I guess this can be the first place. Tapping my finger away on my desk, trying to get serious with animations and staring at Poser(6). Which is ready to go. Now, my plan is to get a character to walk to a car. Open door, get in, and drive away. I can get the character to walk to the car, and grap the door handle. Then have the car move about. The problem is, getting the character to open door, and move into the car into a seated position. Do I start with amount of frames needed (guessing)? If so, How many frames will this take? Or do I use one frame at a time, which could take forever (teadeous) and a headache. How would I get the character to open door (door opens upward), get in seated position in car.....ummm. I have my stage already set.

Message edited on: 01/13/2006 08:19

This is what I do: Take a stop watch, or a watch, and when you are ready perform the action yourself. See how many seconds you took to perform that action, multiply by 30 (as in 30 frames per second) and that would be an estimate of how many frames you should use. I hope this helps.

Hey!..That is great. Thanks.. :-)

one other thing... different formats use different frame rates... check to be sure of which format you're going to use. but, also, yes, use a stopwatch to time it, watching someone do the action. it usually helps if you have a VERY patient friend, (victum), to help you. Lou.

start with 300 frames (10 seconds) for the first cut. do the movie in 5-second cuts, then concatenate them in your movie editor. your audience only has a 5-second attention span, so you hafta keep 'em off-balance. most of the cuts will have 50-100 dead frames at the end, so you just delete the end frames. you can get into the car in 3 seconds or less, so you can allow for extra time or slo-mo with 300 frames, and still have a buffer segment at the end. you could even jack the frame count up to 999 per cut, but you'll go nuts trying to keep track of more than 300 frames in the graph editor or animation palette.