greg

Thanks, Ken

Hey Ken, If you see this and get a chance. How did you get a keyframe on the head and the hand? I can't figure out how to copy this part. Although, I was able to move ahead and make a lot of progress. I just need to get a more powerful PC. It's taking hours to render just 1:35 of animation. Thanks, Greg

That would be great. Somewhere in these forums, I believe in the works in progress or something like that there is a tutorial which shows how to go from the reolute walk to other character movement without messing up the walk. I found that very helpful. Greg

THANK YOU KEN. Everything seems to be working fine now. I guess the problem I was having was lining up Action1 within a choreography action. I've been able to add other voice and character actions and it seems to be fine. Now the real fun begins. Thank you again, Greg

Thanks Ken. I guess I should rename Action1 which is the dialog to something else. OK I'm going to try to copy what you have done to my test project to see if I can get the same results. Luckily I have v13 and v14 so I can look at both projects simultaneously. Thanks again for all the help. Hopefully I can get this moving now. Greg

The problem I seem to be having even if I continue in chor. action 4 and keyframe at the end of the dialog action. The head and right hand are not keyframed. Then, if I go forward to 9:10 and move the head and the hand they get keyframed at 9:10 but the action occurs with the transition from 8:28 to 8:29. I thought that when you select the model and have the Key Model button selected that everything in the model is keyframed. That does not appear to bbe the case. You'll notice in 1.bmp there is no head keyframe but there is in pic2.bmp (attached). I really don't understand this. Thanks Greg 1.bmp pic2.bmp

Hi Ken, Had to get something else done yesterday. Adding Action4 was the only way I could get the dialog, unfortunately named Action1, to render correctly. If I get rid of 4 I lose the voice dialog mouth movements when rendered. If you get a minute here is the project saved after moving the hand and head at 9:10. As you can see there was no key set for the head or right hand target at 8:28. So the movement I perform at 9:10 takes place right at 8:28. Thanks for the help. Greg test2.prj

Unfortunately, that didn't work either. When I went out to 9:10 and turned the neck back, the keyframe moved from 8:28 to 9:10 for the neck movement. What am I missing about keyframes? I thought once you set a keyframe it was set and shouldn't move. Thanks for any help or insight. Greg

I think I may have figured this out. Maybe. When I started the motion, after Shaggy sat down, I turned the head and not the neck. And the head doesn't show up as one of the bones that has a keyframe. The same thing for the right hand when I move it. I think I can figure out the neck/head thing. Unfortunately, the right forearm can not be translated and when I move the right hand since there is no keyframe for it at 8:28 it moves all the wat at 8:29. Am I missing something? Thanks, Greg

I think so. It signifies which action is active. I've attached the project file after embedding everything. I also will attach the sound file although I don't know if that is necessary and the saved dialog action which may already be embedded Thanks for the help. I'll also keep trying things. Greg test.prj 1.wav

Here's what I see is happening. I set the keyframe at the start of the new chor. action. I look at the bones in the timeline for the new chor. action - 5. This is at 00:08:28 of the animation. I then move to 00:09:12 of the animation where I turn the head and move the right hand and elbow. When I do this the key marker, the small red square, for the head, hand and elbow moves from 00:08:28 to 00:09:12. Causing the head to turn and the hand to move when stepping from 8:28 to 8:29. If I do the shift-keyframe at 8:28 the character stands up. I thought I understood this. I guess it's more complicated than I thought. Thanks, Greg

Thanks, Ken I did all of the things set the old and new action to blend, set a keyframe on the entire character at the beginning of the new action, and made the changes to the hold last frame etc. Now I move ahead about half a second to move the head and the rt. hand which in one instance worked fine, except that when going back in the timeline 1 frame before the new action and stepping through the timeline, the head and hand movements all occur at the beginning of the new action and not over the 1/2 second or so. Another time I tried with both the older and the new action with the switches set as described in your last note and I couldn't move any of the bones. Am I missing something? Thanks, Greg

Thanks, Ken. Let me see if I have this. I add a new chor. action and start it at the end of the chor. actions I already have and set it to blend mode. Do I set a keyframe for my character at the beginning of the new chor. action, or do I just move the bones I want and then keyframe those bones in the new chor. action? I also guess this means every time I go from movement, there wont be many repeated actions, to dialog action and back to movement I need to add a new chor. action for each. Thanks, Greg

