Taking the argument a little further, I often get the impression that 'art' requires a single render and that once it starts to move, it ceases to be 'art' and enters another realm. What that is I've no idea, but animation is often deprived of the 'art' tag. Is there a divide between artists and animators?

These minor movements are essential for realism. I try to include them even at 12 fps. Whilst I agree it's difficult to go as far as a cough or nose rub, it is possible to include the gentle shifts of balance and adjustments we all make all the time. Okham's 'Naturalizer'script (check the archives) is a usefull tool for this. Personally, I create the main pose and then go back to add the finer movements - to everything! Incidentally, Mimic defaults at 12 fps. Then again all my animations end up on the web so file size is a huge factor, if you've got the luxury of a large file size then by all means go for more fps, it'll be all the smoother for it.

Wusamah, you are so handsome and beautiful... I just wanted to join in and encourage a fellow Flash user.......

Thanks for this thread, I'm in a similar situation although my machine isn't as sophisticated. I've an AMD Athlon 700 with 512 mg of RAM running Win 98 and have been considering the upgrade to XP too. I increased the RAM from 256 to 512 recently but got virtually no improvements and still get the lock-ups from time to time, so I'll watch with interest. Let us know how it goes....

I'd have gone for 'full, long and feathered' but 'California' sounds OK.

Hi Digit8r, thanks for the link. The exporter can do more than I'm able to show because of my antiquated system. Like most things it's better on post Win 98 OS's. I'll do some animations to show how it handles morphs and child/parent links. I don't mind admitting that I've still got a long way to go in getting the hang of all that's possible with Director 8.5 The Havoc thing for instance! Still haven't managed to get that to work! I suppose the trouble is I'm too busy playing with the exporter. Perhaps I'm easily satisfied but it very nearly does everything I wanted it to do. That is, I can make an animation in Poser and export it out. The current restrictions on the poly count on characters due to Win 98 is a bit frustrating but hey..... this is just the beginning. I'm hoping for CL's sake that they'll get this all scrubbed up tidy and out onto the market soon 'cos, I don't think there'll be an easier way to make animated figures and that's got huge potential for the gaming market. Maybe, because it's all a bit too complex at the moment, is the reason why Shocked sites haven't hit really big time yet. It'll come and wow! won't it take the web up a notch.....

Yes, I apologise ! A little impetuous sour viticulture, but you remain, exclusive.....

Warning: Yanks only.

This can be done with an image strip. Some programs can export animated gifs as image strips. I've used Alchemy's gif construction set, conversion from avi to gif may give you some problems try PSP. Apply the image strip to a long rectangle, note the number of frames and have the same in your Poser movie, slide the square down to the start, make your movie frames the same amount in Poser, last poser frame is where the last image strip frame is. Just create you own viewer but be aware of the fact that the image strip needs to be hidden above and below. The effect is dramatic, if you alter the number of frmaes in Poser you can get a rolling effect on the image strip. Good fun!

I've a group over on Yahoo Groups for Poser, Flash and erotic stuff called Flash_erotica, you'll find it in computer animation.

I see you're entering into the spirit of things!

True, it's really satisfying just to get something to work right, but in Director that doesn't equate to being an expert. The drag and drop level , which is more or less where I am, is OK but the depth of the app is awesome.

Aleks, everything you can do with Nemo and the other game engines should be possible with Director 8.5 There's an enormous amount of interactivity that can be built in. Like I said, I'm just scratching the surface of what's possible. There's bound to be a crossover between the two worlds of 3D and Director users but I suspect that most of us are either or. It'll take time for us to catch up with what's possible, I know it's taking me time to learn Director at this depth. I hope there are just as many Director users struggling to learn 3D, getting them to talk to you is tricky. They've got some of the most silent groups! I noticed this in Flash when I first started really learning that app. Help was restricted to 'RTFM' and 'read the FAQ's'. I guess we've been spoilt rotten because of our wonderful community.

Aleks, it may be because you need to get the focus of the animation, try clicking in the movie first. Director is the recipient app, all the major apps are creating w3d exporters. The 3D apps create the scene or model and it's director's job to translate it into the shockwave format. There's an enormous amount more that it can do, it has physics for example and Shockwave's version of Flash behaviours (that's a bit simplistic) hell, it even can have Flash within the Shockwave. Where Poser wins out is in the ability to create animations so easily. If you're interested, go to the front page of Renderosity and scroll down to the interview with Phil Gross a guy who wrote a book on it, Paula's written an excellent review there too. It isn't the be all and end all of 3D on the net but it's a long way towards it. Something of a holy grail I suppose, being able to view 3D animations from any angle yet still small enough to be possible over the net. Remember when all this net business started, didn't we have this dream then, being able to enter 3D worlds as though they exist. Besides, just think of the possibilities......

What a good idea, thanks. I'll have fun playing with this.