How to make a pole for hands to grip?

Hihi ^_^

I finally got poser installed and had a little play around with it. The basics of a static animation seem easy enough, though it's really taxing on the notebook...

Something I need is a pole, just to simulate the hilt of a sword, spear etc. And a way to link the hands to that object, so that if I move the pole, the hands etc. will move with it, just like the arms and body move if you move the hands around.

Also, I've noticed that sometimes the twists in the body seem real strange - even with the limits turned on.. any tips??

ok,well...nobody's replied yet... I've been studying the reference manuals etc. and there's this thing about parent parts. I've made a quick pole in wings, exported it into obj and imported into poser... seems ok...

but.. the i can set the relationship so that the pole responds to the hand's movements, but how do I make the hand respond to the pole instead?

I basically need to make both hands grip the pole, so that as I move the pole, they will both remain gripping it...

also, I note that it can only have one parent. So how do I make it line up with the other? Use the 'point at'??

In Poser you can use and animate "props" - your sword would be an example of a prop. You can often download props from Content Paradise - they have quite a large selection of free offerings as well as ones to purchase.

The difficulties come when exporting to SL - because you cannot upload the prop you used in Poser and the different sizes and shapes of avatars makes interacting with props impossible to get accurate for all.

I think the body twists maybe an effect of using inverse kinesmatics (which it sounds like you are using) - if so, you just have to straighten them out on the key frames.

Sorry - can't help - never tried to do this. If you work it out, please post and let us know what you can and can't do in Poser.

Hmmmm - because you can only have one Parent, I guess you can only chain it to one hand. You may have to animate the other arm and hand separately.

Are you talking about when you run the animation? If so you need to break spline between the first and second frames, highlight frame two in the animation window and click on the break spline, you may also want to move the start of the viewed animation to be frame two instead of frame one, there is a small slider control for that near the bottom of the animation window.

ok, thanks for the tips guys. I thought about animating the second hand manually. As for the pole, I just made it quickly in wings3d and saved it as an obj, which imported into poser fine.

While waiting for your replies, I made two decent looking static poses, shifting them slightly in frame 2 as said - so that SL doesn't ignore them..

BUT... when I uploaded them... ~_~ They were WAY off.. this is the second time this has happened to me.. before with sculpties, and now with poses. Make a great looking one, and WHAM - it dies when you upload it ~_~

I had this with one of my sitposes i created, i created an upside down sit pose (read feet over back of chair and you bassically lay in the chair, the hands were way of as I animated them, it was funny, so i had to toy arround with it, in order to actually work

I have a little experience with this, animating a devil doing a jabbing animation with a trident. I did the arm movement in DAZ|Studio and tested it with the trident in SL. I attached the trident to the hand. The back end of the pole moved through the avatar and the angle of the movement didn't loook natural so I made my adjustments accordingly back in DAZ and tested again in SL. It took maybe three tries adjusting in DAZ and also adjusting the position and rotation of the trident. Animations always play differently in SL than in your offline software. I believe it is easiest to test your animation against your props in SL.