DummyDance

An Exercise in Parenting

In Poser 6

Having just re-textured D3's Edwardian Evening Suit, I was looking at my character and thinking "What am I going to do with you?" when I remembered seeing an old dance routine where one dancer supports a life-sized model as a partner and I wondered if I could use parenting to move two models with one animated pose.

I chose "Whirling Dance" from a set of dance moves for V3 (purchased from es3d.com)
Turned off David's IK's and applied the pose. Then I loaded the Poser Mannequin into the scene, turned on IK's for both legs and both arms and posed it in D's arms parenting its right hand and both feet to their opposites on D3, left hand parented to D3 right collar and set the figure parent as D3's hip.

This worked fine for the mannequin's body, it was propelled just as I had hoped but it's head was left behind at the start point! (insert your chosen profanity)
I'm not sure why this happened so I hid my mistake and replace the head with props
(Standard Sphere primitive and Pear from PhilC's Extra Primitives free set)
Parenting one to the Pear to Ball and Ball to mannequins chest and hip both failed
(more blue air!)

Parenting the ball to D3's hip worked, if I'd thought of this first I could probably have done it to the original head and saved a few coins from the swear box.
A few minor tweaks were necessary and some keys were added to the mannequins legs to avoid cut through with D3's legs.

Next in the animation palette I deleted all keyframes for D3's right collar, shoulder, fore-arm and hand, turned on IK for right hand and at frame 1 posed his arm around the mannequin's waist and parented it to the mannequin's abdomen.
Back in the animation palette I deleted all the key frames that Poser had replaced for me, played through and was ready to set lights and cameras.

When I tried to reverse the roles, it was a bit more tricky, though D's head didn't come off, his right hand needed extensive re-keying as the rig was too stretched and his trouser legs got terribly confused and kept twirling round his shins, an IK problem best sorted out by camera angles.

Overall I rendered 5 fifteen second sequences from the two files, mixed and composited them in Visual Jockey to create the linked video.

Music "Wonderful Land" performed by THe Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Animation
• Parented
• Figure
• Poser

[markvansomething]

Hey - nice job !

That shin twisting thing you described is a bastard. I have been animating SimonG2 dancing in a circle using IK on the feet. Is is similar to your dance move. But when i do it - as soon as he rotates past 180 degrees, the shin twists into a berserk spiral. I am stumped. I am resorting to turning of IK and just animating every joint manually. There must be a better way. I would love some advice. Cheers, Mark.

[VJflickeringlight]

I think turning off Ik is the only way to do it, you could perhaps try using IK upto the point where the twist starts, then save as a new pz3 and work with Ik off, render the 2 scenes and cut together in movie editing. My solution was just to zoom the camera in so that the screwy bits were out of shot. Incidentally, when i re-opened the pz3 with the dummy in the lead, everything was a horrible twisted mess! best of luck, Dave

[Brunte81]

Very nice!

[useryug]

Amazing, Dave and very interesting to read your description of the processes to achieve this. Real nice film.

B