KeyMate and Animate2 round trip?
Deke
Posts: 1,631
I've learned how to bake ani-blocks to keyframes so I can customize them in KeyMate. And I've learned how to create an ani-block from these frames and sort of back it back into Animate2.
So far so good. But when i then try to add more ani-blocks to that character's timeline, they don't work. Any ideas why?
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I have been doing the same thing. But I have found the only way to add more aniblocks is to make sure the timeline is baked back into an aniblock. If it is still in the timeline, it won't work. I go back and forth like that alot.
I do this by right clicking in Animate2 and using the create aniblock option. Now I think, however, that there are still keyframes in the KeyMate timeline. I wonder what would happen if I deleted those keyframes. Maybe then I could had more functioning unblocks to the timeline.
(and Grrr,,,spell check keeps changing ANI-block to Unblock…and I'm tired of trying to fix it.)
Hmmmm…tried that and it didn't work. It goes to a larger question I have posted earlier about how Timeline, Keymate, and Animate2 interact.
I'm trying to animate a character walking a few steps, stopping and looking around…then walking on. I can manage the walking with ANIblocks, but there is no aniblock for looking around and I could not find a way to use either subtracts or levels to accomplish this. So I baked the aniblock so KeyMate and then hand-keyed the looking around part. But now I can't find a way to use ANIblocks to start the character walking again.
--I tried creating aniblock from the walking and looking around frames and was successful.
--but when I add more ani-blocks they do not control the figure at all..they have no effect.
--Perhaps the keyframes back in KeyMate are confusing the software…so I deleted them…but oddly enough that just deleted all the movement. When I deleted just some of the frames…the looking around frames…I found that the ani-block i had created no longer included those movement. So apparently the Aniblock is just referring to the keyMate keyframes.
Any ideas?
set up your scene and model - do the looking around on the DS timeline - save aniBlock
load you scene - goto aniMate timeline
do the walk - stop walk - add walk ( then take this block and move it down the anjMate timeline
then put the look aniBlock before the walk
if you leave a little space between the walk stop and look - it will look better
hope this helps
Boy I'm having a heck of a time figuring out how Animate and Keymate/timeline work together. For instance
--I have my character into the scene and have applied a post…so he's standing with arms at side.
--I copy all the keyframes that comprise this pose in KeyMate and advance forward 10 frames and paste them in. So the idea is that the character will hold that position for 10 frames.
--Then I go into Animate2 and drag a star-walk aniblock to frame 10. The idea is that the character will then start this walk…hopefully automatically transitioning from the standing pose to this aniblock.
But what happened is that the character's pose is messed up….his arms are impossibly crossed. So somehow the pose I established for the first ten frames is affecting how the aniblock starts. Okay fair enough…but the really strange thins it that this pose is held through the first ten frames…so somehow the aniblock has also impacted the pose I set in KeyMate….even before the aniblock even starts.
It is a mystery.
sorry can't help you with keymate - don't have it
HI. Ive been fairly successful with all this by staying just in Animate2 until I am certain I don't need any more major movements, then bake or simply save (I save every few minutes doing animations!) then literally close Animate2, and switch to the Timeline. I rarely bake because I've found, more often than not, that it throws off my character and forces me to start from the last saved version.
In learning all this, I found that if you start every pose with the default arms-out stance (which you can get to by clicking on the parameters tab corner and hit reset figure pose (I think, I'm doing a long animation render now in Octane so I can't check the name for sure.) this resets the figure pose, but doesn't move the figure to zero space. Then when I drop in a new aniblock (ones I buy, not make) I get a cleaner pose with the figure not having his arms wrap up around his torso. So try zeroing the pose first before animation, but make sure to save as... Its nice that DS saves fast and the files are relatively small. I dump the ones I don't need later on after the full render is in After Effects or Premier.
OK, so here is my question... If the people who write these programs sell them online, I would think they, or Daz, should be responsible enough to at least provide a manual or explain some of what the process is all about. I get a little tired of the company saying they are just distributors, talk to the creator of the plugin.
Having to do this all on our own, as MANY people here have done, trial and error, it simply makes much more sense to have the creator write up some of the basic points so that the buyers, us, don't have to spend days or weeks trying to second guess why this or that works.
Right now, for example, I can't for the life of me figure out why my timeline tweaks won't stick in either Graphmate or Keymate. I have a nice set of figures walking down the hallway and everything is working well, turns, expressions, nearly all done just with Animate2- baked to timeline. Now I want to tweak it and I've tried over and over to just keep a finger from curling or adjusting some arm movement, yet it simply will not stick in Keymate or Graphmate. It does in the timeline but only the one frame, so I can't go into Keymate and smooth out the frames, I have to go in, frame by frame, and tweak everyone by guessing at the settings each time. That takes hours.
I set the key in both Keymate and Daz timeline, then move one frame forward and it just vanishes. At the very least it should stay there with the timeline but it's as if it simply can't hold that adjustment. Very frustrating! Doesn't seem to happen with the camera or other objects, maybe its just the figures, but that doesn't make much sense and it also seems sporadic, so it's hard to pin down exactly why this happens. The timeline SHOULD override every key if you set one there, and Keymate SHOULD simply lock in this key so you can fine tune it with the others. With Max, its quite simple- you set it and use it, or you delete it. If there was one thing I would like to see improved for Daz Studio it would be a fully functional Timeline where its that simple, as it should be. No 3rd party software that doesn't have manuals to back it up.
I am not sure what you mean when you say the aniBlock does not work. Could you clarify?
One thing to look out for is that an aniblock does not record the body transforms, it only records the hip transforms, so if you are moving a figure using the body transforms the aniblock won't record these and the figure will just stand still. This is also why a parented figure won't move in the aniblock. I am not sure this is your problem, just something to keep in mind.