Key Framing

[AMkyle]

OK i really somehow gotta learn this slowly, but i need to learn this, itll make my animating like 100x easier.

 

Whats happening is when i animate someone in a choreography i make then maybe jump or jump then spin, or also recently happening the can can then a slap on the face, but whenever i do this it always starts from the begginning so for the can can move, it totaly ruin it, because he starts slapping himself in the face at fraom 0 moving his hand slowly up. and for jumping he starts rising into the air from the very begginnimg and for the jump and spin he start spinning from the very begginning too. i dont know how to make it so they start the second action from later in the animation instead of always starting from the begginging. have any of you guys had this problem before and how do you fix it. i watched the video manual, the piching one, and i saw there was an encountered problem there very similar to mine. the knights backfoot started rising from the very begginning, but then all he did was he moved it down back to close where it was and then pushed the something model button i think, its two buttons to the right from whole model button down at bottom. but doing this it will still start moving from the bigginning because if he just moves the knights foot down then it will very slowly slide a bit becase he couldnt have moved the knights foot exactly on the place it was before, thats like very hard to do and would take a lot of time.

 

so if any of you can help me itll help a lot.

[KenH]

A very common mistake.....one I had myself. The brain must be hard wired to think differently. Anyway, the answer is:

 

When you move a bone at for example frame 100, then the software calculates the movement from the default position at frame 0 to your new position at frame 100.

It doesn't know that you want the bone to wait for 50 frames before starting to move. How can it?

 

The way to tell it is to copy the keyframes at frame 0 and paste them at frame 50.

 

Now the software will follow this logic:

 

Default Position Keyframe at frame 0....wait

Default Position Keyframe at frame 50.....start to move

New Position Keyframe at frame 100.....stop

[AMkyle]

alright i have an animation rendered that has this problem in it. Keekats jumping but he stasrt going up..=

 

heres the attackment:messed_up_jump.mov

 

 

Hope you all can help, it will be greatly appreciated!

[Rodney]

The short answer is that you've animated it that way so... A:M is following your directions.

 

Upload your project file to the forum and we'll take a look at it.

Alternately if you can upload a screen capture of the Timeline we'll be able to see better what you've got there.

 

 

i watched the video manual, the piching one, and i saw there was an encountered problem there very similar to mine. the knights backfoot started rising from the very begginning, but then all he did was he moved it down back to close where it was and then pushed the something model button i think, its two buttons to the right from whole model button down at bottom. but doing this it will still start moving from the bigginning because if he just moves the knights foot down then it will very slowly slide a bit becase he couldnt have moved the knights foot exactly on the place it was before, thats like very hard to do and would take a lot of time.

 

I'll look again at that and see what can be explored further.

I think I know which part you are referring to.

[phatso]

Concept that may prove useful: People think forward, but an animation program (A:M or any other) thinks backward. When you establish a keyframe telling A:M that the model should be in THIS position at THIS frame, the computer looks backward in time to see how to get the model there. It looks for the last time you established a position (keyframe), then makes inbetweens. If you haven't established any other keyframe, it looks all the way back to the beginning.

 

Note that not everything is keyframed every time, unless you do it deliberately. It is quite possible to keyframe some aspects of a model's position and not others - easy, in fact, you can do it by accident and probably have.

[AMkyle]

Concept that may prove useful: People think forward, but an animation program (A:M or any other) thinks backward. When you establish a keyframe telling A:M that the model should be in THIS position at THIS frame, the computer looks backward in time to see how to get the model there. It looks for the last time you established a position (keyframe), then makes inbetweens. If you haven't established any other keyframe, it looks all the way back to the beginning.

 

Note that not everything is keyframed every time, unless you do it deliberately. It is quite possible to keyframe some aspects of a model's position and not others - easy, in fact, you can do it by accident and probably have.

 

alright so with you saying that, how DO you make a keyframe at a certain frame.

[KenH]

Assuming you've checked the manual.....

 

In the chor, select the bone you want to hold.

In the timeline, go to frame 0 and select the keyframes for the bone there. Copy the keyframes by pressing Contrl+C

Go to the frame you want the bone to hold till.

Paste the keyframe by pressing Control+V.

 

You may have issues with the bone moving a little, but we'll cover that when you get the above done.

[robcat2075]

Didn't we cover this stuff back here...

 

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=260184

 

?

[phatso]

yeah, we keep covering it. everybody has trouble with this at first. I sure did.

[KenH]

I think Robert means it was the same guy back then.

[Rodney]

I think Robert means it was the same guy back then.

 

Yes. I'll give Kyle a lot of credit though.

For a 12 year old he sure is dedicated to learning all there is to know about computer animation.

I think he can be forgiven a little for forgetting a lesson or two here and there.

There is a lot to learn!

 

I'm learning too.

The questions Kyle and others are asking give me good insight into how we can tailor what we are doing online to help everyone work through TaoA:M.

For example: When TaoA:M was first released there wasn't even a forum. There was therefore no instuctions on how to upload images and such to the forum.

The Timeline and many of its enhancements weren't in the public spotlight as much either. That was largely a realm only visited by the animation cognocenti.

Hence a lot of questions about these areas arise these days.

 

Of course animating and the Timeline are going to lead to a lot of questions. Thats why we are here of course.

Perhaps we can put together a basic tutorial (like Roberts) and Sticky it in the TaoA:M forum?

 

Kyle,

I keep harping on TaoA:M for good reason.

Master those concepts and the rest of the journey is going to go a whole lot more smoothly.

Many of the questions you are asking have been asked there many times before.

 

But keep asking those questions! We need more of that here.

Understand also though that as people are taking a considerable amount of their valuable time to answer it'll be a good idea to review those responses thoroughly.

 

Thanks to everyone for taking the time to answer Kyles questions!

[KenH]

I keep harping on TaoA:M for good reason.

Master those concepts and the rest of the journey is going to go a whole lot more smoothly.

 

Can you point out the pages this sort of thing is answered on? I honestly can't find them. Things like basic animation techniques and how to work around the timeline.

[Rodney]

Ken,

Read the rest of the post you quote from.

In it I state:

 

When TaoA:M was first released there wasn't even a forum. There was therefore no instuctions on how to upload images and such to the forum.

The Timeline and many of its enhancements weren't in the public spotlight as much either. That was largely a realm only visited by the animation cognocenti.

Hence a lot of questions about these areas arise these days.

 

The reason you can't find them is because they aren't there.

 

To understand this further we would need to understand a little more of the history of Animation:Master.

Specifically how it was designed to allow animation without any Timeline at all.

[robcat2075]

I don't think you'll want to animate without the timeline for very long.

 

Kyle, try this... put your jumping animation aside for just a moment, and do the rabbit sidestepping exercise exactly as I did it in the video. It may not work for you the first time because you'll forget some button. watch the video again and try it again.

 

Getting something to stay in place isn't hard, but it's hard to get right if you aren't managing keyframes in the timeline.

[Rodney]

I don't think you'll want to animate without the timeline for very long.

 

A lot depends on what you are trying to animate of course and what level of control you find necessary.

 

Animating without the Timeline -visible- would be ideal but as far as I know its unheard of in professional circles. There is no talent or interest in it.

Who can animate without a timeline!?!?! Who would be interested in it?

 

More from the historical aspect...

Martin Hash created A:M in such a way as to hide the technical aspects of animation just below the surface so that animators wouldn't be overly concerned with the technical side of animation. They could then instead concentrate on animating their stories.

 

The timeline is always there even if you never use it/edit it directly.

For those that need to see the physical aspects of the timeline however those are there too.

But its just a mangled mess of lines and curves if we don't understand why we use it.

Somewhere the computer gurus got it wrong when they translated paper timelines to computers.

Its the Timeline that is suppose to drive the animation. Not the other way around.

 

Its generally a good idea to learn the basics before eating the horse. (and in many cases you don't even have to eat that poor horse!)

The basics (oversimplified, incomplete and in no particular order):

- Staging / Appeal (Character / Personality / Conflicts etc must keep the interest of the audience)

- Animation (Pose to Pose / Straight Ahead / Combined Method )

- Timing and Spacing (Walk Cycles are often considered the means to master this in character animation but anything on a Path works great too.)

- Ease (The illusion of Speed / Weight / Force / Resistance can be created with ease.)

- Arcs (Motion through natural Paths)

- Squash and Stretch / Exaggeration (Historically demonstrated by the Ball Bounce for simple objects and the Flour Sack for character animation)

- Anticipation (Best illustrated via things such as Bow & Arrow / Jumping / . The general concept: move in the opposite direction you want to go first)

- Clarity / Secondary Action (All elements must support the central idea)

- Follow Through / Overlapping Action / Holds (Everything moves in a particular direction until something interferes or changes its course)

 

The Timeline gives us access to planning and controlling these.

[AMkyle]

Didn't we cover this stuff back here...

 

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=260184

 

?

 

alright so im guessing this is the best way, alright then, when i have trouble with this way though, ill ask question, and about that other way copying keyframe 0, i tried that and it didnt work. i tried it on 9.13 frame, so i copied frame o and pasted on frame 9.13 but it didnt work. does it have to be on a frame like 1.00 or 2.00 or 3.00? im not sure

[robcat2075]

alright so im guessing this is the best way, alright then, when i have trouble with this way though, ill ask question, and about that other way copying keyframe 0, i tried that and it didnt work. i tried it on 9.13 frame, so i copied frame o and pasted on frame 9.13 but it didnt work. does it have to be on a frame like 1.00 or 2.00 or 3.00? im not sure

 

I honestly have no idea what you tried to do from that description. You can copy a keyframe from anywhere to anywhere. You got to have the right filters turned on. But there's no way for me to know from that description what you might have not had set right.

 

Did you do the rabbit sidestepping example exercise that's in that video? Do that before you do anything else.