VaM 1.x Dynamically play a timeline anim at different empty nodes in a scene (different locations, angles)

[rosey]

How can I dynamically tell an animation to go play at a different positions/angles in my scene? Basically looking for a way to pass in a parameter when calling an animation from a trigger to just pass in the empty node I want it to play at ("play this anim, but play it at the current location/angles of this empty node").

I basically have a scene with rooms that change to different furniture configurations (hotel, office, whatever) so depending on where the "bed" is at any given time, I dynamically move the node where I want the "bed anims" to play. I'm assuming it involves unchecking the "Pose: Use Root"...but not sure how to get the anim to play at that node exactly. Apologies if I'm not explaining it in an articulate way...basically I want to be free to play the same anim at various different "nodes" in the scene smoothly without getting hung up in teleporting, aligning or creating a million different poses I need to load into before playing the anims. Does this make sense?

 

[Clownmug]

There's the "quickplace" feature from the NEXT template. I've never tried it myself though so I don't know if it's suitable for this.

How to use the NEXT template scene - Guides -

This guide applies to the NEXT template and any scene made from it: https://hub.virtamate.com/resources/next.49271/ This is the first thing I do in any scene, to change the person's appearance. The NEXT template's persons are built-in...

hub.virtamate.com

BodyLangauge also has some scene building tools that might cover this. Again, I haven't tried it though so I can't say for sure.

BodyLanguage - Plugins + Scripts -

This plugin aims to simulate real life reactions to the things you do to your model. It will be highly configurable and provide lots of features that could be used to drive your scene with. You need version 1.20.77.13 or higher. The plugin has to...

hub.virtamate.com

 

[rosey]

Re: the "quickplace" feature from the NEXT template...very interesting. So basically forget trying to move the anims but just manipulate the environment every time the anim changes so that it perfectly positions the bed, chair, table or whatever in exactly the right spot to have the anim play on top of it. Seems cumbersome, but it's kinda genius.

Would still be curious to find a simple way to just say "play this anim, but at this dynamic spot this time". Thanks for the suggestion though, I may just try this out, I imagine I can just animate a subscene node containing all of the environment elements if I don't use the actual NEXT template. Clever suggestion!

 

[atani]

Re: the "quickplace" feature from the NEXT template...very interesting. So basically forget trying to move the anims but just manipulate the environment every time the anim changes so that it perfectly positions the bed, chair, table or whatever in exactly the right spot to have the anim play on top of it. Seems cumbersome, but it's kinda genius.

Would still be curious to find a simple way to just say "play this anim, but at this dynamic spot this time". Thanks for the suggestion though, I may just try this out, I imagine I can just animate a subscene node containing all of the environment elements if I don't use the actual NEXT template. Clever suggestion!

Yo

Yeah, that's the basic premise, to move the environment to adapt to the animations instead of the reverse. In that way, a lot of environments can be used for a lot of animations (within reason and some caveats), by calling for some form of "flat", "sit", "stand", "table", "wall" timeline animations (essentially just the coordinates of the environment control).
For example, my NEXT template can use these 20 quickplace VARs:

Free Hub environments

My VaM resources

atani12.gitlab.io

They can be loaded and swapped how many times you want within the same scene, and expanded infinitely. Try them out.

I also adapt other people's scenes that I keep around to use the system. It's a little more involved but just a little more work in terms of connecting the triggers to the scene and quickplace to "talk" to each other. If you want to try out adapting a scene to quickplace, I can help out, just DM me or contact me on the VAM Discord (same username).

 

[rosey]

Great stuff, that strategy hadn't even occurred to me but I'm going to give it a shot now.

Still interested in knowing if there's an easy way to do the opposite (leave the environments static and just play a set of anims on a dynamically shifting node position/angle in the scene) but if that's a no-go your approach seems very intuitive and reliable if such a feature doesn't exist in Timeline (or a related plug-in). Thanks for the guidance!

 

[atani]

Well, you can move the persons to specific spots in an environment and save those poses, it's what most people do and I used to do as well. But then you're limited with things working on that single environment, as the locations would not match another environment. Potentially you could save poses for each position in various environments, but that's going to be a mess very quickly.