Making a shot that lasts about 13 seconds.

It's taken me like 3 hours plus to make it. I'm trying to make realistic motion by the way.
I mean, i'm not aiming at perfection but somewhat close to looking believable.

for example, many times the animation looks robotic so i'm trying to fix it and it takes time.

13 second animation piece... and i'm taking over 3 hours..Is this how it is?

PS: I"m not talking about rendering. I'm talking about the process of creating a believable animation that looks realistic interms of how real people move.

What helped me a lot is i've been reviewing animation techniques but still difficult to make in the software. Also I dont just use Poser so, i'm talking in general

Yes, animating takes a LOT of time, and learning. Thats why animated films have a army of people working on them, and take years to create.

Quote - Yes, animating takes a LOT of time, and learning. Thats why animated films have a army of people working on them, and take years to create.

Garree is correct here.

...and when you're an "army of one", it takes about 5 years to create 34 minutes of finished animation...I hope you're not in a hurry!  ;-)

Seriously, the others are correct: animation is slow and painstaking work, but there's nothing else like it. I've stuck with it because I enjoy the process (when I'm not cursing it) as well as the results because I keep learning and improving, and it's just generally fun figuring out how to create what you want to show.

Its kinda funny.. because our tools improve each year, people think that actual tasks themselves can be done in no time. In many cases however, because there are more options available, you end up actually having more work then less.

producing 50 - 100 frames per hour is good enuff to get the project done on schedule.
this includes everything: animatics, textures, backgrounds, mocap, modelling, set-up,
rendering.  you need a staff of approx. 250 techs and supervisors IMVHO, as there's a
gigantic difference between a professional anim. and a poser anim. in empty scene with
one keyframe every 30 frames, beziers, IK on, stock poses, no clothes, no facial expressions,
no dialog, no GI, no hair, no props et al.

the part about whether you're any good at it - we can't answer that, but 100 frames per hour
is good for a single user, if the end result is good enuff to post on web.

Its impossible for anyone to put a single definitive number on how long it takes one person to create a given animation. so many factors come into play, work flow, tools available, complexity of the movement or scene, speed of the hardware you're using, how buggy the software is etc.

as stated before, the best estimate is "a long time"

If it was easy, everyone would do it because its so darned satisfying taking a static figure and giving it life =)

 
You do get faster as you gain experiance, theres a bit less trial and error , and you may have built up a library of stock moves to use .
13 seconds is 390 frames so a few hours sounds ok.  I spent several hours on a 5 second animated loop once to get it looking good.

Learn to use the preview render option to test it rather than render ot out .

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You do get faster as you gain experiance, theres a bit less trial and error , and you may have built up a library of stock moves to use .

true

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13 seconds is 390 frames so a few hours sounds ok. 

that depends on your frame rate. 15 fps isnt bad if you dont have much quick movement in your scene.

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Learn to use the preview render option to test it rather than render ot out .

good point. preview movies are very important........which is why Im boned right now =(

 The quality, and usefulness of the tool, depends greatly on what its being used for.

I cannot speak past all of you "Highly animated" people. However, I know a bit about it, a very SMALL bit. Gathered in my time making poses, Expressions, clothing and animations for Second Life. Which, I will never go back to even if I were paid...

If using to animate, then it seems to be one of the best.

(Side Note)

My friend has Poser7 and uses it solely to create japanese schoolgirl outfits and ensembles from presets or packages. I dont want to know what he does with them, or why he makes them. But that to me, is a HUGE waste of money as well as the softwares time.

(Then again, I think he has it cracked so, strike the money part...)

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My friend has Poser7 and uses it solely to create japanese schoolgirl outfits and ensembles from presets or packages. I dont want to know what he does with them, or why he makes them. But that to me, is a HUGE waste of money as well as the softwares time.

why would it be a waste of time or money? If he has fun using it then its definately worth it.

Looking at it that way, you are right.

Quote - Making a shot that lasts about 13 seconds.

It's taken me like 3 hours plus to make it. I'm trying to make realistic motion by the way.
I mean, i'm not aiming at perfection but somewhat close to looking believable.

for example, many times the animation looks robotic so i'm trying to fix it and it takes time.

