Need more Keyframe Help

[bobkoonce]

In an earlier topic called "Need Keyframe Help" I followed the suggestions that were made without success, here's what I did.

 

Opened time line, at frame 00:00:00 I nudged Keekats Right forearm, keyframe was create at 00:00:00, at frame 00:01:00 I nudged Keekats Right forearm, keyframe was create at 00:01:00, moved time slider to frame 00:02:00, moved right arm to position I wanted, when I moved arm, time line changed, two more graph lines appeared and stated to come together at 00:02:00 as I moved Keekats arm, keyframe 00:01:00 disappeared.

 

I hope this was clear, and I would appreciate some help with this so I can move on.

 

Thanx,

Bob Koonce

[triath5147]

Ok I will take a stab at it. Since no one else replied yet. I didn't look at your original post, and I am not sure what your talking about but I will explain some things. Firts off the time specs you are giving are in seconds incase you were unaware, so 00:00:00 is the start, 00:01:00 is the equivalent of 1 second and so on. when you make key frame animations and want the computer to tween the frames, that is what causes the other lines to be created in your time line.

So you nudge your right forearm a bit at "0" and there are red blocks on the time line at the bones that were moved. at 1 second you nudge it again? and u get another red block at that same bone and a grey line in between them. and at 2 seconds u moved another bone moving the entire arm to a new position. SO now u see a red block at "0" for that bone, and its children and at 2 seconds for that bone and its children. Correct?

Now the arm bone u moved last, the one at 2 seconds now tweens from frame "0" to frame 00:02:00. SO when you move your scrub bar the arm will slowly move from start to its final position in your last frame. So if the forearm is a child of the arm bone your moving, you may not see the forearm nudges, as the entire arm is now in motion.

if you want the entire arm to stay put, while your doing your forearm nudges, than select the bone by highlighting it in the time line. ( drag a box around it to select it and by default i think it turns bright green) than go to frame 00:01:00 and paste that bone at the frame. That way the entire arm will not move until ur forearm nudges are finished.

Is that what your talking about? If so there you go...If this makes no sense than i don't know what to tell you, except if you really are having this much trouble understanding the way computers animate, check out the tutorials here, and take the AM class thing that Rodney promotes. It will really help you get an understanding of how it all works and why.

Good Luck.

[Fishman]

Can you do a screen grab of your timeline and post it? That will make it easier to diagnose. If you are only working on one bone, then what your saying does not make sense. If you are working on multiple bones, then when you select a new bone the timeline will show the keys for that bone. You can also select Bones and see all your bone keys. This can be very confusing if you have keyframe many bones.

 

Scott

[bobkoonce]

Here is a screen capture of what I was refering to, hope this explains it further.

 

Keyframe Help

 

Thanx for the speedy replies,

Bob Koonce

[Fishman]

Now that is what I call a screen grab. Your problem is very clear and easily fixed. You need to understand what you did and why it happened.

 

It looks like you start by creating keyframes for translation only. When you first rotate the bone it is at frame 15 and it creates a key frame at frame 15 and frame 0 for rotations. The only keys you had before were for translation that is why there is no intermediate rotation keyframe. When you nudge the bone at 0 do a rotation as well. That will enable A:M to force rotation keys when you hit the force key frame button. Another thing to try is to just have Keekat's model selected at frame 0 and hit force keyframe. I think that will key all the bones in the model. Doing so will also key both translations and rotations from the very beginning. This will create a boatload of keyframes, but will not give you the problem of creating a keyframe late in the animation that has no 0 reference. Here is a link to a tutorial that I have found very helpful.

 

http://www.hash.com/users/ed/tutorials/animtut.htm

 

Scott

[Nosferatu]

Wow...What software did you use to make that capture?

 

Nos

[bobkoonce]

Once again thanks for the fast reply Fishman,

 

I will take a look at the tutorial that you sugested ang select all of Keekat and force frame at 0. quick question, won't creating all those key frame create a larger render?

 

P.S. the software that I used to create the capture was Camtasia Studio, great program.

 

Thankx again,

Bob Koonce

[Fishman]

The length of rendering has little or nothing to do with the number of keyframes. The length of rendering time is a strong function of scene complexity - number of patches on model, number of models, number of fancy render features such as reflections, hair, particles, blobbies, etc. The calcualtions to determine the in betweens are simple by comparison. If you are just posing your character to learn, I wouldn't worry too much about render times.

About key framing - one method is to pose your model in the first key frame and force a key frame. When you pose your model the first time your likely to have adjusted just about every bone you need to and that will create a key frame for all the bones without over doing it. Just keep your eye out for bones that get translated only but will be rotate later. If the rotation key isn't set at from 0 then it will be set later which will give you the effect you saw beore. You can always nudge them with a rotation at frame 0 and when you force the key frame it will set you up for later rotations. When you go to the next key frame, force a key frame and then pose it again. In the second key frame any bones you don't touch will automatically get a key frame since they have a key frame at frame 0. This is basic pose to pose animation.

 

Hopefully this makes some sense. I have found this method quite satisfactory for preventing motions that start when I thouoght they shouldn't.

 

Scott

[robcat2075]

I will take a look at the tutorial that you sugested ang select all of Keekat and force frame at 0.

 

Just an aside... You do want to get all your control bones keyed, but you don't want to get every bone in the character keyed, because many are invisible bones that the rig just uses for its own bone-manageing purposes. you won't want them keyed and taking up space in your timeline.

[bobkoonce]

Thanks for all your help, when I did a rotate nudge on the hand it worked fine.

 

If I run into any more problems I'll know where to go.

 

Thankx,

 

Bob Koonce