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How do I replicate the same poses at different postions ?

 
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Arezeon 18+ Age Verified

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PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2009 11:52 am    Post subject: How do I replicate the same poses at different postions ? Reply with quote

Hi ! I was trying to make my avatar walk in a circular motion. I was able to move my avi in a circle from the tutorials in the forums. But this is only sliding along the path.I wanted to make it look like a walk. Sad

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGhqOi3nPog

I wanted to know if I could do the following steps:

1. divide the 120 frames into 12 frames and insert a key at each point in the timeline i.e at 0 , 12 , 24 , and so on upto 120

2. Then create pose 1 at 12th frame and pose 2 at 24th frame

3.Then copy and paste pose 1 and pose 2 alternatively at frame 48 and frame 60 and so on upto 120.

If this can be done then how do I do step 1 and step 3 in Max i.e inserting keys at the following frames and copy & paste the poses alternatively. ? Please explain to me in a detailed and easy way since I am very new to Max. [ The pelvis node remains unaffected in both the poses so will it follow the trajectory as it doing before Question ]






If all these things were useless and impossible to do please tell me how do I go about it ? Smile Confused
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twistednanny

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PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2009 7:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

OK I think the way you have it, is half way there. So you set up the Path Constraint to the Pevlis Node and the avatar 'slides' just like in the video. Now say you have 120 frames set, with auto key turned on, start from frame 6 like you said, move the legs, the hands, etc, then move onto frame 12, move the legs, the hands, etc. At this point you want to slide the bar back and forth to see the actual movements of the avatar. If all looks ok ~ 2 steps walking then, select everything (Ctrl + A), and on the slide bar, drag over frames 6 and 12, then Press Shift and drag that to frame 18 + 24, repeat this until the end and you will have a life like walking animation.
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2009 10:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Many Many thanks for the reply. So what I did was click on time line and (Ctrl + A) to select the entire thing. Then hold shift key and clicked on key at 6 and dragged in to 18 and then released it. Again hold shift key and clicked key at 12 and dragged it to 24 and released it. Its working Very Happy but do I have to keep on doing this individually for all the keys at 30 , 36 , 42 at this alternate manner. Shocked ?? I mean it can be done here since it has only 120 frames. But it will take a lot of time if its a 300 frame animation or more Confused Or is there any shortcut Hot keys for copy pasting keys from timeline or trackview [ curve editor ]. ?

Problem 2

I made 3 animations done. So like I want the avatar to do the 1st animation from frame 1 - 30 [ Its of 30 frames ] then do 2nd animation animation which is this circular walk i.e 120 frames and then the third one [ 60 frames ] Is there a way I can merge this animation one after another in the time line of 210 frames . [ I have saved these three animations in different files ] If it can be done will the constraints that I put in during this circular motion work normally with the other animations ?


Please tell me the steps if its possible to do. If not possible this way , please tell me if there is any other alternatives for doing this thing
Very Happy
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twistednanny

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PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2009 2:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

LOL, let's see if you're still with me on my Max Terminologies.

1. To do multiple copies of the time frame, there's a thing called 'Dope Sheet', in there there're functions you can select, de-select etc. all or any part of your animations and have them copied with several options. The problem is whenever you have that Dope Sheet open, Max will come to almost a halt, and may crash(very high tendency). So what I said was probably the safest and easiest way to do without sacrificing the system resources. If you were to do that many times, you can drag frame 6, then frame 12 to where they are, and if the transitions of the animation is satisfactory, drage over frames 6, 12, 18, and 24 at the same time and drag them over to the next time interval. With this, I think you only have to drag multiple time frames a few times to filll up the whatever length you need.

2. If you have created those 3 animations in different Max files, there's a function called 'Merge Animation'. Now the condition is this: if you create them normally in 3 different files, normally the keyframes will start from 0 to whenever, you will want to place your keyframes in each files to avoid landing on top of another when you merge them. And no the constraints will not be effected by moving them down the time line but.. if you acidentally merge animations on top of each other you will see really strange effects.
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2009 4:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi , Thanz again for the tip Very Happy

1.I used the dope sheet . I selected time 6 to 12 and the moved the slider to time frame 18 and pasted it.But do I do paste relative or absolute ? In both the cases my initial keys are also re-adjusting itself to new places Question Am I going some where wrong although the animation is not much affected and its walking some what ok. Rolling Eyes

2. can I some how delay the start of the circular movement back by 60 frames without affecting the constraint ? Also I tried to merge two animation by using the paste to existing animation option [ both animation starts originally from 0] and setting the keyframe just after the last frame of the 1st animation.How ever the constraints of the source file [2nd animation file ]is not working and the avi continues to follow the existing constraint of the 1st constraintt even after the end of [animation 1] but doing the other bone animated movements of the source file.Is there any way to prevent this from happening ?Confused
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2009 8:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi ! what do I do ? Sad
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MorpherGoddess

