Continue animate character after he finished follow path?

Hi. I asked this question in previous thread but maybe it will be left unnoticeable since that thread has another main question.

So. HOW CAN I continue animate character after he finished following path constrain? So i stopped him moving completely by keyframing offset value of follow path constrain and adjusting repeat option in NLA editor. And now i want my character to do something else other than walking… to grab something for example.

Do i have to create another action? Because i found if i have walk action which consist of 33 frames (and its repeated 6 times in playback settings of NLA editor so alltogether its 195 frames) than if i want to put another keyframe at frame 196 ( where my character will grab something) it will mess up whole animation.

So my character stopped walking and needs to do something else other than walk at frame 196. How can i do that if it still have path constrain and repeated action in NLA?

1 Like

Looks like its not too many people here on blenderartist who knows good NLA editor so i had to look for the tutorials and seems like found answer on my question here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDOFg2spySg

So yes. actually what i need to do is to create another action and name it differently, than make keyframes inside of that action. and than to go to NLA editor and press ADD - ADD ACTION STRIP - select the name of my new action and drag that action and put it straight after my walk cycle action. And now it seems ok. Will learn more about NLA editor as i go further in the timeline with my animation and maybe another questions will come up…

So your model moves along a curve using a Follow Path constraint. Then you want it to do something else. If what I have said is correct, the simple answer is to keyframe the influence of the Follow Path to 1 at the start of the path movement, also keyframe it to 1 at the end of the path movement then on the next frame keyframe it to 0 and Hey Presto! the follow path constraint is no longer active. To keyframe the influence of a constraint RMB Click the influence value and chose “Insert Keyframe”. the same applies to most, if not all text boxes in Blender.

It therefore follows of course that you might like to have your character do some walking or such like, then follow another curve, just add another follow path constraint making sure the influence is keyframed to 0 at frame 1 and also at 0 on the frame before you want it to take effect, then keyframe it to 1 and so on. If you keyframe the constraints to “cross over” over a period of say 30 frames, so one constraint goes from 0 to 1 and the other goes from 1 to 0, the character will be “passed” from one curve to the next.

Cheers, Clock.

PS.

Looks like its not too many people here on blenderartist who knows good NLA editor
Getting a bit stroppy with us for not answering a question immediately is not a good idea, we all have many things to do as well as work for free on this forum…

clockmender

Thanks. Very useful method. Indeed, I am going to use two follow path cinstraints so I will try what you advised despite ( if you noticed in my second comment above I already found one solution - it’s creating another action and combining it with another’s in NLA editor, but I think your advise is maybe even easier.