charanim ?$%

Support Basics & Interface
1

hi

i’m trying a tutorial i found on “the blended planet” concerning character animations. it’s very interesting and i would love to finish it, but there are some things i seem to miss.

  1. it says that i should create a key with the “ikey” and the “avail” option. trying this gives me no result. no keys have been added. i must add, that i just created a simple armature and didn’t move it before i try to create the keys. but following the tutorial i wanted to create the “neutral” position.

  2. i want to copy the keys with the “dkey” and than move these with the “gkey” (i first select all keys with the “akey”). but no duplicates are created.

maybe someone understands what i’m doing wrong and can help me %|

2

okay, first make sure your cursor is in one of the 3D windows, then press the"I" key, you will have options of Loc, Rot, LocRot etc… then move foreward a few frames change your character’s position and repeat the above step.

when you have enough keys visible, then you can select them, using either “A” (with cursor in the IPO or Action window) or by “B” and box selecting the ones you want to duplicate.

also are you using armatures?, make sure you are in pose mode (control tab) and that the key frame window you are looking at is actually the one for armatures (push the button with the little man on it).

3
  1. From your description, it sounds as if the tutorial wants you to duplicate keys.
    You would use Shift_d to do that.
4

thanx a lot!

JarellSmith, the “shift” makes the difference :stuck_out_tongue: .

Dreamsgate :
the “avail” options seems to work only if i have inserted a key before with a different option (eg “locrot”). if i havn’t defined a key before nothing happens. is this right and by the way, what does “avail” meens. i thought it would add a key for all “available” bones and all their possible movements ->rotation,location etc.

5

uhhhh! boy do I look stupid, I have no idea about the avail option, I’ve never used it. I always just set whichever keys I need at each frame (Loc, Rot etc.)

sorry!

6

:wink: thank you anyway - maybe someone else can help?

7

i found this on the knowledgedatabase:

"To do a basic keyframe animation start with frame 1, Say perhaps you are animating an IKA based skeleton, hit A Key to select all elements. I Key = AVAIL .Go to your next frame position, adjust your models and again A key selects all, then I key = AVAIL to record all changes. The only drawback is that it creates IPOs on all axis and sometimes produces eratic results when intermixed with other Key Frame Entries on a specific axis. "

but still i’m not able to create keys with avail, without having added keys with another option before (eg rot). :frowning: a bug?

8

but still i’m not able to create keys with avail, without having added keys with another option before (eg rot). a bug?

According to the Blender v1.5 manual, page 192:

“Avail”: A position is only added to all the current ipoCurves.

So, I interpret that as meaning, if you have inserted a scale and loc key for one object and a Rot and Scale key for a second object, if you have those objects selected and press [I]nsert Key > Avail, then the existing ipoCurves will be “extended” with the current parameters for only those ipoCurves that are currently existing/'Avail’able.

This makes things easier, in that you just keep modifying the existing ipoCurves for each object.

9

yes, that makes sense. i will check this tonight, but the results i got until now fit exactly to this discription. And it makes sense in addition to the other options you can choose with “Ikey”.

thanx for all responses