Let's call a spade a spade. Poser's walk designer sucks. It should do what it's supposed to, and I suppose it does to a point, but you're always having to fight with the graph editor to keep the knees on most characters from bending awkwardly out of joint, or to keep the feet from skating across the floor, when it's walking along a path.

In fact, I find most of the animation tools in Poser grossly lacking. BVH import is almost always a disaster, requiring LOTS of time to fix messed up motion, and you can really never get rid of the floaty feet on a figure after a BVH is applied. I see it all the time in Poser animations. Feet going through the floor, or floating as if magically over the ground. It's not entirely the fault of the animators, because these issues are not easily fixed in Poser when dealing with BVH.

I've invested some money in animated poses for specific figures that STILL had these problems (although not as bad as a raw BVH), so it's obviously inherant of the software.

I think Carrara's tools might do better, but I'm not sure yet. Apps like AnimationMaster and Maya have tools to take care of these things easily. I've also teased myself by playing with the demo of 3dsmax 8, and CharacterStudio seemed very good for character animation also, but I'll never afford any of those apps. The only positive thing I can say about animating in Poser is that the morph structure is very easy to use for animation. Other than that, it's a fight. IK on? IK off? Please, give us the ability to use both IK and FK together. Other apps have it that way!

Message edited on: 01/30/2006 21:41