Problems importing skeleton and animation

[retrothomas]

I'm excited to use FragMotion for a game I'm creating but I'm having some issues getting things to work the way I want. I'm trying to import Poser models/animations.

1) Why doesn't the official Poser model export a skeleton so that I can apply BVH animation? When I "merge animation" I see bone vertices-type things inside, but the model itself just looks like a detailed mesh with any skeletal structure. Is that right? Am I doing something wrong on the import?

2) Poser will export a series of 3DS files (one per animation frame). Is there a way to merge these into a file so that FragMotion will just give me the animated model so I can export the spritesheet of the animation?

Thanks in advance!

[retrothomas]

Okay. Looks like Poser doesn't use skeletal animation but instead uses morph target animation if I'm understanding right. So that explains the difficulty in importing a skeleton because there just isn't one.

I might be better off in just taking the 3d models directly into FragMotion and rigging/animating them there. If I do that, can I share skeletons between models that use the same base, for example, two humans that my artist creates as a variation of one single base human? That way I can reuse my animations and skeletons and just skip Poser?

I would still prefer to use option #2 in my original post of using Poser's exported series of Collada or 3DS files, but I don't see how to get those combined and imported into FragMotion. Again, any help with this is greatly appreciated

[Rex]

Poser utilizes both morph targets and skeletal animation, has some good IK to boot!

You can create bones in the Setup Room.

If you know how, you can generate your own figures in Poser and not use the 'provided' ones, which have license restrictions...but when you create your own figure, it's YOURS!

What Poser doesn't do well, is export this data to a binary that other programs can read.  There is a Milkshape3D exporter, by Phil Cooke.  DAZ3D opens Poser files and can export to FBX and Collada.

Poser is a great character building program.....pretty good animation program as well.

Keep looking for the manuals...