Voice Actions and Body Actions

[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

[KenH]

You can drag the red bar for new chor actions to where you want them to start effecting your character. So, you could have keyframes in that chor action, but they wouldn't effect the character until the time the red bar starts.

 

So, to proceed, you could create a new chor action, drag it to after all the other actions, set it to blend mode and keyframe all bones (that have moved up to now) into a pose for the new action.

[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

[KenH]

Your global position (model bone pos/rot/scale) should be kept in a separate chor action (by itself) that covers the whole span of the animation. Beacuse, if you have the model bone pos in the first action, then at the last action, your model will go back to 0,0,0.....because the first action doesn't cover that time. Then you'll have to try to line up the model in the new action.

 

I should clarify.....

 

Set the last action before your new action to blend mode and in it's properties turn on "transition to next action" and turn off "hold last frame".

 

Keyframe every bone you've moved before in the first frame of the new action.

 

Yes, to switch between repeatable actions it's simpler to add new chor actions to transition to....you could order the actions appropriately in the pws to do it, but that gets messy.

[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

[greg]

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

[KenH]

I'd really need to see images/chors to try to diagnose specific problems. But you do know about the green tick mark beside the actions right?

[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

[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

[greg]

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

[KenH]

I'm not sure exactly what you want to happen, but you don't have anything keyed in chor action 4. If you don't intend to put anything into it, then you should delete it and just go directly from action3 to action5.....wich action3 set to blend.

 

Then you can move the hand in action5 and it will bledn from the hand pos in action3 to action5.

[greg]

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

[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

[KenH]

Here's an edited version with action4 deleted and a transition from action1 to action5 using blend mode on action1. Making a smooth definable amount of time for the movement of the hand and head.

 

Edit: I don't know if you need to key all bones now. Look at this project and see. I'm not sure what's going wrong there for you. Could be a few things.

test3.prj

[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

[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

[mouseman]

I've always wished TAO A:M had an exercise that dealt with transitioning between three or four different actions.

[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

[greg]

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

[KenH]

I think I just nudged the bones abit to get them to make a keyframe....or I may have copied and pasted (Contrl C+V) if the keyframe existed already.

[greg]

Thanks, Ken