Who are you folks? Can I join? Is there an application process? Why are there twelve and not 11 or 13? Is there a secret handshake? Does it (the secret handshake)require AVI, SWF, or divX format to display? Do you all have secret meetings where you wear hooded cloaks to keep others from knowing your identities? Seriously, though, I have been wondering exactly what the "Twelve Animators" is, and if you guys provide any assistance for other animators and such. Paul

Check back through the posts during the last week. There's a link somone put up, to a new web site for Poser animators.

It was an offhand comment Wolf359 made about how there are about 12 animators around here. I've always been outspoken on how neglected animators are in not only the software, but community support, contests (!!), etc. Do a search for "posimators" as I can't remember the web site URL at the moment either. -Tim (The 12 Animators Founding Member)

There are alot more than 12 people doing animation with Poser, so it's pretty silly. I do believe it was meant as a joke.

Yes, that's what I meant by "off-hand" ... is that not the same thing? (It's possible, I've been averaging 4 hours of sleep/night and I'm a 9-10 hour person.) But in relative terms, it's probably pretty accurate. If there were only 1000 Poser users, only about 12 of them would be animators. Maybe LESS than 1% ... who knows,all I DO know is, we're overlooked quite often in a lot of areas, and there aren't many of us in comparison to the still-render crowd. -Tim ("The 12 Animators" Founding Member)

Heh... well, timoteo, I can say that the release of P5 did vastly more for animating than any other release before it... I've been fielding questions from still artists for days on how to use dynamics, and the almost universal answer begins with, "dynamics are forces applied over time..." Time is the realm of the animator, so welcome back to the fold. :) Paul

Absolutely ... no doubt about it. And I think CL is definitely TRYING to crack into this burgeoning market.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=813954

A question was posed by cat3dgrafx and Wolf answered it first. Several others of us responded too. A total of 12 animators were mentioned in the thread (one of those mentioned was actually a web site). Thus "the 12." I've started referring to us as Posimators and a few people have picked that up as well. I know good and well that there were animators before us so I refer to them as "The Elder Ones" (people like Joe Grover). As far as I know, it's just for fun, although people have at times asked about how to get a number etc. cat3dgrafx and silver have offered to host animation-related tutorials at their sites and I've noticed a definite interest growing among the communicty. I think that's great! According to the initial posting, although I'm no Jeri Ryan, I am 7 of 12. Believe it or not, there's some sick, twisted part of me that kinda likes that. [grin]

Hmmm.... I like the idea of exclusivity, I like being a little special but I don't like the idea of excluding others, which is of course what will happen if we limit ourselves to just the 12. Since we are so good at conceptualising the world, perhaps it might be better to say that no matter how many we are, we will always be twelve. Thus, no-one can be number one and no-one can be number twelve, merely one of the twelve...

Oh, and yes, as much as possible, we provide help when we can. Wolf and I are on Macs so we're probably of limited use for P5 questions but you'll see timoteo1 and little_dragon responding to alot of those posts. I'm working up a tutorial on the graph editor (best I can tell it hasn't changed much) but as of a week ago I've been looking for a new job so that's taken up my time.

Sorry, Bobasaur -- just to get the history straight -- but it started a good while before that post. As I said, Wolf made a sarcastic comment a while back about how there were about 'twelve of us animators around here.' I'm not sure exactly when that post was, but if you do a search I'm sure you can find it. "Thus, no-one can be number one and no-one can be number twelve, merely one of the twelve...: That's pretty much been the whole idea ... as far as Wolf, myself, and most of us are concerned. :) -Tim

In that case, a question pertaining not only to P5, but P4 as well. Why is keyframing a necessity? In Poser, when I move to a frame and change anything at all, it seems to re-key the animation. In max it doesn't work like this. So basically, what does actually establishing the frame as a "key frame" do in poser? Paul

I may be missing your point but it's worth saying that merely importing a bvh file and plonking it into Poser does not an animator make. You do need to be able to keyframe an animation....

Yes, could you be more specific? As far as I have learned over the past 10+ years of animating, KEYFRAMING = ANIMATING.

By the way ... one R'Osity member that should probably be given an honary induction into the "12 Animators" group would be Phoul. He does a lot of animating in Vue, but combines a lot of Poser and Vue as well. Simply put, his stuff is amazing, and it is patently obvious (other than reading about him on his website) he has worked in film. His virtual/animated camera-work is some of the best I have ever seen. There is also Aaron who is a professional animator (you can see his stuff on TV commercials) and is releasing "The Case" soon on RuntimeDNA's site. -Tim

Attached Link: The Eternal Night Life

hey guys... Just a reminder that my site, The Eternal Night Life will host your already done animations...as well as tutorials of any such... I will shortly be posting more vids that I have received but sadly still only have received one Poser Made... CAT

TalleyJC here... (mild mannered musician, and systems analyst by day) -"Animator X" by night...

