All images from Poser 7 Revealed: The e frontier Official Guide by Kelly L. Murdock.

This is the next in a new series of excerpts from the Thomson Course Technology book Poser 7 Revealed: The e frontier Official Guide. In the next few months, VFXWorld readers will develop the skills needed to create, render and animate scenes and projects using the amazing tools offered by Poser 7. We will offer step-by-step tutorials for each task, followed by projects that allow readers to apply each new skill.

What You'll Do
In this lesson, you learn how to use the Animation Palette to work with keys.

The Animation Palette, shown in Figure 1, is an interface that you can use to see all the keys for the entire scene at once. This makes it convenient for matching the beginning and end keys for different elements. You open the Animation Palette by clicking the Edit Key Frames button in the Animation Controls. You can also open the Animation Palette by using the Window, Animation Palette menu command.

[Figure 1] Animation Palette (left). [Figure 2] Element parameters (right). 

Setting the Frame Rate
At the top of the Animation Palette is a value labeled Rate. This value sets the rate at which frames are played per second. Movies run at a frame rate of 24 frames-per-second and computer animation typically runs at a rate of 30 frames per second for smooth animation. Half speed rates of 12 frames-per-second are common on the Web, but they can appear jittery. To the left of the Rate field is a pop-up menu where you can select from several preset frame rates.

Using the Animation Palette Interface
By default, the Animation Palette displays keys position by frame number, but if you're trying to synch the animation with a sound track, viewing running time instead of frame numbers is helpful. The Time field at the top of the Animation Palette displays the current time in the format: hours, minutes, seconds, frames. Selecting the Display Time Code option from the Options pop-up menu displays running time labels across the top of the object rows.

Along the left side of the Animation Palette is a list of all the available scene elements, including figures, props, lights, and cameras. Clicking the small arrow icon to the left of the element title expands the element to reveal its sub-elements (such as body parts), which can also be expanded to reveal the element's parameters. Notice that the Ground element has been expanded to reveal its parameters in Figure 2.