the autmation) I'm just saying it can be done without the programs and I beleive some people like me were lead to beleive it was impossible without them.