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Timeline and Animation Keys counter intuitive

baalhugbaalhug Posts: 21
edited October 2020 in New Users

Hi:

I'm new to DAZ but I have used Blender quite a bit, and I don't understand why DAZ uses animation keys in Timeline. Specifically I don't understand why DAZ allows to move or delete them, when doing that has no effects whatsoever. Or maybe I'm missing something (probably) but either way this tool is very counter intuitive. First of all, I have to say I have seen tutorials and documentation but they usually avoid this point which I think is very important. I have seen many complains in this and other forums about this behaviour, but the answers they get are often complex workarounds or "this is not implemented yet", but I insist I think I'm missing something because I just can't believe keyframes are working this way. We are starting a project with DAZ to animate human characters and we're analyzing which parts of the job can be made with DAZ and what parts must be done in external tools like Blender. If the exporting of DAZ characters with their textures and animation were trivial, we would probably would do everything in Blender, but that's not the case.
So, I'll explain this with the simplest example:


I created a character, went to timeline and added a keyframe in the middle, in frame 15. Now I want to lift their arms, so I select the character in the Scene tab, and then in the Posing tab I go to Pose Controls ---> Arms and I slide the control "Arms Up-Down". The character raises the arms. When I move the Timeline I realise now the arms are up the whole time, no transition. Ok, I go to frame 0 and I reset Arms Up-Down there. Now it's working: Arms down at frame 0, arms up at frame 15 and low again at frame 30. Now I realise I want arms to be raised at frame 20 not at 15. I think, let's drag keyframe to frame 20. I drag it, but nothing changes. Ok, I'm gonna delete the key and create it in frame 20. When I delete the key nothing changes either, the arms do the same, frame 0 down, frame 15 up, frame 30 down. Weird. What is the key for? Ok, I'm gonna create a new one at frame 20. Now arms raise from 0 to 15 (like before) they "ping-pong" between 15 and 20, and go down from 20 to 30. I delete that key but nothing changes. I expand all the children elements of the character, but there are no keys anywhere.

Now I start a new scene and I do the same without adding any keys and the result is the same, so I wonder what are the keys for? In other softwares, from Blender to Sony Vegas, timelines and keyframes work the same way: each time you add a key the transitions are recalculated between keys, so the timeline is showing you at all times how every item is moving/rotating/scaling, and if you edit the keys (move, delete) the animation changes accordingly. I have updated DAZ but the same behaviour is going on.

So... I'm sure I'm missing something big here, probably something very stupid, a configuration or setup somewhere, otherwise keyframes are totally useless.

Post edited by baalhug on

Comments

  • skinklizzardskinklizzard Posts: 218

    all I can suggest is at the bottom of the timeline there is a types dropdown, make sure all of them are selected and check again to see if there were keyframes that weren't shown.

  • baalhugbaalhug Posts: 21
    skinklizzard said:

    all I can suggest is at the bottom of the timeline there is a types dropdown, make sure all of them are selected and check again to see if there were keyframes that weren't shown.

     

    You're a genius. That was the problem. The filter "Other" seems the one where poses are applied. Thank you.

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