time node
 

Hi everyone.
I need to slow down particle motion for an animation, but I don't know how to achieve that effect. I found a thread on creative cow's forum about slowing down hair animation, but at a certain point it says that the time node must be duped with defaul parameters. How can I duplicate the time node (or create a new one)?
Thanks in advance.

Hello hi2all, welcome to SM:)

The best/easiest way I've found to slow down/speed up any dynamic simulation, is to bake the sim, then make it a clip in the Trax editor so you can slow it down, or speed it up easily from there by stretching/shortening the layer/clip.
You can even do complex "bullet-time" effects easily using the Trax Editor as well:)

So:

1. Select your emitter.
2. Go to EDIT > KEYS > Bake Simulation
-Make sure your time is set correct here.
-For example, you can bake the whole timeline, or even just a small part of it, etc.
3. Once your simulation/keys are baked, select them in the Graph Editor.
4. Then go to the Trax Editor (found in the Animation editors flyout)
5. Then, with your keys selected, click on the left-most icon to create a "Clip" out of your whole particle simulation.

Then its all a matter of reading the Trax Editor help to learn what you can do with clips as far as time stretching or shortening goes:)

Good luck!

Your method works perfectly, thanks for your help. :bow:
Anyway I'm still curious about how the method described in creative cow's thread works. I also have found a similar suggestion in another cgtalk thread.

Well, what they are talking about is going into the "Hypergraph" and detatching/editing the time node in the hypergraph node-based view.

So if you select your emitter, and open the Hypergraph-Connections, you will see a TIME node to the left of the flow for your selected item.

This is the global frame time node. It manages the flow of time (in frames) during an animation.

There is one time node per graph (selected objects) and the graph gets all of its time information from its time node.

I'm not a big fan if this technique, as you do not have the tactile feel for visually stretching, or shortening your time via the Trax tool, but some people find it usefull for certain situations where Global time is not a factor in thier overall animation:)

I see.
Well, even if I understood the concept, I was wondering how is it possible to duplicate or to create a time node. The duplicate command doesn't work (I got an error message that says it isn't an object), and when I try to edit it, maya says it's a read only node.
Anyway, once again thanks for your help.

Honestly, I would have to check the help regarding this as well, as I've never messed with the Time nodes.

I've just never had a need to as the Trax Editor is much more user friendly in my opinion, than messing with the Time node itself.

Sorry I couldn't help you more, but maybe there is someone that can chime-in that has messed with the Time node itself successfully and can lead you in the direction you want to go:)

creatNode time;