Path Movements not working

[Kaijin]

OK I will include screenshots and my project file.

 

Basically this is what happens I wanted to test a simple animation to practice my skills with and it uses all the default stuff that comes wit A:M and what I was trying to do was have the knight model walk along a path using the walk(exausted) action and then at the end of the path yawn using the yawn action at the end of the path but it keeps puting the yawn ino the cnstrain to path and I dont know why. Meaning the last part o him moving along the path he is yawning...

 

here is the screenshots and project file so you can understand more.

 

Just open the project file and play the animation then seek all the way to the end which if I remember correctly is 31 seconds and 1 frame. Then just simply add the yawn action to the knight and play the animation again and you will understand what I mean.

 

Anywyas here re the pics and project fie.

 

This is thescreenshot from BEFORE I add the yawn action

 

 

 

 

 

And this is the one from after I ad the yawn action see how the knight is back on the path instead of at the end of it....

 

Anyws here is the project file.

Drink.zip

[Dhar]

I apologize for not DLing your project because I havetoo many projects to work with of my own. However, you can set your actions to start and end at certain times of the choreography, have you tried that?

[LurkerAbove]

Hey guy, welcome to the intuitive trap. So much seems intuitive, that when you do something which seems intuitive, and doesn't work, its *very* frustrating. Be patient, because when you learn more, it does begin to make sense, but frankly, every time I went off the beaten path from the tutorials, I experienced a headache, only to find out I was missing a piece here and there.

 

So stay strong! Its not broken! I'm no master by any means, and there are multiple ways of doing the same thing. I'll try to give a quick outline of steps, and armed with this new knowledge, you can use the help and play around a bit more! I try to put keywords that helped me in BOLD

 

So anyway, sorry for the long intro.

 

Scenario. Knight walks (exhasted) for 5 seconds, then stops and yawns.

Make sure the following windows are visible:

1) Project Workspace (PWS)

2) Project Timeline (Timeline)

 

I use the windows command style, so please be patient if you are a collegue on a Mac.

It looks like you can lay some cool paths and you can do a path constraint.

 

Move your time to 00:05:00. So now, right click your path constraint and go to properties. In the properties window, set ease to 100%. This will make sure that the knight is at the end of the path by second 5. Now is also a good time to look up Path constraint properties in the help. Some won't make sense, but just absorb and enjoy.

 

Now add your yawn action. Right click it in PWS and select properties. There is something called CHOR RANGE. Funny, I didn't know what chor meant! (choreography) Set the timeline here from 501 to umm however long your yawn is. You can actually find out from this properties window how long the action lasts, its like 2 or 3 seconds or something like that.

 

So your walk will be from 0 to 5 seconds

Your yawn will be from 501 to 7 or 8 seconds.

 

This is still a good time to look at ACTION PROPERTIES in the help. There's all sorts of properties to help you with making the transitions better, but this *should* do what you want in a crude fashion.

 

I really hope this helps! And if anyone sees any mistakes I made, please let me know and I'll fix them!

 

I'm not on a computer I can run AM , or I'd whip up a sample project.

 

Multiple actions is still quite hard for me, but I'm learning. The fact is this area is so feature rich that its hard to put them all together.

 

Best of luck and lets see how it turns out!

 

Oh hey, couple other things to save your sanity:

 

1) Save lots of backups. As someone said, AM is a sports car, while Microsoft Word is a Jeep. Word will go over any terrain and usually get you there, while AM sometimes, well, sometimes it feels unloved and gives up. I know that seems frustrating, but there's good posts on the topic on how to get AM the very best it can be on your system, and remember its doing a lot of work for you, so keep those drivers up to date!

 

2) Sometimes, when I screw up a project so bad that I can't recover it. Like I add a bunch of actions and constraints and stuff and stuff and then it just turns into a knot and my knight has an epileptic fit. The first step is knowing the promect has a problem. Accept it, throw the project away, and if its new, just start over, or go to backup. Like for your knight and yawn, just start over. It'll get that setting up a project and putting model into a Chor into your blood. Its still not in mine to be honest. He always winds up floating.

