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.