Plugins + Scripts Timeline: LightningBunnyWorkshop

AWAKENING said:

Hi! Thank you so much for your modifications to Timeline — they've made my creative process a lot more enjoyable!
I'd like to make a suggestion, regarding the Parent-Child feature.

In the dropdown menu, I only see various types of controls, but there's no option for things like head/hip/lhand. In the process of animating, the character's body parts and their corresponding controls aren't at the same point, and they don't move 1:1 either. I'd like to ask if you could add the character body parts — like head/hip/lhand and so on.

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LightningBunny said:

Honestly, I’d already thought about this problem a long time ago. Attach Baking was built around exactly this — and it failed.

I remember now — I tried baking by borrowing the approach from the Attach To Vertex plugin, but I ran into one fundamental problem: once the baked result is recorded as controller keyframes, its position becomes fixed. But the jitter of the soft body and the mesh is never the same twice — the jitter/physics captured at record time conflicts with the physics that comes afterward, and the result just looks strange.

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AWAKENING said:

I tried adding this feature locally with AI, and it basically works. (Forgive me.... I really needed this feature.)
My logic is: when you click bake, it links the bone to the corresponding body part (head/hip/or whatever), then Timeline plays, and during playback the plugin records the exact positions. When playback ends, it bakes those keyframes in.

If you want, I can send you the modified version for reference?

Basically, it just uses VaM's own Parent feature to make it work.

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1. Fixed a bug in Parent-Child baking that occurred when Delay and Overlay Mode were enabled at the same time.

2. Improved the easing curve UI.

3. Replaced the parent object used by Attach Baking: previously you selected a vertex, now you select a rigidbody from the skeleton — it works better than before. Thanks to AWAKENING for the reference code. The difference from Parent-Child: Parent-Child uses a controller as the parent and computes the keyframes, while Attach...

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1. Reworked the Float Curve Editor. It now expands into multiple curve charts based on the number of selected float controls. To make it more practical, I also added two new behaviors: depending on where the mouse is placed along the chart’s time axis, the value change is applied to the scene directly, and you can bind it to the main timeline’s playback, so you can view the effect and the time position corresponding to the curve value in fully real time. These changes only...

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vamjungel said:

Now I have a particularly troublesome problem is that when making timeline animation, I made two animations with different root positions. I want to copy the head chest hand swing action of animation 1 to animation 2. At this time, the character will twitch and shift. Is there a way to solve this problem?

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vamjungel said:

Now I have a particularly troublesome problem is that when making timeline animation, I made two animations with different root positions. I want to copy the head chest hand swing action of animation 1 to animation 2. At this time, the character will twitch and shift. Is there a way to solve this problem?

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Electric E-Boy said:

Not sure if i understand your situation completely, but i think this is exactly the problem you would solve using the clip sequencer. Just select the mentioned nodes and perhaps the chest node as the root.


Different topic: the new update is FIRE I used the MicroExpressions plugin for this in the past, and now we have it right inside Timeline, awesome! Thanks for your continuing efforts. <3

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babul said:

Wow, new update seems PEAK, this is simply glorious man... can't wait to try it!

BTW not sure if you tackled this issue, but... it's a thing about baking sequences. Basically, when you have sequence saved as body positions and save it without selecting anchor, it will be saved except the first keyframe - so in that mode I guess it's kinda useful if you want to save only relative motion of your clip. But I found very often that I just want to bake clip that has very first keyframe saved as well - to do that you can select relative anchor as hips/head/etc and then it will load with complete pose.. but often it will be just weirdly rotated because of the reference point. Workaround is to save the clip with reference set to a person control (and not a specific body part).. but we can't save it as a reference to person atom control, so you have to manually change rotation of the entire clip. If fixed, you could reset pose -> load clip -> it loads every keyframe (including the first) exactly as saved, with person atom set as reference, so just like default timeline behavior. IMO this is needed because it would allow you to skip having to manually save actual pose of your person for each animation.

So, again - so I'm clear:
Include person atom control as a possible reference point for clips. So you can make animation, save it, and if it's loaded from scratch in another scene, it will behave as original and very first keyframe is set correctly - or maybe even simply use Timeline's functionality for that? Like, make animation, save a pose for animation in timeline - and then make saved clip also inherit that saved pose? It would instantly fix it.

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babul said:

Wow, new update seems PEAK, this is simply glorious man... can't wait to try it!

BTW not sure if you tackled this issue, but... it's a thing about baking sequences. Basically, when you have sequence saved as body positions and save it without selecting anchor, it will be saved except the first keyframe - so in that mode I guess it's kinda useful if you want to save only relative motion of your clip. But I found very often that I just want to bake clip that has very first keyframe saved as well - to do that you can select relative anchor as hips/head/etc and then it will load with complete pose.. but often it will be just weirdly rotated because of the reference point. Workaround is to save the clip with reference set to a person control (and not a specific body part).. but we can't save it as a reference to person atom control, so you have to manually change rotation of the entire clip. If fixed, you could reset pose -> load clip -> it loads every keyframe (including the first) exactly as saved, with person atom set as reference, so just like default timeline behavior. IMO this is needed because it would allow you to skip having to manually save actual pose of your person for each animation.

So, again - so I'm clear:
Include person atom control as a possible reference point for clips. So you can make animation, save it, and if it's loaded from scratch in another scene, it will behave as original and very first keyframe is set correctly - or maybe even simply use Timeline's functionality for that? Like, make animation, save a pose for animation in timeline - and then make saved clip also inherit that saved pose? It would instantly fix it.

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LightningBunny said:

I don’t quite understand. Are you describing a feature request? But using the character’s main control as an anchor has always been allowed, and it can be done right now. As long as you add that controller to the timeline and select it, it will show up in the list of anchors.

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babul said:

Oh, I see, I haven't tested that.. I just assumed wrongly that list of anchors is static, my bad! I should test it. BTW I had walking animation and selected chest control as my anchor. Resulting animation played normally but entire person was rotated, it is how it's supposed to work? I'll test it out more, but I'm sure if I just save person control with a single keyframe, it should work as I expect it to.

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LightningBunny said:

When you mention the rotation, do you mean that you loaded a single keyframe and it’s off from its original orientation? Or do you mean that you loaded an animation and the motion played out differently from when it was saved?

If it’s the latter, I think your issue is that you’re thinking of the Clip Sequencer as basically the same as the original save feature, just with customizable anchors. In reality there’s a big difference: the Clip Sequencer doesn’t only read the saved motion — it also inherits the motion of the current timeline curves at the same time. Even if there are no other keyframes within the time range you’re loading, if you’re using a looping animation, the in-between motion curves will be inherited as well.

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