[LurkerAbove]

Here's a project with my man Knight walking and waving. Not *quite* the same as walking and yawining, but close enough.

 

Happy Actions

KnightWalkAndWave.zip

[Kaijin]

I apologize for not DLing your project because I havetoo many projects to work with of my own. However, you can set your actions to start and end at certain times of the choreography, have you tried that?

 

How do you do that? Also to LurkerAbove thanks for your help it worked exactly like I wanted it to.

 

 

But I do have another question I decided to see if I could have him pick up something and drink it after yawning but after I moves any bones even if I create a new keyframe after the yawn...He transitions into that bone position from the beginning of the animation instead of from the keyframe I make after the yawn......Because I made the keyframe after the yawn and then went ahead the amount of frames I wanted and made the proper bone movements but ity transitions to that from the WHOLE animation not just from one keyframe to another...Which is annoying...Sorry for being so bad at this but I am splitting my time bewtween work and 3 other projects AND A:M so I just do not have time right now to fumble around for hours figuring it out myself......Sorry to sound lazy and undedicated but I am trying to balance my time effectively so I am using the resources I have available.

[Animus]

But I do have another question I decided to see if I could have him pick up something and drink it after yawning but after I moves any bones even if I create a new keyframe after the yawn...He transitions into that bone position from the beginning of the animation instead of from the keyframe I make after the yawn......Because I made the keyframe after the yawn and then went ahead the amount of frames I wanted and made the proper bone movements but ity transitions to that from the WHOLE animation not just from one keyframe to another...

 

 

You have to check how your actions are layered on top of each other. By default your last action replaces all other actions. You might need to change it to "add" in your case.

 

[attachmentid=20139]

[Fuchur]

But I do have another question I decided to see if I could have him pick up something and drink it after yawning but after I moves any bones even if I create a new keyframe after the yawn...He transitions into that bone position from the beginning of the animation instead of from the keyframe I make after the yawn......Because I made the keyframe after the yawn and then went ahead the amount of frames I wanted and made the proper bone movements but ity transitions to that from the WHOLE animation not just from one keyframe to another...Which is annoying...Sorry for being so bad at this but I am splitting my time bewtween work and 3 other projects AND A:M so I just do not have time right now to fumble around for hours figuring it out myself......Sorry to sound lazy and undedicated but I am trying to balance my time effectively so I am using the resources I have available.

 

This is something many people run into...

One way is to create a new chereographie-action for the drinking. (If I am not wrong, there is another to, but I think this is the easier one)

Go to the model of the knight and then to its action-subfolder. There you can see all the actions and a chereography-action. To make a new one, rightclick on the action-folder... there will be something like "new->chereography-action" or so...

 

The actionstart/end and time-position can be setted at the properties of the actions, or what i prefer, in the timeline-window...

There you will find red squares which can be moved, scaled, etc.

These tell you, how long your actions will be effecting the model, etc.

The second chereography-action you created should be set to start right behind the first one.

THan you have to select the second chereo-action. That will activate it as the one you want to edit now. (-> a green sign next to the action in the pws will tell you that)

 

That should help you to start... next thing you will jump into is the transition of the actions... ask again if you have any questions about that...

 

In the end: Path-Movement IS working... you just have to know how...

 

*Fuchur*

[LurkerAbove]

 

But I do have another question I decided to see if I could have him pick up something and drink it after yawning but after I moves any bones even if I create a new keyframe after the yawn...He transitions into that bone position from the beginning of the animation instead of from the keyframe I make after the yawn......Because I made the keyframe after the yawn and then went ahead the amount of frames I wanted and made the proper bone movements but ity transitions to that from the WHOLE animation not just from one keyframe to another...Which is annoying...Sorry for being so bad at this but I am splitting my time bewtween work and 3 other projects AND A:M so I just do not have time right now to fumble around for hours figuring it out myself......Sorry to sound lazy and undedicated but I am trying to balance my time effectively so I am using the resources I have available.

