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drew good for you. nice movie but that doesn't mean that i"m stupid because i do semi-anim. I have alot of stories in mind. i want to make as many as i can. 50 or 100 and more coming as i age.

Never said you were. If I came off that way, I apologize. Do do what works for you. I think "semi-animation" is perfectly acceptable. At one point I had watched all of that one series mentioned here that got picked up by TV. Other than getting picked up before me, thus making me envious, I have no problem with it. Enjoyed it in fact. Had an interesting story and was what made me think about doing one like it. I will check out yours when you have something to show. I try to watch all the animations made in the poserverse. Can't say I've finished them all once I've started, but I do give them a chance. I think the poserverse needs more animators and storytellers to help overcome the stigma that it is only capable of rendering half naked chicks with huge.... swords.

In my experience if you use Depth Map Shadows they only show up over the ground plane grid so if you have anything not directly over that default grid, you'll get no shadows. Not a problem with Raytraced shadows.

I respectfully disagree PaganArtist. All craftsmen, artists, etc NEED to have the proper tools of their trade. One could not be a very effective animator if one only had, say, Hexagon. Give the best carpenter in the world a rock and ask them to build a house. Would you want to live in that house?
Put a race car driver in the world in a Pinto and some kid who just learned to drive in a Ferrari and have them race, who do you think will win?
Granted, even with the best tools available if one doesn't have the skill to use them properly, they are likely to fail at any endeavor using them. I just don't think you can separate the two: the tools are only as good as the craftsman and the craftsman is only as good as their tools.

The two main reasons I chose Pro over non pro are 64 bit support so I can use many more figures, etc and network rendering. I can't speak as to the benefit of the modeling tools in Pro since I do all my modeling in Hex. The ocean is handy in Pro but not really all that important to me. But those are about the only features I ever use that Pro has and non-pro doesn't. If you think you don't need 64 bit support, network rendering and an ocean primitive AND you don't do any modeling, go with non-pro. Especially if you're planning on just rendering stills. Either way, Daz has one of the best return policies in Poserverse so if you don't like it, you can ask for a refund. You could also purchase the book they sell for $30 and that comes with Hex and Carrara 6 Pro. While there is no upgrade path for 6 to 8 any more, you may find that the 6 pro meets your needs. And 30 bucks is 20 bucks cheaper than $50 (which is what C8 is on sale for right now).

http://www.daz3d.com/i/shop/itemdetails/?item=9166

Depends on your needs. I'd suggest looking at the comparison between the two and make you decision that way.

http://www.daz3d.com/i/software/carrara8/comparison?_m=d

I made the jump from Poser to Carrara about six months ago and now only use Poser to edit BVH animations and for Dynamic cloth. Once Carrara has fully dynamic cloth (which is in the works) I'll only use Poser for editing BVH files. Learning Carrara was much easier than I had anticipated. It actually is a lot more intuitive than Poser UI. Never upgraded to P8 so I can't speak to that UI. In fact the whole reason I made the switch was because of the new UI in Poser 8. I figured if I had to learn a new interface, I'd try something different and I have never regretted not upgrading to P8.

Quote - Nice job. Terrific use of dramatic lighting and dynamic cloth.

Thanks! There was no way I was going to do a superhero animation without dynamic cloth. And the lighting is not actually volumetric. I used a cone with a shader to fake it. MUCH faster render times. It's not perfect but close enough for my budget and time.

It's slow. I animated part of the first "The Shadow" radio play and that has more than 10,000 views but other than that, I mostly get around 500 views. I could spend more time talking them up on the net and other places but to be honest, I'm much too busy actually animating to do that. I am sending "Blue Defender" out to a few tv networks to see if I can't get it picked up by one of them.  Not holding my breath though. I'm also working on a feature length movie (2 minutes down, 88 to go!) that I am going to look for a distributor for. There are a few that work exclusively with independent films.

Also been looking into buying promotion. There are some sites that promise X number of views on YouTube. 100,000 views costs like $250. They have lower values that I may try first.

In the end, I hope for word of mouth to spread more than it does. No big deal really. More people have looked at the least of my animations than ever read a story I wrote. I do it because I love it. If I can get rich and famous for it so much the better.

I started an on-line comic that I was going to do with panels and word balloons and onomatopoeias everything and when you clicked on the panel, it would play a small animation. But it ended up as a fully animated movie. (see my signature if you'd like to watch it)

In the end, I agree that the overall presentation doesn't matter as much as the story does. However, bad presentation can detract from good story and a good presentation can compensate for a bad story. Just look at Avatar. :)

Quote - ....why get the demo when you can just install a Ruby for free and use that?

Because I didn't know about that and was typing my response the same time. :)

The  way I convert sketchup models is with the demo version of Sketchup Pro. This gives you 8 "anytime" hours you can use for converting. I've converted several hundred this way and still have about 3 hours left on my demo time.
 
Anyway, here is a link to the 'cudas they have there:

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/search?q=Plymouth+Barracuda&styp=m&btnG=Search&reps=2

http://www.sharecg.com/v/39498/Poser/Plymouth-Barracuda

Always happy to help a fellow animator. Just remember those of us who helped you should you beat me to fame and fortune with poser animations! :)

Collaboration is the only way to get any animation done. One person just can't do it all and get anything done!

Figures are Hiro and Aiko toon and some store bought morphs for both of them. I also used some magnets to further morph them.  Here: http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/search/searchsub/?_m=d&sstring=hiro+toon&x=0&y=0 (the base figure, the faces and the TINT Nation for Hiro and Aiko).

Lastly, little bit of both really. Basically, every other year, I upgrade my computer and turned the last one into a render machines. I also have the process pretty well figured out so I know what slows things down the most and can usually get my render times down to 1-2 minutes per frame. On my new i7 computer I can have a render going and still be working with no noticeable slowdown.

I work with a very good group of people who create amateur audio dramas. When i was trying to put together voices for some earlier animations (The Villainy You Teach) I discovered www.audiodramatalk.com - a forum dedicated to people creating audio plays. I needed audio help and people on there were more than happy to volunteer to add their expertise to my animations. We hope to help each other find fame and fortune in the entertainment industry. :)

As for the offset, that is actually pretty easy to fix: Turn off the IK on both feet, then select the hip and open the graph editor. Drag the slider out so you can see all the frames. Next, select all the key frames in the entire Y-axis range. Finally hold the "control" button and you can drag all key frames at once.