I have been using Poser on and off for some time now and lately I have become very interested in exploring and learning the animation side of its capabilities. But I have to say that I have never managed to get my head around Walk Designer let alone its Animation layers.

Now please don't get me wrong I love Poser for all its faults and bugs, but as far as Walk Designer is concerned it's a complete and absolute mystery to me and the tutorials that are out there do not go into it in any depth.

So I was wondering how many Poser users actually use Walk Designer? And if so how many actually get it to work with their animation without encountering problems? Or have you thrown in the towel never to return to it again?
 
To start using Walk Designer you select a character and then select a walk from the walk list then you have to give it a walk path - Did you notice that the walk path by default moves off the computer screen and ends up somewhere outside your premises requiring you to zoom out to find it?

You are then told that you can shorten this path but after numerous attempts I personally have ended up with a walk path that looks like a string of convoluted pretzels and of course your character follows that path perfectly and walks as gracefully as a brick dancing in the air!

So if you have succeeded getting your character to follow a moderate walk path where exactly is this sequence when you want to edit it or move it in your animation? I can't see any action frames in the edit window and there appears to be no explanation whatsoever about this unless I'm missing something?

And what if you want to make your character take a couple of steps or even a single step back or forwards towards another character? And how do you this without messing up the walk and messing up your animation which you have spent hours getting right?

So I wonder is it just me or are there other people who equally find it difficult to use? It would be nice to know because Smith Micro might need to take a relook at Walk Designer.