 

You're really helping *me* out by asking these questions, since I just recently went through this frustration. My brain wanted to think one way, and the program works slightly differently.

 

It is annoying when a bone starts moving right away, but if you really think about it, since you only set keyframes, how is it to know when to start?

 

You've got the right idea of creating the keyframe, but I've found that keyframe generation doesn't *quite* work the way that I (and it seems some other folks) think the documentation *says* it does. I probably read it too fast.

 

I really wish I had A:M when I decide to write these things, but please bear with me, and if any of my far more experienced fellows notice any errors, please correct me! Its how I learn

 

Anyway, this is *my* understanding of keyframes. When you look in the timeline, and you have the view set to show a line graph, a dotted line indicates there is nothing set. I have not found the insert keyframe button to work when the line is dotted. Instead, I 'nudge' the bone, which inserts a keyframe and viola! the line is solid! Now for a given bone, we have X,Y,Z translation and X,Y,Z rotate. Its my understanding that nudging translation doesn't affect rotate and visa versa. So, you might think that you have set a keyframe for rotation, when you haven't, and suddenly your foot starts drifting at frame 0. What a pain in the keester!

 

Easy fix. In the timeline, go to frame 0 and draw a group box around the keyframes. Copy. Use the scrubber (the scroll bar) to move the red line to the frame where you want movement to *start*. Paste. You can use the group box to select multiple keyframes, which is a very cool feature. What's also cool is that using the mouse to select keyframes doesn't move the red line, so you can copy paste all day with relatively little extra clicks and drags. This will also mean sometimes you'll copy things to places you don't want. Save early, save often

 

Now there is the feature of holding the shift key down when you hit the insert keyframe button. This gives several options, one of which is to put a keyframe on every bone in the currently selected model. There are three modes to the left of the insert keyframe button which indicate how far in the bone hierarchy to add frames. If you want to watch your system crawl, start using it to add thousands of keyframes. This will also drive you crazy because making adjustments means lots of little changes, and sometimes its hard to figure out which bone is causing your hand to smack Sir Nigel in the face. But sometimes Sir Nigel needs a good slap now and then, the prig. (note, Sir Nigel is the only stock model out of the box with gratuitous amounts of hair. He clogged up my system, though Shift-8 turns hair off, which makes Sir Nigel workable). This is all help file fodder and these help files are particularly good.

 

Something else to think about is to take these reusable actions, like drinking, and making them into actions. Someone with more experience can probably tell you what the difference is between a choreography (the one under a model in the PWS) and an action is. To me, I can't give a difference, and choreographies can be exported as actions. Dunno if you're a programmer type, but when I say reuse, I mean "resuse". Using a resolute walk on Gala isn't as satisfying as using a resolute walk on the knight. This is a great opportunity to open the existing action using Gala as the model, tweak it to make it fit the character's personality, and save it away under a different name. A reusable action like drinking is tricky, because there will have to be modifications made depending on if the beverage is a can of soda or a beer stein. At least if you want it to look good.

 

Even if you don't save these off into actions, using separate choreography actions can help keep your key frame timeline from looking like the NY Times version of connect the dots. You do have to be careful about which action you're editing when you change things, but I think the technique is an overall bonus.

 

I wanted to add a point about bumbling around and learning things. Bumbling around *is* an effective use of your time. At least that's what I tell my boss . No really. Sometimes you have to just sit back and enjoy the burn. There will be setbacks and false starts, but for me, many of those have exposed some new trick or feature. If you want to be ultra efficient about mastering the program, do not derivate from the tutorials, but do each one, and read the help files on every screen you use. There are instructional videos. Get the videos,*watch* the videos watch the web tutorials here. I would suggest any derivation from the tutorials be very minor.

 

Mostly, have fun. I can't say that I'll be able to answer all your questions, but I'm sure *someone* here will.

[Kaijin]

Thanks to everyone for the replies and help I got it working the way I wanted and thank you for your patience. Also I apologize for asking so many questions. I am just used to other animation programs where the keyframes work differently so thats how I was invisioning it. My bad.