Question How to do a Multilayer animation with different speed with Timeline plugin?

[Pig Bros Productions]

Hi everyone,
In my videos I use the Acid Bubbles Timeline plugin -

Timeline - Plugins + Scripts -

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hub.virtamate.com

I'll explain the situation to you.
I would like to have a main timeline where there are animations of the whole body except that of the left hand.
The hand animation is a 2 second looping animation (want to have variable speed).
Other animation of the hand is syncronized with the first part of the animation(no variable speed).
From what I know, if I give the same name to animations that are on two different layers, they will be synchronized.
The problem is that if I vary the speed of one of the two, the speed of the other also changes.
Which isn't good for me, because I would like to be able to vary the speed of the hand movement independently.
In order to do that, I have to give it a different name.

But there is already an Anim 1 main animation with an Anim 1 hand animation.
In the main animation Anim 2 I have to give the hand movement a different name otherwise the speeds remain connected.
In this situation, however, if I go to work on the Cycle lHand 1 of the hand, it will show me the movements of the main animation Anim 1.
Using a trigger in Anim 2, I launch Cycle Hand 1.
But if I want to work on Cycle LHand 1, the body movements will be those of Anim1 and not 2.
To be able to work on it I simply changed the order putting the Anim 2 in first position and the Cycle lHand1 in first position.
But I would also like to use Cycle Hand2 and 3 with small movement variations.
By putting a name with "/" I get animation groups.
I could do Cycle/lHand1... Cycle/lHand2 etc.. In this way I can launch randomly the hand movement just putting Cycle/*.

From the instructions I saw that there is a way to indicate in the tab Sequence who an animation should be synchronized with, but I didn't understand how it works.
Can you give me suggestions or solutions?

Thank you

 

[hazmhox]

DO NOT change the speed of layers. They have to be synced.

There's only one reason for that : There are massive bugs in Timeline with blending between animations if layers are not exactly at the same speed. There is no workaround, Timeline would need to be fixed.

You can test it, and you will see it works. But if your scene relies on blends and animation switching, you will get ultra weird blending behaviors that will drive you nutz. Unless you'd obviously control speed at runtime and everytime an animation switch occurs, you reinit everything... but this would override the intended speed and might not work as you want. Also, it's not "fail proof"... Even by resyncing the speed you could still get blending issues.

So the solution I could suggest is, if for instance, your speed is controlled by a slider... I would instead go back to buttons, use like three buttons "fast/normal/slow", and sync up layers with proper animations at a 1 speed (but you stretch/squash the speed of the layers you want).

 

[Pig Bros Productions]

DO NOT change the speed of layers. The have to be synced.

There's only one reason for that : There are massive bugs in Timeline with blending between animations if layers are not exactly at the same speed. There is no workaround, Timeline would need to be fixed.

You can test it, and you will see it works. But if your scene relies on blends and animation switching, you will get ultra weird blending behavior that will drive you nutz. Unless you'd obviously control speed at runtime and everytime an animation switch occurs, you reinit everything... but this would override the intended speed and might not work as you want. Also, it's not "fail proof"... Even by resyncing the speed you could still get blending issues.

So the solution I could suggest is, if for instance, your speed is controlled by a slider... I would instead go back to buttons, use like three buttons "fast/normal/slow", and sync up layers with proper animations at a 1 speed (but you stretch/squash the speed of the layers you want).

Hi and thanks for the answer.
Yesterday I made a test and it woks very well.
I put in the sequence tab of the timeline in the sync field a word "hand1" and write it in the main animation and al in all the cycle animations.
Now I can work on a single cycle animation sync with the first 2 second of the main animation.
Hope during the recording doesn't come out some bugs.
here is the example video.

 

[Pig Bros Productions]

@hazmhox
I found a bug using ths method.
If I set the Sync field like I used for my sequnce, the system can't exit from the loop.You can set manually to go to other animation, but it didn't work.
Anyway, I found a workaround.
While I'm working that piece of the scene, I can use the syenc field to sync the cycle layer to the main animation. When is completed, I simply delete the field and launch the hand's layer from the main timeline.
In this way the animations can work without any problem and go to an other animation.
Let me know what you think about all this method.
Thanks.

 

[hazmhox]

I have my take on the potential speed issues/bugs. I can't tell/say much about the rest... there's no real answer to doing a sequence, anything that works and yield the result you're looking for is worth it.

There's no right or wrong... only the result matters

 

[Pig Bros Productions]

I have my take on the potential speed issues/bugs. I can't tell/say much about the rest... there's no real answer to doing a sequence, anything that works and yield the result you're looking for is worth it.

There's no right or wrong... only the result matters

I agree with you, but not being an expert in VAM yet, I try to find solutions that speed up my work.
I'm trying to standardize the process.
So, I'm always looking for helpful advice.
In this case, while asking for help, I had some ideas that worked.
At least for now.
I hope that no problems arise during the registration phase.
I have to say that I find making these videos very fun.
It relaxes me a lot and I give vent to my creativity.
VAM is a fantastic software.

Thank you for the support