Sandwiching a chor.action between two actions?

[Mr. Bill]

First off, thanks to Robcat for giving me the link to answer my last question.

 

As usual in the learning process, it answered the Q, but brought many more. My most pressing, currently, is that above: Any links for this one? I am REAAAAAly close to getting this one...I may even have it but it's just too late to try it again tonight, and I wouldn't mind finding out that there is a tutorial that addresses this one, as well.

 

Thanks, in advance.

 

Mr. Bill

[robcat2075]

I haven't tested this out completely , but I think a plausible tactic is to open the second action up in its own action window and copy a whole body keyframe from its start.

 

Then go back to your chor and paste that onto the character at the point where you want your new chor animation to end and the second action to start.

 

There are many details to be gotten right that i haven't covered.

 

Here's a prj that show use of an action (shaggy stands up), then chor animation (he turns around), then another action (he climbs on box). This is just rough animation to show the premise.

 

Action2Chor2Action.zip

 

Look at the timeline in the Project Workspace to see what is going on.

[Mr. Bill]

I haven't tested this out completely , but I think a plausible tactic is to open the second action up in its own action window and copy a whole body keyframe from its start.

 

Then go back to your chor and paste that onto the character at the point where you want your new chor animation to end and the second action to start.

 

There are many details to be gotten right that i haven't covered.

 

Here's a prj that show use of an action (shaggy stands up), then chor animation (he turns around), then another action (he climbs on box). This is just rough animation to show the premise.

 

Action2Chor2Action.zip

 

Look at the timeline in the Project Workspace to see what is going on.

 

 

Thanks for the Project visual. I will look even more closely at it soon.

 

One thing I noticed is, the actions that are cycles have no ease percentages in the shortcut dropdown menu. I know it is in the spline, but what if you want to continue a walk cycle and then interrupt it with a skip and let it go back into a walk?

 

I haven't had any luck dropping two of the same walk cycles yet, so this seemed like the way to go from what I know at this point (which isn't much, admittedly). When I did the cycle interrupt it worked, but the skip is in slow-mo, and I thought maybe an ease slider independent of the spline could remedy that, because it seems like it is reading it as requiring only a certain percentage of it's total cycle, inasmuch as it is part of the overall percentage of the choreography1 (or whatever the whole sequence was default named.) In other words, if it 'thinks' that only the percentage range in which it resides on the spline is supposed to be shown (say from 25% ease to 33% ease on the spline) then it may only be showing from 25%-33% of the cycle and spreading it out over the section of time allocated, making it a slo-mo view. That's all I could figure out about it anyway.

 

Any thoughts or tut's I can view on that one?

 

Thanks.

[robcat2075]

One thing I noticed is, the actions you loaded have ease percentages in the dropdown menu of the 'shortcut to (action)'. Mine do not. Why is that; because that seems like something that would help me on yet another query of mine. Is there a newer version I can get that has these?

 

Dropdown menu? when i right-click onthe "shortcut to" i dont' see ease.

 

I haven't used ease on this prject; one could, but the defaults worked ok here.

 

Actions that are "cycles" ( "has stride length = ON) wont' have an ease property in the chor timeline.

[Mr. Bill]

One thing I noticed is, the actions you loaded have ease percentages in the dropdown menu of the 'shortcut to (action)'. Mine do not. Why is that; because that seems like something that would help me on yet another query of mine. Is there a newer version I can get that has these?

 

Dropdown menu? when i right-click onthe "shortcut to" i dont' see ease.

 

I haven't used ease on this prject; one could, but the defaults worked ok here.

 

Actions that are "cycles" ( "has stride length = ON) wont' have an ease property in the chor timeline.

 

 

I was afraid that would happen. You were replying to my original message while I was editing it.

 

I realized that they don't have ease percentages on cyclic actions; only on non-cyclic. As for the drop-down menu, I was referring to the triangle that opens heirarchy. Sorry about the mislabel.

 

If you wouldn't mind reading my edit, maybe there is another insight or reference you may have for my current problem?

 

Thanks.

[robcat2075]

a cycle on a character on a path constraint will always adjust its rate so that it's feet don't slip (presuming the stride distance is set correctly).

 

So , for example if you have a "run" that only has to cover 10 feet in one minute, it will go thru the run action very slowly. Use ease on the path constraint to reduce the time that the character spends covering the distance it is supposed to run.

 

you can change a character's speed in mid path by keyframing ease values. you might set 0% ease at 00:00 and 50% ease at 06:00 and 100% ease at 08:00. The character will travel the frist half od the path in 6 seconds and the last half in 2 seconds.