To get BoxBot to walk from the door, around the couches and then to face the chair I used the a path, the NLA and new Modifiers. Detailed at this thread:
I have started this new thread as it is actually a seperate area I think. What I want to do is now start fresh with a new action -
Steps are? - Go to action editor, X the previous walkcycle, add new, call it sit. OK, that sounds fine. I then go to Frame 1 - Alt G and Alt R the skeleton / armature to clear any previous pose and back to classic T stance.
BUT - At Frame one Boxbot is at the door. I need the next action to start with Boxbot facing the chair, I need him to turn and sit. Do I turn off RECORD and move him to the new position? Will this upset the previous walkcycle using the Path and new modifiers? What of the Track option in the Anim Settings panel? It is currently set to -Y. This is so, as it was required in the original walkcycle where the character was facing in the -Y direction. But now - facing the seat he is more or less back to Y again.
Is it possible to have multiple actions with their own seperate paths and using their own seperate modifiers in the NLA?
Each NLA Strip has it’s own Transform Properties tab when you hit N. It only shows when a Strip is Active. In other words, if you select Sit there will be no Chan Modifier. But… if you don’t hit Mute on Walk then Walk will still be holding Sit to the CurveModifier. Once you have keyframed Sit you can move it’s Strip to (let’s say) frame 101. To keep it at the chair you click Hold on Walk (so Sit happens at the end of Walk’s Curve). Same with Turn which will be between the two.
The Track Axis shouldn’t be a consideration as there is no PathCurve for Turn or Sit.
This may take some more questions to get it into my brain
I understand what You say above … I think. ~
To clarify [ in my brain ] - Essentially if you are keying a new action [ in this case Turn ] YOU SHOULD?? Mute the existing actions [ in this case the Walkcycle ], then move the Turn action [ once it is converted to a strip in the NLA ] out to the end of the Walkcycle action strip repeats. Unmute Walkcycle.
The use of HOLD is always on the previous action so as the next action happens at the end of this previous action?
OK - so I MUTE the Walkcycle action first. What I notice is - at Frame 1 - the Armature goes back to the T stance. This is OK.
Now this is where I begin to loose it. If you see the vid above - at frame 1 - Boxbot is standing at the door, with the Walkcycle action muted he is still standing at the door but with the T Stance. BUT, I need him to be at the chair in order to pose him for the new Action called Turn [ and thereafter, Sit ].
What comes next? Move him over to the seat? If so, In what mode? Any initial Keyframe additions here? Posing/keying him for the turn / sit actions is ok, I will figure that out, but initially before posing/keying does one move boxbot over to the chair or the chair to him at the door?
You keyframe two new actions, Turn and Sit, where the Armature is at Frame 1 (usually at 0.0.0). It’s useless telling us where he is relative to the chair or the door because we don’t know where that is relative to the Center of the Scene and the Armature Object’s Object Center. Anyhow, if you unlink Walk Action, Alt-G in Pose mode will get him where he’s supposed to be and Alt-R will get rid of any Poses.
Now you keyframe a Turn. Unlink Turn, Alt-R and Alt-G and keyframe Sit.
Goto the NLA window and make Strips for each. Put Turn almost at the end of Walk and BlendOut on Walk for 10 or so frames and BlendIn 10 or so frames on Turn. Do the same for Sit; BlendOut Turn and BlendIn Sit. Unclick Mute on Walk and check all Strips don’t have Action icons on them. Alt-A.
If Turn and Sit jump back to their respective Frame1 positions then add up the number of frames they extend beyond Walk’s last frame and add that many frames to your Modifier Curve (to hold them to the end of the curve). You may, just maybe, have to add the Speed IPO back to stop them moving along the curve during Turn and Sit.
While it’s possible to mix actions in the NLA, as you’re discovering, figuring out the modes / holds mixing etc etc isn’t all that simple. You could just start another new .blend file for the next scene. If you also change the camera shot, that will make it even easier.
(You DO have multiple files saved / backups etc …right ?
Apologies for the assuming on my behalf - on both the video/dialup thing & the object centre thing.
I grabbed 3 shots of the vid - 12k each. These are start / mid / and end of anim:
As you see in the last image - this is the chair that he stands before. In pic one, the armatures centre is between his feet, just outside the door. This is where the Curve / Path begins. Here is a screen grab of the actual work area [ Frame 1 ] with Armature selected:
Thanks for the explanation above, will try out this information. Why I asked re his position at the door and then the chair across the room? I assume, to keyframe him turning and then sitting down, one would need the prop [ ie the seat ] and boxbot in position, somewhere around that last video shot above. If you set him to 0,0,0 - how would you sit him on the seat if the seat is nowhere near 0,0,0. That was my point guys!
Heres a top wireframe view - so as to see 0,0,0:
Again I should not have assumed that all are on Broadband etc, hopefully this is ok as the images are about 10k each, dialup friendly
Yes - I thought about this business of using different blend files for each part, but I am on a learning expedition about the NLA etc at the moment, so I’ll stick with it until it breaks me
Yip multiple files. What I usually do is save the mesh, then the mesh & Rig, then the mesh & rig skinned, then … blah blah, you get my proceedure …
Also - as I did with the thread about Curve/path animation and the NLA Mods, Once I have this part cracked, I will once again attempt a 1 to 17 points thing. I like to finish out threads as much as possible. Too often I have been the victim of threads that are left hanging - with - “Oh yeah, figured it now - cheers everyone” - and thats it, can you give us the benefit of your eureka moment please???. Its like leaving out the last chapter in a murder book which reveals who actually did the crime … grrr
Was away for a few days on personel stuff - Still a little stuck with this. I understand about the unlink part in the Action Editor AND the go to Pose Mode, select all the armature - Alt G and Alt R. Yes - all poses are gone.
