Timeline Confusion

mikethe3dguy

I have always found animation to be incredible frustrating. I think I understand it, but frequently run into unexplainable behavior that suggests maybe I don't. 

In this case I only need to animate a G8F character from an A pose at frame 0 to a seated position at frame 30, to help dForce settle clothing and hair into place properly. The character also has some shape morphs that cause dForce challenges, so I also want to start with default shape at frame 0 and apply the shaping preset I've saved at frame 30. The animation is set to 50 frames to allow some dForce settling after the final pose is reached.

My problem is that when I move to frame 30 and apply the shaping preset and pose, then move back to frame 0, the shape preset and pose are still applied - no change to the character at all from frame to frame!  What might be happening?

Thanks

benniewoodell

On frame zero when the character is in the A pose, right click on her in the scene tab and click select all children. Then on the timeline, make sure in the keys section that object is selected in the dropdown box (for some reason node was defaulted there for awhile which will not help you here) and then click on the plus sign because you have to tell the program that this is a keyframe for all the limbs. And if you continue to animate, every time you are at a pose, you should select all children and add a keyframe there so you don't get limbs moving out of whack if the last key you have from them is farther back in the timeline. I hope that helps and makes sense. 

mikethe3dguy

Thank you! Okay, that did make sense and I followed your advice, but it didn't seem to change anything... except that now the eyes and eyelids only are in default position at frame 0 and transition to their posed position keyed at frame 30. The rest of the figure is in the full pose position at frames 0, 30 and all the frames between.

mikethe3dguy

Noticed something odd: after doing all that I expanded the G8F in the timeline at frame 0, and the only key present is on the figure itself and a couple odd bones (like both ears for some reason). I noticed that the dropdown for keys was set to "Node". Not sure what it's supposed to be set to, but I changed it to "Object" and tried again, and it worked!

mikethe3dguy

After a little poking around Daz forums, it looks like the setting for that Keys dropdown I'd prefer is "Node Recurse", which applies keys to the object selected in the timeline PLUS all its children. This appears to be a relatively new "feature".

Richard Haseltine

benniewoodell said:

On frame zero when the character is in the A pose, right click on her in the scene tab and click select all children. Then on the timeline, make sure in the keys section that object is selected in the dropdown box (for some reason node was defaulted there for awhile which will not help you here) and then click on the plus sign because you have to tell the program that this is a keyframe for all the limbs. And if you continue to animate, every time you are at a pose, you should select all children and add a keyframe there so you don't get limbs moving out of whack if the last key you have from them is farther back in the timeline. I hope that helps and makes sense. 

Object should include all children anyway, even if a child bone is selected - Node Recursive includes the selected node and its children, which may not be the whole figure if a child bone is selected, while Node includes only the selection without any children.

mikethe3dguy

Richard Haseltine said:

benniewoodell said:

On frame zero when the character is in the A pose, right click on her in the scene tab and click select all children. Then on the timeline, make sure in the keys section that object is selected in the dropdown box (for some reason node was defaulted there for awhile which will not help you here) and then click on the plus sign because you have to tell the program that this is a keyframe for all the limbs. And if you continue to animate, every time you are at a pose, you should select all children and add a keyframe there so you don't get limbs moving out of whack if the last key you have from them is farther back in the timeline. I hope that helps and makes sense. 

Object should include all children anyway, even if a child bone is selected - Node Recursive includes the selected node and its children, which may not be the whole figure if a child bone is selected, while Node includes only the selection without any children.

Thanks for the clarification Richard.