merging question

[frankenspline]

Dave

yup my program takes the above described animation and shows me the character with his hands up but looking straight ahead (as I set it up originally) and then it flickers off and the character reappears twisted. This, together with what happens in fragmotion itself suggests something is wrong in the keyframing.

I can see why I was confused because when I added the paddle I moved different bones and that explains why the hand "slipped" off the paddle when it looped.

thanks again. Hope this helps.

joe

[frankenspline]

I made a new animation like the one above only this time I explicitly moved all the other bones into a fixed position.. it took awhile.. but it worked correctly in fragmotion and also in my program.

No doubt anymore that this first/last unfixed frames is my problem.

Hope it is fixable.

joe

[fragmo]

Ah,  I think I know what the problem is now.  In the keyframe editor are you showing all the key types (rotate, scale, translate) when you create the frame?  If you don't it only creates the keys that are visible,  which is a bug.  There are actually several bugs that I just found relating to not having all of them visible.  If this is the case then you can work around it by keeping the Show Rotation Keys, Show Translation Keys and Show Scaling Keys buttons checked in the toolbar.

[frankenspline]

All of the transformations are/were checked. Still can't get the first/last keframes to lock all the bones. In fact, if I try to manually lock the bones at the initial position in order to get a button, it won't allow me to do it. I have to perform a very tiny transformation on a bone to get the bone's set button to appear in the frame. That's what I did yesterday to force the bones in the first frame to freeze in the keyframe. But it is a really big job with fifty bones. First I have to select the bone, then rotate it as little as possible with the slider to get the button to show up. then I have to repeat this for every bone and then when I say make a keyframe it freezes all the bones that I manually tweaked in keyframe one.

here's an image of my settings before I begin:


I can't remember, but wasn't there another key button in the keyframe window in 7.0 that told the first frame to be a frozen copy of the normal character position? Maybe I'm dreaming but I seem to recall that I did something different when I created the first keyframe than when I created the subsequent keyframes. This may be fantasy because I can't visualize how it worked anymore.

Thanks for your efforts Dave. If you can think of any way to make this happen let me know.

joe

 

[fragmo]

if I try to manually lock the bones at the initial position in order to get a button, it won't allow me to do it

Could you elaborate on this?

wasn't there another key button in the keyframe window in 7.0 that told the first frame to be a frozen copy of the normal character position

I'm not sure what you mean here, but there is a toolbar button 2 buttons to the left of create frame that creates a frame using the initial pose.  Is that what you're looking for?

[frankenspline]

In an attempt to get ALL of the bones to lock the first frame I set the red line in the first frame and one at a time select the all the bones I will be moving in the entire animation and move them a little bit ( even though many of them are not supposed to be moved in this first frame ) in order to make sure that when I create the first keyframe it will lock the bones later used into this initial position. It's the only way I have been able to find to get bones that will be moved in later frames to know they are to end up in this initial position.

The reason why I have to do this is because otherwise the bones not moved in the first frame cannot be locked into position there. If I tweak them a little they will lock in position and not become tweeners when I move these bones in a subsequent keyframe.

Elaboration. What I mean by the button not appearing, I am referring to the dot that appears when a bone is manually moved in a frame. That dot is an indication that the bone has been moved. If this dot does not appear, making a keyframe there will not lock the current position of a bone. And the dot will not appear unless I move the bone a little with the slider. So I move some bones as imperceptibly as possible until the dot appears and then I know when I click create frame it will stay in that position.

Hope that's clear.

Although these glitches are a nuisance (for both of us) , the new ideas in this animation technique are very nice and even with the problems I can still work faster than before. The sliders are wunderbar.

joe

[Rex]

I haven't had this occur due to merging; I do think the way the KeyFrame Editor's buttons work has changed.

Here's what I do to create the 'initial pose frame':

When I click the 'Create initial pose frame', no Keyframes are recorded visually; nothing 'seems' to happen. I 'thought' they appeared when this button activated in previous versions[preV.86], no feedback on the process prompts or notifiies as to what is/has happened....  Next I have to move on to the 'Create Frame' button and activate it, THEN I can set the entire frame[initial pose] by clicking in one of the animationType Tracks below the Node's name.  Then the entire Frame is KeyFramed.  Or, I have to simply do a 'Create Frame' and do the same[Click on any Track in that Frame], which does basically the same??

I think that may be what Frankenspline is referring to??  Perhaps.

[frankenspline]

rex

now that is peculiar. I followed your instructions and the column did select (as in olden times) and all of the bones were set. My program worked like a charm even when I moved bones in the middle of the animation that had not been previously moved.

Thanks for your help Rex. So the new fragmotion actually does what I need to loop an animation.

Excellent insight.

joe