Poser 7 Specifics relative to Seocnd Life

Let me start off by saying that I have successfully written animations in QAvimator, SLAT and DAZ3D Studio, and gotten them to all work correctly in Second Life.

Anyway, that said, I was convinced by lots of hype that if I were serious I would be using Poser. So I purchased 7.0.

I will be doing some "intersting things" with coordinated poses so I wanted to start off with some initial scaling. And to correct some of the male avatar issues I wanted to make a straight up and down hands at the side pose so I could scale the arms and shoulders.

Here is what I did.

I have limits turned on.

1. Imported the sl_avatar male and put it in new scene
2. Scaled the body to 104%
3. Drop to floor
4. Set all joints to 0,0,0 rotation

SECOND frame
1. Move hip to right
2. Set all joints to 1,0,0 or some semblance there of (some were 0,0,1 or possibly 0,1,0 depending on the order of the rotations in the parameter list)
3. Rotated collar forward 10 or -10 I dont' remember
4. Rotated shoulder down -90
5. Exported BVH movement


When I u/l this to SL two things are noticed
1. The arm that is down is embedded inside the body with the hand protruding the opposite hip.
2. The av rises up and returns down through out the loop, which I expect to be static.

I have tried making keyframes at 2nd and last frame
I have tried shortenign it to 2 frames total
I have tried all the differnt spline buttons, breakign etc... (not sure what these actually do yet anyway)

Anyway, this is not a good start for Poser for me. I am sure there are some SL specific settings or techniques I am completely missing. Can someone point me in the right direction or tell me what I might be misthinking? This is getting very frustrating for a tool that is supposed to make my life easier Especially the way I hear the Poser critics describe it...

I still have a lot of trouble with the concept of "spline," which I know is an important concept in animation but I haven't figured it out.

However, I have a workflow that deals with some of my spline problems.

Adding the first frame- the reference frame- is the last thing that I do in the animation process.

After I get the animation to play in Poser like I like it, here is what I do:
1. Resample key frames so that every frame is a keyframe.
2. Add an extra frame to the end. (E.g., if my animation has 31 frames, I add frame 32.)
3. Retime the animation to move it back one frame. (E.g., retmine frames 1 to 31 to frames 2 to 32).
4. Re-pose the figure in the first frame. Each joint should be moved. If you have a joint that has, say, 0 degrees rotation on one axis throughout the animation, move it to 2 degrees. I do this manually to make sure I get every joint. If you just use a zero-figure pose or something, you risk the fact that a joint doesn't move between frames 1 and 2. Also remember to set your hip translations to 0.0 - 0.0 - 0.0. (Each rotation value between frame 1 and frame 2 should be different; the hip translation values should all be 0.0 - 0.0 - 0.0.)

If you don't want the animation to control head movements, for example, then keep head rotations 0 - 0 - 0 not only through out your animation, but also have the first-frame reference-frame match the 0 - 0 - 0 rotation. From my understanding, if you upload a .bvh, and the rotations on a joint match between frame 1 and frame 2, then Second Life ignores the joint completely in the animation.

If I do the animation by starting with the first-frame reference-frame as the starting point, rather than the finishing point, I get all those spline problems that I don't know how to fix. Doing it last, the way I described, seems to avoid those spline problems.

Also remember the 15 fps speed limit (Second Life has a problem with dropping frames above 15 fps, and that causes the animation to act way differently than it looks in Poser.)

Another thing I have done is create Poser files with the basics, so I don't forget things. So I don't start by opening a new Poser document. I load one that has (a) the Poser figure (b) IK off (c) main camera set to not-animating (d) 1 frame only to start 15 fps set. As soon as I load it, I immediately save it to a new name before working on it.

Every time I edit a frame, I usually run the animation quickly to see if it has affected other frames with this weird spline thing I don't understand.

(Especially I check the last key frame, or what I consider is the last key frame- if the last key frame is frame 11 and the joint is 0 - 0 - 0- and then on frame 16 I change it to 10 - 10 - 10, I go back to frame 11 to see if it's still 0 - 0 - 0. If it's not, I have a "spline problem." So I manually reset them to 0 - 0 - 0 in frame 11. But now, if it's supposed to be 0 - 0 - 0 in frame 6, I'd better check to see that's the case, and so on.)

I always save before editing a frame, so I can go back. I make frequent use of "resample key frames" so that all joints are on the same frame, otherwise I'll lose track. I know that there are graphs and stuff to keep track of them all, but the graphs make my mind swim. If the animation is such that I can't have uniform keyframe numbers (e.g. every 4 frames all the way through), I will save each key-frame to the pose library to use for reference. (I save single-frames, not multiple frames.)

Saving key frames in the pose library has another advantage. If you save the pose in frame 11, then the changes you have on frame 16 have unexpected results that alter frame 11, you can just go back and to frame 11 and apply the saved pose.

IK is great, but use it with care. Do not leave it turned on. If you need IK to help you do a pose, turn it on, make your pose, then immediately turn it back off. Otherwise, it will do things to your animation that you will not see until it's too late.

I am by no means an expert on animation or on Poser 7, but, through trial and error, I have figured out a workflow that helps me do animations fairly efficiently.

