Question Building Animations From Poses in Timeline

[TripleR]

I've been working on a scene and I've already made several animations for that scene in Timeline. I wanted to create a new animation with the starting keyframes loaded from a static pose that I've downloaded. Is this possible?

Adding a new animation in Timeline always seems to grab it's starting keyframes from a past animation. I've loaded in poses and gone to the "Pose" tab in Timeline where I'm able to load it in but it doesn't seem to change the keyframes because once I start the animation, it always goes back to whatever was there before.

Thank you for any and all information that you can give!

 

[Acid Bubbles]

Hi there! I'll be guessing a little, but these things might help:

- In Timeline, only nodes you actually added as targets will be animated. So if your pose has different targets than the previous one, it will be overwritten.
- Poses will re-apply all nodes, so that's good, but it will also overwrite any on/off or physics settings you set, just make sure that's what you want.
- By default, animations are looped, meaning the last frame is going to be the same as the first frame. You can untick the Loop toggle in the Edit tab, and the last frame will become editable. You can also go to the last keyframe and select Del(ete) if it still loops after ticking it off.
- Loading a pose will not "set" the keyframe. You can set all keyframes at once in More, Advanced Keyframe Tools. So, load the pose, keyframe all, and now the keyframes should have the pose too!

Let me know if that helped

 

[TripleR]

Oh hey! Thank you so much for your reply, Acid Bubbles! I'm very new here but I already love the tools that you've brought to this community.

This worked! I was missing that step in the Advanced Keyframe options. That makes things so much easier! Thanks for pointing that out. This will save a lot of time on animating scenes if I can set some of them up with already existing poses.

 

[Jocks3D]

Thank you @Acid Bubbles and @TripleR for this information! I've been struggling with this exact same situation, creating poses to build a smooth animation in Timeline. Deleting the Loop and setting the keyframes was all that was needed. You guys kept me from giving up on this!

I have a few additional questions:

1. Is there any way to see which targets are being used when I create and save a pose? Currently I believe my poses are saving more targets than are actually needed. For example, when I import a pose into Timeline and set the keyframes the Eye Target shows up but I don't recall using that in my pose.
2. Is there a recommended smoothing setting for this technique? I suppose I could try each one but thought I'd ask because I assume others have already done the trial and error so why re-invent the wheel? LOL
3. What is the best method for saving and importing poses, with the Pose Presets or with the Control Physics 1 tab? I tried the Pose Presets but did not seem to get good results, probably because I didn't have the right status options checked.

 

[Acid Bubbles]

1. The Pose tab in Timeline will save everything; all node states, physics settings, etc. It's a safe way to get a clean starting point for your animation, and it's independent on what you actually animate.
2. Not really, you have SmoothMoves which really smoothes everything but also reduces hard movements, Reduce which keeps extremes but smoothes a little.
3. With Timeline I'd recommend using the Pose tab, you can load them however you see fit (e.g. the Pose presets) but to keep it in Timeline, go to the Pose tab.