3Dave, I'll try that. Thanks.

Quote - Here's how I would do it. There are other ways...

Save the scene you were just working on to a new file name - this will be your subsequent scene.

In the animation palette, make sure that all the cells of the final frame have a keyframe - select them all and click on [+] to create them to be certain.

With all the cells of the final frame still selected, grab them with your mouse and drag them back to frame 1.

Delete all other keyframes. (Edit: the quickest way is to set your frame count to 1; then back to the required maximum.)

Now you should have a scene where frame 1 is identical to the last frame of the previous one.

Good luck. If you're trying to do a six minute animation you'll need it. ;)

I've tried and tried that. I tried that weeks ago and a hundred times since then, but it always reverts to the first frame. I'm just baffled.

Quote - Frustrating when you knoww it can be done. Sorry I can't help further, I just can't remember enough of Poser 7 as distinct from later versions.

Thanks for your help. If it weren't for this forum I'd have scuttled the project I'm working on weeks ago.

Quote - "Dave, that boxdoesn't seem to be there. I should have said I'm using poser 7. But I know it's possible because I did it accidently once.  I haven't used "shrink" in any of my google searches. "Squeezed", "Collapse" "reize," but not "shrink." I'll try that".

Hi see attached

I see how that works on the graph, but it doesn't do anything to the animation pallette. The time I accidently did something to it squeezed the whole thing down to about 1/5 of its normal width so I could see all the frames in it without moving the play arrow. I can work without that but it sure would make it easier to be able to do that. Maybe there's something I'm missing.

Quote - I'm use Pro 2014, can't remember when that feature was added. Have you tried resizing by clicking and dragging on the end of the scroll bar itself? That's how it works in the graph palettes.

No, nothing. I can change the size of the window, but not the keyframes in it, and the graph pallette doesn't seem to have that feature in it, either. It's maddening because I did SOMETHING that made it that way a couple days ago, but can't replicate it.

Quote - Just under "Play Range" at the bottom of the list in the animation palette, there is a little box with a two headed arrow, just next to the position slider. Click on it and drag left to shrink the keyframes

Dave, that boxdoesn't seem to be there. I should have said I'm using poser 7. But I know it's possible because I did it accidently once.  I haven't used "shrink" in any of my google searches. "Squeezed", "Collapse" "reize," but not "shrink." I'll try that.

But thanks.

Thanks, Ockham. I ran both but there's no discernable difference afterwards. For a few seconds where the figure is not speaking it's particularly evident, so I'll probably try and remove those keyframes for her mouth manually, if I can figure out how to do that without throwing everything else out of balance.

Rokket, thanks, I was figuring that out as you were responding to my rant. Or maybe I was reading your mind.

Quote - Save that frame as a pose and then apply it when you get to that point...

All right. I think I've worked around that, but I'm not sure I can explain or if I even understand what happened. I saved the pose my figure had in that one frame I wanted to keep, set the animation panel pallette at frame 00001 to frame 00001,  removed all layers but the base layer and lip snyc layer (actually that's not totally accurate. The lip synch layer simply refused to be erased....) Then I set up the sound file for the next animation and the number of empty frames changed accordingly. Then I applied the saved pose and it kept reverting, but by setting one of those green spline squares in the first frame I think I made it stick... Damn, this is confusing.

I have tried and tried and TRIED to delete unwanted frames and they just WON'T go away. I'll try to explain here: There is ONE particular frame near the end of a 600 frame animation that I want to use as the starting point for the next. I select the entire column and move it left so that i'll be frame # 1 , but that NEVER works.  I select all the frames that are not that frame and hit the "delete key frames" tab and all the green and yellow and grey colored squares go blank, BUT THE FRAMES THENMSELVES ARE STILL THERE! There are still 600 of them. I just want that one. I'll select that, close out the file, open an new one and try to Paste, but that does not work, either.