Splines are just a way of smoothing the movement between frames. Using spline sections, Poser produces the intermediate frames between the key frames so that the limb moves in in smooth curves between the key frames. Let me give an example:

Suppose you want to animate the AV's hand shifting gear in a car with a manual gearbox. You want the gearshift to move right in a straight line, then forward in a straight line. So you make keyframes for the start, the end of the rightward movement, then the end of the forward movement. Now, if you use spline sections, the hand will move in a single smooth curve through those 3 key positions, not what you want in this case. If you set poser to linear sections, then the hand will move in straight lines between the key positions, with a sharp change in direction at keyframe 2.

Usually you want smooth spline movements, but not always.

If you are using spline sections and you have two keyframes adjacent to each other (e.g the reference frame and the first animation frame), then poser will try to draw a smooth curve between key frames R,1,2 and so on, and if there's a significant movement between the reference frame and the first animation frame, then the spline curve is likely to "overshoot" as Poser tries to fit a curve through all the key points (I won't go into the math), and thit results in the famous "crazy wiggly dance" or CWD we all know and love. The solution is to break the spline between the reference and the first animation frame, so that the reference position doesn't influence the animation at all.

Clear as mud?

Ok, so far I an getting some useful things to try.

I do have IK turned off on all 4 apendages
I do have limits turned on

>1. Resample key frames so that every frame is a keyframe.
I am not sure I understand makign all frames keyframes. Won't that happen on it's own by beign made into a BVH (which has no keyframe information)?

>2. Add an extra frame to the end. (E.g., if my animation has 31 frames, I add frame 32.)
>3. Retime the animation to move it back one frame. (E.g., retmine frames 1 to 31 to frames 2 to 32).
How is this done?

>4. ....Also remember to set your hip translations to 0.0 - 0.0 - 0.0. (Each rotation value between frame 1 and frame 2 should be different; the hip translation values should all be 0.0 - 0.0 - 0.0.)
Always? Or in the 1st frame it needs to start at (0.0, 0.0, 0.0) ? is this not also a reference issue?

>Also remember the 15 fps speed limit (Second Life has a problem with dropping frames above 15 fps, and that causes the animation to act way differently than it looks in Poser.)
This is the first time I have heard this.

>Another thing I have done is create Poser files with the basics, so I don't forget things. So I don't start by opening a new Poser document. I load one that has (a) the Poser figure (b) IK off (c) main camera set to not-animating (d) 1 frame only to start 15 fps set. As soon as I load it, I immediately save it to a new name before working on it.
How do you set "main camera set to not-animating"?
Why do you set 1 frame only?

>Saving key frames in the pose library
I will have to look around for this option, have yet to see it.

Now without sounding whiney... I am still not understanding why what I did shoudl have behaved as it did even compared to your methodology.

With the exception of the hip being translated to the right, it is the same as whatever is in frame 1 in frame 2. And even when I reduce it to 2 frames only, it still goes up in the air when it animates.

Also, when I look at the animation in poser the arm is straight down (-90 degrees), when I upload it to SL it is more like -120 or whatever.

Useful as all this has been, it still doesn't give me a good understanding of why i am seeign what I am seeing.

Suzi --

That is the best explanation I have ever heard on splines. Now let me just ask, the question of how you use them?

There is a "break" and a "continue" and some other options on that bar. Also it seems like I can choose one joint, or several or the whole body. Is it set on the beginning keyframe, or on the ending keyframe?

The whole spline issue is easier to understand if you look at the graphs for a particular rotation (from the animation menu). 3 poses, hand down, hand up, hand down again, and watch what poser will do. to the rotations.

And yes, you can brake the spline per joint or even per channel of a joint.

Ok I think I got the spline thing. However it deosnt' seem to be eiter cuasative or even contributory in this situation.

As I understand it, Spline interpolation affects the "speed" of the movement between key frames, in the sense of starting the motion slowly, gradually speeding up and then slowing down as the next key frame is reached. This gives a nice rounded motion curve and results in a smoother looking animation. Linear interpolation keeps the same speed of movement between key frames - no acceleration or deceleration - just an average speed throughout from begin to end. This gives a straight line graph between key frames.

I've embedded a few answers in the text below for you Absinthe - hope they help and good luck.

No it isn't the speed as such, it's the linearity of movement. Spline sections result in a smooth transition between keyframes. The easiest way to understand what's going on is to make a simple animation, moving jusy one joint, then look at that joint's movement on the graph panel. If you switch between spline, linear and constant sections you'll see the difference. You'll also notice that the section if the animation that is affected by these changes is the section AFTER the keyframe you're at, up to the next keyframe.

Also, I've never had any problem at all running my animations in SL at 30fps.

Deira --

Let me start off by saying, your responses were lucid and well worded, but I will also complain that trying to read anything on this forum like that is difficult as heck

The last few anims I did I had to go back and grab QAvimator to do it, because I just couldn't take the time and frustration to get back to Poser. As things mentally calm down for me, I will start over.

I will:
1. first start with an sl character
2. do something simple
3. Examine the output

If it breaks at this point, I will assume that either I am an idiot, or that there is something wrong with either my installation or version or whatever.

If this works, then I will go on to try and see if I can get scaling working.

-- Absinthe

No - you are definitely not an idiot! Poser is a complex package to learn. I find the Help file in Poser 7 is quite useful - I mean the one that comes as a pdf file - I use that often and it has some useful theory chapters as well as describing all the functions and menu options - tells you all about splines and animation graphs etc.

Best of luck

I was under the impression that the SL_AVATAR male and female are actually POSER 2 models.