I retargeted my action from a motion capture file using the Dopesheet->Action Editor->Browse Action to be linked.
It is successful.
Now it is time to offset the animation.
But everytime I offset the whole animation of a particular bone using the curve editor, the original bone whose property I changed in the copied bone ALSO get affected by the change, gosh stop xxxxxxxx with the original mocap data Blender, leave it alone !
How do I make unique the targeted/copied mocap without it affected the original mocap data ?
And if that cannot be answered, how do you “layer” animation then ?
Meaning keeping the original data intact, and meerly add an offset to the whole thing.
PLEASE don’t tell me to go to the curve editor and offset the curve it DOESN’T WORK because it affects the original data in which it is copied from, I am serious, is there an OFFICIAL WAY to layer animation in Blender, not some curve editor do-hicky bullshit.
Go to action editor. Hit the plus sign between the F and the X. You now have an identical copied layer of your action. You can edit this without changing the original action since it is a new action with all the original keyframes copied. You can change this until your heart is content without impacting the original. You can also add additional key frames, edit what you have, etc. I use this a lot when I animate. The original is there for you. You can also hit it again to try out new keyframes on top of the one you have. You can always return to the others that way. Be sure to hit F to keep it.
You can if you want add offsets in the NLA editor. Create a new independent action (press X then New, no copied keyframes) and then add the action to the existing one in the NLA. It’s in the blend. But watch the quaternions, they don’t add as quaternions, they add as linear math.
You can also use Delta Transforms to offset the entire armature if that is what you mean by offset. I’m not sure what offset means in your circumstances since I can’t see what you want.
If you are just tweaking, make friends with the graph editor. It will forgive you and cooperate on your new action just fine. It just wants a little understanding. It really loves you.
I LOVE LOVE LOVE your respond stilltrying, check on the plugin suggested by zanzio, this is the “animation layer” that people from softimage/maya/3DS Max’s Cat motion layer/etc…has been waiting for !
There is one issue with it though, I am using it right now myself with success but there is no way to “collapse” the animation layers, Blender’s built in baking will NOT work, I tried it, it will scale/destroy the resulting armature in weird ways.
I don’t really animate, and I haven’t used this addon myself, but supposedly there were limitations to it. It just simulates animation layers. Maybe this is why you can’t merge the layer with action.
Ton keeps throwing around the term “animation 2020” (he mentions this on this page), so they’ll probably revisit blender’s animation system within the next couple of years.
@anon62435837
The reason Bake doesn’t work, is because it’s only designed to insert keyframes for the Replace blend mode (like blender does everywhere else).
It’s actually a python script, which I mimicked while rewriting my custom additive baker from scratch. My new baker:
performs like the default baker
(optionally) can keep keyframes from the animation (does not insert keyframe on EVERY frame)
and most importantly can correctly bake to the additive blend modes
@stilltrying@zanzio
I made videos and ablendernation post a month prior to this thread.
Is there something inefficient or unclear about my addon, or did you both just never hear about it?
Whichever is the case, would you have suggestions for improvement/exposure?
I make lots of addons for my personal usage but I REALLY want people to use this addon.
This in particular because I ultimately want a snowball effect that culminates into official internal support for additive animation layers. (instead of my addon hacks)
Because when people talk about animation layers in Blender, the most they talk about is 1) stashed backup storage, 2) game engine, 3) NLA strips using Replace/Override.
The people that ask about layers often don’t elaborate on what they’re actually asking, which is additive layers.
I would hope that my addon demonstrates that with relatively very few changes to keyframe creation, Blender could already use additive layers, without needing to do a complicated rewrite or adding new systems that are backwards incompatible.
Note: The plans for 2.81 animation layers was after I already made this, and that’s still a while away.
Hold on to your horses, I love that fact that you say you make a lot of plugins but what you really want is for people to use it.
I have a small YouTube channel [only 7,280 subscribers] and recently have started to dive BALLS DEEP into all things blender, can I get in contact with you ?
Maybe setup interviews once a month with you and talk about your plugins and how to use them through my style of no nonsense straight to the fucking point tutorial styles.
If you like these style of teaching:
Maybe please try to get in contact with me. and also the animation for the camera motion tracking was done using “additive_keyer_11.py” created by artellblender, is that your alternate nick ? or Someone else ? That is a really good plugin because it JUST WORKS. but unfortunately baking the resulting animation from it is a no show.
I could not get it to bake properly so I have to let the layers be [multiple layers], you will have to walk me through how to use your baker [IF it works with additive_keyer_11.py that is] next time so that I can TEACH it to the world and save them from having to watch someone else make a 45 minutes tutorial out of pressing a few buttons.
No no no, I think you misunderstood what I was saying.
Zanzio posted a link to “Additive Keyer” addon, where you click a button to insert a keyframe.
The developer of that addon is not me.