Can anybody tell me how I can save that SINGLE frame?

i'm sorry for the caps, but this %&#@*$?! thing is turning me into a blithering idiot. The only thing I hate more than poser is myself for getting myself into this nightmare. I promised to do an animation for a group of people whose respect I value and I'll never earn it if I can't follow through with my promise. I'm two weeks late already and I'm only 60 seconds into a 6 minute animation. Any help- explained at idiot level-would be very much appreciated. I feel like I'm throwing my life away on this cursed thing. Once this project is finished I am going to uninstall poser from my computer and shred the disc it came on.

I bought an inexpensive logitech wireless mouse at walmart this afternoon. Not the cheapest on the shelf, but almost. And it actually works for selecting and moving keyframes in the animation pallette! And I was afraid my neighbors were going to call Mental Health on me for screaming and cursing at my computer when I was using that other mouse.

Thanks for all your suggestions!

Thank you. That will be very useful.

Quote - Before you go completely bonkers from going about it in a way that drives you nuts, experiment with using additional layers for emotional tweaks, etc.

You don't have to delete a single frame from the base layer to add things like blinks, laughs, kisses, etc. The changes can be suttle, or extreme.

You can define the Frame Range that each layer affects and how it Blends into the base layer. You will want to use the Replace option for some things, and Add for others.

Layers can be flaky sometimes, so save often. Name them something you will actually remember.

One of the best aspects of using layers is that you can turn them off.

Which means if they are all turned off, your base layer has never been changed at all.

Very simple tutorial...

http://my.smithmicro.com/tutorials/2380.html

Thanks. That darned thing keeps popping up whether or not I want it ;/ Is ther any way of making it just go away?

I seem to have hit on a way of modifying my character's expressions and keeping them from spinning out of control by use of the parameter dials and the spline controls. Probably not optimal, but it's the best I can do with my limited patience and attention span. I have put poser to good use making still images, and have a certain amount of experience animating objects with it, but once I have finished this project, I swear to god I will never, ever use talk designer again.

But thanks for your help. (I'm following your suggestion to break it down to a number of smaller segments.)

Quote - The graph will show you how quickly, and exactly where, the expression changes. You normally want a curve, not an abrupt change. The green spline is usually best for this, but it can go crazy if you dont anchor it properly at beginning and end. To see the graph section, first select the expression you are changing (in this case the mouth sneer/pout), then open the graph. If the graph line is rising and falling all over the place (as it is wont to do), youll need to set the keyframes more carefully.

The graph is your animating friend...I use it all the time...

Thanks, but I've tried that again and again and I simply don't have the coordination in my hand any longer to manage it. I've found that I can achieve something of the same result with the grey spline control on the upper right hand corner. At least it works for my purposes, which is good because I was getting truly desperate.

Quote - The easiest way to select all the frames you want is to click on the first frame and hold the  shift key down and scroll to the last frame and click on that one while still holding down the shift key.  Now all the frames are highlighted it is a simple matter of pressing the minus button to remove the keys.  Just did it with PP2014 and a 500 frame BVH file, so it should work for you. 

Rokket, Thanks. I've considered that already, but the liklihood of my being able to paste those parts together and retain smooth movement of a cat walking in the background (which is a vital part of the animation,) seems nil at best. However since posting my last somewhat hysterical (and not in the funny sense) message, I've quite by accident stumbled on a way I think will allow me to achieve the effects I want. It seems that the grey flatline feature of the spline controls will clear out those frames following it, stop the wild contortions of my character's face and allow me to manipulate her expressions like I'd intended. Also, I need a new mouse. The one I'm using is so unresponsive.

For reasons I'll spare the readers here I've since childhood had a huge mental/emotional block against reading technical manuals. It causes me actual physical pain, so my approach to learning any new softwarehas always been to just bumble around with it till I can make it work. But the folks here and on a few other forums have been very helpful and I do appreciate it.

Quote - One thing I could suggest, so that you bring the enormity of the animation down to something you can work with, is to break the sound file into separate pieces, animate them as separate files, then bring them all together in a video editor. 6 minutes is a long animation, and smaller chunks would make the process easier on you.

I suggest breaking the sound file into 1 minute (or wherever there is a pause in the dialog) sections and work from there.

EDIT: this will also allow you to change camera angles, add transitions, or focus in on facial expressions or body parts (like the eyes), and give your animation a bit more life.