Question Help with actions or plugins

[2804184398]

I'm looking for some plugins or scenes that can control character poses with just a few atoms. Anyone have anything similar?

 

[MacGruber]

I think your question is too vague to be able to formulate a useful answer.

What are you trying to achieve? What does "control character pose" mean for you? And what does "just a few atoms" mean?

There are various ways to control a character's pose, from loading a PosePreset (e.g. via trigger) to using a plugin like IdlePoser or Timeline for blending/animating between different poses. Which of those make the most sense for your context is hard to tell without more info from you.

 

[2804184398]

你想达到什么目的？“控制角色姿势”对你来说意味着什么？“只有几个原子”是什么意思？

有多种方法可以控制角色的姿势，从加载 PosePreset（例如通过动作）到使用 IdlePoser 或 Timeline 等插件在不同姿势之间进行混合/动画。如果没有您提供更多信息，

对于模糊的描述，我深表歉意。例如，我正在寻找的是，如果一个人站着，我可以在他保持站立的情况下移动一个原子来张开或合拢他的双腿。这样描述可以吗？

 

[MacGruber]

对于模糊的描述，我深表歉意。例如，我正在寻找的是，如果一个人站着，我可以在他保持站立的情况下移动一个原子来张开或合拢他的双腿。这样描述可以吗？

Google Translate:

I apologize for the vague description. For example, what I'm looking for is if a person is standing, I can move an atom to open or close his legs while he remains standing. Is it okay to describe it this way?

Sorry, it does not make it more clear.
Possibly the term "atom" got lost in translation. In the terminologiy of VaM for example the whole character is an "atom", but it has multiple control nodes for head, hip, wrists, ellbows, knees and ankles.

I'm still not sure whether you want to animate between different poses or are fine with instantly snapping to a new pose. In the former case you will need to look at IdlePoser plugin or potentially also Timeline. In the latter case, you could just use PosePresets, which just save/load the current pose of a character.

 

[2804184398]

Sorry, I'm not a native English speaker, you can understand an atom as a control point,

 

[2804184398]

Google Translate:

Sorry, it does not make it more clear.
Possibly the term "atom" got lost in translation. In the terminologiy of VaM for example the whole character is an "atom", but it has multiple control nodes for head, hip, wrists, ellbows, knees and ankles.

I'm still not sure whether you want to animate between different poses or are fine with instantly snapping to a new pose. In the former case you will need to look at IdlePoser plugin or potentially also Timeline. In the latter case, you could just use PosePresets, which just save/load the current pose of a character.

The Google Translate I'm using seems to translate the entire page into Chinese, so the English I send doesn't seem to be used

 

[MacGruber]

Made you 3 quick example scenes....is this what you are looking for?

96.8 KB file on MEGA

mega.nz

Dependencies are Life and IdlePoser, you probably have them already....find them on the Hub if you haven't. You can use the "Scan Hub for Missing Packages" button in VaM's Package Manager window.

Examples:

1. Loading PosePresets
2. Using IdlePoser to simply force-blend between both poses.
3. Using IdlePoser to actually animate between poses. Character is shifting weight, actually lifting feet, always keeping one foot on ground. Can be made look nicer with spending more time tweaking, obviously.

 

[2804184398]

Thank you so much. The second scene is what I want. I’m glad to see such attentive replies on hub.

Made you 3 quick example scenes....is this what you are looking for?

96.8 KB file on MEGA

mega.nz

Dependencies are Life and IdlePoser, you probably have them already....find them on the Hub if you haven't. You can use the "Scan Hub for Missing Packages" button in VaM's Package Manager window.

Examples:

1. Loading PosePresets
2. Using IdlePoser to simply force-blend between both poses.
3. Using IdlePoser to actually animate between poses. Character is shifting weight, actually lifting feet, always keeping one foot on ground. Can be made look nicer with spending more time tweaking, obviously.

 

[MacGruber]

The second scene is what I want.

Mini tutorial...

Minimal Setup​

1. Add IdlePoser to your character:
   
   
2. Go to the "Captures" tab. Setup which control nodes you want to be controlled by the plugin. You can also capture morphs, like fingers, etc.
   
