Need help with Exercise 6

[Gary]

Hi all,

 

I'm starting up yet again with exercise 6 after being away for quite a while, and I'm running into the same problem that stumped me before. I hope I can explain it properly. I want to have Shaggy walk up to the door before he tries to open it, so Ive made a path, dropped Shaggy onto it and then dropped a "resolute walk" action onto him. The walk cycle lasts for 7 seconds. When he reaches the end of the walk cycle, I want to bring him to a standing stop with his feet together and his hands at his side, but the walk cycle goes about 3 or 4 frames too far in terms of the hand and feet positions. Can I stop him before the end of the path/walk cycle and make keyframes that would allow me to manipulate Shaggy to a standing stop position?

I've tried backing up a few frames, hitting the force keyframe button and then repositioning the hands and feet, moving the timeline marker ahead 3 frames and forcing another keyframe, but what happens is that the changes I make end up happening throughout all 30 frames of the walk cycle. The foot that I bring down to the ground plane and the arms that I bring to Shaggy's side end up just shuffling along throughout the walk cycle, ruining the walk action. Could some possible give me a step-by-step on how to accomplish this, because I'm just not getting it.

 

Thanks,

 

Gary

[robcat2075]

Welcome back!

 

This is not an unusual problem when combining a premade "action" with some new animation.

 

The new animation mixes with the old action causing the results you see. To keep them from mixing you will need to create a new "Choreography Action" to put your new animation in.

 

Yes, two choreography actions in the same chor.

 

Quick view of how this looks in the PWS:

 

[attachmentid=16357]

 

 

An alternative, a more straightforward one in my judgement, is to NOT use an action for the walk. Animate the steps like you would any other motion of a character.

[ArgleBargle]

An alternative, a more straightforward one in my judgement, is to NOT use an action for the walk. Animate the steps like you would any other motion of a character.

Isn't that heresy?

 

Seriously, though, I thought a major part of the plan for an animation was to use a re-usable action... especially for things like walking.

 

Up to now, my animations haven't involved much in the way of re-usable actions. But then, my characters have been a camera on a tripod, a ruler and a computer. Frankly, they don't travel a lot.

 

Sorry if I seem to be walking into something philosophical, but after watching films like "Alien Song", "Duel" and others of the cooler productions, I'm trying to figure if I'm seeing any use of re-usable actions in those videos. Am I?

[Gary]

An alternative, a more straightforward one in my judgement, is to NOT use an action for the walk. Animate the steps like you would any other motion of a character.

 

So what's the best way to do that? Should I constrain Shaggy to the path first? Would I animate one complete walk cycle and then just copy and paste the keyframes from that one walk cycle over the 7 seconds? Or can I simply copy the keyframes from the existing resolute walk action and paste them repeatedly, or does that just make another action?

[Gary]

Ok, I'm taking robcat's advice and I'm going to animate the walk. However.....I've run into the following problem: I've animated the keyframes for frames 0,5 10 and 15. When I try to copy/paste mirrored frame 0 to frame 20 the upper body shifts backwards and downwards (see attached pic). I've made sure to keep the body in the same horizontal position throughout, only moving it vertically.

 

So, what am I missing?

[Rodney]

Just curious... Did you keyframe on frame 0?

Frame zero can be problematic sometimes as the way it is designed to work is to retain no data unless the user specifically tells it to. This helps in a lot of situations but can be confusing.

 

I'm describing this badly...

You need to copy a good keyframe in order to get a good 'paste mirrored'. Somehow you haven't got that.

Check to make sure your keyframing options are toggled correctly at the bottom as well.

[Gary]

Frame 0 was keyframed. How do you tell a good keyframe from a bad one? As far as I can tell it looks ok as far as the parts of the character are where they're supposed to be in the original frame, just not on the paste mirrored one. What else do you look for?