Is the 15th frame identical to the first? If it is, you can get a "jerk" in the animation, because it's essentially showing frame 1 twice in a row (at frame 15 and again at 16)

One other nice thing with the new focus settings in 6--if you're doing an animation, you can now keyframe the focal distance (and the f-stop), so as your camera or character moves, you can keep them in focus (or go for one of those artsy shots where things don't move, but the focus on the lens changes.

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When it comes to tweaking a walk, a lot of settings will have the same value for the left and right side, but half a stride off (for example, if the "stride" is 30 frames long, the left shin bend will have the same value as the right shin bend, but 15 frames later). So, I'll tweak one side and get it "smooth", then copy and paste to the other side, but offset by 15 frames. Some things still need to be "hand adjusted" on both sides (like the thigh "side to side"), because the sign changes when you move to the other side of the body, but at least I cut down on some of the "grunt work"

They weren't hats--they were "energy domes" :-)

Very cool! BTW, where did you get the car?

Ethan, If you render out the animation as individual images, you can save them as tiff files, which I believe has an alpha channel. Unfortunately, you'd then have to do whatever postwork you're going to do on every frame... Can't help you with the BVH motion--I'm looking for some of those myself.

Doc, Here's what I do: First, I save it under whatever name I'm going to call the second part (that way, any changes I make won't affect the completed animation) Then: Go to Frame 120. Select "Edit", then "Memorize", then "All". This will save the position of everything at frame 120. Now go back to frame 1. Select "Edit", then "Restore", and "All". This puts everything in frame 1 in the same position that it was in at frame 120. Change the length of the animation to one frame, to get rid of all of the stuff that was in part 1. The system will ask if you're sure you want to do this. Tell it yes. Now, change the end frame to make it as long as you want part 2 to be, and save. Make sure when you render part 2, you start at frame 2, because frame 1 of part 2 is just a duplicate of frame 120 in part 1

If it's on, that's the problem. It's supposed to help by making the leg move in a natural looking way when you put the foot where you want it, but most of the time, it seems to get in the way.

Acadia, Do you have IK turned on for Mike? It sounds like that might be the problem.

AFAIK, the guide is new in P6

It's what we used to call "unanticipated functionality" in my last job.

My first thought was Harry Shearer at the end of "A Mighty Wind", but he was a blond...

Fixer, On #2--do you have the latest drivers for your card? That might make a difference. I've found the "wipe" feature very useful when I'm "tweaking" the settings on a render. Render, tweak, then re-render. I can use the wipe to do a "better like this, or better like this" comparison.

Hey, I've sucked up a ton of info here, but I rarely get a chance to pass any along!