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This section is where we stop talking about technical details for a moment and focus on a few artistic considerations. Editing animations is pretty easy work in and of itself. Getting your animation to look just the way you want it and adding realism are the hard parts. A jerky movement can turn smooth and flowing or an unrealistic motion can become realistic if you keep a few simple techniques in mind.
How should you space keyframes? Begin by considering time and frame rate. Space keyframes so that the motion looks natural at the selected frame rate. For example, if you have a motion that requires 4/5 of a second, you’ll need 24 frames at 30fps, 20 frames at 24fps, 9 frames at 12fps, etc. The basic formula is frame rate (in frames per second) times motion duration in seconds = number of frames required.
Now that you've gotten the number of frames required for a motion down, what’s next? Break down the motion into component parts. For example, look at a baseball player swinging a bat. At first glance, it may look like the arms are moving. Upon closer inspection, however, you see that the entire body is in motion. Some movements, like the arms and legs, are more pronounced that others. So, begin with the large movements then go back and work on the finer adjustments. Using our baseball player example, you could start with two keyframes: One at the beginning of the swing, the other at the end.
Previewing this animation with only two keyframes would probably give you a pretty good result, however the details are where your animations will shine.
Now that the major motions are roughed in, let’s add some detail. For example, add the hip swings, shoulder tilts, etc. The subtle details may not be overly noticeable, but your viewers will pick up their presence or absence though they may not be able to tell you what’s wrong with your animation if these elements are not present. Poser’s Animation palette and graph (described in the previous sections) are ideal for this fine-tuning. Smooth transitions don’t occur in all movements. For example, when a bat strikes a fast-moving baseball, there is an immediate change in direction. This is an animation where linear interpolation might be better suited. You can adjust splines in the Graph palette, or change interpolation types to create motions. You can adjust splines or change interpolation types in the Graph palette.
By working this way, you can create any kind of action and can make that animation look as realistic as possible.
If you are trying to make a long movie or one that incorporates changing cameras, you should create small clips and edit them together in a video editing application such as Adobe Premiere.
The Animation > Bake Transforms commands take positions and rotations that are automatically animated and converts the results to animation channel data. Generally, any animation that results in transforming an actor or which drives a morph target should be baked by these commands. For example, if you use the Object > Point At command to point one object to another object that moves around the scene, the Bake Transforms command will generate a keyframe on every frame to reproduce that automatic Point At motion.
The Bake Transforms commands do not extend to objects that are manipulated at the vertex level (such as soft body dynamics, dynamic hair, or dynamic cloth).
As you animate the objects in the scene with Point Ats or other automatic movement capabilities, the Bake Transforms commands capture these movements to channel data and generate keyframes for each frame.
While some export functions automatically perform similar keyframe creation, the Bake Transforms commands are helpful when you want to ensure that the transformations are in a specific state before you export the animation.
There are three sub-commands in the Bake Transforms menu:
Current Object: Select the object that you want to apply the command to (for example, an object that has the Object > Point At command applied to automatically face another object that is animated). Then choose Animation > Bake Transforms > Current Object to generate keyframes that reproduce the movement.
Current Figure: Click to select one of the actors in a figure, then choose Animation > Bake Transforms > Current Figure to generate keyframes for the selected figure.
Entire Scene: Use the Animation > Bake Transforms > Entire Scene command to generate keyframes for all items that are automatically animated in the scene.
Before the command is applied, Poser will display a dialog that informs you that Bake Transforms will turn off conforming of figures and change keyframes, and that the action is not undo-able. Choose Cancel to exit without applying the command, or OK to complete the process.
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