is smartskin cp information available in the graph window?

[mlogan1962]

Hi,

It is funny how I always come back to AM, even with a few years break, for the simple pleasure of animating.

Nothing beats its simplicity.

I am using version 18.0p on Win 10.

When I do a smartskin I would like to be able to track the movements of individual cp's in the graph window.

That way, if there is an odd jerky movement of a cp i could smooth it out.

But I can't see any way of bringing them up in the graph window.

Is it possible?

Kind regards

Mike Logan

[Rodney]

Hi Mike,

I won't be of much help here as but the short answer is 'Yes'.

There is some voodoo magic we have to do to make sure we can see the CPs in order to select them and I think it might be best to create a Pose in order to activate things appropriately.

Basically we can edit/animate/monitor any CP that is part of a Relationship and one of the easiest ways I know to create that Relationship is via a Pose.

 

Regarding the voodoo settings...

Make sure you have 'Show Advanced Properties' and 'Show Property Triangle' checked on the Global settings tab under Tools/Options.

This will allow you to drill down to the Spline and CP level in the Channel Editor and Timeline views.

 

A few other useful things will be to toggle on the 'Show Manipulator Properties' icon so that when we select a CP the CP number will display easily for us to use.

The second thing here then might be to use a Filter Search with that CP number as the text to find so that it can easily be found (as the listing of CPs likely wont be sorted numerically... it is sorted by splines assignment.

A third thing then might be to Pin the CP in your Timeline so that when you select something else it will stay there in the timeline for you to view.

You can forego using the Timeline if you use the PWS Channel Editor.

 

Of course, all of this will be clear as mud so please feel free to ask questions and I'll try to be more specific.

 

And a final caveat...!

There may be an easier way to do this via Smartskin but it's been so long since I've used smartskin that I need to brush up on that myself!

 

Bottom line: Yes, it should be possible.

[mlogan1962]

Hi Rodney,

Thanks for your help.

I have no problem seeing the information in the graph editor if I animate a cp in muscle mode for example.

But once I get into smartskin I can't see any graph information.

I have attached a screenshot.

 

[mlogan1962]

Also, I would like to change the default smartskin interpolation from spline to linear.

Is there a way to do this?

All help is most appreciated.

regards

Mike

[robcat2075]

I'm afraid there is no graph editing for the interpolation between smartskin keys. I believe the reason is that there is no linear time relationship between them, they are related to each other by the orientation of a bone and the bone can move among any of three axi rather than one time dimension.

 

We would need a 3 or 4 dimensional graph that could show the XYZ of a CP for each XYZ axis that the bone can move on.

Also, regrettably, there is no linear interpolation between smartskin keys that I am aware of.


My typical strategy for smooth smartskins is to sculpt the shape for the bone's biggest deflection angle first. Then if more intervention is needed in the result between that angle and zero, I will add a key at the half way point or maybe at thirds.

 

So I might make keys at 0, 90, 45

 

or 0, 90, 60, 30

 

but I wouldn't do 0, 10, 75, 90

 

Keys that occur at regularly spaced angles seem to interpolate best.

[mlogan1962]

Thanks Rob,

I thought maybe there would be a graph of the cp xyz position as it is driven by the bone.

I have been doing quite a bit of research on the best way to use the smartskin for sleeve folds.

Unfortunately the spline interpolation causes the to and fro motion of the points that defeats the purpose of the smartskin feature.

Being able to choose linear interpolation would certainly be of benefit.

I did have a look in the project file on a text editor to try and see if there was some sort of reference to the interpolation method for the smartskin.

Since I didn't write AM it was a pretty lame, sad and pointless 10 minutes.

regards

Mike

[mlogan1962]

Rob,

I did just have a look at some of your cloth tests.

How hard was it to achieve?

regards

Mike

[robcat2075]

I know that SS has been used successfully for imitating cloth folds in the past, so I know it can be done. We'd need to ponder a specific case to know more.

 

I'm pressed for time right now, but my brief answer on "cloth" is that it can work well. It has many parameters that need to be chosen carefully. The defaults are really just there to stop beginners from trying to do it with everything set to zero.

Again, a specific case is easier to talk about and give recs on.