A beginner's guide to animation - does it exist?

I'm a complete beginner when it comes to animating, and almost a beginner when it comes to SL. Now that I'm looking at exploring these things together, I'm fairly disappointed by the lack of information, guides and tutorials that I'm able to find at the SL website.

I've gone through the Animation forums now, and I have found some interesting stuff. But mostly this assumes I have some background already, and little that would help me get started. Most of the information seems to be about two years old, and several of the links are broken, like the Beginner's Guide which seemed to be just what I was looking for.

Is there anywhere else I can find information on getting started creating animations for SL? I just got a copy of Poser 5... I just need to know where to begin now.

Thanks.

Ulrikasheim's guide is a good overview of getting an animation from Poser into SL, although I'd recommend you get the SL figures from the Developers Resources page, plus it isn't really necessary since that part of the process is so simple: make your animation in Poser, export to bvh, import the bvh into SL using Upload Animation in the File menu.

As far as animating in general, look beyond SL. There are tons of tutorials online about 3D animation. Don't just restrict yourself to tutorials about Poser, since animation concepts are the same across all tools. In my case for example I'd been animating for years with other tools, and just needed a day to get up to speed on the location of buttons in Poser.

A good beginner's tutorial comes with Qavimator/avimator.

lee

That guide you mentioned was the one I was trying to get to, but the link is broken. I'll be looking at the developer's pages soon...I didn't even realize they existed until you mentioned it. That's an oversight on my part because they're clearly listed.

What you mentioned about export and file types is the kind of information I'm needing. I have no idea what I need to keep in mind to make animations work in SL. For instance, do I need to use a specific "SL compliant" model? And if I do, just where would I find it. That's the kind of general animation but SL specific stuff I meant.

I intend to read what I can about animation concepts in general, but the Poser manual is huge and I'll be stuck in that for a bit I think.

Lee:
I was avoiding trying any programs while waiting for Poser to come in, not wanting to scramble my brains understanding two different packages. Is the tutorial in text format, or is it a live walkthrough? And if it is text, can it be obtained without installing the full program?

Thanks for all your help.

Ulrika's website has been down for a while now, which is a shame. I'd recommend reading through the Avimator guide linked in the FAQ sticky at the top of the forum, and add the SL-specific parts to what you'll learn in the Poser manual about using Poser itself.


The main things you need to know are general use of your animation software to create the animation itself, how to export a BVH file, and how to upload to SL. The latter two are fairly straight forward. As you can probably guess, the Export command is found in the Poser's File menu, and the instructions for uploading a BVH to SL are in that Avimator guide.

As for learning Poser, that will take practice, just like learning any other new software. You'll find that the program is pretty simple to comprehend. It's intended for amateur animators, so it allows you to bypass most of what you'd normally need to learn for 3D animation.

For your first SL-specific tip, remember always to start your animation on frame 2, not frame 1. SL uses the data in frame 1 simply to define the skeleton, not actually to move any part of it, so be sure to leave all body parts in their default position for frame 1. The default is commonly referred to as the "T-pose" for the SL mannequins.


You can download the SL avatar mannequin models on the downloads page of this site (surprise, surprise). They come with installation instructions for Poser.

The mannequins optional though, just so you know, as the Poser 2 models which you'll already have with Poser will work just fine. If you use the stock Poser models, just remember not to bother animating fingers and faces. As the Avimator menu points out, SL has its own library of finger positions and facial expressions, from which you can choose to add to an animation at the time of upload. SL will not accept finger and facial animation data from Poser or any other external source (don't ask me why).


The Poser manual is not incredibly well written, unfortunately. It's a good reference for learning the behavior of Poser's rather quirky toolset, but it won't really teach you anything about becoming an animator.

Think of it kind of like trying to learn to write just by reading the MS Word manual. It ain't gonna happen. Poser's simply a tool, just as is Word.

To get started, I'd highly recommend reading Chip's animation concepts post, linked in the FAQ sticky. It will give you a well written basic overview of keyframe animation in general. After that, I'd suggest you follow whatever basic Poser tutorials you can find, to get the gist of using the program.

From there, you should find it pretty intuitive to create SL-specific animations. Good luck.

Thanks so much for explaining all that to me.

I went through the Avimator tutorial and was suprised how much simpler the interface was compared to Poser. I expected that to a point, but Poser looks like a jumbled morass of dials and buttons by comparison. I'm thinking I might use Avimator instead now because it seems to be a lot more intuitive. Then later, I might try Poser again after I've become familiar with the concepts.

Avimator seems to be much friendlier to use for a novice.

Thank you again.

Most of the jumbled buttons on Poser's interface can be safely removed. Like, the controls for render styles are unnecessary, and lights are pretty irrelevant since you'll be exporting to SL. Also, note that you can drag stuff around the view, so I shove all the less important crap off to one side so that it doesn't distract me.

Avimator is easier for a beginner to learn and is great for doing poses, but Poser has some major advantages for more complex animation work. In particular, IK is a godsend, and you can put multiple figures in a single scene.

ADDITION: Oh, here's another SL-specific tip. What he mentioned about the first frame is very important to know, but another related point is that SL will only apply your animation to joints that move in some way from the first frame. So like if you never move the lower arm, that part of the character will continue to use SL's default animation while the rest of the character animates according to what you set. Sometimes this is desirable (in particular, this can be useful for the head) but often it is a mistake. Annoyingly, the upload window doesn't really have a good test case for checking this, so often you don't realize you did it wrong until after uploading the animation and trying it. The walk animation works okay for checking this, but what would be great is some really spastic animation that works all the joints to extreme angles.

I knew that I wouldn't be needing everything I saw in the interface, I just didn't know what I could safely ignore yet.


Thanks for telling me that! I'm not all that interested in doing static poses, there are plenty of them out there already that are just fine. But I do intend to work on some fairly complicated movement eventually, including some with multiple figures. I'm glad you mentioned this because now I feel like I should just bite the bullet and learn Poser from the outset, since I will certainly have to switch to it later. IK? ... Inverse Kinetics? That's something I'll have to figure out...


Is this how certain poses are created which allow the head to swivel around and track things while the rest of the body remains locked? I've been wondering about how that was done.

Thanks Johan! That was very useful!

There's nothing to figure out really. Poser automatically does IK for the legs, and you can turn on IK for the arms if you're doing an animation that needs it. With normal/forward kinematics, you rotate each part of a limb in order to get the full limb motion (eg. to position the hand you rotate the shoulder, then the elbow, then the wrist) but with IK you just move the end of the limb and the rest moves appropriately (eg. move the foot around and the leg bends to compensate.)

*light goes on*

Now I understand. I read an explanation of it (IK) somewhere in a manual or faq, and it left me scratching my head. I totally get it now!

Thanks again!

Ulrika's site is now back up for anyone who is looking for it.