Hiccup in loop of animation

Hi

I am using Poser 7 to make the animations. What I tried to make is a lead in of about 7.5 seconds. Then start the real animation in a loop for about 22.5 seconds.

When using 240 frames I copy frame #60 to the last frame. They should be exactly the same, so a loop from frame 60 to 240 should be seamless. In Poser it is.
When uploading I set the start percentage on 25%, the end on 100%. But I can't manage to have the seamless loop in SL.

Even copied the keyframes to the frames 57-62 and 235-240. Made the keyframes linear. Played with all the settings in Poser. It still doesn't work

Can someone please help me out? I am not desparate yet, but wasted too much time already on this.

Thanks

Black Nimbus (Black Velvet Animations)

Have you tried changing all the different percentages for loop in and loop out? Sounds like you have 25% and 100% but you might have to try changing those a little. Also try adjusting the ease in and out settings. I don't have poser so I have no clue if there is some setting there that could be a problem.

Would it help to make the math easier? Since frame one is ignored, wouldn't frame 60 be (grabbing calculator) 24.686%? Of course, since 60 is the same as 240, you'd be seeing those frames twice if you used that. Might it be easier to make frame 241 the matching frame and keep your anim length 240?

See this recent thread (loop is noticeable)?

However, there also is apparently a drifting issue, but since you don't describe your "seamless" problem, might this be a factor?

I've had the same problem with using the looping for something other than 0% and 100%. I haven't tried one again for a while because I just couldn't get it to work correcty.

When I tried it, I think I was fairly precise with my math: discounting the first "reference" frame, knowing exactly which frames to end and begin the loop, and figuring out the exact percentages on my calcuator. I had wondered if there was some sort of rounding off problem (is the percentage rounded to the nearest frame, rounded up, rounded down)?

After getting help on my problem with the jerky leg-hip movements, and reading the Jira on drifting (which seems to be a problem only for Poser animators), I wonder if drifting is the culprit here.

The way I solved my drift problem was using the linear or constant selections, rather than spline selection (which occurs by default), on certain joints and keyframes.

If the drifting problem seems to affect Poser users so much more than anyone else, the culprit has to be the spline selection and interpolation.

Then again, maybe this isn't the case. I just re-read the Jira, and the problem is not limited to Poser users, and in testing there was control for the drifting problem. So maybe my response on this is moot.

With the spline selection, Poser interpolates the movement of the joints over a curve between key frames (and not just between key frames).

This causes the movement to be uneven in frames between keyframes. You may not notice how uneven, because in the parameters window, you don't see fractions of a degree. Then adding more keyframes later in the animation completely recalculates everything before.

So the spline selection could be creating frames that the SL optimization will 'ignore', in places that you may not expect or are not clear to you.

It may be that you are having drift that becomes noticeable because of the looping.

An idea for fixing it would be then similar to fixing any drift. You need to make sure you have sufficient joint movement between the loop start and stop points. At critical points, use linear or constant selections rather than spline selections.

And Amity brings another thought to mind, what happens if the optimization changes one of the frames at your loop start or end?

Spline interpolation (which QAvimator has too) would certainly exacerbate such a problem, as there'd be less change closer to the keys of course (risking more optimization then)...

Does this idea sound like it makes sense to anyone else? I wonder if we could create an anim that would optimize out a key critical to a loop?