Seperate animations
 

i have a character on trax (arms and legs in the same clip) and hes running, but i want to animate his arm as an extra to his animated arm in the trax clip, but i dont want it as another clip, just keys in the graph editor, how do i do this? cos if the arms already in a clip, then when i try to key it again the arm goes totally weird when you play back the bit the clips are playing in

I'm afraid I don't use the trax editor all that much. Anyone else have ideas? Only thing I can suggest is good 'ole F1 help. :P

F1s evil in a situation like this, doesnt help much at all :(
im just scared i havent explained my problem clearly enough :(

is this a hard one? :(

i read something that you can use clips relative to the others in trax. so maybe you need to create the keys relative (thus putting the caracter exactly in origin and key the movement from origin that needs be added to the clip. that might help. or maybe there is a option to use the clip completely relative to your keyed things in scene.

If I remeber right, (I've only ever used the trax once for animation) you can set keys on a trax clip its just a lot of extra work. When you set keys on a trax clip the keys works but after the time slider passes the last key you set you will get a jump as the Trax clip will take over again.

You would have to key all the individual postions you want in your arms to take through the whole trax clip. Thats should stop it from going weird.


There might be an other way I'm just not familiar with the traxs edtior.


Kurt

yeah i did thinkin about rekeying all the arm movements again, but i thought itd take quite a long time so maybe theres a quicker way to solve this?

not sure if i totally understand what your getting at, but couldnt you bake out the clip, get the legs with their motion back into a new clip, then make a sub character for the arms retaining the existing animation and make a new clip based on that? actually theres gotta be an easier way than that... I'll look into it.
as I read it you want to separate out the arms from the clip but retain the animation so you can build on it?

thats exactly what i want kal :) the arms in the clip i want them to stay the same, but i ALSO want to animate the arms (like fine tune some bits, add totally new bits at the end of the enitre animation etc) without the animation in the slips messing up (like it does)

what does baking mean?

re seperate animations
 

Hi Nem,

check out this link (from anim forum at SM)

http://forum.simplymaya.com/showthre...&threadid=1909

Get back to me on this!!!!!!!!


re Jim

Hi nem,

Check out these two links for animation theory/techniques. These will give you an overview of some approaches to animating. Remember to keep it simple yet expressive.

http://www.keithlango.com/

http://www.comet-cartoons.com/toons/3ddocs/animprocess/

Maybe send me the file (Zipped/Rar) and I' have a look.

re Jim

nice long reads there :) yeah i understand all that, so thats the theory side of it i have down, but now, its simply a case of overcoming the tecnical side of animation, which is weird for me because its usually the other way around!
i thought id check its ok with you cos even zipped up and rarred its pretty big, 2mb i think? not sure, im on 56k, so i didnt wanna send it unless you were ok with it

Hi Nem,

Yes, please send it to me, but,

please delete all textures, etc... to make the file size smaller. See if you can somehow compact the scene into its basic elements, eg. skeleton, geometry and animation, no fur or shaders, lights, etc.. as I too have 56k internet.

But yes I would be happy to look at it for you my friend.

by the way, my coastal trip was great. Went surfing, snorkling, saw some humpback wales leaping out of the water, etc....work paid for all of this too.......ha ha ha

re Jim

dang man, its times like this i wish i had a job! glad u had fun :)

(files in 2 rar'ed and zipped up parts)

what my problem is is in trax and keys
in the trax you can see the theres a clip which controls the whole of the
character (arms and feet)
but tahts just the base of my animation, id like to add more ontop of it
without using clips cos its not something i want to reuse
if you grab the selection handles for the feet and set keys whenever in
time, it works fine, but if you grab the locators for the hands and set keys
for them, just play back the animation, itll mess up the arms where you have clips set

i dont understand why and i really need a workaround without animating the
arms from the start again (not enough time, not very efficient either)