Create IMVU Attack Animation
Posted by Danny Jensen in 
Hello friends,
Today i am going to show you how to make cool attack animations for IMVU using the IMVU biped Model which you can obtain here
Now we really don’t need all the mesh stuff as it will be in the way so lets go ahead and select everything but the Biped skeleton and hide it.
Now that we have that done we can get to animating, first thing is first we need to select one of the bones and then go to the Motion tab so you should see this.
This is where we will be doing a majority of our animation by copying poses and then pasting them to different key points to make the animation. So for starts let’s make a Pose Collection by expanding Copy/Paste and clicking create collection and then give it a name. (NOTE: max 7 users can skip this step since max 7 and below do not use collections)
Ok now that we have a collection set up let’s create the initial stance. Using the position and rotate tools you can move/rotate parts of the body to get a decent stance. This is what i got.
Basically just sort of a leaned in semi crouched ready to fight stance. Once you have something you are satisfied with we need to copy it into our collection, make sure you have at least one (any) bones selected and go to the copy/paste rollout menu. From there make sure you have it set to pose and hit copy. 
Alright since we have the initial pose now its time to make the pull back of the swing. What we need to do now is to click on and then off the figure mode button to reset the biped’s pose.
YOU MUST make sure that figure mode is off before making the next pose as it will save that as the default pose and mess everything up. Alright so next we need to make the pull back where the character is getting ready to heave a mighty blow.
Go ahead and hit copy when your satisfied. Now we do the same steps again and create the final impact pose. remember to keep figure mode off before changing the pose again.
And copy the final pose. Now that we have that done, we need to reset the pose once more by turning on then off figure mode. Now we need to highlight the entire skeleton and then go in the Motion rollout and expand the Key info menu.
With your skeleton highlighted go back tot he copy/paste section and select the first pose hit paste, then go back up to the key info menu and hit the red add keys button.
Now activate the autokey button down to the right of the timeline so it turns red.
Move your timeline slider bar over about 20 frames and paste in your second pose. This should automatically create a keyframe for you.
Then just move it over 10 more frames and paste the impact pose, after that go 10 more frames and paste the first pose returning our character to the melee idle stance he started in. you may need to make adjustments to the base pivot rotation and position as the poses don’t usually store that data.
to be continued…..