Wow! A 12 foot animation (or is that 12 minutes) either way very impressive. Let me know when it's done and I'll put a review up on my Animation Ramblings Blog.

Do you mean the SDK or the Python Scripting language?
If the latter, check out the Poser Scripting forum

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showforum.php?forum_id=12390

which software would be the better for rendering?

I would not know if Daz Studio is better than Poser 7 for rendering, however I'd recommend keeping your models, textures and materials simple as with animation you can't be having 10 minutes rendering time per frame which might be acceptible if you were making stills.

Its seems like a great idea but the small distance moved and sharpness of the turn seem to cause a bit of a problem for the walk designer, I've moved from moon walking to breakdancing....

I'm going to see what I can do with scripting, I have been studying python and the object model.

*Quote: "Poser Python doesn't really have enough of an object model to warrant drawing a diagram."
*I get similar kinds of comments from the developers in the office.... There's actualy quite a lot of the model particularly when you come to document it. The fact that some of the objects have lots of methods is also a classical sign that the model has evolved over time.

Here's my first draft in PDF and Open Office formats.
http://www.aceanim.com/Poser/Poser6PythonR1.pdf
http://www.aceanim.com/Poser/Poser6PythonR1.odg

The IK did not work, the foot breaks of the figure, that also is the problem if I use a standard figure so it's not my figure thats at fault there.

Got an idea from another forum about parenting the figure to an object centred under the foot and then rotating that object. I've got to try this and to see if the parent can be changed in the middle of the animation.

Failing that I'll have to resort to script which as far as I can tell should not be too difficult (but I've not tried it yet)

Yes this tools should be fine. I think if you look on the animation section here you will see another film made using poser.

Keep your shots short and try to fix the appearance of the characters early on so you don't have to do lots of re-rendering when you come to edit the film.

Record the voices first, animate the film over them.

You might want to make some storyboards or animatics, this is good for pacing the film and motivation.

If want to have lipsync then you will need something like Poser 7 or Mimic.

Keep your project objectives realistic, this is particularly important for a first project. You will be surprised as to how much learning and extra effort you will have to put into this film.

I personally use Poser6, Carrara (for modelling and rendering) with Premiere Elements for video editing. I survived with Microsoft Movie maker for many years but finally got something better earlier this year.

Good luck!

Now that idea I like, it's simple and I've used similar techniques in other tools, I'm slightly worried that the parenting will cause problems for the other bits of the animation though. Will give it a try later.

This bug is fixed in the 5.1 download available from the Daz3d site.

I repeated the experiment with your technique and the problem still exists so it's not directly related to copy and paste. The only method that does work is to import the whole of the first file and then delete the cameras and lights.

I had used a texture map initially, based on a segment of the picture first posted. But the blue was too pale and thats how I got thinking about other techniques, I also experimented with ripples and a parametric mapping to rotate them 45°.

I think my problem is actually because the rope is a vector object and there are some splits in the sides which means that the UV mapping does not work too well, I should have 1 rectangle and 2 circles but I've got 4 rectangles.

So thanks for the words of experience, I'll switch back to a black and white texture map as a mixer for the colours I want and as you've done I'll also put it in the bump channel.

The subtle difference is that I was not thinking of modelling the rope. It's already complex enough because it's having to bend. So I thought it would be better as a shader. I've tried some experiments using the "Caution" shader but it's not joining up properly, I might be able to fix that in the UV editor but it was getting late when I was looking at this yesterday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaClm5vv4vw

For example, for the unicycle trick mentioned in the last post I used separate groups to allow me to have 2 centres of rotation, one for it in the air and one when it hits the ground, a wobble motion, a slow updown motion linked to the progress along the wire and a motion path for the falling.

Otherwose you might have to resort to a plugin such as the Digital Carvers Guild cognito plugin, again you will need to use groups to have your spinning things rotating in different directions. There's a free download to experiment with.

I have looked at the wheels modifier for a different part of the project i.e. the ambulance that rescues my poor fleas. It's ok for co-ordinating sets of wheels and steering the vehicle along a path.

However I don't think it will be able to drive the movement of the morphing rope.