Animation glitch?

hrpschrd

I have an animation that used to work but now has serious problems. (attached)

The objects have spin but I also manipulate their position and alignment. Now I am unable to Move or Rotate the objects even if I delete the spin on them (see "Epoxide 1" for example.)

Has this file been corrupted or have I somehow "locked" all these objects? Its a mess.

 

3DAGE

HI Hrpschrd :)

You need to switch off the Collision Detection (top toolbar),. or push/pull harder :)

.. other things,..

6 frames per second isn't really enough to have a spin of 1.7 cycles/sec.. which would look like it's rotating

more frames should give you a better visual rotation, rather than flips or jumps.

try 24fps or higher.,. i'd also change from 320x240 to 1280x720 especially if you intend showing it on a larger screen /projector,. 320 will be crunchy

 

VIEW /Show production frame (Ctrl+Alt+F) ,.. displays a frame on screen to represent your output frame size,.

make sure that what you want to see in the image fits into that inner "safe frame" frame area,.

you may want to check the position of epoxide3 around 10-12 secs, it's just dropping out of frame..

hopefully with collision detection turned off,. you can move stuff up and around.

Hope it helps :)

hrpschrd

Thanks 3DAGE yet again! 

3DAGE

no problem,. always glad to help :)

 

hrpschrd

I made the changes and simplified further but I still have a jerky animation in the Assemble room. This is a small set of objects mostly just spinning. Why is it so jerky? Are there more settings that I am missing?

 

3DAGE

it's jerky in the timeline,. but it's ok in the final render,. that's just down to carrara calculating what's going on,.

there's a couple of things which may help

currently you're using primitives,. and each of those is scaled to suit,. it may be more efficient to make a couple of simpler models, to the correct scale. (see files)

in the assembly room, scale isn't real,. it's forced,. the actual objects remain their original size,

(handy if you're making a human figure into a giant or dwarf, and don't want to alter the original model)

but it's the same amount of geometry, whether it's normal scale or not,. more geometry means more calculation.

in the vertex modeler, you can create a model with less polygons,.. which will look the same in the assembly room.

that may help carrara calculate and playback a bit smoother.

you're also using a couple of spin modifiers on the models, at different time/speed settings,.

you can set keyframes for the speed,  so a model could spin at 1 cycle per/sec for 3 seconds,. then change speed to 3 cycles per/sec for a couple of seconds,. using only one spin modifier. you can also take it from zero to whatever cycles per second,.. over say,.. 2 seconds, so it's a slow rotation up to speed,. or slow rotate to stop.

 

 

hrpschrd

Clearly there is a lot of skill in using the Vertex Modeler but the results are impressive.

In my case I need each atom and bond to be a primitive so I can interchange them in the animation.

I want spin to be in two axes at once which is why I use the modifiers. It sounds like keyframes are once at a time.

I am glad there is not a problem, but just a difficult calculation going on. It seems like what I am doing is trivial compared to the animations I see done with Cararra.

Thanks

3DAGE

Using the vertex modeler is pretty much the same as the assembly room, you can select a vertex Sphere, Cube etc from the menu ,..Adjust the size, Place those objects to create what you want.

no great skills required.

the big difference is that you can create a custom object,  which can be lighter on your system. and potentially offer more control in animation,. Morphs/bones.

Even if you made a vertex sphere , and a bond from a vertex cube,...and then use that in the same way as you're currently doing with primitives,. it would be less for carrara to calculate.

 

you can do interchange with vertex models ,. it may even be easier,. since each model would have a shader for "bonds", a shader for Oxygen, and one for Nitrogen,.. those shaders could be used to control the visibility of the parts over time,. or the type of parts,. EG: swap nitrogen for oxygen at any point in time. or change the colour of a bond. 

you could also use a magic swap technique to do an interchange, where one object is made invisible at the same frame/position where it's replacement object is made Visible,. all the viewer sees is one object change into a different object,.

 

to spin on a different axis,. yes, you need to have a different spin modifier for each axis.

 

You can create as many keyframes as you like,. each keyframe can set the speed and direction of spin, this allows you to adjust the speed of the spin over time,. or start/stop or forward/reverse,. whatever you need.

it's almost the same as setting the speed and duration values,. but you're using key frame's rather than seconds to set the spin.

 

the objects you're using may be simple, but what you're doing is quite involved,. and as you progress, those will become more complex.

 

 

hrpschrd

Thanks for all the good ideas.

Once again, I don't understand something: why a group of objects that are parented don't stay together?

In the attached file you can see in the sequencer that Dimer1 has two children Epoxy1 and Amine1 as of 3.5 seconds. Why do they separate after 3.5 seconds? Doesn't the parent Dimer1 hold them together? In previous versions they were attached but I can't see any property that I modified to make them stay attached.

3DAGE

The children should normally follow whatever the parent does,. but,. if you select a child and move it,. then you're animating that child, independent of the parent, although its motion will still remain relative to the parents motion,. if that makes sense.

In Dimer1 i'm not seeing any drift/seperation,. of the Epoxide1 or Amine1, ..the Dimer1 "groups" motion (and the epoxide/amine) stops around 3.5 secs .

Those two are the "parent" objects,. they both have child objects,(carbons bonds etc) ..both of those are "contained" in a group called Dimer, but they can be animated independently of each other and the Group they're contained in. although their child objects should remain in place following their respective parent, Epoxide/Amine.

Example,

If I have a vehicle moving along road,. I could parent a camera to that vehicle, and it'll move along with the vehicle,. but,. i can still select the camera and animate it moving around the vehicle,. the camera is still moving with the vehicle,. but it's also independently animated. 

Just looking at Dimer2

it has a Spin modifier,. animating the Group,. where as Dimer1 Doesn't

In Dimer2 / Epoxide2 / Oxygen1 has a spin modifier,. which is probably not needed,. since it's a red ball, you probably won't see any spin. and it's more for carrara to think about.

Carbon3 also has a little rotation key at 8 secs,. possibly not needed.

Bond in,. after 4 secs, where it becomes visible,. there's some motion from that point,. to a couple of keyframes at 8 /8:01, 

Dimer2 / Amine2 has a couple of spin modifiers,. one from 0 to 3.5 sec,. one from 2 to 8 sec,. but Epoxide2 stops at 3.5

the Dimer2 Group they're both in,. has a spin from 4.5 to 12 secs

I'm thinking that you should cut the spin on the Dimer2 Group,. and the Amine2 at 4 secs when the Epoxide/Amine bond.

hope it helps :)

hrpschrd

Thanks, and you got it. I had a couple of changes in the Epoxide1 group that I didn't clean up. I am still working on getting all of it into a shorter time frame and making sure it is clean. I was just getting the Dimer1 group fixed and not yet the others. Now the Dimer1 is good to go. More careful work.

I sometimes get the "an error occured while executing Save" message. I can fix this by Save As a new file name.   Why??

3DAGE

that's a harder question to answer,. :)

it can be caused by things like objects or shaders which have been deleted from the scene, but are still present in the scene objects/shaders panels

going to Edit / Remove unused / objects/shaders,.. before you save, is always a good thing to do,.  as is incremental saving,. version 1, ver2 ver3 etc

however, in this case i'm not sure that those are the cause.

Good housekeeping,. go to your DazTemp folder,. (users/documents/Daz3D/Daz temp,.

and clean it out,. regularly,.

Carrara has a bad habit of leaving temp files when it shut's down.