I've been trying to create a walking figure holding a musical instrument. Although I lock the upper body parts that hold the instrument in place, the Walk Designer overrides the lock feature and animates the figure's arms dropping to its sides as he walks. What am I doing wrong?

Attached Link: saibabameuk

Yes, I can see that, is a problem if you wish the actor to play the instrument as he is walking.

Perhaps you need to export the pose as png frames that will do the job.

It is slow but will work.

I have knocked this up have a look.

This is EASILY Accomplished if you learn to properly use your poser

GRAPH EDITOR

Cheers

Two ways to workaround :-

1. Do the walk first, then delete the unwanted keyframes for those body parts you are going to redo.

2. Keyframe the body parts you've adjusted for the instrument (make sure you add a keyframe in the last frame of the animation), save as a animated pose using the subset option to include just the body parts you need to preserve.
   Do the walk, delete unwanted keyframes, then apply the saved pose.
   Be sure to unlock actors before applying the pose.

You need to lock the arms before you apply any animation (eg Walk Designer) to the figure. Applying poses or the Walk Designer won't affect locked actors, even if they are unlocked later the pose will not have affected those actors. On the other hand, locking an actor after it has been animated won't stop the actor from following animation that was applied before it was locked.

The above may sound a little strange until you understand how locking works. Locking just stops the value of any frame in the actor from being changed from the value it had at the time the actor was locked. So "Locked" means "Locked in" not "Prevented from animating". A locked actor is locked in  every frame, but its locked position can be different in each frame, and will be the position it had in that frame at the time  the actor was locked.

To have a walking figure carrying something, you can try this. Lock the arms, collars, and hand parts. Apply the Walk Cycle. Then in  frame one unlock the locked parts, parent the item to the chest, pose the hands and arms to hold the item, turn on IK for the arms, and parent the hands to the item. If it were a musician playing a saxophone or flute, you would parent the item to the head, instead of the chest, so that if the head moves the instrument moves with it.

In an animation of a figure playing a flute, the 'origin' (Center Point) of the flute prop can also be important. Placing the origin at the part of the flute that meets the lips, will allow you to easily add a bit of rotation to the flute whilst keeping it in contact with the lips as the animation progresses, giving a more natural look to the animation than if the flute just maintained the same orientation relative to the head throughout.

I have tried to explain a bit about how "Lock Actor" works, but that does not mean that I disagree with the advice from nruddock or wolf359. There are many ways to skin a cat (apologies to any felines reading this, on offence meant), and the more techniques you have available to you, the better able you will be to meet the challenges of animation.

Thanks all for your very helpful input. I'll give your suggestions a try.

Wolf: Yep, that did the trick. The Graph Editor does all, sees all, knows all. Thanks for the great video tutorial.