Animation Overview

At its simplest, the animation process is as follows:

1. Decide how many frames you want in your animation. One way to do this is to decide how long your animation will be in seconds, then multiply that by the desired number of frames per second (frame rate).
2. Create a starting pose.
3. Select your next keyframe.
4. Create a new pose.
5. Repeat Steps 3 and 4 until your animation is complete.

Poser uses a technique called keyframe animation to simulate motion based on a series of still poses. You set up a series of poses at different points in time. These are the keyframes. Poser fills in the gaps, interpolating between keyframes to create the illusion of motion. This keeps you from having to move your figure each time you want to create a motion, such as is done in stop-frame animation, where each frame is individually positioned (many “Claymation” movies use stop-frame animation).

What You Can Animate

What can you animate using Poser? Just about everything! Here are some examples:

• Figures (humans, animals, clothing, etc.): If you can imagine a motion, you can create it using Poser! Please refer to Posing Figures for information about posing human figures, and to Posing Animals for some information about posing animals.
• Hands: Gestures and small motions add incredible realism to videos. Many amateur animators ignore hands when animating, which subtly detracts from your scene’s realism. Please refer to Hands for information about posing hands.
• Faces: Animating faces can add emotion and power to your scene and can also mimic speech. Please refer to Posing Faces with Morphs and Posing Faces with Bones.
• Props: You can animate props by moving them about the Poser workspace, parenting them to other actors, etc. Please refer to About Props for more information about props.
• Lights and Cameras: Change color and position of lights and zoom, pan, or bank cameras over time.
• Deformers: You can animate magnets, waves, morph targets, and parameters. Please refer to Using Deformers for more information about deformers.
• Force Fields: You can animate Force Fields to create realistic wind effects for strand-based hair and dynamic cloth. Please refer to Wind Force Fields for more information about force fields.
• Materials: You can animate material shaders as described in Animating Nodes.
• Walk Paths: You can create paths that your figures walk along, as described in Creating a Walk Path.
• Background: You can animate the background using the Material room. Please refer to The Materials Category for more information about the Material room.
• Movie nodes: You can play movies on any object using movie nodes in the Material room.

By default, your animation moves over the Document’s background. You can have still or animated backgrounds in your scenes. Please refer to Using Background Pictures and to Importing Movies for more information about backgrounds in Poser scenes.