Hello creativity people out there i need your help please ! For a home movie i will have to animate a horde of skeletons standing in a battle line cheering at their enemys. I didnt have a clue how to do this. My cousins owns poser4.0 and is working with it and said i can use it on his PC if i want but could anybody help me out ?

There was a thread on this not too long ago. Do a search for 'animation' or 'poser animation'.

OK, first of all... Do you know what animation is? Have you used other software? Have you ever made a flip book? In other words, do you know how to divide "motion" by "time"? Second of all... you said "home movie". What media are you going to transfer this animation into? If it is a Quicktime movie on your website you'd probably need a different fps (frames per second) than if you were transferring this to video. If we know a bit more, we can offer more concise help. Carolly

Ok here comes more information... I know how to animate a figure in poser :-) im from germany so im working in PAL using 25 FPS and working in DV quality. We are doing here a little fantasy movie and are still working on the trailer. In this trailer we want to film our two heros standing on a big field, having an army of skeletons in front of them. I thought that poser could probably be the best programm for this bcause nobody of us has the time to go to university and study "Lightwave" :-))) I would like to know if somebody can help how would be the best way to start working out such a project by using poser. ?!??! By the way thanx for your interest :-)

um... an army in poser, so you would need a really powerful comupter. I think normal computer cannot handle 50 skeletons( still only a little army). May be did it separatly, and using post work to put all them together.

Hmmm...i tried 15 and its still working fine ! Ok you will have to wait A LOT if rendering the scene but with no motion it works fine...even if u animate them a little silly it still goes. So u think bluescreening would be a fine idea and then composing different layers over the original scene to get an look like army ? By the way....if u animate one skeleton..how do u extract its motion and use it on another one in the same scene ??? (Damn english is hard for me :-)))

Attached Link: http://www.schlabber.org

Huh Schlabber auch deutscher ? :-) He he he...

Look into a program called Susanna, you can animate a ton of skeles in Bryce, if you have it that is. He has an animation of marching skeles on his website. http://www.datamike.com/susu.htm Marque

Ja - auch Deutscher ... sieht man doch am dt. popup auf dem puretec-host ;o). Zu schade, ich hte gern geholfen, aber ich werd' die nhsten Wochen mit Arbeit zugeschmissen sein :o(

Absolut kein Problem !! Aber wenn du interesse hast mitzuhelfen, ist es auch kein Problem dich ins Team zu integrieren oder bzw. mindestens im Abspann zu erwnen. Mit dem richtigen dreh des Films werden wir eh erst diesen Winter beginnen und da wir auch Jahreszeitenwichtige Drehs haben werden sich die Dreharbeiten bis Sommer nhsten Jahres hinauszern. Du siehst, das wenn du also vielleicht doch so in den nhsten Monaten Zeit htest uns zu helfen dann we ich er jede hilfe dankbar ! :-)

Weiss evtl jemand wie zur hoelle ich ein Schwert (Prop) dazu bekomme in der Hand so eines Skelettes zu bleiben ?? Does anybody know, how you can stick a sword to a skeletons hand ? That if u move the arm the sword will follow like glued to it ???

Parent it to the hand... Once you've got your first basic animation use Poser's retime animation command to alter each skeleton's movement very slightly, it'll look more realistic...

Hmm parent it to the hand sounds good... but how do u do that ? :-) Damn im a totally beginner :-(

Put the sword where you want it in the hand. Then go to Figure > Set figure parent Once you do this the sword will follow the hand, (if you raise the arm the sword stays put in the hand, if you move the hand, the sword stays put), but the hand won't follow the sword. If you try to move the sword it will move out of the hand. Marque

When you parent the sword to the hand, do NOT have it "inherit bends" from the parent... otherwise your sword will look like overcooked fish. Remember that figures (clothing and such) must be "conformed", but objects (things which don't move) are "parented". As you dress a figure, make sure to parent or conform each article you add. So. Make a new folder in your Figures Library. call it Skeleton Army. Load a skeleton. Dress the skeleton (sword or spear, maybe a rusty shoulderplate). Save the skeleton into your new folder. Give him a name!!! When you animate you add personality and it is MUCH easier to say that Benny is a sneak or that Tommy is a braggart than to say that Skel001 is anything but a pile of pixels. If you are building an army, establish your name system NOW. You can do it alphabetically: Adam, Ben, Carl (or your German equivalents).... You can do it by weapon class: Pike & sPearmen all start with "P", while Swordsmen all start with "S", and Archers all start with "A". Trust me, after you get a dozen little guys thumbing their noses and bouncing up and down, you will wish that you could tell them apart. Next step. In the Pose Library, you should make a folder called, you guessed it, Skeleton Army. Take your first skeleton, let's call him Adam, and pose him into a nice threatening stand. Save "Adam Stand" into your new pose folder. Animate him. We call random stand-in-place movements "fidgets" and this term will cover nose-thumbing and shield-banging and sword-waving as well as the usual hair-twirling and gum-chewing. Keeping note of your fps, have him wave his sword (or whatever). Save that motion to your Pose folder as "Adam Fidget" or "Adam Sword". Load up another skeleton. Dress him a bit differently. Name him and save him. Pose and animate him. Save those, too. Do this a third time. Now you are ready to start doing production work. :) Load "Ben", tweak clothing or whatever slightly (color change?) and save as Dave. Apply the stand and fidget from Adam (they are in the Pose Library, and you can just click on them as you would click on any pre-made pose), tweak them, and save them as Dave's stand and fidget. Keep mixing and matching, tweaking, adding to the Libraries. It doesn't take much to make each skeleton look distinctive, even if they are all similarly equipped Roman Legionnairies. When you run out of ideas try these: Under Render > Materials look at object color. It is a nice soft "bone" color. Change that slightly. You will render all these pups with the same light colors, but if one is greenish and one is yellowish and one is a bit whiter than the others, it will help. Be subtle here!!! Scaling. When you stand in an elevator, you realize that people come in an amazing assortment of heights. Fat people do not have bigger ribcages, AFAIK, but ribs and hips are usually proportionate to height. If Adam is 100% and George is 96% and Manfred is 105% overall scaled along the Y axis (I use BODY dials for the overall stuff) you will have a lot of difference. Invisible parts. Since these are skeletons, it is possible that not all of the bones were together for reanimating (the dog got the thigh bone and the witch up the road took the forefinger). Click on a body part, go up to Object Properties, and make it invisible. Remember that if you make a foot invisible, it should affect the way he stands! Have fun! Carolly

If you need to dress up your skeletal army, here are links to some skeletal characters:

Jon Malis' skeletal warrior:
Posergamers (look in Downloads --> RPG)
AniMotions.com (look in Free Stuff --> Fantasy & Sci-Fi --> Fantasy)

Crowfoot's undead warriors 1 and 2, Ghost's Grim Reaper, and poses:
Greylight (look in Poser Archive --> Poser 3 Characters --> Fantasy & Medieval)

WOW THATS KIND OF HELP I WAS LOOKING FOR !!! THANX THANX THANX THANX THANX THANX AND THANX AGAIN !!!!!! I love U :-))))

We're glad to help each other. This thread is getting a bit buried. So start with these tips and the links that Little_Dragon pulled out. When you get to your next questions, make a new topic of it so that we'll see it... or so that the right people will see it and if they are on different topics, you might separate the threads. It also helps if you put a bit more information in the thread title. "How to animate crowd scene?"... "Please help with props problem"..."Why does my skeleton have eyebrows?" will all attract different respondants. There are people here who are experts on clothing or skin textures or joint movement or morphs or even lip synching and animating but you might not find them if your question is too vague. Carolly