Hi Everyone... My name is Colm and I am the new administrator on the '3D Animation' forum. Some of you that have been members for some time may know me as the creator of the '3D Vision Sci-fi and Fantasy Character Zone' site. I am also a full partner in 'Dark Souls Images' (DSI) the company who is now running 'Poserforum.com' and 'Renderosity'. We have many plans to revamp the '3D Animation' forum in the coming months. The main thing we would like to do is generate a lot more interest in 3D animation. What we really would like is your input and your idea's: How can the '3D Animation' forum be brightened up? What improvements can we make that would be to your liking. Here are some idea's that I have:... Continued on next post...

Encourage users of all forums to experiment with 3D Animation. Encourage users to post links to their animation work. Make the animation forum more accessible from the side bar. A new animation and DTV tutorial section for beginners upwards. Competitions. Reviews of Software and Hardware. A regularly updated buyers guide. Reviews of related books and links to the retail source such as 'Amazon' An extensive links 'Worthwhile Web' section. Discussion groups. Ie. Animation and DTV techniques. Advice on plugins. Animation on the web. Sound and sound FX. Special FX. Character creation etc etc. Interviews and tips from other animators on and off forum and production houses. Continued on next post...

These are only some of my idea's and not all may realized. Please help me to help you by making some suggestions. I can't promise that all suggestions will be put into practise but those that are feasible and technically practical will be. We would like to make a home not just for Poser animators but also other software users such as 'Bryce' and '3D Studio Max'. Also the post production software like 'Premier', 'After FX' and tools such as compression utilities. I myself am far from being an expert animator. I am very much a beginner. So I don't claim to know all the answers to all the questions. I would like the '3D Animation' forum to become a hub of information for 3D animators of every level of skill everywhere. And... A really cool place to visit, hang out and display our work. So if you have anything at all to contribute even if it is just an idea please let me know. You can contact me personally by email at colm_j@yahoo.com. I will respond to all. Or leave a message on the '3D Animation' forum. That poor counter has been stuck at around 50 for the last few weeks. Lets see if we can start to move it up a few more digits. Many thanks for your time and interest in reading this. Colm...:)

Cool. I have been looking for better resources for animating Poser. Any leads would be welcome..

Colm, all of your ideas sound great. Any information and help with animations would be much appreciated. Diane

I think one of the reasons many of us are not into animation yet is because we feel intimidated and the lack of tutorials is one reason. Another is because it's difficult to get the feedback that you would on a picture (since animations are a bit larger to dload) but your ideas sound great and I hope most can be implemented. Looking forward to this.

well, I can do a little animating but I rarely do, because firstly I can't put it in a pretty bryce background which would be nice...when I'm stuck with poser I usually do dim lighting to hide the lack of a background or put a photo, both of which kinda crimp an animation also, it takes substantially longer to do an animation than a single image, and you can't "show off" animations nearly as easily. I guess I'm lucky, I just shove them onto a video tape, but I still don't get the feedback from a forum like this methinks if metacreations released a bryce/poser animation plugin then the forum would jump in posts =) Let's all spam ummmm cough I mean send them encouraging e-mails to get this out SewerRat

Hi Folks! I have been creating 2D and 3D animations for several years now. Most of my presentations have been for personal use or private clients, so I have not released much of my work for general viewing. But I have experience with a number of programs, including Cinemation, Animation Works, MovieMaker (anybody remember them?), PowerPoint, LogoMotion, Infini-D, Ray Dream Studio, AfterEffects, Bryce, and now Poser. In the spring of 2000 I will teach a course in 3D Design and Animation at a university in my local area. Colm and others, please consider me a modest but willing and available resource for whatever insights I can provide about computer-generated animation. Peter (Dr. Zik)

Hi Folks! BTW--I've also produced animations from images produced completely in ClarisWorks, and I'm currently teaching myself Hash Animation Master. Again, I hope I can be a useful resource. Peter (Dr. Zik)

Yes I definitely agree that the intimidation factor runs quite high when it comes to animation. The changes that are implemented on this forum I hope will help to a large degree to alleviate that feeling and replace it with a desire to learn how to animate and see your still images come to life. There are as many forms and styles of animation just like there are with still pictures. Animations in my opinion don't have to be feature length epics. Computer animation is mostly short clips. I hope we can see that it isn't really that difficult to show your work. I have recently half completed a 2 minute clip. It weighs in finished as an 88mb Quicktime movie. After further mpeg compression I got it down to 1.2mb. That would only take about 10 minutes to download with a 56kbs modem. Compared to the quality and size of the original file it admittedly has lost a lot but it would be good enough to give others an idea of what I am up to. We have all download characters and models in the free stuff area that match that size. All you really need is the web space to house them. Animation is definitely in some ways easy in Poser. Not so easy in Bryce and in something like 3D studio max it is pretty amazing. There are great ways to include your poser figures in Bryce scenes directly in Poser by using a Bryce animation as the background. But it isn't the same as putting the animated poser character in Bryce. Continued in next post...

SewerRat... I totally agree with you about a Poser/Bryce and possibly a Poser/Max plugin. If this forums revamp is successful we may even help influence the situation with Meta. I think we should get more into that in the near future. Maybe do some form of campaign. Animated gif's are cool. I used to do stuff similar on an old Amiga with .iff files... Peter...Many thanks for your offer. It sounds like you will be a very valuable resource. There are a lot of programs in your list that I have never used and would have a difficult time helping people with. If you monitor the animation board regularly please feel free to answer queries regarding the software you know. If Anyone wants to write a tutorial of two or a review of a piece of software, hardware or books on animation please do. We will find the space to include it in the up and coming '3D Animation Resource Center'. Thank you for responding. I hope to see you all on the 3D Animation forum soon... Colm...:)