I think Timoteo1's emphasis on "TRYING" is correct...

the slowness of P5 makes me want to take hostages and demand outrageous things like a monster truck filled with baked beans. Trying to use the mouse to do quick positional changes is still like a visit to the dentist.

And trust me I am not the mega-java-head screaming in front of the microwave "C'mon!! C'mon!!"

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I personally can't wait until we get a whole butt-load of patches for it because it does show so much promise...

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But I really hate having the paramter dial window hide all the time as well as having to switch to the dials tab from the properties tab continously. Granted there is tons more of bells and whistles but the interface would better be labled as Inyourface.... and then I get bitch-slapped often with the twilight zone freezes that leave holes pointing to my underlying desktop {like zoinks! scoob!... its like the whole app is swiss cheeze --- man!)

I also have to say that I am positive that "Firefly" is a inside joke at CL refering to its blinding speed. I'll also bet names like Zippy, Rocket and Super-Mega-Colosus were used.

I long for the day when p5 is as stable and comfortable as p4.

Certain things blow my mind. CL has to know that every person on the planet that has Poser has Victoria or Michael in some form or another.... why then, would Judy and Don be only marginally above Dork and Posette?

Give me a face room that allows the number of morphs on V2's face.

Before sending me hate-o-grams I am not trying to bash my beloved poser I am however, a little disappointed from all the hype to what was released.

The materials room I am sure has a great deal to offer but its really hard to tell from the manual. I think this forum will be the only place people can learn what half of this stuff will do but for many more, the functionality will be lost. These same people will have to sacrifice speed for advanced functions that will never get used.

Any way.... They did a great job, but I NEED the patches.

As far as a niche market I know you could sell a ton of these:How about this for an idea....

A set USB metal skeleton puppets that send pose data in real time. I've seen things that henson and other big cg shops use for this... I am sure that it could be produced for a home market. Think how easy it would be to have a hand that you could pose (better yet a glove to wear) that you used to pose your models hands and then step on a pedal to advance 1 frame. Same thing for a Human skeleton..... We as animators could quickly do better more natural body poses and then be able to concentrate our time on faces where we all know is how you breath life into these things.

Ah, thanks timoteo1. I'd asked at one point where it came from and this was the best I could find. Darn. No more assimilating while wearing a tight catsuit. As far as the keyframe thing, you may be set up to autokey. I've gotta go for a bit but I'll be back to this thread later tonight and see what's been posted. It should basically work just like Max, Lightwave, Bryce, After Effects, Flash, and virtually every other animating software.

I've been trying, but no one will give me a Posimator number. Sigh. I give up, from now on, I shall be the (in a echoing voice): "THE LONE POSIMATOR", and I carry the soldering iron of justice. Ben

Hi, Just saw this thread Steve cooper once told me that character animators are about %3 of the poser users base and he hopes to increase that marketshare. with poser5. As for those of you wanting to join this elite group of 12 we have TWO words for you........... GRAPH EDITOR ;-) _wolf359 founding member of the "12 animators"-

Attached Link: Smell the Cloth

BTW we animate more than Just Characters ***_wolf359 founding member of the "12 animators"-***

Cool, what was that animated in?

Well now that the animators are here what settings are using in Poser5 for your animations? Ron

Rendering settings that is. Ron

"Why is keyframing a necessity?" "So basically, what does actually establishing the frame as a "key frame" do in poser?" If you're working with stills, they are set on the first frame by default (and you can't erase those) but they are unneccesary. Just make sure you do all your posing and changes etc. on the first frame. If you accidently move to a frame other than the first, Poser will assume that you want things to change between whatever they are on the first frame and whatever they are at the keyframe you accidently set. Thus it will make whatever changes you made over time, sometimes with unpredictable, amusing or even horrific results. When you're animating, keyframes define what a characteristic is supposed to be at a specific point in time. The characteristic can be anything from position to size to components of a material to light setting - anything the programmers have made animatable. Keyframing is necessary because, by definition, in animation something changes over time. Keyframes are the only way any animation software can identify what's changing, at what rate it's changing, and when it's not changing anymore. If you're creating a still, there is only 1 point in time. With animation, there's as many as you want. "In Poser, when I move to a frame and change anything at all, it seems to re-key the animation. In max it doesn't work like this." If you mean Poser automatically creates a keyframe at that point in time for whatever you've changed, that's what it's set to do by default. In Lightwave I can have it either do this automatically (like Poser) or I can set Lightwave to require me to manually create a keyframe. Max should be similar (check your preferences). With Poser you can manually set keyframes. I just haven't found a way to make it not set them automatically when I move something - except through the use of "undo" or the delete keyframe button. If you don't actually want the keyframe Poser sets, it can be deleted. Did I answer your questions? I may have misinterpreted what you are asking; specific details are almost always a help. Bobasaur (I was 7 of 12) [grin]

Ron, I'm using the super secret Mac settings. They're so top-secret that I don't even know what they are. I can only tell you that they won't work if you have two buttons on your mouse.

