Poser Animation Library

odintheking

odintheking

Lighting the way...
Joined
Jul 12, 2004
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Stickin it to the man
Okay, this is for Poser artists who want a few generic animations. I made a ten frame run, and will make more animations available, so I decided to make a library. If you want your animation added here, just post a link and preview, and I'll post it, :).


Ten Frame Run Animation
Author: Odintheking
-This is basically Kinboat's run animation, but seeing as how it was 15 frames, I made a new one. The reason I did this is because this way sounds will now link up well with civ 3 .amb sound files, which are based off of ten frames. This will make it easier to add sounds for your unit's run animation. I deleted every third frame, moved them over, and deleted the third frame again, and now it is a ten frame run animation.


Swordsman Animations
Author: Plotinus
-Some basic swordsman animations; really meant to be used as a template or example to look off of for your unit.


Complete Swordsman and Halberdier Animations
Author: CamJH
-Since CamJH is such as kickass guy, he offered all the animations from his Empire Swordsman and Chaos Halberdier units! Thanks, man!


Javelineer Throwing Motion
Author: Plotinus
-The javelin throwing animation from Plotinus' Ethiopian Javelineer unit.


Pikeman Attack Sequence
Author: Plotinus
-The complete attack sequence from Plotinus' Pikeman unit.

Worker Unit Complete Animation Set
Author: Plotinus
-The template for workers, including all animations and props. Sweet!
 
Yeah, but we have half-a-dozen or so great Poser artist still, yet none of them have contributed? :(

Plotinus announced his files, but I hoped this would be much more.. C`mon guys, if you share animations, there won`t be so many people pestering you.. Just me and some others :mischief:
 
Wow, thanks for advertising my library in your sig, :lol:. I'm sure Plotinus will post his animations soon, and soon other artists (possibly NavyDawg) will post theirs, too. I don't really expect many animations in this library; I was just expecting to post my animations here, rather than opening up a new thread for each.
 
Well, those animations are much needed.. atleast a few "basic ones", like 3 or 4 deaths, a default stance, a couple of victories and fortifies (based on gear - i.e. a fortify with a spear, sword, etc), and various simple attacks if people would like to keep their spectacular attack animations as their exclusive trademark.
 
The problem is that you can't really mix and match animations. You can't take the fortify from one unit and use that with the attack from another unit. That, I think, is the major drawback here.

What you would need is for full animation sequences to be posted. For example, you could post a complete animation for a spearman or swordsman: default, fidget, fortify, attacks, death, and victory. The run is independent of the others. But, then all the units start looking the same.

Personally, I used the same animation for multiple units some years ago now, and I just didn't like it. Of course it was easier and quicker to produce units that way, but there was something weird about it for me, I guess. I didn't like it. Because of that, I don't necessarily plan on posting any animations myself.
 
It's fairly simple to adapt an animation, though. For example, I have a stagger/death animation that I used for a quite a few units, although they all had different "fortify" poses. I would just import the animation, then copy the fortify pose to the first frame, and then un-key the next four or five frames so that the character moved smoothly into it. Maybe make a few adjustments to that bit, such as the feet, and bingo.

I do think that making your own animations is half the fun, so I'm not going to post all of mine, but I will post a few. I think, if nothing else, that looking at someone else's animation in Poser might help people to design their own, by seeing what works and what doesn't.

One problem I've got is that I'm not sure how easy it will be to upload the Worker animations, because they all use different sets of IK chains, which might make it hard for other people to use them. But I'll see what can be done.
 
Plotinus said:
One problem I've got is that I'm not sure how easy it will be to upload the Worker animations, because they all use different sets of IK chains, which might make it hard for other people to use them. But I'll see what can be done.
Click to expand...

I don't think that should be too much of a problem. As long as all of the frames for all the body parts are key frames, it shouldn't make a difference whether or not the IK chain is on. Perhaps, just to be sure, you could turn off the IK chains—except for the feet, maybe—after you've made all the frames key frames.
 
Yes, the IK chains don't matter; you can turn them off or on at any time, and the motions will remain the same (although if the frames aren't keyframed, strange things happen.

Plotinus, thank you for posting the animation. I agree with what has been said by both utahjazz and Plotinus about animating; it's what makes a unit personal. I created this library to help main new creators, who have no idea what's going on (like I did). Yeah, the tutorial is absolutely wonderful, but I think that some potential artists can be helped by actually seeing the motions. I, for one, hate reading manuals and stuff, and I'm really stubborn about doing it my way. I'm also kinda ADD in the aspect that I can't really follow a tutorial anyway, just too many steps to follow. If I had the actual animation to look at in Poser, I would've understood much faster. I, personally, would never use someone else's animations (that's the way I am) but alot of potential artists (in my opinion) could be helped making their baby steps, so to speak, with a template (these animations) to work with.
 
I must say I've found IK chains to be enormously unpredictable things. Sometimes turning them on/off with fully key-framed animations does alter the figure's position, and sometimes it doesn't. But perhaps that's just me.
 
Plotinus' animations do work! I just applied them to my armorsuit instead of the PDM!

The rest of this post is kept only for reference--it is erroneous and untrue.


Let me post a warning: Plotinus' animation do not seem to work for us cheapskates who downloaded Poser5 for free. Poser just says that the animation were made with a newer version, and that it will try to read it anyway, and it ends up it can't.
 
What! That's outrageous! I didn't know that animations were not backwards-compatible like that. Seems daft as the PDM itself can be used in Poser 5 fine. You'd think animations for it could be too.

Sorry about that - I had no idea.
 
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