VaM 1.x Timeline Female Hip rotates away

Damarmau said:

Toggling female atom made no difference for me which makes me think it could be plugin related where there is some plugin that has its settings reset or modified by the atom being turned on/off in your scene?

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Hm... yes, I think toggling on and off should normally not cause that problem.
I also guess, that something causes this.

Damarmau said:

Can you post a screenshot of all the active plugins on the female?
Did you try disabling or removing all plugins other than timeline one by one to see if it is a specific one causing the problem (save before making these changes obviously).

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There's actually only the Timeline Plugin on the Female and Timline and Hazmhox Fluids on the Male.

Damarmau said:

Are you using the timeline pose function to save a starting pose for each animation?

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Yes, I always save the current pose in timeline, before animating.

I have now really tried to rule out everything that could be causing the problem.

I downloaded the newest VAM Version and tried it out there, with no additional Addonpackages or other stuff.
I added a Person to an empty scene, added two lights to the scene, added timeline and added Targets with Add All on Controllers Targets in Timeline.
Then I created 4 Animations and gave every Animation a start position, which I then saved with Use Current Pose in Timeline.

So far so good. I now then can switch between the animations and every pose stays nice and stable.
But as soon as I turn off and on the person Atom, the problem appears and the hip rotates away.
After that I can switch between the animations and the phenomen occures on every Animation.

I really wonder if I am an exception with this problem?
I mean, I ruled out now everything, that could be a cause of that strange phenomen.
Just used the RAW VAM Program.

Anyway... the best solution I could figure out so far, when the problem occures, is to change the rotation state of the hip node
(I just change it from on to off) and then toggle off and on the persom atom again.
After that, It remains stable, and positions are in all animations again as they should be.
When I now switch to another animation and toggle off and on the Person Atom again, the problem returns
and I have to repeat the procedure described above.

Maybe someone can see here something that I can't, to completely solve this problem.
But at least I found something to fix the problem temporary so that I can continue with the work process normally


The movements in this example, are not that big, but big enough to destroy a working animation.
But sometimes the movement is very big and nasty.
It seems to have an effect on which position the person atom is getting turned off and on,
and after every toggle off and on it is a bit different.


In this example, the movement is much bigger and nastyer.

I think we are talking about several different aspects of the very same system. The movement of your first video is quite usual, i can replicate it every time without turning the atom off and on. I am sure that the reasons for this is everything we discussed before, it is the whole system, especially important are the node properties. I can replicate wild movements every time if i want (for example with comply setting on specific nodes).

Also, in your first video you can easily fix every single "wrong" movement using the "keyframe pose" command from the advanced menu or changing the node properties. I tried this a dozen times with a fresh scene, and it is always the same, it is reproducable. Then even turning on/off the atom doesn't change anything anymore.

I found something interesting: i screenshotted every pose and change and examined it later - in your first video the first pose after changing the animation is a wrong one, the second pose is the correct one. So this mini movement is needed, it is actually correcting the current pose to the keyframed ones. Didn't expect that. But this is just a fun fact and not applicable to every situation.


Your second video is different, but i guess the reason still is the complex system behind it, perhaps addtionally complemented by the circumstance that newer timeline versions may have a problem with keeping persistence regarding node properties when switching animations - which would explain your scene perfectly: "In Timeline 5.x, the Position/Rotation state toggles (On / Comply / Off) on controllers don’t persist when switching animations." (timeline discussion, last page). This could be one missing puzzle piece

That you can fix the situation of your second video by setting the node property, take us back to the beginning of this discussion, although it is always specific what you need to set. In your first video setting nodes to "on" regarding position and rotation also helps fixing these little movements in lots of cases. As did "comply" for me in my previous scene.

The only thing not clear for me: though turning on/off an atom isn't the main culprit of the general problem, in my dozen tests it sometimes (there were only very few cases) created that movement as in your second video. I guess the process change/refresh something of the properties we discussed or something like a neutral status is loaded and then things applied lead to this.

Electric E-Boy said:

I think we are talking about several different aspects of the very same system. The movement of your first video is quite usual, i can replicate it every time without turning the atom off and on. I am sure that the reasons for this is everything we discussed before, it is the whole system, especially important are the node properties. I can replicate wild movements every time if i want (for example with comply setting on specific nodes).

