Digital Art Zone

Hi Carnite!

So, 2 years ago I was working on a project and you helped me.  I ended up having to set aside the project for lack of computer power.  Now that I have a new computer, I have picked the project back up and went back to some of things you wrote me back then.  It has helped me tremendously!  Now I’m kind of stuck.

I am using DS 4.5 Pro and my updated version of animate2.

I am working on an animated scene where a little girl is swinging on a swing.  When I bring in K4, she comes in quite a ways away from my swingset.  I know you originally told me to only move figures into their place with the root then any other posing, use the hip.  So I move her into position using the root, which includes using x, y and z to put her on the swing, BUT as soon as she is posed and click on a keyframe, she goes flying back to where she came in.  After several trys, I got that first frame (1 not 0) keyed then as soon as I advance to frame 15 for the next pose, again she jumps back to the place where she came in.

How would you do this?

Hi, jaebea - I’m a bit rusty, having had a long break. I’m not sure yet that I’m back in, either. But I’ll have a bash at your problem .

Have a look inside your aniBlock in the aniBlock graph editor (that’s the third icon from the right when you’re editing the block). Does it have root at the top of the list? If so, click the word root, and click the -key to delete. You shouldn’t have any root positioning in an aniBlock.

When you are positioning K4 using the root, make sure that you aren’t in aniBlock edit mode, so you shouldn’t be editing the aniBlock at all, so no keys will be made. Also make sure you’re on frame zero.

I have a scene experimenting with using nulls, and it’s totally stuffed, so I’m going back to a backup. Later… Scene totally stuffed - will have to start again - I can’t get an aniMate track for K4, it keeps coming in as a subtrack. I didn’t save a version before I started experimenting with nulls. Make sure you save many different versions of the scene you are working on, because things will go wrong. (My daughter had to do an assignment in Maya, and she kept complaining that it was almost unusable because of all the bugs - mostly user error I’m sure, but even expensive programs have nasties.)

Bug reported - don’t create an aniMate track for nulls. Actually, that’s a bit nasty - I was hoping to animate the swing so that it’s faster going down, then has a slowing down at the top, and that would be a lot easier in a graph editor. I guess that could be done in DS3, and then transferred over.

I use Puppeteer to hold poses, rather than create them in aniBlocks. Puppeteer will key the root, but when I later put the poses in an aniBlock, I clean them up.

This YouTube shows how I’ve done it. I did two poses, and held them in Puppeteer. Then I parented K4 onto the swing and animated the swing (not in an aniBlock). Then I created an aniBlock on K4, and placed the Puppeteer poses into the block. Then I deleted the root keys from the block. Then I repositioned K4’s hip that had displaced itself into the air. The end of the video shows going into the graph editor - the hip should be the topmost thing in the graph editor hierarchy.

http://youtu.be/wFhKsYKy7IU

Btw, the swing set is two cylinders and a cube, parented to a null called Swing. The Swing null has it’s rotation point at the top of the swing. - did you do yours the same way?

Anyway, to answer your question, you have possibly keyed the root inside the aniBlock .

Nice grass, btw.

Thank you Carnite.  I haven’t ever played with puppeteer so I didn’t exactly know what to do in there.  It looks like a good alternative when I’m having problems so I will have to pleay around in there later. 

I saw the root keyed and kept trying to fix it.  Even when I moved it when the aniblock was closed.  I ended up starting over.  Luckily I save files in different stages of animation so I can go back to a certain point if I screw up.  I was using a heavily loaded scene but I was able to select everything and move all to the point where K4 comes in so I had her right at my swingset.  After that, I had only one instance of her jumping back to the ground.  I was able to keep her root without keys and finished the animation.at 6am in the morning.  Funny how animation can keep me up all night! Thank you for your response!  You know more about animate then anyone and I so appreciate your help!!

I’m glad you got it finished.

I wouldn’t try to animate anything in a heavily loaded scene. Something like the swinging, I would isolate just the necessary parts into a separate scene, and animate them in position 0,0,0. Then save out the aniBlocks, and apply them to the heavy scene. This is when it’s important not to key the root in the aniBlock, so that you can use the aniBlock wherever you decide to position the final animation. Non-linear animation in the form of aniMate2 is great for doing this - breaking complicated things down to simple parts.

I have to admit that my finished works are few and far between - I just like to tinker (those who can’t do, teach) .

Puppeteer is brilliant for saving poses, and previewing what the animation will look like. This video is an example:
http://youtu.be/ExXkTTniE1E

See, why didn’t I think of that!!  That’s why aniblocks are cool!! I’m going to try that in my next scene!