You said you had a problem with BAKING the animation. I posted a link to “MY” Baker, which looks like this:
The function of the Default Bake that you used, and the Additive Keyer addon, are two separate things.
I then told them about MY Additive Layers addon. Which for all intent and purposes, achieves the same goal as Additive Keyer but you don’t have to specify any actions, or click the button to insert the keyframe.
It simply works with Blenders regular keyframe insertion.
My baker is essentially a working replacement for the Bake option you normally have.
Our addons don’t change anything about how Blender actually works. You use our addons when you want to create keyframes, then you can simply disable/remove them and the animation will still work correctly.
Thanks for the clarification, I will probably be using additive_keyer_11.py because it works and once something works, I am keeping it.
I will try your baker next time.
Do you have a separate file for JUST your baker ? because I don’t want it to clash/confuse additive_keyer_11.py GUI where I don’t know which is which.
And since this is your baker, can you make it look less like the Blender’s default ? [The default is confusing as hell, I just want to click bake and flattern EVERYTHING, there are six checkboxes I don’t know what is Visual keying, and why is overwrite current action even a question ? I ALREADY am ready to bake it what a terribly unintutive unnecessarily complicated GUI It’s like asking “Hey you want to start walking ? You want to over-write your current standing position ?” what a stupid senseless nonsensical question.]
It’s call bake EVERYTHING, why can’t it be just one button that just freaking works !
Bake EVERYTHING !
Bake everything into one layer, all position [including root position], rotation, scale, EVERYTHING, why can’t it be just ONE button that just works ?!
My additive layers can be enabled/disabled with a button.
It wouldn’t conflict with additve_keyer, just with it you wouldn’t need to use that addon.
I implore you to give my additive addon a try.
A quick test to see how fast it works. It’s designed to run continuously without you ever having to think about it, as well as be disabled whenever you want, to see what happens with it disabled.
And finally if for whatever reason, you simply want it completely disabled and hidden from the UI, I include options in the user prefs.
I also make my addons modular, meaning they’re inside a single addon collection in a folder but you can always either remove an addon from the folder, to either get ONE of the addons, or simply erase one from the collective.
about how it and the default baker looks...
Yes, I can change how the addon looks.
That’s an optional manual process. I was going to alter the look, but only for my extra items, and then I found out that I didn’t have to setup the menu myself at all (just like the default baker doesn’t).
There are valid reasons for the items available, mostly being that, removing the options would require several separate operators to achieve the same desired results: ....
Only Selected:
Self explanatory. Bake everything (hidden or otherwise), or limit how much data is getting baked.
Visual Keying:
If you have a constraint on an object, Visual Keying will key exactly how the object appears.
Without Visual Keying, if you remove the constraint, the object will go back to what it looks like without the constraint
Clear Parents:
I never use this, but this is similar to Visual Keying + Clear Constraints, but only for objects.
if you remove a parent before/after baking, the object will be offsetted. This lets you remove the parent, and keep the visual changes that the parent gave the object.
Overwrite Current Action:
I could try explaining this but if you can’t find a situation where you would want to keep the current action’s keyframes and also have an action with the animation baked, then explaining it in a way that would sound of any use to you would be time consuming and difficult…best example I can think of is, take an NLA strip, press Y (to split it in two), then bake over only the second half.
Bake Data: Pose/Object:
This is the only item that could potentially be removed, but I don’t plan to do so.
The reason this exists, is because the bake doesn’t consider whether or not the object is a rig or in Pose mode, it simply bakes Object transforms if you select Object, and Pose Bone transforms if you select Bone.
If someone animated their rig in object mode, this would let them bake that and the bones in one sweep, instead of having to perform a bake separately for each mode. Though it’s recommended to never animate a rig in object mode.
This is also the case for the Extra items in my menu.
However, the only reason the menu pops up is because we told it to.
I can explain to you how to manually design the panel if you want.
I have very little intent to make a custom menu, and if I do, I have 0 intention of removing any of the already available items except "maybe" Pose/Object.
You could do it yourself for mine, as well as the default baker.
You could also change the default values in the menu, and have it run instantly after you click it (never showing the menu).
You have to use a little python to do either one. Here's a snippet of the code I was using to mimick the Default window, before I found out I could let it setup automatically...
I went to make a screenshot to show how far apart the addons are, and found out additive_keyer only works in Pose mode. Inversely, the panel with the bake button only shows in Object mode.
I use a custom hotkey menu for bake and others, so I didn’t know that but the button still appears in the Object/Pose >> Animation menu(like the default baker)
My current version is set in the Info Header but the one in the main post with the videos, is in the NLA editor.
When enabled, it runs automatically in the background. The placement and icon of the button are arbitrary to me, and is a quick fix if you wanted to change them. (line #258 if you wanted to look into doing it yourself).
