I've got two major problems I need help with.

First, I have tried two different versions of Poser (Poser 6 and Poser 7), on three different computers, and each time it's the same: Poser arbitrarily chokes up, lags, freezes, and crashes at the most random times. Three different computers, all of different makes, models, and stats (but all theoretically capable of running Poser no problem, and two of which shared the same operating system) with two different versions of Poser, and each and every one had the same problems with it. I dunno if it's just that Poser hates me, or what, but I'm getting really tired of having my files corrupted and losing my work because Poser refuses to cooperate. Can anyone help me understand what's going on, and how to fix it?

The second deals with animating in Poser: recently, I tried making an animation with props, but the props won't work with me. If I try to have a prop stay stationary until someone moves it in a later keyframe, it ends up moving around throughout the animation. If I want to have a prop invisible or removed until a later keyframe, it shows up in the entire animation. In other words, Poser simply refuses to apply any changes I make to a prop in the animation to the keyframes I made the changes in, it ALWAYS has to apply the changes to the ENTIRE ANIMATION. I'm not sure what I need to do to keep that from happening, but I'd really like some suggestions on it.

One last question: I tried converting my animation into an .swf file, but Poser completely shut down. It didn't do that when I tried making the animation into an .avi. Do I need a plugin for Poser to make .swf Poser animations?

On the prop staying stationary: This is a "gotcha" that gets everyone at first.
Poser uses Spline Interpolation by default, which means that any move you make between
two frames gets extended in a curvy way between the frames AND after the frames.
There are several solutions.    Easiest is to set the interpolation to linear for
this prop.  You can use the keyframe to do this, but it's tricky and time-consuming.
Here's a script that does it easily for the current prop or figure.

http://ockhamsbungalow.com/Python/SetRange.zip

On changing visibility:  You can do this in Poser 7 rather easily.  On the Properties
palette you'll find a little key next to the Visible choice.  Click on the key to turn it
green, and Visibility will become animatable.  It's an off/on choice, 0 for invisible
and 1 for visible.  When the key is green, the Visibility parameter will appear on
the keygraph and you can animate it.  In earlier versions, there's no clean way
to do this; you either have to scale the prop down to zero or move it way out
of the scene to make it invisible.  Whichever way you do this, it needs to be
a sharp move.  Let's say you want it visible at frame 40 and then gone at frame
41.  In the keygraph put the Visibility to 1 at 40, then pull it down to 0 at 41.

On SWF: Poser's internal SWF generator has never been very good.  Your
setup apparently has more trouble than most; it doesn't typically crash but
it does typically run very slowly at best.  No matter what the final destination,
AVI, WMV, or SWF, you're always better off rendering an animation to separate
frames and using some external editor to combine them into the movie.

k, for prop animation , I use CONSTANT for the type of interpolation while the prop is standing still , and spline for movements . You need to put a keyframe for the position at each end of the time its not moving .

 

As regards the crashing, it could be various factors. One simple thing to try is to disable all your anti-virus programs, all your programs that look for spyware, worms, etc. You may want to be offline while doing this. Then try Poser. If the crashing stops, enable whatever programs you had running one by one to see which one is causing the crashing. I was running iolo system mechanic, and this caused Poser to crash.

Quote - On the prop staying stationary: This is a "gotcha" that gets everyone at first.
Poser uses Spline Interpolation by default, which means that any move you make between
two frames gets extended in a curvy way between the frames AND after the frames.
There are several solutions.    Easiest is to set the interpolation to linear for
this prop.  You can use the keyframe to do this, but it's tricky and time-consuming.
Here's a script that does it easily for the current prop or figure.

http://ockhamsbungalow.com/Python/SetRange.zip

On changing visibility:  You can do this in Poser 7 rather easily.  On the Properties
palette you'll find a little key next to the Visible choice.  Click on the key to turn it
green, and Visibility will become animatable.  It's an off/on choice, 0 for invisible
and 1 for visible.  When the key is green, the Visibility parameter will appear on
the keygraph and you can animate it.  In earlier versions, there's no clean way
to do this; you either have to scale the prop down to zero or move it way out
of the scene to make it invisible.  Whichever way you do this, it needs to be
a sharp move.  Let's say you want it visible at frame 40 and then gone at frame
41.  In the keygraph put the Visibility to 1 at 40, then pull it down to 0 at 41.

On SWF: Poser's internal SWF generator has never been very good.  Your
setup apparently has more trouble than most; it doesn't typically crash but
it does typically run very slowly at best.  No matter what the final destination,
AVI, WMV, or SWF, you're always better off rendering an animation to separate
frames and using some external editor to combine them into the movie.

Okay, I downloaded the file you linked to, but the txt file that came with it didn't tell me where to put it in.

As for the animation, considering that my last one went to 2300 frames, and was up to 1000 frames done before it crashed, would I be okay with doing small snippets of the animation in Poser, then combining them into one long animation with Windows Movie Maker or something?

Synjo,

Take a look at a normal movie. In each movie there are "shots", sometimes also called "takes". This is a segment of film from one camera, uninterupted.

In an action movie these shots will be between 2 and 8 seconds, in a drama they can go from 5 to 25 seconds, and in some films with vistas and a lot of scenery, shots may be as long as 45 seconds.

So, watch a normal action movie. The camera will be on actor A from the left for 2 seconds, then switch to a different camera, from the front for example, for 4 seconds, then switch back to the first camera, etc. The "tighter" the cuts, the more it gives the illusion of action, the more relaxed cuts are used for building up tension or for the comic relief moments.

So with Poser, don't try to make 2300 frame animations. The most you should do is about 300 or 400 frames, and any simple video editor can then link these together. You will see that BVH and animated motion files will also be very short, mostly about 4 to 10 seconds of animation. This is because animated files take into consideration that they will be used for a shot or take, and only need to last for that take.

Attached Link: Youtube

Wtach this for example. The actual Poser bits are 6 seconds long. At 30 frames a second, that is only 180 frame animations. The reason this works is because it flows from one shot to another. To have tried to do this in one 40 second Poser render would be almost impossible.