Noob question about joining aniblocks

v-man

Hi, all

I just started playing with Daz3D and aniblocks and I just ran into a problem with joining aniblocks that I can't figure out. Usually if you join two standard aniblocks (say walk and stop) everything is fine. But in this case I wanted to join aniblock that contains a boxing pose to aniblock from swordplay animation. I was expecting to see it transition smoothly from the boxing pose into swordplay animation, and it does, but it totally reorients the character when swordplay animation starts. I attached the pix to show what I mean...

In Pic 1 you see the beginning of the swordplay animation and the character is facing SW.

In Pic 2 you can see that I put an aniblock before that one with one frame at the beginning, which represents boxing pose. This pose had a different angle so I rotated it to look in the same direction as the swordplay pose. The expectation is that by the end of that aniblock it should transform into swordplay pose. And it does, but it also rotates the swordplay pose further west, as seen in pic3. (it gets worse as it continues turning further west).

I assume it has to do something with center of rotation that swordplay animation has (judging by the fact that the rotation tool is off-center in swordplay animation). Also I think that since the two animations start at different rotations, and I try to rotate the first one (boxing) to be in the same direction as the second one it affects the second one, so the second one gets rotated even further. Any ideas what I'd need to do to fix this. I'd think something to tell it - do not rotate second aniblock when I rotate the first one, but do everything else.

And a side-question... In general how do I change center of rotation for a figure. (for example in swordplay animation it's not at the bottom of the figure, but rather a bit further)

Thanks!

Ivy

if you are using animate2 on the top of the timeline bar there is a option to change the ani-block angle by degrees and you can also change the speed of the ani-block as well in case you wanted to slow down the action. as show in this snippet.

Reisormocap

Thanks Ivy!

v-man, Ivy has it right. Sometimes the Swordplay Aniblocks need to be rotated by plus or minus 90 degrees to match orientation properly with the preceding pose. Once you have the poses properly rotated, then they should blend with other aniblocks. Let me know if this helps.

Ivy

Posermocap said:

Thanks Ivy!

v-man, Ivy has it right. Sometimes the Swordplay Aniblocks need to be rotated by plus or minus 90 degrees to match orientation properly with the preceding pose. Once you have the poses properly rotated, then they should blend with other aniblocks. Let me know if this helps.

I used your swordplay aniblocks in latest animation ; ) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSTcTFEh0T4
a very helpful; set :)

v-man

Thanks, guys, appreciate the help !

And, yup, that worked.

But now I have a couple of more issues, not specifically related to swordplay but animate2 in general.

First, is it possible to hide an object during animation so it dissapears only after a certain keyframe.I wasn't able to figure this out yet - I know there's a visible/invisible option under Scene but that affects the whole scene, not just aniblocks.

Also is there a way to lock translation/rotation, etc at a certain keyframe. I know I can add Lvl1-15 rotations at a certain keyframe but those become offsets so the rest of the animation will readjust. And I know you can lock translation/rotation for the whole animation. But is there a way to , say go to frame 15, set some rotation and say "going forward do not try to translate/rotate this any more". So 1-15 would interpolate until that point, then all the keyframes after that would have that same rotation and I could go ahead and tweak subsequent frames to get new animation.

Reisormocap

1. You could always try to keyframe the Opacity, but that's on a material by material level. Another trick is to scale the model down to zero in 1 frame, effectively making the model disappear.

2. You should be able to select all keyframes on a channel after a certain frame in a plugin like KeyMate and delete them. That will effectively "freeze the animation on that channel. The problem with that approach is that you have to bake aniblocks over to keyframes and then edit them that way. Personally, though, I would look at doing a camera cut instead, where you render out one section of animation, then render out another clip of your new animation and bring the two together in a video-editing program like Adobe Premiere.

Can you give more detail on what you're trying to do?

Jaderail

Posermocap said:

1. You could always try to keyframe the Opacity, but that's on a material by material level. Another trick is to scale the model down to zero in 1 frame, effectively making the model disappear.To me, and I'm still trying to learn myself, this is the best option in DS. And by best I mean both work very well. I'm still working on my 4th Ani which I hope is GOOD.

Posermocap said:

2. (SNIP Here) Personally, though, I would look at doing a camera cut instead, where you render out one section of animation, then render out another clip of your new animation and bring the two together in a video-editing program like Adobe Premiere.

I do the Clip thing, and then edit the clips together. This is how real Ani's and Movies are made. Save Frame Blah (the last one) as a New scene and then continue from there.
Can you give more detail on what you're trying to do?Yep that would really help us understand what help you might need.

Ivy

v-man said:

Thanks, guys, appreciate the help !

And, yup, that worked.

But now I have a couple of more issues, not specifically related to swordplay but animate2 in general.

First, is it possible to hide an object during animation so it dissapears only after a certain keyframe.I wasn't able to figure this out yet - I know there's a visible/invisible option under Scene but that affects the whole scene, not just aniblocks.

