Suggestions for a Beginner

Just yesterday I got myself Poser 6, it has been years and about 4-5 versions of Poser since I last played with this at all. The basics all seem the same, etc... But! I've never used Poser before with the actual intent of exporting it to something, just made amusing little animations. Sooo....

What tips would you guys like to pass along before I completely frustrate myself and my $L's?

=)

Welcome to Poser world. I hope you'll be able to make your dance.

1. You must update your Poser6.
2. You'd better download SL Avatar and set it up on your Poser.
3. Go to Ulrika's tutorial page and follow it. Though she doesn't SL Avatar, you'll be able to understand what she says. Someone used another Avatar and had a trouble. Avatar must not have hair. "Hair is Devil", Video Linden or Bruce Willis had also said so.

Note: (cf: Ulrika's page)
Second Life deletes the first frame of an animation, using it as a "normalizing frame" to orient the remaining animation. To begin, one must load a Poser 2 model and make the first frame a default stance.

Advanced question, you should read this FAQ thread. It buried so deep that I hardly found it.

Hope this helps you.

Kk, had steps 1 & 2 done, now going to do 3 on....

Thanks! And Thanks -so- much for those animations, just made my month! =)

Hey, Little, I recall you're a Mac User. Do you use OS Tiger?
Poser6 doesn't work on my Mac. I can't open and save any files on it. So I have to change OS to Panther whenever I use Poser. It has two HDDs and different OS each one.

But somebody can use it on even OS Tiger. I'm not sure what difference is. I hope you don't have such problem. Oh, I've notice you're lucky.

"To begin, one must load a Poser 2 model and make the first frame a default stance."

are the default stances available anywhere? I just got poser too.

(like the SL standing animation, not the poser default)

No. That means Poser default. But I'm not sure what happens acturally when you do that.

Well does anyone have the SL standing animations? It would be a good frame to start with to get a smooth animation that starts from standing.

Sorry, I don't understand you. You mean it is the animation to keep up the default stance?

hmm... I seem to be getting what you said...
Sorry, I might have misread you. You meaned if you made an animation with the default position, you could start the animation anywhere in world(SL)? If so, the answer should have been "YES". The animations are just for your body parts and have nothing to do with world. So if you start your animation when you're hovering, it would start there. And of course you can start it from standing position if you're standing.

=(

Nope, I'm a "I wish I was a Mac User" as I am far happier doing art projects on a Mac, than a PC which will almost always end up freezing or something terrible.

O, Oh, anyway, it is good you can use Poser without any troubule.

=) Yep, was just worried about the uploading to SL part. But the tutorials are great! Now I just need to find a day where nothing unexpected takes over everything....hrmm....

I meant are they (default sl animations) available to download anywhere.
not asking if I can execute them anywhere in world.

just saying if we had the default standing pose, we could use that as frame 1 and 2 so that our animations would start from the right position.

Sorry for my dense. Now I've got you.

Q. Are they (default sl animations) available to download anywhere?
A. No. At least I've never seen them.

Q. If we had the default standing pose, could we use that as frame 1 and 2 so that our animations would start from the right position?
A. Yes. But you don't have to have SL default standing pose at all. Animations start from the 2nd frame you made and the position depends on where you set, that is, there is no right position. If you want to start your animation from SL default standing position, it is the exact Poser default position. Even if you could get SL default animation, you would just find it be the exact same position with Poser default one. That would just waste your time.

Thanks for the answer, I widh they WERE available for DL.

Actually this part:

wasn't a question, lol.

it is always best to have the first (in the case of SL , the 2nd) frame match the last position you were in.

in/out settings upon importing animations etc. can approximate but nothing beats having the animation link up smoothly to begin with.

I guess I'm just a perfectionist about that. Too much '3d Fighter Maker'

Why? We can't know what we would be doing just before starting our animations. SL default standing poses have a couple of patterns and they are always changing in a random order. Even though you had them and was about to start one of those, what would you do that posing start point?
I think if you would make your animation's in fame, that is, 2nd frame be the same with Poser's default pose, it would be smooth to start. But the end is not able to be hoped because we don't know what kind of standing pose starting in advance.

No, I was wrong. We can't let the starting point be smooth, either. It was obvious.

But there is the way to achieve what you want. It is called Animation Override. It would make your custom animations override SL default animations. Make your own standing pose animation and displace SL standing pose by your custom standing pose so that you can estimate what your avatar doing.

It might, however, be no use doing anything because you'll find lag and your frame rate which depends on your video card be more awful than start/end jitter.

Okay, help!

I changed my mind at the end of my animation on how I wanted my animation to start. Typical! No, I -know- there's just got to be a way to copy and paste a pose, riiiight?


The set up is like this...

Pose1 - Pose2 - Pose3 - Pose4 - Pose5

Now!

I want to keep the order, just, make it like this...

Pose5 - Pose1 - Pose2 - Pose3 - Pose4 - Pose5

And loop. =)

BTW: I'm making an item to put this animation into, and will be giving the item out free to anyone wanting to have a looksee and give me some feedback on my first. =)

Right.
OK, open and see "keyframe editor" which you can find Window/Animation Palette. You'd better always open this window.
Now you can see names of your avatar's parts on the left side column.
Green dots mean keyframes. Click a dot, a white outline appears. This means you selected it. If you click and drag, you see a size varying rectangle. It is an area to select multiple dots.
After selecting, click again and drag a keyframe (a green dot) horizontally, along with time line. It's "move". Press ALT key and do the same thing, you can "copy and paste".
Body parts names can be folded like Explore, system browzer. And it is convenient for you to select the whole avatar parts keyframes.I guess Pose#s you say are keyframes. First, how much frames are there all? OK, I imagine it my own way. You set 30 frames.

See below AnimPalette01 & 02 .

You need to set this in uploading window. See this thread.

Do your best.

Why would you ask "why" when that is exactly what I've just explained in great detail?

Why would you say I can't know what I'm doing just before an animation and then go on to post how I CAN know?

There seems to be a distinct communication problem between the 2 of us (from the start), let's not answer each other anymore.

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If anyone knows where I can DL the default SL standing animation pls post it.

I agree with you. I'm dense and not good at reading and explaing anything in English, so let me just say to you, "Sorry".
At the end, just one suggestion. If you want something, go to Classifieds forums' Product Wanted thread. Here is a discussion forum and the title of this thread is "Suggestions for a Beginner". Your important asking would be buried and might not see the light of day.

Thanks for at least trying to answer tho, many didn't.

Here it is.