ok… I’m learning animation, and I’ve come to the point where I don’t really know, and cannot decide, how to go with this. so, I need help from someone that is familiar with actions, nla and character animation. basicly, how to do it in blender.
here’s the idea:
so, I have made armature actions for:
“jump”, “walkcycle”, “fall down and get up”.
then I put together in nla window.
jumping sequence
walkcycle, repeated couple of times so guy moves a little bit
fall down and gets up action
back to the walkcycle action, repeated until he reaches camera
that is the idea. but how do I do it?
jumping works, but if I put the walkcycle actions in nla after the jump, he starts walking in the place where I first created the walkcycle. and he is walking in one spot.
same with falldown of course.
I created all the action in 0,0 position on the blender grid, so that’s where the guy stays. heh.
so, how could I make him actually change place (move towards camera) while going through these premade action animations?
or… should I just forget nla, and make one big action with all of these together? if so, where is nla actually used then?
Your NLA actions should be for armature deformations only, not character positioning. So when you make an action for your character falling off the table, it should look like a guy going through the limb and torso actions of falling, but remaining in place, as though floating in space. Then you keyframe the overall motion with standard object location/rotation keys.
If you include overall armature position info in your action, then you’ll experience exactly what you’re seeing - jumping changes in position when you use NLA.
but I dont understand, if I’m making walkcycle, I am in pose mode, and move ik-solver bones, and setting “loc/rot” keys to them. doesn’t this make them have a certain location?
Yeah - you’re setting a location for them. But only relative to the center of the armature. Some people create their whole animation, eg. the vertical motion of falling off a table, within the armature action, whereas the vertical motion of falling or the forward motion of walking should be keyframed onto the armature as an OBJECT, outside of pose mode. You generate movement through space of the entire character by moving and setting keyframes on the pink-selected armature. Clearer?
whereas the vertical motion of falling or the forward motion of walking should be keyframed onto the armature as an OBJECT, outside of pose mode. You generate movement through space of the entire character by moving and setting keyframes on the pink-selected armature.
An in-depth, Blender explanation of this - and some tools - is found at Meloware’s page http://www.meloware.com/blender/anim.htm
Unforunately, no one seems to have taken the trouble to update it from IKAs to armatures (yet? ) but the principles are still the same.
I’m going to take a stab at explaining this (mostly to see if I understand it). a motion, like walking, is broken up into two components. The first part is the motion of the bones relative to the root bone. This would be like trying to walk on ice while someone was holding you by the suspenders. You would look like you are walking, but you wouldn’t go anywhere.
The second part is the forward motion. if the person holding you by the suspenders pushed you forward at the right speed while you were flailing around, you would look like you are walking normally. eh?
) but the principles are still the same.