   
3. Go to the "States" tab. Bring your character into your desired pose. Then press "Add State". Basically each "State" is a "Pose" in this plugin. You should give each state some reasonable name in the "Name" field. You will need the name later to trigger the various poses.
   
   
4. Use the "State" dropdown menu to switch between the various states (=poses)
   
   
5. Want to change a State/Pose later? Select the State you like to change from the drop down, then adjust your character pose, then press the "Capture State" button in the "States" tab.
6. Add a button or something else that can trigger things to your scene. Have it trigger "SwitchState" with the name of the state/pose you set above.
   
   
7. Have fun!

Wanna know more?​

IdlePoser is an extremely powerful plugin, you can do LOT with this. Just a quick overview of the bare basics:

Transitions​

1. In the "Transitions" tab you control how to get from one state/pose to another. Optionally you can add one or two states in-between with their "State Type" set to be a "Control Point". Instead of going in a straight line the transition would then end up being a curve. This is setup by adding transitions controlling how you exactly you get from State1 to State2:
   1. from State1 to ControlPoint1
   2. from ControlPoint1 to ControlPoint2
   3. from ControlPoint2 to State2
2. The length of the animation is the sum of the "Transition Duration" values of all the states involved in the animation.
3. As soon as you have setup transitions, IdlePoser might already automatically switch between States at random, following the available transitions. This only happens as long as you are in the "Play" tab (which is the default when loading a scene).
4. How long IdlePoser waits for each state is controlled in the "States" tab. See "Wait Duration Min/Max", you can also set "Wait Infinite Duration" if you want to control things externally from buttons, etc. That's what I did for the 3. example scene.

Debug Visualization​

In the "Options" tab you can enable to draw the paths of animations and also the transitions. It will help you with more complex setups.

State Groups​

For each "Regular State" you can assign a "State Group". When IdlePoser is in "Play" tab, it will transition between states automatically according to whatever "Wait Duration" you did setup for each state. However, it will not transition between states of the same group. A usual setup would be to setup one common "Control Point" for each group, allowing to setup transitions between groups quickly. Think of states in a group as "minor variants" of a state.
I guess it becomes more clear with an image....different colors for different groups:

Anchors​

This is where the real power of IdlePoser is. Via the "Anchors" tab you can make a state/pose relative to some other body part or even other character/atom. For each control node for each State you can setup what it is anchored to. E.g. here the hand of the right girls is "anchored" to the other girls ass. So even if the left girl moves (within reason) the hand will stay attached while right girl is in this state. Since it's setup for each state (even the control points), you can smoothly in and out of anchoring.
A common setup would be to have multiple IdlePoser on the same character, each controlling different parts of the body. Each of them would operate more or less independently. This creates a lot of random animation variations, achieving that non-looping life-like effect we are looking for with comparatively little setup.

 

[GordonShock]

Thanks for posting the samples.

What are the difference(s) between your plugin, and Synergy, for instance? They seemingly do the same thing (and I mean that as a good thing), but I'm still too green to grasp the differences, as I'm sure there are.

 

[MacGruber]

FYI....I made the above IdlePoser tutorial a resource so it can be found. Also extended it a bit as well with more advanced info and a best-practices section:

Guides - IdlePoser Mini Tutorial

This is a Mini Tutorial for my IdlePoser plugin. I wrote this for a discussion thread. I decided I might as well make it a resource so it can be found. IdlePoser is an extremely powerful animation plugin that is using an alternative approach...

hub.virtamate.com

What are the difference(s) between your plugin, and Synergy, for instance?

Can't really say that I know Synergy. However, from quickly glancing at the resource page and wiki, it seems to be yet another principle of achieving animation. IdlePoser is pose based, it animates from pose to pose. Synergy on the other hand applies random forces/torque to bodyparts. @via5 can probably explain better what Synergy does.

IdlePoser excels at building complex random animation, while still giving you immense control what is happening. I could be wrong, but I doubt you could do the following with Synergy. You can with Timeline, but it would be 10x more setup work. Synergy and Timeline simply excel at other things.