Editing keyframed animation

Comments

• Thomas Windar Posts: 272

  October 2016

  If you apply the animation, can you see the keyframes in KeyMate?

  Well in that case - in keyMate:
  1. Set the range from which you want to extra the animation.
  2. On that range, change everything in there to Keyframes.
  3. You can now delete everything else except the keyframes you want to export.
  4. Select all of the Keyframes and move them to to the beginning, so it starts from Frame 0.
  5. In your timeline, set the number of frames to match the length of the animation. (If your range is 0 to 29, that is 30 frames, cause Frame 0 counts as a frame).
  6. You can now save this range as an animation.

  Does this answer your question?

  Be aware - it is not an elegant solution to the problem. You basically hard-code that animation in there.

  A different solution that is more elegant (but also more prone to failure):
  1. Create a full Keyframe for the object you are animating on the beginning and ending of the part you want to export.
  2. You can now proceed with step 3 of the above process.

  It's more prone to errors, depending on the animation, but if it will work, it will be more elegant than the previous one.
• unLight865 Posts: 95

  October 2016

  I wanted to use graphMate at sometime, but I don't yet have keymate, and without that graphMate doesn't seem to work very well - for me, at least.

   

  I'd certainly welcome hints/tips, though .

   

  ( Maybe graphmate just doesn't like/recognize animations that were created before installing it? At least that's the only alternative explanation I could come up with, though I didn't yet test it... *Note to Self* : Start up DAZ and try! ... )
• Thomas Windar Posts: 272

  October 2016

  I can share some tips. I would suggest however to animate something SUPER SIMPLE at first to get the hang of the tool. Like, create a primitive sphere and have that just zip around the floor. Have a cube rotate around, etc. Afterwards once you understand what goes where with GraphMate and Keymate - then use figures.

  I'm saying this as someone who used to animate in other programs first. I thought I know how to animate and then suddenly had errors popping up all over the place. I had to return to the very basics to animate a ball and check what works.

   

  Anyway about Graphmate - remember that GraphMate has to be ASKED to display a value. So you open Graphmate, select a node (like the arm) and then in the PARAMETER tab just hover your mouse over one of the values, like X Rotate, Y Translate, Bend, Twist, Pose Control for eyes etc. GraphMate will then display a Curve for you. Now you can manipulate that curve.

  Holding CTRL while you hover over parameters lets you select multiple ones to display all at once.

  If you select two or more nodes in the Parameter tab (like both hands) you will see both of their respective values in GraphMate (they might cover one another if they are the same, so be aware of that).

  Holding CTRL while moving a Keyframe in GraphMate will lock it to the Grid. Otherwise you can put it anywhere freely, between frames.

  Remember you can select multiple keyframes at once, both in GraphMate and Keymate.

   

  And a simple animation tip - ALWAYS Block out the animation before you start doing details and adjustments. (You can google for this info and how to do it - its universal)