Click to expand...

Yes, I also believe that smaller movements are normal.
And as long as they are minor and do not destroy a functioning animation, this is not a problem.
But, when I click Use Current Pose in Timeline or later Overwrite Pose, then it fixes the position completely.
When I then switch between the animations, there is absolutely no movement anymore.
In my second Video, there is a little movement, but that is just, because I haven't clicked on the Overwrite Pose button again.
After I do that, nothing moves anymore, when I switch the animation.
This will remain so, until I toggle off and on the Person Atom.

Electric E-Boy said:

Also, in your first video you can easily fix every single "wrong" movement using the "keyframe pose" command from the advanced menu or changing the node properties. I tried this a dozen times with a fresh scene, and it is always the same, it is reproducable. Then even turning on/off the atom doesn't change anything anymore.

Click to expand...

I never used the Keyframe Pose button in the advanced menu.
What exatly does it do?

Electric E-Boy said:

I found something interesting: i screenshotted every pose and change and examined it later - in your first video the first pose after changing the animation is a wrong one, the second pose is the correct one. So this mini movement is needed, it is actually correcting the current pose to the keyframed ones. Didn't expect that. But this is just a fun fact and not applicable to every situation.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately I could not make the same observation as you.
In my first Video at position 0.06, where I toggle the Person Atom Off and On, you can clearly see,
that the first pose is the right one and the second pose after the mini movement is the wrong.
I also checked this with screenshots out of that video and came to the same conclusion.
And when I press the "Apply saved pose" button in timeline, the saved position matches the first position before the hip rotates away.
It's strange somehow and would make more sense otherwise

Electric E-Boy said:

Your second video is different, but i guess the reason still is the complex system behind it, perhaps addtionally complemented by the circumstance that newer timeline versions may have a problem with keeping persistence regarding node properties when switching animations - which would explain your scene perfectly: "In Timeline 5.x, the Position/Rotation state toggles (On / Comply / Off) on controllers don’t persist when switching animations." (timeline discussion, last page). This could be one missing puzzle piece

Click to expand...

I also think this might have something to do with the newer versions of timeline.
I really can't remember having this problems in earlier times.
Something seems to change, when toggeling the Person Atom Off and On and messes something up in Timeline.

Electric E-Boy said:

That you can fix the situation of your second video by setting the node property, take us back to the beginning of this discussion, although it is always specific what you need to set. In your first video setting nodes to "on" regarding position and rotation also helps fixing these little movements in lots of cases. As did "comply" for me in my previous scene.

Click to expand...

It is strange, that changing the hip node propertey and then toggeling off and on the person atom fixes the problem.
But I still don't think that the main problem here is the tensions between the nodes, I guess, this would not lead to such big movements
or at least would go from the wrong pose to the right one and not otherwise.
For me it looks like (Use current pose) or (overwrite pose) in timeline fixes the pose completely.
Then toggeling off and on the person atom makes this fixation undone and messes something up in timeline.
Then change hip node state and toggeling off and on the person atom again reverses that undone fixation and every animation is in it's correct pose again.

Electric E-Boy said:

The only thing not clear for me: though turning on/off an atom isn't the main culprit of the general problem, in my dozen tests it sometimes (there were only very few cases) created that movement as in your second video. I guess the process change/refresh something of the properties we discussed or something like a neutral status is loaded and then things applied lead to this.

Click to expand...

It is interesting that you have this extreme case, as it is on the second video, only in a few cases.
In most cases, I have these big movements that cause the animation to stop working properly.
If the movements would be minimal and not affect the animation, it wouldn't be that dramatic

Oh, i have wild and big movements all the time: the few cases are just the ones in combination with the atom turning on/off. In your second video you get a 100% quote i guess? I didn't have a use case so far for a scene where i would need this on-off-toggle. For a magic scene i am working on i needed to hide things and let them appear, there i used on-off, but that messed up the plugin SexyFluids, so i opted for the cua editor by Hal9001. For making characters vanish i would use the transparency plugin. So the question is: do you need to turn the atom off and on, or is it just an interesting discovery?