Hi again, I seeem to be having a problem grasping combining actions to render a movie of a few minutes. I understand the concept of the shift-keyframe to go from say the resolute walk and have the character perform other actions in a new choreography action. I also added a dialog action with a new choreography action and that works fine. That all takes about 9 seconds. Here is the character flow I have so far. - Character walks across the screen (resolute walk) - Character sits in a chair and turns head to face front - Character speaks and the mouth is animated That all works fine and I couldn't be happier. Now, I need the character to turn his head back to the back of the screen, maybe adjust his hands or feet or torso in the chair and then speak again. This would then repeat, sort of, with other actions, pointing e.g., and other dialogue. Do I have to continually add choreography actions to accomplish this? It appears that keyframing evenin new choreography actions, especially with the head, affects the dialogue action preceding it. Am I missing something? Is there a project out there where something similar is done so that I could look at it to have an idea of how to proceed? Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Greg

Hey Ken, I'm not sure what worked for the picture not appearing. I did delete the Alpha thing, but I also changed the Ambience Intensity. One of those made the image appear in the rendering. As for the Ambience Intensity, that sloved a problem I had of washing out a video clip I inserted into the choreography when I zoom into it. So, I inadvertantly solved another problem I had. Also, I figured out what my speed problem was, I think. When I created the dialog action and dragged in onto the character I lengthened it in the choreography. So, I deleted the action and reinserted it on the character and left the length as it came in and just moved it to the correct location on the timeline. Thanks for all the help. Now the real fun begins. Greg

Thanks, Ken I'll check those options. Greg

Hello, Somehow I solved the problem of the character not mouthing the words from my previous post. I'm not sure what worked but the character now does mouth the words from the voice action. However, when I render the clip which is about 11 seconds long a couple of things are not right. First I have a picture in the camera shot which I imported. When I move through the frames in A:M the image is visible when I want and not visible as I've set the active option in the properties. However, in the AVI render the image does not appear. Also in the rendered AVI the dialog is greatly speeded up. Probably at least three times normal speed. But when flipping through the frames prior to rendering everything is fine. Has anyone else run across this? I would think what I'm doing is pretty basic. Thanks, Greg

Thanks Ken, I'm going to try a couple of things. Like creating a new choreography and just putting the dialog file in to see if that works. I'll also check the CDs that came with the two books I bought for A:M. There might be something there. If I can't get anything to work. I'll attach the project and the wave file. Thanks again, Greg

That's the red bar I am referring to. The red bar for both the dialog action and the choreography action start at frame 00:27:20 and end at frame 00:32:00. Picture attached... Thanks, Greg

Unfortunately, dragging the voice action to the bottom and changing back to replace didn't work. Choreography Action 3 ends at frame 00:27:20. Choreography Action 1, the new one I added and the Voice Action begin at frame 00:27:00. However, the Voice Action has a small red square at 00:00:00 and at 00:27:20 with a white narrow line from 00 to 27:20. The Choreography Action 1 is just gray with no red squares or narrow white line from 00 to 27:20, where the red line begins for the length of the action. Thanks, Greg

Thanks Ken, Although that didn't seem to work. Maybe a little more info. Prior to the voice action I had two choreography actions, which allow Eddie to walk, yawn and perform other actions. Everything works fine. The tutorial I found where it showed how to add other animation after the resolute walk was great. I now add the voice action. I also thought to add a third choreography action and have it and the voice action run parallel. I changed the property of both the choreography action and the voice action to add. Again, the audio file plays but no lip synch. Am I missing something? Thanks, Greg

Hello again, I'm making progress with A:M but of course now I get to the hard part adding a voice. I have a choreography where at the end I want to have a character, Eddie for the time being, say a sentence. I've watched the "Can you say that" tutorials and I think I'm doing things correctly. I've created a new action in my choreography for Eddie, imported my WAV file, created the dope sheet and moved the words so that it synchs up. I've saved the action and then put it into the choreography where it is supposed to go on the timeline. However, Eddie's lips don't move. The audio file plays but no lip movement. Earlier in the choreography I did make Eddie smile a bit. Is that the cause of my problem? I also noticed that the voice action does have an ease value in the properties. Should that start out as 0 moving to 100% by the end of the action? I'm kind of at the end of my rope trying different things to get the lips to synch. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks, Greg

Hi, Thanks for all the help. I'm pretty sure how to get it done now. Greg

Hi, I'm trying to have a character sitting in a chair have a thought bubble pop up. Kind of like you would see in a comic book. I can't seem to figure out how to do this. I think for the most part I could just use decals and paste them into the air above the head. But, if I create a round white circle in Photoshop, of course the picture is square and I can't seem to get rid of the background and just leave the circle. When the top bubble appears, I then would insert a model, which I have to create and perform some type of animation on the model. Am I thinking right in using decals or is there a better way to accomplish this. Thanks. Greg

Thanks, Nancy I agree with the reply in the post you sent me to, this is a great tutorial. I've been looking for something that explains actions vs choreographies etc. since I bought this software in June. Greg