Shape Keys 2 Action 2 NLA (Solved)

EDIT - I forgot to include the IPO curve in the action

Hello Everyone,

I have done this in the past - (All Shape Keys) - but I seem to have forgotten exactly how. I have been looking at the wiki, but I cant figure out what is going wrong.

When I preview the animation, nothing happens. I have:

  1. created a shape key
  2. verified that it works correctly
  3. created an action
  4. converted the action to NLA strip

I am trying to animate the construction of a cabinet, starting with the top.
When I Alt-a in the action window, I can see the key changing values, but when I Alt-a in the 3d window, nothing happens. What am I missing/forgetting?

Attachments




Shape keys and the action window are a bit of a mess right now.

For some “techy” info see this post and the few posts just before it

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showpost.php?p=761582&postcount=146

To use the NLA with shapes, create a driven key object using say an armture or an empty (an armature is probably better) that will control the shapes. Then put the actions of the controller-driver (the driven key object into the NLA i.e. the NLA will have the action for the controllers that are driving the shapes.

Alternatively you could of course just animate the sepearte objects. I’m not quite sure why you’re using shape keys to animate a cabinet construction. If you seperated the top / bottom /left /right and just animated the objects separtely you wouldn’t need shape keys.

To use actions / NLA with “ordinary” objects (not armatures) click on the “headless man” icon in the IPO editor to make the ipo an action. Or add an armature and parent to bone the individual pieces (which I think is easier to work with).

Anyway, here’s a small example file demonstrating all three of the above techniques :

http://uploader.polorix.net//files/232/shapeKeyNLA.blend

Mike

Mike_S,

Thanks for the info! I kind of like the idea of shape keys, for me they seem convenient. They do pose problems though, so I very well may use individual objects. The downside to using shape keys for simple geometry like this are:

  1. At corner joints, you will need to have duplicate verts. So if you remove doubles, (out of habit), things will no longer work as designed.

  2. When modeling simple geometry like this, it is quick and easy to duplicate and separate verts to create mating surfaces. However, once you use shape keys, you can no longer separate verts.

I would absolutely love to be able to “Apply” shapes as you can modifiers. This would be extremely useful if you have something like a family of parts. The easiest example would be a several standard size doors or window frames. You could add the door or window, use shape keys to size it, apply the shapes, then separate outside verts to start building surrounding structure.

Thanks again for the help.

Ok, following up on my previous post, I see now that IS possible to use shape keys with actions but the “little man” has to be on. (IPO included with action … why would NOT want an ipo included with an action ???) With armatures in POSE mode, the “action ipo icon” gets turned on automatically, and I think the same behavior should happen with shape keys when a shape key IPO created.

I’m going to file a bug report on this … even it ends up on the TODO list, at least it will be recorded.

Mike

Mike_S:
Knowing Ton, it’ll end up on the todo list :wink:

This is indeed one of the very messy parts of Blender. How exactly to get it to work is always a very clumsy process. I do have plans to fix it, but there are some parts of that that still need fleshing out.

Aligorith

At the very least, if an action is created, “Include IPO” should be on/locked automatically.
(Action with non Included IPO = non-functional mode)

Why not just :

  1. Have an Action created as soon as any of the sliders are moved
    (like POSE mode)

  2. Have the "Include IPO locked on (like with Armature Pose Mode)

2a) When the “include IPO” is locked on (after a slider is moved / key set), keep the key “markers” (the dots in the action editor) beside the sliders. Why do the channels all get consolidated when “include IPO” is on ? The separate shape key channels are still there (down the right side).

I guess I don’t understand why both Action / Non action … and Action (non Included IPO … which seems to be a non-functional mode (i.e. a BUG) are all there.

I’m just looking at the GUI side of it, I have no idea what the internals are or how difficult my suggestions would be.

Mike

The one reason I’m hesitant to do anything about this at the moment, is due to a few hairy spots in the IPO system.

The greatest issue it has is figuring out where to get animation data from (i.e. which ipo-curve, located in which ipo-block, an action?, action-used as a nla strip?). Now, currently, each type of ipo-block needs to have a large wad of code copied and modified (as appropriate) so that this can happen for some of these cases.

I should note that I absolutely hate the current ‘activate the legless man in the ipo-editor header’ business. Behind the scenes, what that button does is link/unlink the current ipo-block from an actionchannel in a new action. This was added because older versions of blender (pre 2.4x) would not let you do that.

Regarding shapekeys…
Before the (partial) refactor done for 2.40, I couldn’t actually figure out how to work them. Nothing much has really changed in the internals of Blender, it’s just that the interface was made easier to work with. There are currently still too many hacks for them imo.

Aligorith

Aligorith,

What use does it serve to even have it available for a shape key ? … or for anything else for that matter? If an action is created in the action editor with Add New, why would you ever NOT want the IPO included in the action ???

It has to be enabled (which I’ve now found out) to use shape keys in the NLA editor, so why not just lock it down like with Armature Pose mode?

As for where to get IPO data from, I thought the that IPO block was the source, and that the NLA strips were just a window / filter into the underlying IPO data. ???

Mike