When i wrote about poses, i didn't mean the timeline (start) pose. In my tests i was able to replicate your problems without using them. Although this surely belongs to the whole topic, i wouldn't go that direction, because this feature alone is error prone 3000 if you ask me. For example you can't rewind/scrub to the first keyframe and expect to get your saved start pose, that never works for me. This should be "normal" behaviour though because of the way timeline works, interpolating.

In this regard "keyframe pose" from the advanced menu takes your current pose and keyframe it again (select all relevant nodes before that), if there is a new position which wasn't keyframed before. That is useful if you load a preset pose for example, then timeline won't take that in account and you need to explicitely tell it to keyframe again (or you could move every node a little bit yourself, but that is too much work). But even without loading poses, this fixes the mini movements. But in your second case/video it would fix the wrong position i think, so that is not the solution there.

Following this, yeah i get you, the direction (wrong pose -> correct pose) doesn't make sense, but i can prove it - but only for your first scenario/video, that is important - this is what i meant with "several aspects of the same system", we have several different situations here. One of my first theories was that if you keyframed an "impossible" pose, that VaM will try to get to a correct pose within its limits. So thats why the plugin controlling the limits helped to fix the movement (see first page) or the comply setting. So that would be the correct -> wrong way.

If you want you can send me your scene or the problematic part of it, would love to do further tests. I can't replicate your situation there. I am sure we have tackled the general problem, but there is still something nagging at the back of my head telling me that we are missing something I guess we would also need some dev explanations of the internal vam systems and timeline to be sure. I will check the timeline source code, maybe there is something to discover.

Electric E-Boy said:

Oh, i have wild and big movements all the time: the few cases are just the ones in combination with the atom turning on/off. In your second video you get a 100% quote i guess? I didn't have a use case so far for a scene where i would need this on-off-toggle. For a magic scene i am working on i needed to hide things and let them appear, there i used on-off, but that messed up the plugin SexyFluids, so i opted for the cua editor by Hal9001. For making characters vanish i would use the transparency plugin. So the question is: do you need to turn the atom off and on, or is it just an interesting discovery?

Click to expand...

Ah ok... and I thought, you are blessed and having those big movements only once in a while
Then you just seem to have them more in other cases...
I often use the toggle off and on fucktion, while working on scenes.
I find it often more comfortable to turn off the male, then pose the woman and turn then the male on again and pose him.
Or quickly turn off and on the woman, to see what the Penis alignment inside the woman is doing.
Or just to turn off the male in some scenes especially in VR to save ressources.
The transparency plugin seems to be a good alternative, especially for the working process.
I have seen, that there are several such plugins.
Which one, do you use?

Electric E-Boy said:

When i wrote about poses, i didn't mean the timeline (start) pose. In my tests i was able to replicate your problems without using them.

Click to expand...

When you didn't use timeline for start poses, how did you then switch poses to reproduce the phenomen?

Electric E-Boy said:

Although this surely belongs to the whole topic, i wouldn't go that direction, because this feature alone is error prone 3000 if you ask me. For example you can't rewind/scrub to the first keyframe and expect to get your saved start pose, that never works for me. This should be "normal" behaviour though because of the way timeline works, interpolating.

Click to expand...

What feature exactly is error prone 3000?

Electric E-Boy said:

In this regard "keyframe pose" from the advanced menu takes your current pose and keyframe it again (select all relevant nodes before that), if there is a new position which wasn't keyframed before. That is useful if you load a preset pose for example, then timeline won't take that in account and you need to explicitely tell it to keyframe again (or you could move every node a little bit yourself, but that is too much work). But even without loading poses, this fixes the mini movements. But in your second case/video it would fix the wrong position i think, so that is not the solution there.

Click to expand...

By select all relevant nodes before that, you mean select the control targets in Timeline?

When I load a present pose, I mostly click on every checkmark in timeline under targets and then save the position in timeline.
As far as I understand it, keyframe pose leads more or less to the same result?

