SOLVED Crazy Keyframe extrapolation

Granville

I am using DAZ studio Pro 4.0.3.47

I have a rocket set on the launch pad.
Solved with MCasual's setinterpolation script

Thanks everyone for all the help!

The problem is that when I place 2 and only 2 key frames to get the rocket to take off it dips into the ground ( the opposite direction of the key frame) It looks like it is extrapolating the movement from point X to Z via A.

How can I fix this so that the rocket moves from point X to Z via Y?

In a related question, how do you set up a hold keyframe? When I have a keyframe at 0 and frame 130 with identical values for translation and rotation, but the rocket still moves. This is not the way key frames work in After effects. Also how can I predict in what random direction an object will go from point X to X when the thing should be stationary?

Help! The scene looks great with awesome shaders and uberenvironment light. I hope that I won't have to do the project directly in after effects. I love daz studio, but am finding the animation frustrating.

Granville

The only solution that I can find is to manually keyframe about 100 frames to stay stable. This takes a while and doesn't make for flexible animation.

bigh

what I do is make key frame at 1 - goto frame ( x) move model up , make key frame - so thats two keys
ran it - works fine

Granville

That's what I did too, but the model moved in the opposite direction in between. I can't determine why.

Dave Savage

The only possible thing that it could be is an unwanted keyframe. Bryce does something similar sometimes.
Is the rocket the only thing in the scene which has keyframes added?
Because if there are other keyframed items anywhere in your animation and you had the rocket selected (by accident) when you were setting the other keyframes, it will have made a keyframe for the rocket that doesn't show up in the rocket's keyframe channel and yet still alters the movement path of the rocket.

Please know I'm working blind here as I don't use Daz myself but I believe the basic principles are the same.
Is there a way to turn on "paths" so you can see what line your rocket should travel? (as there is in Bryce).

The way to find the extraneous keyframe is to "select all" and run the whole timeline using the 'next keyframe' button in the player controller.
This will jump your animation forward to each and every keyframe you have set. Then you need to check all the parameters set until you find the one that shouldn't be there.

Hope this helps. :)

bigh

what he said - and you could delete all keys and start over

Dave Savage

bigh said:

what he said - and you could delete all keys and start over

If you decide to delete all keyframes, do a 'save as' first so you still have a copy you can go back to if you need to.

cridgit

Redacted

Ivy

I have had this same problem when i try to animate a dragon taking off from the ground,.
what I found to solve this issue is.
if you are using the Animate2 or animate plus...

in the animate plus folder option there are anti-blocks you can use for object movements, that move objects forward,backwards, horizontal and vertical
select the aniblock direction you need in the time line for your rocket.
you can move the aniblock along the timeline to the location for when you need the rocket to take off vertically. so until the timeline scrubber hits the aniblock the rocket stays put.

I think if you try that it will be the easiest way to go.
I hope that helps

Granville

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I plan to use them all since I am working on several video projects right now. I really appreciate all your help. I probably need to learn how to use animate2. I will watch the videos again on the Go Figure site. Any other suggestions for go tutorials on Animate2 or the timeline? I know I am crazy for animating in DS4, but I really do love that program as well as the quality of images I get.

CleverApe

The strange movements between keyframes seem to be something that Daz has never bothered to solve in any of it's versions. To get around it I've been using a script from here:
https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts/setinterpolation-for-ds2-3

It works very well. Basically I have it set to Linear, covering the spread of frames where the problem happens. Sadly there are only scripts for DS2 & DS3 - there doesn't seem to be a similar script for DS4. I don't know if it's possible to open DS4 scenes in DS3 - if you can, then perhaps it's worth a try.

One other thing that can help stop unwanted drifting: if you have a keyframe at say frame 200, and all of the positions between 0 and 200 are suposed to be identical, make sure there are no keyframes between 0 and 199 inclusive. The model should remain rock solid virtually all the way to frame 200.

Hope that helps.

Granville

Thanks CleverApe. I should have guessed that mCasual had a script for this. I will try it out. It's really too bad that DAZ studio doesn't have really keyframes that you can edit, move around and see the values of.

mario.cicalese2_d6b65131db

Another workaround is this: (Supposing 0-100 keyframes, with the object starting moving at frame 10)

1) On Keyframe 0, select your object then go to the tab PARAMETERS: on the extreme upper right menu' of it select MEMORIZE->SELECTED ITEM, then RESTORE->SELECTED ITEM.
2) Go on Keyframe 1 and select again RESTORE->SELECTED ITEM.
3) Go on Keyframe 9 and select again RESTORE->SELECTED ITEM.
4) Select again RESTORE->SELECTED ITEM for Keyframe 10 too.
5) Go on Keyframe 99, move your object in the new position, and again select first MEMORIZE->SELECTED ITEM and then RESTORE->SELECTED ITEM.
6) Go on KeyFrame 100 and select again RESTORE->SELECTED ITEM.

As you can see, we duplicated the start frame and the end frame every time: this will give you a linear movement of it and no overshootings.
(...but you will loose smooth movements too:( )

Granville

After further study. I became clear that adding the a third key frame was what caused the animation to swing into the ground. Mcasual's script works great. All I had to do was change the interpolation to linear to get a rocket launch. This was as simple as one click.

mCasual

setInterpolation like most of the scripts marked as "for DS3" on my site should work with DS4 DS4.5

i should finish reviewing them and making them related to DS4 compatibility

for DS3 there was my plugin named SceneGraf ( which i still use a lot ) which lets you view the animation curves

for short animation ranges, there's my mcjCycleFilter script
https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts/mcjcyclefilter
, which is compatible wuth DS4 (i'm almost certain) and lets you view the animation curves,
tweak them a bit, or apply functions, like "ramp/sawtooth" for instance

https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts/mcjcyclefilter

here you can see a 2-keyframe curve in red for a figure's "Bend" channel
and in green, what it would become with a synthesized 'sawtooth'

oops i just saw after posting this that you did end up using setInterpolation :)

note that it's possible that setInterpolation's less used "TCB" and "Hermite" buttons are interchanged