I may be a lone Posimator, but this is what I'm doing... I try to stay away from FireFlaw, but if I need to use it I uncheck EVERYTHING i'm not using.

I Usually set the bucket size down to 8 or 16 That seems to speed things up a bit. I turn the shadeing rate up to at least 4. It speeds things up a bit and I can't see the difference.

Here's probably the biggest tip. If your scene has lots of polygons (100,000+) use ray traced shadows and turn off all the lighs' shadows except for the key light and maybe one other. The Shadow mapped shadows take just as long to render ans the main scene. 2 or three shadows and you'll be rendering an hour on one frame.

Lone Posimator

Hey thanks for the replies. Ron

There was once a secret society who meet in the woods in the dead of night and stand around in a circle in dark hoods chanting ancient mantras. There are twelve to represent the signs of the ancient Cornucopian zodiac which hasnt been used for centuries and even then never predicted DICK. The story goes something like this. In March this year (no, thats May this year) the application Mimic was bought by DAZ and put on sale for 25% of the original price, which was bad luck for anyone who had just paid $US199 for it. Then in August this year the Macintosh version was announced, which was bad luck also for people who had just paid $100 for a PC to run the original beta. (Blimey, it was stuck at 1.0 for two years. What hope is there for Poser 5?) Not disputing wolf359s claim as the founding member it was Little_Dragon who first estimated the number of animators being limited to 12. First person to mention 12 animators was, well it was ME actually in the same tread, one of my more mindless posts just before DAZ re-enabled the Mac button. (It had been accidently turned off, see my second posting in that thread). Ive learned to type with my right hand, sort the WEB with my left hand and animate with my nose.

On one hand I'm tempted to point out that the list of 12 that I'd found was written 12 days prior to the Mimic thread xvcoffee mentioned. However, bottom line is that it's not that important. What's important is that we Posimators are growing in number! Maybe sometime early next year we should have our first Posimation Challenge. Bobasaur (I was 7 of 12) Member of the Secret Circle of the Graph Editor. Critically assaulted - I mean acclaimed - producer/director/posimator/composer of the classic shorts: "Spew" and "dude, you suck!"

Thanks, Bobosaur... my question actually got answered via IM or I would have checked back sooner. Basically what I was trying to determine was the purpose of the "Add Keyframe" function is Poser automatically sets a keyframe the instant I alter anything within a numbered scene. In Max, I use splines to set up paths and the control points are keyed to timing, but they don't require an actual "keyed" frame to manipulate. The path steps are simply keyed to the key frames you set. Basically I'm just now taking a first look at the way Poser handles things. All of the dynamics are, of course, a funtion of time, so, there's no reason to not learn how Poser looks at timed sequence and interpolation, and very good reason to learn about it very well, even for still artists. Paul

"Cool, what was that animated in?" I used Cinema4DXL 7.3 for that one -wolf359 founding member of the "12 animators"-

Just letting everyone know, you have another animation 'brother in arms'. Darkskills of the Detroit Contingency.

Attached Link: http://homepage.mac.com/kflach

Entropic, I rarely use the Add Keyframe button on the main interface because I invariably animate with the timeline open. I manually add keyframes when an object has to maintain its position for awhile before it moves. For example, if I want a character to look ahead for a second and then turn its head and look to the right, I would start the animation with the head facing straight ahead (0 on the Y-axis) and then at one second (frame 30 if the frame rate is 30 frames-per-second) I would manually add a keyframe to the Y-axis in the timeline. A keyframe is created with nothing changed. Then at the point where the head turn is supposed to be complete I'd use the parameter dials to turn the head the desired amount. If you don't set the keyframe where you want the movement to actually start, the head will start turning at the first frame. By adding the keyframe at the 30th frame, the head stays still* until then and at that point begins its turn. *If you've got the keyframes set as Splines (they appear solid green on the timeline) Poser tries to create a smooth curve that accomodates all the points you've keyframed. It will often create an unwanted motion between (in this example) the first and 30th frame. Sometimes that curve is small anough that it adds a more natural feeling to the animation - nobody keeps their head 100% still. However, until you learn to finesse the splines you're better off making sure the very first keyframe is either Constant (white) or Linear (orange). The head will stay absolutely still until the 30th frame (as long as their settings are identical) and then begin its turn. DarkSkills, Welcome Bro! Have ya got anything online that we can enjoy? The link above is to a test page I put up real quickly to show some things. A real site is on my "to-do" list. FWIW, I didn't use Mimic on "dude, you suck!" (although I've bought it since then and will use it henceforth. QuickTime is required.