13 second animation piece... and i'm taking over 3 hours..Is this how it is?

PS: I"m not talking about rendering. I'm talking about the process of creating a believable animation that looks realistic interms of how real people move.

What helped me a lot is i've been reviewing animation techniques but still difficult to make in the software. Also I dont just use Poser so, i'm talking in general

3 hours for 13 seconds clip? Are you kidding? It should take a lot more.

Just post your work somewhere for us to see and we'll be able to guide you much better. Otherwise we're only guessing as to whether you're slow or fast for the quality of work you're doing.

I can spend many hours on a single, relatively simple single-frame render. If the result gives me some satisfaction, and especially if I feel I have learnt something from the process, fast or slow is irrelevant. This is all difficult stuff, and we can take some pride in being able to learn even the basics.

stimuli produces the most natural-looking, fluid animations (erotic and otherwise) that I have seen within the Poser community. I would advise you to do what I have done - buy one (or more) of his animations (from the other place), load it, and study how he has constructed it. Careful which one you get, though, especially if you have kids looking over your shoulder. And do try to concentrate on the task in hand!

Izi

Long ago, Mason put together a generic .pz3, and posted it for folks to use as a standard test file to compare their render speeds.    It was kinda fun and answered nagging doubts similar to the OP's in this thread.

Sounds like some may be interested in playing that game once again.  ( I'm several Poser versions behind, but perhaps one of youse whats somewhat more current might be up for it.)

There are too many variables to really say if the time is reasonable. I have taken more than 3 hours on a single image , and a lot less than 3 hours on a 30 second animation. What the figure is doing makes a big difference.

The killer in animations is rendering it all, that can take days.

Posser does not have the tools available in some high end applications to do things like accelerate away, or decellerate to a stop. Those have to be keyframed manually. It all takes time.

@stimuli , do you get the same problem creating a set of single frame images.  Maybe try a different codec ?
 

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@stimuli , do you get the same problem creating a set of single frame images.  Maybe try a different codec ? 
 

I got it fixed, mark, with some advice from "bagginsbill"
was an openGL issue with a recent graphics card I got. simply changing some of the preview render settings fixed it =)

JosterD, you have been strangely silent apart from your origional post.
Is any of the info posted here helping at all?

Whatever software you are animating in has its own shortcuts to certain animating tasks. Discovering these shortcuts just takes lots and lots of trial and error.
For Poser (the only one I animate in) the real movement magic is in "spline wrangling" (coined a phase! WOOT!) in the spline wave editor pallette. If you arent familiar with it just click the long button at the top of Poser's key frame window that has the wavey line on it. This graph is the key to making poser figures move well.

P.S. Isaoshi, thank you for the kind words =)

Yeah it's helping.

and i guess as i work on it more i'll get better.
At first i was having alot of problems with realism because I hadn't studied the animation techniques like anticipation etccc.. and without those i was having problems finding out why it didn't look anything near realistic. but now it's getting b etter and i'm feeling more comfortable making animation.

Any books on keyframe animation will apply to poser. try your library system and see if they have anything.  remember that Poser is not realistic in the joint movement. for example your knee doest really have a side to side movement , or its very minor. Same with the elbow, the movement is a twist in the upper arm. You also want to use morphs to show some muscle changes if it can be seen , that adds to the realsim.

Yup. Anticipation, secondary motion and follow through are also important to making animation look good.  Remember to bring the action through the entire body and not just the body part. Then, make sure the action completes before begining a new action or the overlap may cause some confusion (this depends on the situation though).  Back in my Amiga 500 days I had the Disney Animation Studio - the manuals and examples that came with it were like a course in animation by themselves.  No program has ever come close to giving you clear examples of basic animation principles in-app.

Sadly, we have yet to implement any kind of squash and stretch features in the bone system so that has to be done manually by a combo of morphs and scaling. May not be as important if you're working with "realistic humans" but if you're working with toons, that's kind of critical.

Required reading: The Animator's Handbook.