I’m working with the NLA editor for the first time and I think it’s going pretty well. I’ve run into a little problem though.
After a repeating walk-cycle and another action I’d like the character to start following a path and use the stride bone to do so. However, when I set it all up it immediately starts following the path at frame 1. I moved the Path IPO up to frame 352 (where it should start), but now my character has a constant rotation offset.
Does anyone have an idea as to why this is happening?
Thanks in advance!
PS: I know walk cycles and path-following aren’t perfect for good animations, but I’d really like this to work.
EDIT: Enabled Stride Root, fixed the Parent type and made the IPO fit the action. It sort of works now, except that the character is now bouncing back and forth every frame.
Hey Olifant, hanks for your reply. It’s not working though. =/
When I try using the Constraint the character moves forward and sidewards, then after some frames jumps back to allign with the path, but then moving away from it again.
I’ve also tried Parenting, but as soon as I activate ‘Stride Path’ in the NLA editor the Stride bone acts funky and makes my character jump back and forth (already tried different axis).
I really don’t know what to try anymore. x.x
hi , is this the kind of effect you want to have?(see file)
if yes here are a few tip to get the bone to folow the path. make shore that the root of the bone is exactly in the origan(pink dot) of the curve. you can do this by selecting the root of the bone, then pres shift-s, chose “cursor to selection”. then select the curve and in the edit button panel/ curve and surface panel choose “center cursor”. and now the center of your curve is exacty in the center of the root of the bone. normaly the bone shood follow the curve.
for the exact timing and speed, you can change the pathLen for speed and the offset for the timing.
is this what you wanted to know? if not maybe enclose a file or so as example.
sorry made a mistake. the root has to be in the exact position as the center of the armature not the curve!!! sorry
Hey, thanks for the file! =) The problem I was having was not the following of the path, but activating the Stride Bone. That kept on making it act haywire. I’ll try to see if centering the root has any effect, but I solved one half by using an offset bone already. Thanks for your time though; it’s much appreciated!
I’ve used the deform modifier in the nla editor to control the direction of a character, having him follow a path, and it works good. But I haven’t found a way to start/stop at a particular frame. Once the modifier is enabled, it’s there for the whole scene. My work around was to switch the camera and switch scenes. Once scene with actions, one scene with actions and deform modifier, one scene with actions. Camera switches between scenes to hide the slight shift in the character. I liked the deform modifier because not only can it control the stride bone, but also the foot controllers so the feet follow the curve as well.
Hey Randy,
I’ve actually thought of using that as well, it seems like a really neat feature. The turning on and off would be nice though. After I finish this animation I’ll definitely experiment with NLA modifiers and IPOs (err, f-curves) a bit. Too bad they removed Stride (and Offset?) from 2.5 though. =/
Thanks for your input!
