EnglishBob posted at 6:43 AM Mon, 21 November 2022 - #4449743

T_the_T posted at 10:49 AM Sat, 12 November 2022 - #2974985

[...] I thought I could do this in the animation palette by deleting the first 50 -or so- frames, and then selecting the remaining keyframes, sliding them over to replace the ones I deleted.

Chiming in late here, but drag-and-drop in the animation palette never seems to give me the expected result. I don't know if that's Poser's fault or mine, to be absolutely fair. :)

I would do this purely with copy and paste:

1 - Select the second half of your animation and hit Ctrl-C to copy it.

2 - Select the first half and delete it.

3 - Select the block where you want your second half to go - this can include frame 1 if you want - hit Ctrl-V to paste

Actually I often retain frame 1 as a "home" frame that isn't included in the timeline, where everything is at zero position / pose etc. It can sometimes make things easier.

Also, full disclosure, I rarely make animations as such; but I do use the animation palette in nearly all scenes to hold a series of sequential frames that will become part of a comic strip or similar format.

I have tried this, and though I could cut/copy/paste, the initial frame#1 always stayed the same and all other keyframes compressed into a mess. I believe the best solution so far is to 'retime animation' -and what I did, which was to render the animation sequence from the frame #s =like telling a printer which pages to print. That was the simplest, unproblematic way I have found thus far. Your method would probably work if I planned the animation accordingly, and not after the fact. Live and learn.

Thanks

Richard60 posted at 1:23 PM Sat, 12 November 2022 - #4449032

With your animation open (the whole thing) go to Animation--> Retime Animation and for SOURCE FRAMES put in the middle number say 60 the end frame of 135.  For the DESTINATION FRAMES put in 1 to (135-60) +1. You have to add the extra 1 because Frame 60 is part of the timeline and you don't want compress or expand the timing.  Then shorten the animation to 76 Frames which gets rid of the extra that are no longer needed. 

Thank you. That is some helpful 'new' info for me. I did the workaround using the make movie frame choices (i still had to break it up, and as of today have only managed to render about half of it -many many hours-) But I will be trying this suggestion very soon.

It dawned on me that I could try setting the animation 'make movie' to start at the frame i want. So I am trying that....

Richard60 posted at 2:20 PM Sat, 5 November 2022 - #4448458

The problem is most likely you are using layers.  Say you have the base layer and one other.  If most of your camera movements were mad on the Base layer and then you switched to the other layer and made a camera movement, it is going to override the lower levels movements and you get the camera jumping all over the place.  Best thing in the world is to ignore the layers feature and only work on the base layer. Highly unlikely this will ever be fixed. 

I have found that the order in which I add animations is crucial to the stability of the layers. For years I would just use the base, and make all the tedious correction after adding new keyframing, but I got tired of the tedium, and started using new layers for each new animation. This seemed to work better; less having to go back and adjust each frame after adding key frames. But this recent attempt to use the UI dots pretty much tossed everything I thought I knew about it out the window. 
Thanks for the input, It's all helpful.

ratscloset posted at 10:21 PM Fri, 4 November 2022 - #4448414

I find using the Animation Palette for the Cameras is best. You seem to always need to add some Breaks or change the type of animation (Linear, Spline, etc...) to get the desired results. Often, unless you are doing a Matrix type shot or a one of the other Movement shots(Pan. Tilt. Zoom. Tracking shot. Dolly shot. Following shot. Pedestal. ), most of the shots you do not want the Camera moving, but more like a change position, from an Close Up Camera, to a Long shot, etc... ( Long Shot, Medium Shot, Close Up, Extreme Close Up, High Angle, Low Angle, Over the Shoulder, Point of View)

Arial shot can be a Still or Animated Camera.  There are others... those were the ones I remember we used to reference when setting up Story Boards, PreVis, and POCs

I try to keep my camera animations simple; zoom mostly. I am limited in what I can do, as I have had issue with the GUI and UI since pro2014. Stuff just jumps all over the place, but since there really isn't any user-friendly alternative, I keep trying to use poser. My results are woefully short of anything closely resembling 'professional' but since I am primarily a musical artist, I allow for the simpler results. For this latest project, to make it work, I had to use the palette, and enter the coordinates for each movement or static placing in the keyframes. Thanks for your input.

Thanks for the replies. All of the suggestions are good ones that I employed in my search for a solution. The best diag I could get was I think related to that 'stored in different places' reference. After trying all of that and more, I finally just went to the original saved copy and -without camere ani enabled- and screenshot the coordinates, and then animated the camera, using and manually entering the parameters i screen shot at new keyframes. I still made use of the dots, because they remembered the camera info, but it definitely would save some steps. But I guess the workaround didn't take too much time...

Well, one thing solved, but another one steps up to replace it. Unchecking gamma, fixed the one, but when added to the scene, I have another prop with transparency that loses complete transparency when gamma is unchecked! I may be able to work around it, but its friggin' annoying.

That was it! I actually had the gamma on. When I turned it off, the problem went away! Yay! 1 out of about a dozen issues solved. I was able to get the effect I needed by adding an alternate specular. Thanks!

Since Poser Pro 2014, the mat room has randomly rejected and accepted both mp4 and mov formats - meaning one day the mov works, and the next day it doesn't (or sometimes mere minutes). In this instance, I am using mov. ( one of the issues i have had that support has tried to, but did not resolve).

Your second thought may be closer to the issue. However I don't know how to address that. All the settings appear to be the same; mat room, lights, cameras. I usually have the gamma turned off. Maybe if I turn it on...I will try that. Any other ideas?

Thanks for your input!

As an update, I tried the same thing with my Poser Pro 2014 (kept it because of issues with poser 11) and there was no problem. So the issue is directly related to the upgrade.

Note: Choosing firefly or superfly made no difference.

well that sort of worked, everything retained position and scale, but the movement parameters had unintended results. The oarlocks turn as intended, but the oarstops (up/down) twist the oarlock instead of just rotating the oar - which it i set up to do in the pz3. In the Cr2 I am editing, those parameters remain intact even as i slowly reposition the objects from the cr2, saving the edit as pz3, then converting to Cr2, and then back into poser. Once it opens from the library and needs no further tweaking then that Cr2 is the one I want.

The method of creating the new figure might work if I could tweak the bend inheritance - if i can find the right settings.

Thanks for the idea though. It was relevant.

OK I did miss the obvious... the button I am looking for is in the Hierarchy editor. sheesh.

The only "create new figure" option I can see in this instance is inserting/opening a Cr2 from the library. This pz3 scene has multiple objects setup as animatable; the oars and rudder, the only exception to the order of assembly/creation in poser was that I duplicated the oar structure in poser, rather than import them. I may be missing the obvious. My fix is working so far, but since this has happened to me before, I'd like to know where my mistakes are so i don't repeat them. And having used the 'create new figure' option before (with largely unsatisfactory results) I do wonder why I can't do that with this.

Thanks for the idea, its somewhere in the ballpark anyway, or at least put me closer.

well, a step by step reorientation using the cr2 in poser and resaving/converting to cr2 seems to be a workaround. However I'd like to avoid this in the future, so my question stands. Thanks.