Chip help me *again*

OK Chip (or whoever else may be wise enough and kind enough to help me with this question....

In Poser using the SL model what is the suggested # of frames between keyframes. When I try 10 it adds in all sorts of contorted body positions. I'm finding I need to edit every frame or my animation looks like utter crap. Is there a work around?

Also Chip your suggestion of setting a key frame for the head only so it won't bob all over the place in SL dosn't work. Seems they (LL) would have had enough sense to have a check box in the animation upload thingy to let us keep their stupid movements especially the head out of our animations. Why doesn't LL make this crap easier for us with simple things like that?

So also I need to know (if possible) how to keep my head still in my animations.

Thank you for all your help thus far Chip God belss ya man!

You'll find some good information about animation lengths and framerates in this thread, and you can find some tips on cleaning up the inbetween frames in this thread



I haven't had this problem with any of the poses I've done so I'm not really sure why it's happening to you. Perhaps someone else who has solved similar problems can chime in.

Why, I do believe that's the closest Chip ever got to God

shush you! hehe

Kinda looks like a blonde Je'sus from the barrio don't he
Who came first the Chip or the Eggy

Rock on Chip my man, Rock on!!!!

Hey Kelly, don't forget to check and make sure that the head doesn't have any other keyframes down the line. This will make it tween to them. I think just on keys 1 and 2. I'm not at home but it sounds like your using the pose dots. I think the pose dots will set a keyframe for everything at the frame you use it on.
Been a little while, and I'm not so hot at Poser but, after using the key at the bottom to set frames 1 and 2, I think you want to go and just set the frames for the bosy part you want to move and nothing else, remeber if you throw a pose dot in on like frame 25 your arm which didn't move at all will now have a keyframe at 25 and slowly go that position from frames 2 till it hits 25. Even if the arm didn't move at frwme 25 Poser will tween for you and it will probably go back and fourth once between 2 and 25 trying to tween "nothing". Confused yet? Sorry but the best I can think of away from home w/o Poser.

Hope this may help a little, BTW a good idea to pick up a book on actual 3d character animation just for a full grasp of animation if your not yet in the know.

Happy animating

Love, Peace, and Hairgrease!!!

May Chip have mercy on us all!!!

Chip what 3d packages do you use? Just curious bro, I'll go f* myself if it's non of my business Hmmm may just go f* myself anyway, sounds challenging

hehehe. Yep, I went for the jesus look just because I thought it would be funny I think the Eggy came first

I've been using 3ds since 1.0 for dos, so I'm currently using max 7 with a few assorted plugins like Shag: Hair, Vray Advanced, Character Studio (which is now included in 7), and Ghostpainter2. 7 is a really solid release and I'm very happy with it. I also use Combustion for compositing and DarkTree2 for procedural textures.

Damn bro, you like OLD SHOOL and shit I think you've named every thing out there that I haven't touched. I'm a lowly Lightwaver with my Photoslop and such. I'm teaching myself Maya, like all the frickin rave right now, and Modo by Luxology is pretty sweet too, may be the next Maya, who knows. I mostly character model and animate so not up on the painting programs, got a few just ain't dug in yet, you know the ongoing internal struggle to.. must.. gotta... maaaaaaster just this one.. little... tiny.. part of the... damn package!!!!!

I'd love to see some of your RL 3d sometime

Jonny I did exactly as you said. Something extremly simple. I set my frame 2 pose as a person standing like say at attention. Arms straight down by side. I moved 5 frames out to # 7 and set the right shoulder to point straight out to the side. The right shoulder is the only thing with a keyframe. The only dark green boxes for tween are on frames 3-4-5-6. 7 is light green for my keyframe. I set the animation for 7 frames. When I play looped the arm pops up then it goes way behind my back before starting back at the attention position.

Kelly, I'll have to get home and look into Poser but what you need to do is change the graph editor for that key from I think TCB Spline to Linear. I think on the right you got the parameter window and some where you can get to the graph. Poser, in Spline mode will continue to go on a path even when you 've stop with a key.
Old school fix would be 2 keyframes in the same position but even that's not really accurate. Launch the help from Poser and read around the animation area, look for graph editor and it'll give you delicious info on this. Then you'll be well versed and stick the hell outta those poses.

Hope this helps a little, I taught myself Poser from just the manual and the tips from everyone in the forums, but I am a 3d animator, so I may have a slight upper hand, not much though, these spliffs keep me laughing to hard I know I'm killin something upstairs

I'll try to keep checkin on you to see how it's going kiddo!

