Importing Multiple Animations\Copying\Rotations

Support Animation and Rigging
1

I really don’t have any animation experience, just a forewarning.

Basically, I have these 9 different animations that represent 9 different aiming directions and are just a single frame long. My question is, how would one go about importing each of these animations to create one single animation? It would go from frames 0-8, 1 frame of animation per direction.

My second question involves how to copy rotations (and location?) from one animation and paste them in another. Basically, the aiming animations are fine, but the arms are completely unaffected, and so I have this idle animation which has the arms\hands in the right place for the corresponding weapon that the player would hold.

Now just one more thing, in the aiming animations, the root bone is rotated 90 degrees in the wrong direction on the Z axis, meaning the player is facing the wrong direction. I know I can do Alt+R to clear the rotation, but I only want to clear the rotation on the Z axis, as I have no idea if it’s rotated on the X or Y axis in each of the aiming directions. How do I clear the rotation on just the Z axis? Not only that, but the idle animation is rotated 90 degrees in the wrong direction as well, but it has like 60 frames of animation to it. How do I clear the rotation of the root bone on the Z axis for all frames?

Any help is greatly appreciated. Animation is just a little bit beyond me at this point in time. Thank you in advance!

2

The VSE could be used to do it. Shoot one-frame files, then use VSE to import these as film strips to make (say) a 9-frame animation.

Make each animation a separate scene, say, all of them linked to one otherwise-unused base scene in which everything is stored. (Each scene can have different output-file names, directories, etc.) Now you have only one source from which to change everything. (A final Scene can be used to hold the stitch-together VSE.)

Use Actions and the NLA Editor heavily.

Use the “N” key to look at the Numbers pane, where you will find things like rotations, expressed as numbers. It might also be on the Object Data panes.

You might have to edit the animation after doing this, but the Curves editor should get the job done, sliding the entire Z-curve upward or downward to its correct range of output-values.

Be careful that you’ll need to “fix 'em all,” not just one. Sux to have made a mistake like that early-on, but it happens, and you’ll have to really clean it up so that the data is truly right.