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PostPosted: Thu Jul 23, 2009 1:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

That Curve Editor and Track View is designed for you to manually refine the transitions of your animation including setting repeated animation sequences, etc. You can't select and drag copy in there. You will have to use the button called 'Param Curve Out Of Range Type', set it to 'Loop' at first and this will repeat your animation over and over again until the keyframe ends, and you will have to set it to 'Constant' over the loop to avoid the end frames repeating itself at the beginning frame. You have to manually do this to each and every bone, in all 3 axis manually. Sounds like weeks of work? So why not do what I said before, just drag copy the keys on the slide bar with everything selected, then if you like you can open the Curve Editor to refine the transition of the animations.

Delaying is also done in the Curve Editor. Or, you can press Ctrl+A, drag select over a set of keys on the slide bar, and just drag them to where you want. I don't think you can merge 'Helpers' from another file.
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 23, 2009 6:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanz I managed to delay it Very Happy . But the problem with overlapping of contraints on two different animations still exists. i.e only the contraint in the original file is followed throughout even in the merged portion of the animation. Sad
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 23, 2009 9:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

If you're trying to do something tricky, like get a semi-realistic walk cycle that follows a path, I'd look into using the rigged avatar (rigged with Biped). Biped has its own learning curve, separate from most normal animation. But if you really want that "walking around a path" to work, that's probably your best bet.

On a side note, my work with the rigged avatar uncovered some nasty bugs in Max 9 that were solved in Max 2008. I had only "played" with Biped in Max 7 and 8, but I know that each new version of max typically adds lots of functionality to Biped. That is, try and use the newest version available to you.

In addition to footstep mode, you the Biped tools also allow you to make "clips" of animation that you can easily splice together. While the curve editor has the ability to play an animation "past the end" of a defined timeline, the Biped motion tools allow you to define separate animations (move legs/feet in a walk) and merge them on top of another animation, such as "follow this path". If you've ever done video editing, where you take many different clips of a video and put them on a timeline, with some transitions in between - the Biped tools allow you to do that with the animations.

Of course... Biped is BIG. There's a lot to learn about Biped. I tried jumping in to solve a problem in two nights and ended up with a mess. I then spent 2-3 nights going through the docs that came with Max, going through the tutorials, and ended up with a fairly good understanding of how you're supposed to use Biped and then things became a lot easier. The Max tutorials are *fantastic*, as always - they sprinkle in new topics with shortcuts and hints - always worth going through them step-by-step as they're filled with nuggets of goodness.

Anyway - throwing out another option Smile

-ner
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 23, 2009 9:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

the 'export animation' serves as a 'biped' tool so that you can later apply the animation to the 'set' skeletal you've made.

The default biped built in Max was not identical to the IMVU skeleton so you cannot use it to animate the avatar.
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 23, 2009 11:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah I have read about moving a biped walk in the max help tutorial. So is working with the biped given by Imvu [The bipedExample01 file] is going to be same as the one given default in Max ? I mean regarding the bone movement and all.

@ ner

Yeah I was exactly refering to that system of video editing where I could put two seperate clips in timeline and play them at required intervals. I thought 3D Max 7 would have that kind of feature of putting separate animations accross timeline. But oh well ,I will try to work with the biped and see if it goes on well Idea
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 23, 2009 12:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

@Morpher and janbaaz:

There is a special "rigged" avatar that IMVU provides for download that has the avatar already hooked up to a Biped system. That is, it's the female mesh with full IMVU skeleton PLUS the Biped system all hooked up. Animate with Biped, the avatar moves. Select Female03MasterRoot and export your animation and it works as usual. They didn't hook the hands or fingers together (I don't think), but everything else is setup and you can usually get away with no special finger animation, or just change the fingers once to "grab" something and leave them like that.

The nice thing about the biped motion mixer (I think that's the name, but not 100% sure) is that it's meant to be super easy, and provide "good" transition animations between clips. And it has simple controls for saying "this animation controls only the feet" and "this animation controls only the upper body" - it's ideal for mixing together biped motions.

Good luck, Janbaaz!

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PostPosted: Fri Jul 24, 2009 2:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

umm.. the problem with rigged avatar that I face is that th pelvis node is connected to the master root some way. so displacing the avi is not easy at all Sad since working with master root is difficult.
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 24, 2009 9:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

On rigged avatar, you don't move/rotate the standard avatar bones. You just manipulate the Biped, which has its own "pelvis" - I forget the technical name (center point, balance point, something?), but the Max name is Bip01. If you select Bip01, then you get access to all the standard Biped features. You "move" the avatar in footstep mode or... well, however you want Smile

-ner
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