VaM 1.x How to Glue/Link Person A's Hand to Person's B back during Timeline.

[Preddie]

Hello,

Im trying to make a scene just for curiousity sake for now. Mocapped 2 actors in a scene for 100 seconds, but after 40 seconds or so, I want person A's hand to be stuck on person B's back, but I cant seem to figure out how. I've tried the "Link to Parent' but then it creates some distance, it follows it but with a gap between it. Also, I dont know how to trigger that during the animations in Timeline, so can anyone help me?

Chatgpt is not a help either with this haha.

Thank you.

 

[hazmhox]

You won't get a "perfect" match. Using the parent rotation/position in timeline is the way to go, as you figured out. But it's simply a "hook" to another node, so you will need to potentially animate relative motions if you want a perfect match.

 

[Preddie]

You won't get a "perfect" match. