Keyframing Poses in Chor

[MJL]

I'm working on a pass my PTB entry. I have Nigel in this pose. I've successfully stretched out the keyframe sequence to give me a two second pause, during which I want Nigel to hold the ball steady (camera"Aim At Constrained to Ball) while in the reflection we see Nigel lean forward for a closer look, then move back to his original position. How do I get His hand and the ball to freeze in position when the rest of the body moves? Thanks

[robcat2075]

technical answer to your question: you would need to animate the arm/hand in IK so all you have to do is set the hand position once and the arm in between the hand and shoulder figures itself out on its own. Somewhere in your rig there's a FK/IK switch

 

But: It's a VERY odd look to have the hand remain MOTIONLESS while the body moves around it. It never happens in real life. It's something only a mime (beloved by all) might do.

 

Better to animate the body to do the move in that you want then keyframe the arm and hand to look like they are compensating. The little bit of error will look more natural.

 

 

Edit: (read your description again) Unless the movement only happens during that second point of view... where we never see the movement between the body and hand. In that situation I'd constrain the camera to the ball. then the ball would appear motionless even though you were actually moving the hand closer to his face. you could do that in either FK or IK

[MJL]

Edit: (read your description again) Unless the movement only happens during that second point of view... where we never see the movement between the body and hand. In that situation I'd constrain the camera to the ball. then the ball would appear motionless even though you were actually moving the hand closer to his face. you could do that in either FK or IK

 

You would only see the movement in the reflection in the ball. the camera is already "aim at" constrained to a null which is centered on the ball. The camera is also constrained to a path ready to begin a "sweeping dolly pan" which takes place after Nigel takes a closer look at the ball. Nigel holds pose form frame 0 to frame 10 Only the camera moves. Between frames 10 & 1:10 only the ball & hand are in frame. During these frames, I wish to be seen Nigel's reflection leaning in for a closer look, then moving back to his starting point, just as the sweeping dolly pan begins.

His movements will only be seen in the reflection of the ball.

 

0:00:00 Begin Pan

0:00:10 End Pan Camera still until 0:01:10

0:01:10 Begins sweeping dolly pan

[NancyGormezano]

You will have to coordinate moving the hand (forearm, bicep) closer to Nigel's head,face, whatever, along with moving his body parts.

 

Perhaps you can get away with just moving the arm/hand closer to Nigel - which is more likely to happen, rather than moving body closer to hand.

 

I am also making an assumption that the ball is constrained to the hand in some way, and the camera is set to aim at the ball, and is coordinated with the movement of the NULL of which you speak

[MJL]

Okie Dokie, I'll figure it out. thank you Robcat and Nancy for your faithful replies.

 

I shall overcome.

[robcat2075]

regrettably , it's easier to do than to describe.

[MJL]

I was going to post with a problem, then I had a thought, went back, found out the cause and fixed it. Now I'm dancin in the street like I had two scoops of raisins! It's a newbie thing.

[phatso]

Why wouldn't it work to just create a bone somewhere, and constrain the ball and hand to it (with offset)? maybe I'm just confused about IK and so on, but that's what I do.

[MJL]

I'm learning a ton on this project.

I made a backdrop and put a jpg decal on it, constrained it to the camera with Translate and Orient Like (with offsets) and got the effect I wanted. However I want it to fade out to invisible for about 60 frames then fade back in. How do I go about this? Do I use transparency in the object, the shortcut to the object or something else entirely?

 

EDIT: I got the backdrop to become transparent in the "shortcut to" but the decal itself does not become transparent, and I can't find anywhere to make the decal transparent.

[Rodney]

EDIT: I got the backdrop to become transparent in the "shortcut to" but the decal itself does not become transparent, and I can't find anywhere to make the decal transparent.

 

Every Decal Image has a transparency property.

Keep looking. Its there.

Look for the Percentage property.

[MJL]

It's interesting, when I hit the keyframe button when I made a change in the "shortcut to" transparency the object became transparent but the image did not. But when I made the transparency change and did not hit the keyframe button, the object and the decal became transparent and a keyframe was entered in the timeline below the window.

Regardless, it is now doing what I wanted it to. On to moving things around.

[MJL]

Thanks Rodney,

Is that percentage animatable? X% at 10 frames and Y% at 20 frames?

[Rodney]

Is that percentage animatable? X% at 10 frames and Y% at 20 frames?

 

Sure is! Just make sure your adjust the settings in an Action or Choreography.