I was wondering if there is a tutorial or something someone can point me to in order to find out how to animate the ripples that would go through something if you hit it?

Soft body physics. Not available in Poser 6.

There may be a way to cheat it, but I don't know what it is.

In P6 you can do a pretty good job with waves and magnets.  The "victim" object needs to have a fairly dense mesh so the deformers can move the surface in detail. 

First: Animate the "weapon" and "victim" to form the hit.

Second: Add a magnet to the "weapon", and set the magnet's Objects Affected pulldown to include the "victim" object.  Then play around with the magnet and its zone until it makes a good dent in the "victim" as the "weapon" approaches.

Third:  Add a wave to the "victim", and play around with the wave and its zone until it shows the kind of ripples you want.  Animate the Phase and Amplitude so the ripples begin just after impact and fade out shortly thereafter.

Textures can be animated in Poser 6 also.

You could put a displacement map on the target, and animate the value of the displacement map.

happy Posering.

Yes, excellent idea.  You could even use a black-and-white movie of ripples for the displacement map.

Quote - In P6 you can do a pretty good job with waves and magnets.  The "victim" object needs to have a fairly dense mesh so the deformers can move the surface in detail. 

First: Animate the "weapon" and "victim" to form the hit.

Second: Add a magnet to the "weapon", and set the magnet's Objects Affected pulldown to include the "victim" object.  Then play around with the magnet and its zone until it makes a good dent in the "victim" as the "weapon" approaches.

Third:  Add a wave to the "victim", and play around with the wave and its zone until it shows the kind of ripples you want.  Animate the Phase and Amplitude so the ripples begin just after impact and fade out shortly thereafter.

Thanks, Do you think you could direct me to a tutorial on the create wave option and how to use the wave?

I don't know of a tutorial for sure.

PhilC probably has a good (non-free) video tut on the subject, and DrGeep undoubtedly has a free comic-style tut that fits the P6 era.

drgeep.com is Dr Geep's homepage.