I've been using a number of tutorials for quite some time to gently get in to Poser, and having felt ready to take the plunge a short while ago, I'm finding it extremely infuriating because there always seems to be a brick wall thrown up to frustrate me and make me give up until I've calmed down for a few days, whereupon I take a few deep breaths and try again - only to inevitably be thwarted again!

The latest one is the animation layers. I've purchased and studied two different video tutorials, as well as read the PDF tutorial, and despite following the instructions EXACTLY as I'm being shown, the layer function simply won't work.

I create a new layer, and I put in the start frame and end frame, as shown. But, all that happens is the new frame goes to the required frame and immediately flicks straight back to the first frame of the Base Layer, and when I put in the end frame, it goes to the required frame but immediately flicks to the end frame of the Base Layer. This is not what I see happening in the video tutorials, and it's driving me crazy that something that looks so simple is not working as it should for me.

And then this morning the start and end frames of the new layer actually stayed where I'd set them (hoorah!), so barely believing my luck I went into the keyframe editor to make the animation I wanted (a very simple test wave), but Andy refused to move no matter which editing tool I used, and when I looked back in the layer editor (yep, you've guessed it) the new layer I'd set had again moved from the frames I'd set and was once again matching the base layer setting (60 frames).

Am I being really, really dopey and missing something very obvious here, or is there some sort of glitch I'm unaware of that's causing this.

If someone can help me I'll be extremely grateful, because I'm on the verge of giving up and taking another look at Daz or iClone instead.

hi, I'm running PoserPro 2014, and the layers behave as they should.

In the Layers tab, you've got Current Layers Only, Include In Playback and a Composite Method to choose (all at the left side of the panel), having some of those (un)checked might affect what you're seeing in the preview.

You can also set the start and stop frames for the selected layer, but these are affected as well by any keyframes - as seen in the Keyframes tab. That is: when the start is set to 10, and I add a keyframe at 5, then the start changes to 5. And I cannot move past the limits of the Base Layer. In other words: if something weird is going on, checking the keyframes might reveal a solution.

I'm far from experienced in this, but perhaps the two of us can see more than one alone.

Quote - hi, I'm running PoserPro 2014, and the layers behave as they should.

In the Layers tab, you've got Current Layers Only, Include In Playback and a Composite Method to choose (all at the left side of the panel), having some of those (un)checked might affect what you're seeing in the preview.

Thanks for your helpful response. I'm using Pro 2014 too (I should have mentioned that in my initial post), so I'll go take a look and see if I can sort it out.

After my post I started practicing some animations without the layer function or editing tools, just using the dope sheet and the graph, and it worked really, really nicely, so I'm now feeling quite confident again 

Just an idea: the Walk Designer generates an animation in a new layer. It might be a fast way to get a layer with keyframes just for experimenting.