Also is there a way to lock translation/rotation, etc at a certain keyframe. I know I can add Lvl1-15 rotations at a certain keyframe but those become offsets so the rest of the animation will readjust. And I know you can lock translation/rotation for the whole animation. But is there a way to , say go to frame 15, set some rotation and say "going forward do not try to translate/rotate this any more". So 1-15 would interpolate until that point, then all the keyframes after that would have that same rotation and I could go ahead and tweak subsequent frames to get new animation.

In the version of animate mate2 I bought there are some extra ani-blocks that come for characters references.
They are in the folder called Plus
in the plus folder you will see another folder called Visibility see first picture.

In figure 2 & 3 you can see that sliding your scrubber on the timeline over the aniblock make the character appear and disappear.

that the easiest way I know of to make a character visible and invisible to me

Now if you want a ghostly figure texture. you will need to play with surface shader of your character to get the texture you like, by sliding the opacity slider on your characters or props under the surface tab.

I hope that helps

v-man

Great ! Didn't try the visibility/scale trick but I can see that would work. I also have that animate plus with all those aniblocks, I guess just never noticed that there is "rt-visible/invisble'. That should definitely work.

As for 2 - maybe I asked the wrong question. I was just fumbling with the app trying to figure out what i can do , but basically what I wanted to do is , say transform the charter from idle pose (any default DAZ pose would to) to kick (B) pose (where the charater seems like it's hit, then moves back) , then back to default pose. The problem is that by the time kick animation is done the character has been translated backwards. So if I add default pose aniblock after kick b , then yeah, it will go back to the default pose, but it will be way back. So I tried adding walk animation but that one either overshoots the start pos or stop animation but that one stops short. Basically I was trying to figure out a way to do something where a character is idle at 0,0,0, then gets hit which sets him back for a bit, then walks back to teh exact position at 0,0,0 and reassumes default pose.

Also - any ideas on what would be the best way to make the swordplay guy crouch. I tried pinning feet and then bringing abdomen down at frame 15, Lvl1 which looks great on that particular frame, but the rest of the animation gets all discombobulated (I guess probably coz it's applying offsets to everything). If I do it on the base it seems to affect only that frame. Do I need to adjust these on the base level frame by frame manually ? Or is there a better way ?

Ivy

v-man said:

Great ! Didn't try the visibility/scale trick but I can see that would work. I also have that animate plus with all those aniblocks, I guess just never noticed that there is "rt-visible/invisble'. That should definitely work.

As for 2 - maybe I asked the wrong question. I was just fumbling with the app trying to figure out what i can do , but basically what I wanted to do is , say transform the charter from idle pose (any default DAZ pose would to) to kick (B) pose (where the charater seems like it's hit, then moves back) , then back to default pose. The problem is that by the time kick animation is done the character has been translated backwards. So if I add default pose aniblock after kick b , then yeah, it will go back to the default pose, but it will be way back. So I tried adding walk animation but that one either overshoots the start pos or stop animation but that one stops short. Basically I was trying to figure out a way to do something where a character is idle at 0,0,0, then gets hit which sets him back for a bit, then walks back to teh exact position at 0,0,0 and reassumes default pose.

Also - any ideas on what would be the best way to make the swordplay guy crouch. I tried pinning feet and then bringing abdomen down at frame 15, Lvl1 which looks great on that particular frame, but the rest of the animation gets all discombobulated (I guess probably coz it's applying offsets to everything). If I do it on the base it seems to affect only that frame. Do I need to adjust these on the base level frame by frame manually ? Or is there a better way ?

The best thing to do is play around a bit with the aniblocks ,
you can trim them back to remove part of a animation cycle so you can match it better to another aniblock cycle
the best way to trim a aniblock is double click the selected aniblock until the key-frame option appears for the aniblock then you can click the edges and shorten the length of the block.
This picture is a cut from one of my Karate girl animations i am currently working on. you can see an example of my trimming a aniblock to match the other. then I'll fine tune the orientation of the character using the aniblock with the degree-orientation tool. . its really just practice to get the experience.
I've been trying to work with it a long time and still I am learning new things :)

Good luck and make sure to post your film when your done :)

v-man

Ivy said:

v-man said:

Great ! Didn't try the visibility/scale trick but I can see that would work. I also have that animate plus with all those aniblocks, I guess just never noticed that there is "rt-visible/invisble'. That should definitely work.

As for 2 - maybe I asked the wrong question. I was just fumbling with the app trying to figure out what i can do , but basically what I wanted to do is , say transform the charter from idle pose (any default DAZ pose would to) to kick (B) pose (where the charater seems like it's hit, then moves back) , then back to default pose. The problem is that by the time kick animation is done the character has been translated backwards. So if I add default pose aniblock after kick b , then yeah, it will go back to the default pose, but it will be way back. So I tried adding walk animation but that one either overshoots the start pos or stop animation but that one stops short. Basically I was trying to figure out a way to do something where a character is idle at 0,0,0, then gets hit which sets him back for a bit, then walks back to teh exact position at 0,0,0 and reassumes default pose.