Yes, to move each node a little by yourself would be a little too much to ask

Electric E-Boy said:

If you want you can send me your scene or the problematic part of it, would love to do further tests. I can't replicate your situation there. I am sure we have tackled the general problem, but there is still something nagging at the back of my head telling me that we are missing something

Click to expand...

I have copied the two animation poses shown in the last video to an empty scene and had the problem again, as you see in the Video.
I uploaded the file here, If you want to have a look, and see if it behaves the same in your VAM.



My Solution does not work in this case, because I didn't keyframe pose after loading the animations in timeline.

Electric E-Boy said:

I guess we would also need some dev explanations of the internal vam systems and timeline to be sure. I will check the timeline source code, maybe there is something to discover.

Click to expand...

As you said above, it seems that there must be something causing this, we can't see, and maybe for the developers of VAM or timeline this would be more obvious.
I myself really have no knowledge and experience, when it comes to coding and stuff.
But if I understood it correctly, you are doing coding stuff as well?

I use the old character transparency by ZRSX.

Your uploaded scene file only has the jpg thumbnail, no scene. And you can just upload the json for the scene, no need to package it.

Regarding saving loaded preset poses, you wrote you "save the animation", but how do you do it? If you have loaded a pose, timeline won't take that, that is the reason for the "keyframe pose" function in the advanced menu section. Also when loading preset poses, they are including node properties, so that can corrupt an animation also.

Yes, i meant selecting all control nodes in timeline and then press the keyframe pose button.

With error prone i meant the timeline feature under the pose tab to save a start pose for an animation. It was a bad term for that, perhaps better would be "fickle"? I don't know, i guess we have some language problems, i don't understand everything you wrote, my bad ;(

I am a developer, no experience nor knowledge regarding Unity and VaM, but i can understand source code in general, daily bread But it will take some time, lot to do this weekend.

Is there some reason you need to turn the atom on/off? I didn’t have the hip issues when I did it but it causes all sorts of problems with clothing presets loaded on the model which then have to be loaded again. If you need to hide the model you might be better off moving it out of sight with the timeline pose for that animation.

If the json gets posted later I’ll take a look at it.

Electric E-Boy said:

I use the old character transparency by ZRSX.

Click to expand...

Ok, I will try this trasparency plugin and see, if it does, what i need.

Electric E-Boy said:

Your uploaded scene file only has the jpg thumbnail, no scene. And you can just upload the json for the scene, no need to package it.

Click to expand...

Sorry, my bad... I picked the wrong file... here it is again.

Electric E-Boy said:

Regarding saving loaded preset poses, you wrote you "save the animation", but how do you do it? If you have loaded a pose, timeline won't take that, that is the reason for the "keyframe pose" function in the advanced menu section. Also when loading preset poses, they are including node properties, so that can corrupt an animation also.

Click to expand...

I wrote:
''When I load a present pose, I mostly click on every checkmark in timeline under targets and then save the position in timeline.''

I use that checkmark clicking instead of clicking the keyframe pose button.
I guess, it does the same.

Electric E-Boy said:

Yes, i meant selecting all control nodes in timeline and then press the keyframe pose button.

Click to expand...

Ah... ok.

Electric E-Boy said:

With error prone i meant the timeline feature under the pose tab to save a start pose for an animation. It was a bad term for that, perhaps better would be "fickle"? I don't know, i guess we have some language problems, i don't understand everything you wrote, my bad ;(

Click to expand...

Ah... ok, everything fine with the term, I just wasn't quite sure exactly what you were referring to, but I suspected that you meant the timeline save position option.
No problem... I also have difficulty understanding certain texts.
I try my best and a lot of Google translating

But do not be afraid to ask if you do not understand something

Electric E-Boy said:

I am a developer, no experience nor knowledge regarding Unity and VaM, but i can understand source code in general, daily bread But it will take some time, lot to do this weekend.

Click to expand...

Ah ok... so this is your specialty.
So then you are our hope to find the error in the code to free us from these nasty hip problems

Don't feel pressured... whenever you have time and feel like... no need to hurry.

Damarmau said:

Is there some reason you need to turn the atom on/off? I didn’t have the hip issues when I did it but it causes all sorts of problems with clothing presets loaded on the model which then have to be loaded again. If you need to hide the model you might be better off moving it out of sight with the timeline pose for that animation.

