Animation tip - working with frame 1

Second Life uses frame one of an animation as a bone and positioning reference, so it is never rendered in the actual animation but is important - if a bone is not referenced in the first frame, it will not show up in the animation even if you use it in later frames. One problem with this approach is that it makes viewing your animations in Poser difficult, because it starts from the first frame, and any interpolations it does includes this frame so your animations go crazy. There are several ways to handle this.

The easiest way I have found is to actually start my animation on frame one, and duplicate the same keyframe on frame two as well. Once I have completed the animation, I go back to frame 1, and choose Edit-->Restore-->All (or press CTRL-A). This restores the frame to the default stance that SL needs. If I ever need to work on the animation again, I just replace frame 1 again with the keyframe data from frame 2 using the keyframe editor (accessed with the key icon next to the + sign at the bottom right of the screen). I select all of frame two, press CTRL-C, then select frame 1, hit the Delete key, then CTRL-V).

wow good tip. that whole interpolation from the default pose thing has been chewing my butt for a while.

I second that 'Wow'. Great tip about dealing with frame 1! Totally solved the problem I was having with my animations.

Everytime I started animating the little guy he would get all twisted like a rubber band . I guess it is the Poser software trying to smooth the transition from frame one to frame two? The trick of swapping in the first pose works like a charm.

Here's another method for dealing with frame one that seems to be working for me. Just diiscovered it after using Cristiano's technique.

Leave the standard pose on frame 1

start your animatoin on frame 2 - the actual first frame for the SL animation.

Select all of frame 1 and 2 and set them to the Constant interpolation mode. (see pic below)
http://www.wallofgray.com/pics/posersnapshot1.jpg

This tells Poser to ignore the changes between frame 1 and frame 2 when calculating the in-between frames.

Not sure if this will work under all circumstances, but I just tried three differnt anims and it works so far...

Great tip! Thanks.

ADDITION: Hm, well that didn't have the intended effect, but I discovered something even better. If you use the Break Spline button (the next button over) on the second frame, playing the animation will ignore the first frame altogether. Now I'm just wondering if this'll export correctly to SL.

What I do works for me just as well.

I Add key frames on frame one, then start my work on frame two after adding key frames to frame two as well.

I have yet to have to go back and restore all, though that technique does work and takes lil or no time.

Is that the one where the arms are at 90 degree angles to the body? Like a human cross? Or is that supposed to be the starting pose of your animation?

Sorry, kind of confused.

Hi Ayu:

The pose you're referring to is known as the T-Pose and is used as a reference from which to start posing a figure. It is considered a "neutral" pose.

A common use of the T-Pose is at the beginning of a motion capture session. The "actor" assumes a T-Pose so the mo-cap cleanup artists can define each of the sensors on the actor (Chest, Back, L/R Shoulder, L/R wrist, etc)

Have fun.
Adrian

great tip, chris. I however still use the 1st frame as a ref. point. haven't had any probs. its
really wierd knowing that all those years of working in poser could really pay off hehe.

Has anybody tried hacking the BVH file? Seems like you could just paste the t-pose channel right in at the very beginning of the channel info chunk. I'll try this tomorrow morning.

Hahaha. Nope, no easy way of hacking the BVH.
But it sure was fun trying.

Another way to deal with viewing your animation in Poser and bypassing the default frame is to adjust the play range at the bottom of the animation palette. Move the beginning to frame 2 instead of frame one and the animation will loop from frame 2 to the end.

BVH files are nothing more than large lists of 20 sets of number in sets of three. Your first set being. the XYZ position and the other 19 sets are all angle in degrees for each joint. All I do is use my inworld program to to create this pose/animation date for the Key frames then paste it into the BVH file, upload and then that is it. The only external program I use is NotePad.

I usually keep my first frame as all zero in the BHV file then Then paste all my animation data after that. Then use the formula to create nice looping animation, adjust the In% to ((100 / NumberOfFrames) * 2). then your anaimtion should loop flawlessly. Now sure how well that works for other programs out there.

You have an inworld program? Where did you get it? What's it called? I could really use one of those!