VaM 1.x Changing the "Hold Position Spring" for any node on a mocap scene does nothing.

[Colourless]

A long time ago I was told to edit the physics of the character that I wanted more movement out of. I was told to edit the "Hold Position Spring" and "Hold Rotation Spring" to follow the nodes more closely, and for a great length of time that worked. Another trick that seemed to work was tying both left and right thigh controllers to the hip controller via "Parent Link" and then editing the "Hold Position Spring" on each.

However, this no longer seems to work anymore, especially with mocap scenes. Ispinox, KittyMocap, PrimeMocap, and many other creators' scenes are not affected by changing the physics values of the individual character atoms anymore. Is there a fix for this or am I overlooking something super obvious?

I have already tried offsetting the timeline via "Offset" and "Move Relative to Root" functions but both only change the starting position and does not change any other keyframe.

Is there anything that I can do to get more movement out of these mocap character atoms?

 

[hazmhox]

Are you "playing" the mocap right after changing the value?

 

[Colourless]

So, the value can be changed anywhere from 2000 to 3000-10000 and all it will do is move the body part, but it won't cause it to follow the original node. What I mean is that it follows the mocap but at its new position as if it was offset rather than being forced to follow it more forcefully. So instead of it looking like you put the weight of the specific animation to 1.5, let's say hipcontrol for this argument, it just moves the body and then follows the original path from where it was moved to. I don't know if that makes any sense. Usually when you increase the hold position spring, it's as if you're making the weight of the animation higher, but not in this case.

To answer your question: After increasing the hold position spring values of ***every*** joint affected by timeline, even increasing it up to 100 000, it just moves the atom, but doesn't change the actual animation to be more forceful or increase it's movement in any way when played.

 

[hazmhox]

It was always the case for animated nodes.

What you're thinking of applies more to cycle forces. On actual animations (timeline) it will result exactly as you say, offsetting/forcing more the "position" of the node.

 

[Colourless]

Is there a way to effectively achieve the same thing with animated nodes? Something ad hoc or unorthodox?

 

[hazmhox]

Not really. You can do in one way : you can reduce the hold/drag a lot to have the animation pretty much not influencing the node, but overall it will always have a slight influence. But pushing up will always try to constrain to the animation, not make it wider/longer.

 

[Colourless]

It's still weird how there are mocap scenes (older) that are affected by changing the position spring values and/or parent linking other nodes to specific nodes, but almost every newer mocap timeline scene is immune to these changes. Do you have any idea why? Did timeline change how the animation is played, did the way nodes are influenced by recorded animation/mocap change?

I have the idea that when specifically selecting the hip node and going from keyframe to keyframe, you see that each keyframe is recorded about 0.03 seconds from each other. Just the way that timeline imports mocaps and records their keyframes may have to do with the inability to influence its movement in post. Where increasing the position spring doesn't really do anything because the movement from one keyframe to another is so minor that there isn't enough time to get that extra movement in.

I know you can reduce keyframes, but I don't know how to do that without ruining the animation entirely. Is there a way to only remove every second or every third keyframe?

 

[Colourless]

Is there a way to offset a node from the root but not move the root in its entirety? I'm thinking that if I move the hip slightly above the original intended mocap root then the movement to get from the offset position to the original root position will slingshot the character, thus achieving effectively somewhat the same effect.