Click to expand...

It is really strange, that you didn't had this hip problem when turning off and on the Female.
Have you done this, when you used the newest Timeline Version on the Female?

I often turn off the man so that I can position the woman better and then position the man afterwards.
Or I turn the Femalo Off and On, when I want to see how the penis is aligned in the woman.
Or I turn off the Male in VR Scenes for better performance.

As Electric E-Boy wrote, the transparency plugin could be a good alternative for some of these actions.

Damarmau said:

If the json gets posted later I’ll take a look at it.

Click to expand...

New file is uploaded:

So in your scene I noticed the same hip movement after turning the model on/off. What helped reduce it and possibly why I didn’t notice it on mine is increasing hip hold rotation spring from default 250 up to 1250 (what I usually set it at for animating)

Hold position spring might help some too. Default for position is 2000 but I usually have it at a minimum 4000 or as high as 6000.

Even with it set that high I could still notice a slight movement in your scene but it is much less obvious.

I didn’t have too much time to test yesterday and I’ll probably try again tonight but for now I would suggest avoid turning the model on/off completely.

A few alternatives to turning on/off is turning collision off on say the male. This should reset penis to its natural position. And without collision it should be obvious if alignment is off. The other thing is if the penis is already inside (assuming you are animating penis nodes) is to turn those nodes off so the physics push the penis to where it wants to be naturally while inside, then turn node on and make a slight adjustment to register the improved location.

You can also move the whole male/female atom out of the way, then in timeline pose menu hit the apply saved pose button to reset to where he/she should be.

I found the solution to the problematic movement in your test scene. You have locked both feet and hands. The locked nodes create the tension. If you unlock both feet and overwrite the start pose (else both nodes will be locked again after changing animations), any movement is gone. I guess Damarmau's expert advice is also supporting that, because there are different ways and solutions to solve this kind of situations when it is about tension or the physics system in general. So you can try to increase the limiting settings or the node properties or the position itself.

I don't want to be annoying and i am just a beginner, but i am sure all things we discussed can be reasons in different situations of that kind and the case could be finally solved

Hey Damarmau

Thanks for checking

Sadly did rising hold rotation spring up to 1250 not help with me.
Also rising hold position spring to 5000 did not prevent that hip rotation.

As soon as I turn off and on the Female, it appears again.
And every turning off and on, changes it a bit.
How extreme the hip rotation becomes also depends on the pose in which I turn it off and on.

But I'll keep those sliders in mind.
They could be helpful to stabilize the hip in certain poses.

Yes, since I know, that turning Off and On the Atom triggers that problem, I completely prevent turning off an on the person atoms.

That's how i work too.
I turn off and on collision and nodes of the person a lot.
I used the person off and on, when the penis is already in the Female and it causes problems, to see if the penis is crumbled and to better fix it.
But I can manage to work even without this switching off and on.

I just move the person I don't need to the side now.
It was more comfortable and faster to turn off and on, but it works like this too.

Electric E-Boy said:

I found the solution to the problematic movement in your test scene. You have locked both feet and hands. The locked nodes create the tension. If you unlock both feet and overwrite the start pose (else both nodes will be locked again after changing animations), any movement is gone. I guess Damarmau's expert advice is also supporting that, because there are different ways and solutions to solve this kind of situations when it is about tension or the physics system in general. So you can try to increase the limiting settings or the node properties or the position itself.

I don't want to be annoying and i am just a beginner, but i am sure all things we discussed can be reasons in different situations of that kind and the case could be finally solved

Click to expand...

Thank you Electric E-Boy

At first... you are not annoying
Every contribution is valuable and can be helpful.

Unlocking foot and hand nodes indeed reduces the hip rotation amount.
When I turnd off and on the person atom several times and in both poses the hip rotation get's not that extreme as in my previous video,
but still that big, that a penis that fitted in before, doesn't anymore.
I think, I also can't live without locking feet and hand.
I just don't like it, when they have little movements in an animation, where they shouldn't.

But the interesting thing is, still with no locked nodes, the hip is the only node that rotates away.
No other node behaves like that.
Something just seems to conflict with this one node.