Hi guys! I have a few questions about animating with Poser 5, heres a quick overview: Ultimately Im trying to inch my way to being able to make CG shorts. I mainly use P5 for character design, but Ive found its animating tools really easy to use. Now that Im getting a little better at it, Im wondering if there are any techniques for creating effects like muzzle flashes, explosions, running water, etc. within Poser? Would I be better off using 3DS Max 6 or Unreal Ed? (I have both, but I havent messed with either) If so, is there any way to take animations I create in P5 and export them to the aforementioned programs? If you guys have any advice on this or could point me to some tutorials, Id really appreciate it. Thanks!

I know of a couple of merchants that do those kinds of things. I don't know if they are animatable, though. I personally don't know if it's even possible to do explosions or running water in Poser. <---signature---> nemirc Animation Moderator

You are better off doing explosions etc in max since you can do particle effects. greenbriar do plugins for importing poser figures into other applications. Or you can animate the figures in poser and do the compositing with backgrounds in another application.

for a muzzle flash object animation -

you can try positioning a muzzle flash out of camera view before its needed then in a 1 frame move, position it at the muzzle... alternate the transperancy / morph (if any) for about 3 frames or so, (light transperancy frame 1, no transperancy frame2, light transperancy frame 3 - then in frame four, do a 1frame move back off screen.

Message edited on: 06/14/2005 16:49

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Muzzle flashes and explosions can be done to some extent in Poser. In the attached annimation there is a square prop with texture and transparency map inside the "bomb", in frame 2 the bomb is moved under the ground, the square is scaled up throuout the animation and moved slightly closer to the camera. The linked thread posts #3 and #4 demonstrate a muzzle flash and fire ball. These were all done in Poser 4, they are a bit primitive, later versions of Poser may be capable of better effects, I don't know.