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Saving animation for a prop?

There's a couple ways to go about this.
If you have just a prop, or set of props in your scene that have been keyframed and you want to save all that, then save the scene, with nothing else in it to the scene subdirectory of your Poser Libraries runtime.
Then you can import that scene to another one to add those props with all the animation.

If you have a prop, or props included in a scene with a character, then open the animation palette and create a new animation set and select the props and their channels, add them to the new animation set, and then with the character selected and the animation palette open, go to the library palette pose subdirectory and add the pose.
In the select sub-set drop down select the props that have the animation sets for them and save the pose.
Now you will have the animation sets for that or those props saved in a pose file which you can add to a new scene and you will then have those animation sets added to the props if they are in the scene.
Experiment with these ideas a little on something simple to see how it works for you before going at it with a complicated scene that has a lot of stuff animated.
 
Well, I still use PP2014, so in that version the animation palette has a tab called Animation Sets. Hopefully you still have it in P11.
That would be the tab I would have open to save a selected set of animation parts.
So you click on 'New' and give the set a name and then you can select any group of parameters and keyframes by kind of a 'lasso' action, then click the '+' button and that selection gets added to the new animation set.
You could go on picking out stuff until all the bits you want are in the set.
So when that tab is active, and the character that the props relate to is selected in the scene (which I think you can do from the animation palette) and then you navigate in the Library to the desired 'Pose' folder for the purpose and save the pose (selecting the desired prop's' only) what gets saved is that special set of animation parts.
I think the idea is that because those parts are defined as a set you can place them where you want on the timeline, or even repeat them in multiple places.
All this is part of the creative process so who knows just what you might do with it. That's why I suggest doing it that way and experiment. Gives a lot of flexibility to what happens in the final scene.

That's the approach to take when the props have something to do with a character. If the props are parented to some part of the character they would be treated like 'smartprops' and the animation would be relative to the part they are parented to. Only the animation bits get saved of course in the pose, not the props.

On the other hand, if it's just props and no character is involved, I don't see any other way to do it but save a scene file in the library with nothing else at all but the props you want the animations saved for.

Now in that case if you want to be able to move the animated props around in the scene without changing the whole animation, then probably you would want to parent them to something else, like a null, or make a group for them and move the group around.
Else you could make another layer and use that to add to the whole animation and modify all parameters in a more complex scenario.
 
Oh now this got me going. Sometimes I start thinking about something and can't stop.
I guess that's called fascination, er somethin'.

Well the first thing was that all these animation features of Poser point to the idea that it's really better to work with characters.
One way or the other.
So even though the basic concept of the item is that of a prop, any prop could be made into a character.
You just need at least one poly group so that it could be rigged with a bone and there you go. It can be a character.

Say for instance it's a palm frond fan. It could have all the polys in a group named 'frond' and be rigged with one bone named 'frond'.
So then the fan could be animated with just one 'wave' cycle, and that could be made an animation set, and the fan could wave over and over again.
And perhaps a morph or magnet could be made that bends the frond and that could be animated and added to the animation set for realism.

So then I was wondering, what kind of stupid maching could be made that would be more interesting than a fan, but just does the same cycle over and over.

Finally I came to the idea of an old fashioned treadle powered sewing machine.
Now you've got the treadle, the push rod, the drive ring, the flywheel ring, and the needle shaft all moving in synchronicity through one cycle of animation with the full cycle of the treadle being the main length of the animation set, and multiple cycles of each of the driven parts occuring throughout the same animation set.

Of couse all those parts get poly groups and they all get bones and then the animation set made up and saved as the 'sew' pose, and you'd have an operational antique sewing machine.

Then there could be one of those grumpy looking Mennonite ladies making respectable uniforms for everyone with it and animation sets made up for her to run it.

Maybe I'll do that! Make the sewing machine anyway.
Quite a project to make it look authentic and be all UV mapped for those gilded looking logos and fancy designs.

But... I just got the latest Cubase and I've been playing with that a lot so it might be a while.

So anyway, thanks for getting me going. I love ideas.
 
Another technique is to use Les Bentley's free Min-Fig (at Rendo), a null figure, effectively just a centre pivot that props and figures can be parented to. This "converts them to a single figure without changing anything or adding to the poly count, but now as a figure it can be saved to the Pose folder, just save the Min Fig not the prop.
I've found it a super-useful tool for animating also tricks like a whole squad of soldiers in a walk cycle can march on the spot, be parented to min fig then I only have to adjust one Z tran parameter to have them all march forward or shift them all to where I want them in the scene
 
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