Baked aniBlock keyframes everywhere
tubbesing
Posts: 48
When I Create aniBlock From Studio Keyframes, I get an aniBlock that displays the modified keyframes in red (say, frames 1, 12, and 24). But if I bake that aniBlock back to Studio keyframes, I get a keyframe on every frame, not just frames 1, 12, and 24. The same is true of 3rd-party aniBlocks that I bake to keframes. Is there any way to bake/extract just the modified keyframes from the aniBlock? Timelines are complex enough without every frame being a keyframe.
Thanks.
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I don't believe that there is.
I think that the reason behind that is to ensure that What you See in aniMate (or what is portrayed in a BVH, for another example) is what you Get in the timeline, regardless of keyframe interpolation.
One key per frame is the most accurate way to ensure that.
So, once in aniMate, if we double-click the aniBlock we're in Keyframe Mode.
In Keyframe Mode, our Base Level holds all of the keyframes within the block. We can make edits to the animation poses using levels (see drop-down in image) anywhere within the block.
In the image, just to the right of the highlighted "Lvl 1" there are three Key icons. The one in the middle will zero our changes from the original animation at the playhead - allowing us to ease in and out of changes if we wish. If we want the changes to persist through the entire block, just don't use the Zero Key and the changes hold true.
The key on the Left (hidden in the image) "+" adds a key to the changes we've made in this level. This will hold our changes at the playhead - useful for holding the changes longer before Zeroing.
The key on the right "-" will delete the key under the playhead for this Level.
Helpful info, as usual, Dartanbeck. I also enjoyed your talk in the Saturday Zoom meeting. Thanks.
Oh Cool! Thanks!
One day I will rehash this however, there was one time where I tried the expected "bake to Timeline" and for whatever reason it like, took forever [seemingly] and it wouldn't animate in preview. But it rendered out just fine. So fresh instance of D/S, lined up the same aniblocks - did NOT "bake to Timeline" -- just switched over to the Timeline - it was already there, rendered out fine.
Yikes! Makes my "keyframe every frame" complaint sound like no problem at all. Thanks for the info, and let us know if you ever figure out what happened.
Here's what that was all about:
When we Bake to Daz Studio's Timeline, aniMate automatically turns the aniMate animation tracks to Disabled - during which time the little dot next to the figure's track changes from a dot to an Open Eye icon - meaning that we click the Eye to re-enable the track.
When a track is disabled, it cannot show aniBlock previews, but enabling it again can also end up removing any keys in may have placed in DS's Timeline - but will not remove any special keyframes we've added ourselves - like those we create in my Dynamic Character Animation course.
When it seems like it takes forever, it's often a fairly long animation, or there are several characters being baked. this is normal, and really doesn't take all that long. In fact, I usually make sure to have the scrubber anywhere along the track except at the very end, so I can clearly see when the track has completed its baking process, because it always ends up placing the scrubber at the end.
Nope. "Forever" basically means program froze. And for the short 1 figure with clothes and hair [hair not doing anything] animation that did eventually claim to bake over, there was definitely no scrubbing it period. Frozen scene. However I was pleasantly surprized to see that it did render out stills correctly. Have a few projects on the go atm, this one is not forgotten ;-)
fwiw, the interaction between the animate2 timeline and DAZ Studio timeline changed kind of radically somewhere around 4.11, I recall being able to setup aniblocks in animate and make tweaks in concert with that timeline on the main DS timeline and have them co-exist, save w a scene (and restore), without having to do the bake-to-timeline step. Somewhere in 4.12 I believe that 'feature' changed. Perhaps both behaviors being described above (Catherine and Dart) are accurate to the versions being used?
btw, i'm not making a judgement as to whether that original behavior was better, but i did get accustomed to that and missed it.
to the original post, I've forever wished for exactly that - a 'bake only real aniblock keyframes to DS timeline' check box or similar - and I would pay for a script that does this.
regardless the available workarounds, being able to go back and forth between the DS and Animate2 timelines, *preserving* only the active keyframes, would be useful. The litmus test would be to be able to go back and forth multiple times with no changes (at all) to the animation. Not possible yet.
if we're wishing here, having animate2 updated to include the various TCB interpolations internally would be grand, as well as behaving such that 0, 360, 720, (n + (X * 360)) degrees are not the same. In animation (actions over *time*), they are not the same in spite of what the math libraries being used want us to think (the result is functionally equivalent, so don't worry about it!)...
--ms
I think that a lot of that is due to the fact that Daz Studio's timeline doesn't have the cubic interpolation made available as a user-facing tweener. So the best way to make aniBlock keys work with Constant, Linear and/or TCB is to calculate a key for every frame - to sort out the actual joint adjustment at every given time - which would not at all be equal any other way.
But that's just a hunch.
BTW, Great to see you mindsong! Hope all has been Wonderful in your world!!! :)