Hi all, We tried our very best to create a movie at Poser 5 (SP2.1). After we had come into the near of a heardattack, we stoped processing and wrote down some questions. 1. If we create/add a new figure into our document during our frameposings all the keyframes, which we set before were lost. Did we made anything wrong? 2. We failed in including some more frames into an existing footage. Example: We tried to add 30 frames into a footage with 210 frames. Our idea: Add this include at frame 151. The old 151 up to 210 must became framenumber 181 up to 241. Any chance to do this? Or can we move frames 151-210 to startframe 180, after we had enlarged the document from 210 frames up to 240? 3. Importing another poser document with n-frames into an existing poserdoc with m-frames: Is there any way to prevent both frameblocks from melting together after an import? We need frameblock 1 (the import) before frameblock 2 (the actual poserdoc) 4. Is there any chance to delete frame 1 to n and keep the frames n+1 and last? It's true, we are freshmen in making movies, so we hope in getting any help. Thank's a lot Daniel + Matthias Kruse

1. I just tried this. I loaded a figure into the scene, created some keyframed animation for it, then added a new figure. My keyframes for the first figure are still there.

2. Yes, it's possible to add extra frames into an existing animation. From the Animation Palette, increase the total frames to 240 by clicking on the numeric value and entering the new frame count. Then draw a selection box around frames 151-210 and drag them to the end of the timeline. You'll probably want to make certain that frames 150 and 151 (soon to become 181) are both keyframes before trying this; otherwise, Poser's frame interpolation might produce undesired results in the animation.

3. I haven't messed around with importing keyframe data from another document, but you could add m frames to the beginning of the importable document so that its animation doesn't start at frame 1.

4. Yes. First, make frame n+1 a keyframe. Next, draw a selection box around frames 1-n and press the Delete Key Frames button. If you want to leave the remaining keyframes at that spot in the timeline, you're done. Otherwise, select the remaining keyframes and drag them to the beginning of the timeline, then enter the new frame count to remove the blank frames from the end.

If you are just learning animation, you might want to set all the frames to linear interpolation (orange), which produces straight-line movement between keyframes. Spline interpolation (green) produces curves, which can be more life-like, but affect positions before and after a keyframe in ways that can be difficult to predict and control. Also: I usually render animations as a series of still frames instead of as one big movie, then assemble them in a video application. There are some good low-cost ones available. It also lets you combine shorter shots of your scene taken from different camera angles and distances, which will give you a more professional-looking movie. By rendering as still images, you don't lose all your rendering work and time, if the movie doesn't completely render. You can also use the saved frames later in other ways. Don't get discouraged - you can get good results from Poser animation - Elisa/gryffnn

Hi Dragon, wow! There are a lot of good helps. To No.2: Think you mean, ....change into 'Edit key frames', select the figure and keyframes and drag them to the new keyframe-position. Tonight we try this. To No.1: There was a very improtant hint: Keyframe for the figure! Now we now, there isn't one keyframe for all figures at this frame, but one keyframe for the figure only. Now it's clear, why all the keyframes are 'gone', because the new added figure is totally new to the document and without any keyframes. Thank's for helping Regards Daniel + Matthias Kruse

Hi Elisa, yes we know, our headline is a little bit rough. We had a lot of fun, to set live into our scuba-divers for example. We missed just some hints to make moviemaking more comfortably. For example, after we had run the first view, we recognized some places in the movie, in where we had to speed up or to slow down the movements. Now with the help of dragon we found a way. We got some experience in the past in moviemaking and are of the same opionion: Just some seconds for one document. So our largest footage is about 7 seconds. All the footages are merged afterwards. We are using Multimedia Studio 6.5, which is a very good (but expensive, sigh!) software. We also tried the 'spline' and 'linear interpolation'. Both results are of the nearly same quality (you have to watch cerfully for seeing differences). Perhaps in case of setting too many keyframes. Nevertheless, it's we are very pleased to get good hints. Think we are a good community! Dear Elise and Dragon kindest regards Daniel Kruse, Germany

My longest project so far ran a bit over 2 minutes. I ended up splicing together three different .pz3 animation files (rather carefully, since I wanted it to appear like one camera shot with no cuts.) Unfortunately, there was a minor light shift (which I still can't explain). I would have done it all in one take, but Poser runs into problems when you exceed 999 frames- it's more of an interface problem, really. The animation palette will track the excess frames, but the pop-up animation bar in the Pose room only has room for 3 digits... makes things slightly difficult when you use both tools regularly. Actually, when I make movies now, I make them in DivX 5.0.2 format, with a 1000kps encoding rate- high enough so no detail is lost at 640x480, but small enough so that individual images don't fill my hard drive. I found a freeware editing program that can spice individual .avi's together, add sound, and works with DivX compression, but unfortunately, I can't recall its name right now. Best of luck with your movies! Animating in Poser is fun :)

Actually, film editors often have to insert a quick shot of a character's expression/reaction or a Point-Of-View shot to cover just such a real-world mis-match of lighting or whatever between different "takes" of a scene. It's really educational to watch films without the sound, so you focus on that sort of thing. A skillful editor can keep you from noticing inadequacies in footage that cannot be re-shot. Even so, you'll be amazed at some substandard stuff that ends up films. At least we can archive our actors and sets and rerender!