Also - any ideas on what would be the best way to make the swordplay guy crouch. I tried pinning feet and then bringing abdomen down at frame 15, Lvl1 which looks great on that particular frame, but the rest of the animation gets all discombobulated (I guess probably coz it's applying offsets to everything). If I do it on the base it seems to affect only that frame. Do I need to adjust these on the base level frame by frame manually ? Or is there a better way ?

The best thing to do is play around a bit with the aniblocks ,
you can trim them back to remove part of a animation cycle so you can match it better to another aniblock cycle
the best way to trim a aniblock is double click the selected aniblock until the key-frame option appears for the aniblock then you can click the edges and shorten the length of the block.
This picture is a cut from one of my Karate girl animations i am currently working on. you can see an example of my trimming a aniblock to match the other. then I'll fine tune the orientation of the character using the aniblock with the degree-orientation tool. . its really just practice to get the experience.
I've been trying to work with it a long time and still I am learning new things :)

Good luck and make sure to post your film when your done :)

Thanks, Ivy, I'll try this out soon and see how it works out.

v-man

Posermocap said:

1. You could always try to keyframe the Opacity, but that's on a material by material level. Another trick is to scale the model down to zero in 1 frame, effectively making the model disappear.

2. You should be able to select all keyframes on a channel after a certain frame in a plugin like KeyMate and delete them. That will effectively "freeze the animation on that channel. The problem with that approach is that you have to bake aniblocks over to keyframes and then edit them that way. Personally, though, I would look at doing a camera cut instead, where you render out one section of animation, then render out another clip of your new animation and bring the two together in a video-editing program like Adobe Premiere.

Can you give more detail on what you're trying to do?

Hi - I have one more question. I assume you're representative of posermocap so I wanted to ask you if you coudl point me to the license document for various mocap animations. I m mainly interested in whether the license allows merging these animations into keyframes that would be part of a proprietary format in a game (so they wouldn't be readily available to an average user but they would exist inside a custom file structure and be read realtime by the game). Thanks

Reisormocap

v-man said:

Hi - I have one more question. I assume you're representative of posermocap so I wanted to ask you if you coudl point me to the license document for various mocap animations. I m mainly interested in whether the license allows merging these animations into keyframes that would be part of a proprietary format in a game (so they wouldn't be readily available to an average user but they would exist inside a custom file structure and be read realtime by the game). Thanks

Hi. I tried to send a PM via the forums, but for some reason it wouldn't go. At this point, this is something we're looking into. I will contact you as soon as possible with an answer on this.

frank0314

Posermocap said:

v-man said:

Hi - I have one more question. I assume you're representative of posermocap so I wanted to ask you if you coudl point me to the license document for various mocap animations. I m mainly interested in whether the license allows merging these animations into keyframes that would be part of a proprietary format in a game (so they wouldn't be readily available to an average user but they would exist inside a custom file structure and be read realtime by the game). Thanks

Hi. I tried to send a PM via the forums, but for some reason it wouldn't go. At this point, this is something we're looking into. I will contact you as soon as possible with an answer on this.

That is probably because there are 2 or more users with the same username. It happens quit often. They need to contact Richard Haseltine to get it fixed.

v-man

Posermocap said:

v-man said:

Hi - I have one more question. I assume you're representative of posermocap so I wanted to ask you if you coudl point me to the license document for various mocap animations. I m mainly interested in whether the license allows merging these animations into keyframes that would be part of a proprietary format in a game (so they wouldn't be readily available to an average user but they would exist inside a custom file structure and be read realtime by the game). Thanks

Hi. I tried to send a PM via the forums, but for some reason it wouldn't go. At this point, this is something we're looking into. I will contact you as soon as possible with an answer on this.

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I am a bit suspicious about PMing being fully functional on this forum. I PMed you as well, prior to posting this in the forum. I also PMed GoFigure as well as one independent author with a similar question and now I m wondering if they even got it.

In any case, please let me know when you find out , or just send me the link to the license.

Thanks

Chohole

AS Frank said, your problem was that you had selected a Username that was already in use by someone else. He did also suggest that you contact Richard Haseltine to get this sorted out.

PMs are full functional under normal circumstances. If you wish to save a copy of any PMs you send then you need to tick the box saying save a copy to sent box.

Richard has sorted the problem out now, so people will be able to PM you with no problem.

v-man

chohole said:

AS Frank said, your problem was that you had selected a Username that was already in use by someone else. He did also suggest that you contact Richard Haseltine to get this sorted out.

PMs are full functional under normal circumstances. If you wish to save a copy of any PMs you send then you need to tick the box saying save a copy to sent box.

Richard has sorted the problem out now, so people will be able to PM you with no problem.

Thanks !