BUT, as you can see from the stills above the walk along the path started at the door. The armatures centre seems to be here at the door. You can see this in the wire top image above [ this is Frame 1 ]. To pose the next actions [ turn, sit ] I need to have the character over by the small chair, this is where he ends up at the end of the walkcycle action. My stuck part is - whats best practise from here? Can I move the character AFTER Alt G and Alt R to this new position? Should I do it this way?
It doesn’t really matter where what is. The sensible place to keyframe both Sit and Turn are at the Armature’s Origin. Once it’s Keyframed the position of the NLA Strip will tell it when to start and end. The only caveat as I said:
If Turn and Sit jump back to their respective Frame1 positions then add up the number of frames they extend beyond Walk’s last frame and add that many frames to your Modifier Curve (to hold them to the end of the curve). You may, just maybe, have to add the Speed IPO back to stop them moving along the curve during Turn and Sit.
is that, if your Armature is constrained to the path for (let’s say) 100 frames and the Turn strip runs from 90 to 120 (and Sit runs from 110 to 130) then Turn will only be constrained to the Path for 10 frames (so they both may jump back to where they were keyframed at frame 101). I don’t think this will happen if you have Hold on Walk, but if it does then you add however many frames as you need (PathLength in F9, Curve and Surface tab) to keep them at the chair (end of the Path as you need. And to keep them stationary you’ll need to add a Speed IPO that runs at zero speed from frame 100 to the end. As I say, I don’t think any of this is necessary though.
I suppose I am getting bogged down and/or getting involved in symantics. Its just a point of understanding to clear it in my head.
Yes i realised one could do the turn/sit at frame 1 and at the path beginning where the armature origin is. BUT my point is that the two things involved in the turn / sit are the Boxbot Character and the SEAT. As you can see in the pictures above - the seat is a good bit left from the armature origin. To get a proper SIT on that seat one surely would need the seat by the character to test that the SIT action is correct. SO, I ask, is it best practice to move the seat back near the origin temporarily to create the SIT action and to test it? Obviously when doing the sit action one does not want the character to sit too low or high relative to the seat for example. To do this one actually needs the seat involved in position?
I hope my description is clear, maybe I am being stupid,
I don’t use NLA often. I dunno, maybe I’ve never needed it. Usually I hand key everything, even a long walk, but I agree that’s a hell of a work.
What I did, basically, was:
1 - make the walk cycle in one Action and use the walk cycle modifier, so the guy walks forward. =D
2 - I took this action and made another one, with the guy stopping to walk and sitting.
3 - Added a curve path and set the frame length of it so the walk is not “too” slippery.
4 - In the NLA editor, I’ve positioned the two strips one after the other.
Well… I’m not the best to explain what I just did, so there’s a link with the Blend file so you can mess 'round with it.
Thanks for your input, appreciate it. Disecting the file.
Still trying to figure the idea that when a character actually has to sit on an actual seat away from the armature origin, how does one deal with that process, as explained in my last message. In your case you created a sit motion, but not onto an actual positioned seat. I used this site by the way to grab some premade seats:
Well… in the case of the seat, the first Idea that occurs to me is to grab a copy of the seat and position it in the armature origin (or where else you made the “sit” action).
After that, you’ll have to make sure the end of the curve path is positioned at the same (or near) distance your puppet was from the seat copy. It will assure that he’ll sit properly.
Yip - thanks, thats what I thought too. I just wanted to make sure their was no other thing I was missing.
So - do you think this could make things a little cumbersome when and if a character interacts with alot of other objects as well as the chair. If one has to keep going back to armature origin AND positioning copies of the objects each time at this point to get the right interaction . This is more an interesting comment.
I know one could probably do up a load of seperate files and do an anim that way, but that has issues as well with respect to flow and object positions across all files.
Well… maybe that’s why I don’t use the NLA very often… It can make a simple thing become very complicated. =D
I think that just animating the interaction from scratch is more straightforward than trying to mix some pre-made movements. The time you spend in tweaking that for look right (I believe) doesn’t worth it. I could be very wrong in this, by that’s what I prefer to do.
You’re leaving Blender planet and entering the realm of animation esoterics. You should look on the net for stuff by Keith Lango and others. They all have different names for it like Push-thru or Blocking etc… Once you have done the main animation you run thru the frames manually with the arrow keys or the Timeline. When, for example, you get to the Sit the character will be at the chairs position as it is in the final anim. You open the IPO window, use K to select Keyframes on selected Bones and move them so the character fits the chair frame by frame. It takes a lot of tweaking; you may have to select more than one Bone and Pin them in the IPO window and Tab into edit mode on some Curves to either/or change Handle Types, change the interpolation using individual handles etc.
Basically it consists of Blocking out (dividing by blocks) parts of both the Armature and the Action; on the Armature doing (say) the upper body first and then the lower, and on the Action doing the translations along global X (distance) first then Z (height) and then working on the coordination of the flow and lastly the inflections (the subtle movements and relative rotations of hands, feet, hips, shoulders and head)
Mmm, animation esoterics or not, I reckon its what others - as they learn - will come up against too - like me. I was asking it in such a way as to what do others do in this situation? Best practice and all that. This, so that one could proceed in a manner of a well travelled path with Blender in the case of procedure and not to get bogged down because one had proceeded in a wrong direction. Better to ask first me thinks.
