Stupid Arms

I'm trying to make an animation where the arms go from the sides to straight up beside the head. Only...the arms sort of flare out and circle around to the destination. I've tried changing values by hand, using the sliders on the body parts properties to no avail. I've done it once before on accident and can't for the life of me reproduce it. My keyframes are linear and I've tried to change just those with the arm movement to spline and still no dice. Anybody have ANY ideas? ~begs~ please?

Hmm.. just made a simple 2 frame with just what you were talking about, then set the lead in and lead out to 3 seconds for the SL upload. Looked smoothe and the arms diddnt wave around at all. Try making one with just two frames and do just like I did.

EDIT: Just a typo.

Here's the bvh for what I was talking about. As with all others, copy, paste to notepad, save as a .bvh file.

Nixed it since it diddn't solve the problem.

I haven't had a chance to look at that yet (just now got a chance to get back here and don't have Poser at work) but I should add one detail, i need to arms to go out in front of them and then up to the head, would that make any difference in your solution?

Hello abi, excuse me, but I don't understand what your problem is. hmm.. how many frames did you prepare for the whole your animation and how many keyframes did you set? If you can upload the trouble animation, a pz3 file, I can see it and may tell you how to fix it.

Hello Stone, I tryed to load your bvh text on my Poser. But the result was the picture below attached. Is it what you meand?

Derr, .bvh dont really import back into poser very well, upload it to 2nd life and you'll see what its supposed to do. Not that it fixes the problem in this matter with just 2 frames.

Yup, that makes alot of difference, my previous solution no longer applies.

Ok, now that I understand what you were trying to do, here is why your arms are swiviling.

When your arms move from in front of you to the sides of your head, poser is swiviling your arms in front of you because it's interpereting 2 different axis of movement for your arms at the same time.

Past that its harder to explain.. attatched is a .pz3 file that works correctly for you to play with.

Hope it helps. =P

Yup, Stone is right. And Stone, did you upload that file to help me to understand this trouble? Yeah, made sure that it played a weird animation correctlly. Thanks a lot. I couldn't help some ppl because they just asked by words.
My advise is that "Don't rotate just its shoulders." (Hey, did you know that SL avatar's arm are constructed with a Collar, a Shoulder, and a Forearm? My localized Poser called them a Soulder, an Arm, and a Forearm though. ) Yeah, use all of them.

See this version.

Ok, so I'm a total poser klutz. I've looked at both and the pz3 files that Seagel uploaded is closer to what I wanted, so I studied the arm movement, the collar, shoulder, and foream to see what parameter changed and what didn't and I tried ot mimic it in my file and it's uncooperative. Maybe it's because I'm using a smaller amount of frames or because of how I move the arms, I'm not really sure. I've uploaded the file, if one of you or both of you could take a look and point me in the right direction, that'd be awesome. The sad thing is, I've done this before with another animation on accident and I can't figure out how to recreate it. I thank you both so much for your help!

Hello abi,

I thought your animation was not bad. I wonderd what you wanted more.
Based on your animation, I tried to recreate it. I'm not sure if you like it or not but I can tell you some fundamental things.

1. You'd better see Parameter Dial when you move avatar's parts. Your avatar's movement is symmetric, that is, the number of values should be the same with the right parts and the left parts even though there is the difference between + and -.

2. You'd better decrease keyframes as much as possible because it would be easier when you give a fix for it later.

3. You'd better not put over 90 degrees value as much as possible. That would break its joints. I couldn't help, however, doing so in case of that knee holding though. Make your animation with spline on at first so that you may not be able to put stiff values in it.

4. Use Reset of value on Parameter Dial when the part bocomes odd on the keyframe and try to rotate or move again.

Heh, when in doubt, open your keyframs menu, drag a box around all your frames and click the orange button in the upper right of the window (linear selection), this will make your arms move directly from keyframe to keyframe with just a straight shot interpertation. Try it you'll see what I mean.

Stone, it is so neat technique. I've not used that. Thank you. I like it.