Question about creating animation from poses

EightiesIsEnough

If I wanted to create aniBlocks animation of, say, slow dancing, and I wanted to use poses I had purchased, is it possible to create an effective animation with just two poses?

Also, how about for a front crawl swimming animation?  I would think you need more than two poses (among the two poses would be the original and mirrored versions).

mindsong

I would try this using DS's puppeteer tool, to preview/see the available range of motions with the two pose sets:

create a basic scene with your posed characters (starting poses), then bring up the DS puppeteer tab, enter 'edit' mode and save a 'dot' (their starting poses), then change the poses (apply and adjust the second pose-set), add another 'dot'  - some distance away - in edit mode.

then go to puppeteer's preview mode and move your mouse around in the grid with the dots, and see how the motions look. be sensitive to mesh overlap and the like when you have two figures - it makes the process a bit more tricky, but you'll see what's possible when you get there...

If you like it (or most of what you see going on...), you can try recording a session (using puppeteer's record mode, much like your preview sessions), then  when you like it (maybe after some graphmate/keymate/manual-keframe adjustments - optional), 'bake' that recorded timeline to an aniblock in the usual way, and do what you want with that aniblock (adjust/name/resave, etc.)

The 'big idea' is to use puppeteer to establish the viability/range of the possible motions available to you with the poses you have and any manual adjustments, and then you can save/'record' and/or edit from there if you like.

Note that within puppeteer, you can preview/record mousing/control *outside* the realm of the two pose-set dots! - run the mouse all over the grid in preview mode to see what I mean, and then, if you like a position, you can go back to edit mode and create a new 'dot' as-is (and save that as a set of new DS pose s- just like any other poses you save), and/or edit the characters in the viewport to 'fix' mesh overlap/intersection issues and the like, then save those poses/positions as DS poses, and/or as new 'dots'. You can drag/move the 'dots' on the grid around as well, so that the positions they 'hold' compliment your natural mousing motions/rhythms, and you can (should) save the puppeteer tab/settings as a resource to use in the future. Puppeteer settings should also be automatically saved in a normal complete scene save as well.

good luck!

--ms