OMG I think I got it!!! When I set the key frame for the part I want to move I use the linear selection button instead of the + sign. Don't know if that's the 'proper' way of doing it or not, but at least my arm isn't doing 20 different spins and such before it goes back to normal position. THANK YOU!!!!

Hiya Kelly I won't be able to get into SL tonight, but if you want to email me your poser file I'll see if I can figure out what the problem is. You can send to surrealme*@*aol.com (remove the asterisks).

Aha! Glad to hear you got it sorted Sounds like Johnny had it nailed. You're experiencing overshoot of the function curve which you can diagnose and fix in the graph editor. Refer to the second link I posted for you in the other thread for some more info on the function curves and the problems they can cause and how to fix em.

Chip I think I got this one fixed. I feel like such a bone head LOL. I read everything you write about this animation/design stuff. I just get so confused. I'm sure I'll have a ton more questions about this poser stuff very soon... gee betcha can't wait heh

*RESOUNDING BOOM*
"And Chip has SPOKEN!!!"

You go guuuuurl!!!!!

You gonna be an animator in no time hun

Don't you guys just feel tha LOVE, wish the rest of the forums could be as lovingly lovely as tis one

Rock on Kelly, there's only ONE Rule in animation!

Whatever works!!!

Don't feel like a bonehead! Animation isn't easy (and if you disagree, please don't tell my RL clients!) The concepts can be difficult to wrap your brain around at first and it can take a lot of banging your head on the desk and tearing hair out in the beginning. You just need to keep doing it, running into problems, and figuring out how to solve them. The cool thing is that the next time you have a similar problem you'll already have a good idea of where to start to try and solve it. That's how ya learn

^*BOOM*
yeah, what he said

OK Chip and Jonny....as promised I have another question YIKSSS DUCK LOL... It's back to the head bobbing around thing. The animation I made is a military salute. As you know a bobbing head wouldn't go over well with the officer you were saluting. I did exactly what you said Chip. I put a key frame for the head. I did it on frame 3 as 1 is taken for the SL pose...2 is my first pose so all the parts are lit up green. 3 is the first frame I don't have green lights in. So I put a key there. I even tried with the brown (linear) thingy. Nothing will keep my head still grrr. Can you try once again to explain how to do that? I even tried setting the head key frame at 20...30...40...50 etc etc... My salute pose is 60 frames.

Try a keyframe at 3 and 60 and go to the graph and make them all linear. If the head still moves check the next bone "neck"? and see if that's doing the "wave". If so set this to linear also and try that. Remember that bones are linked together in like chains so if you have a problem with one and troubleshot and fix, check the next one up the chain. Until you find the pesky bastard that's sneaked some keyframes in on you.

Jonny it's not a problem with my animation. In my animation the head is still. It's that retarded ass feture SL has that makes your head move in the game. That's what I'm trying to defeat. I'm wondering if setting the head tilt at like 1 or something will make that stop. Fixing to upload now and see if it worked.


edit,.

OK I have a 60 frame animation. I set a brown key frame at the end with the head having just the slightest tilt (you can't notice much in game). I have green boxes up to the 25th frame and the rest are brown for the head only. This seems to be the trick for keeping SL stupid auto head bob thingy out of my animations. Once again it's probably not the proper way to do it, but it worked so it's MY way now hahaha.

Thank you guyes so much. I'm taking a break from poser for the night. My eyes are on the verge of bleeding lol

Have you tried uploading the animation with different priority settings? I've never played around with them (I've only done a few poses) but I think that might be the solution to keep the head movement from being overidden by SL's default movements.

Naw Chip. I've tried all 4 of the priority settings. They don't seem to make much differance when doing a standing pose/animation. When I make a sitting pose if I don't set it to 4 my avi will pop up and down. I edited my last reply to say what I did. Just in case others have the same problem they can see my solution and all the input I've receoved. Chip I do think SL would crumble without ya! I think they should pay you *hemm maybe they do heh*

G'night

Actually I just did a forum search and I think I found the answer. You need a keyframe for the head on frame 2, but it needs to be different than the keyframe in frame 1.

Ah cool that sounds easier then my way heheh. I'll do it like that next time. I was never changing the head position for frame two drrrr.

hehe, well we both learned something! Thanks muchly for the kind words Kelly. Happy to help.