Blue limbs in Qavimator, ? about SLAT, and some randomness

Could someone kindly shed some light on what exactly happens when a limb is double-clicked and becomes blue/purplish, or direct me to a place that explains this? I *sorta* see what happens, but I am still learning and notice that the limbs go totally out of control sometimes when I adjust them when they are highlighted blue - but I can see some sort of usefulness because one time it got an anim I was making look really good... lol...

Stuff I am wondering specifically - does the adjustment change radically according to what part of the limb is highlighted last? How do I avoid the adjustment getting totally out of control when doing adjustments this way (I suppose using the number slider on the right instead of trying to adjust manually might be the solution?) What does it really *mean*, as in can someone give some clues in terms of basic animation and then I can learn a bit more that way...

Thank you for any help!

Also, anyone know of any layman's beginner guide to SLAT? I read some forum posts about it that went right over my head (I'll try again soon but it just didn't make much sense) and I have opened the program to find it completely baffles me.

P.S. I also wonder how to make more natural hip movements in Qavimator, if there is a way to somehow drag the hip forward, backward, to the side without having to then adjust all the limbs to look like they haven't moved from their previous location (to say, anchor a foot and have the other leg parts follow the hip)... but I'm thinking this is something I'll figure out over time and is more of a skill thing than a simple "do this." But if there is a simple 'do this' I'd love to know what it is. ^_^

P.P.S. And now that I've totally gone into other subjects I might as well ask this well... is there an easy way to populate changes of one body part into the rest of the keyframes in an anim? For example, say I've pretty much completed an animation but then I realize the hip and arms need to be adjusted. So I do that in the first keyframe, and what I've been doing is manually taking the numbers and changing them in all the subsequent key frames (let's say they are non-moving body parts)... maybe I should just be deleting the little dots or squares or whatever they have become in the other keyframes? (I sense some of you are laughing at me now). Any help on this too would be greatly appreciated. ^_^

Hi! When you double-click and turning parts blue you are activating inverse kinematics (IK), which sadly isn't working in QAvimator.

What you are asking for later down in your postscript, of moving the hips but having the feet stay rooted? That is why it's unfortunate IK isn't working, as that's exactly what it is for!

You can copy and paste keys from one place to another, be careful though, as the paste will put keys for ALL parts, not just those that had keys set before! So it will paste over what might be there, what I usually do is paste one frame earlier or later and simply drag the ones I desire to the right frame and delete the extras.

Hope this helps!

Hey Crystal, thanks for the info. That definitely helps... too bad though.. hehee... guess I'll be breaking out that Poser trial software soon.

Good hint on copying the key frames and the dragging the pieces I want, thanks much!

Just to clarify, it's not Qavimator's fault that IK isn't working, but SL's.

LOL, why am I not surprised? Thanks for the clarification.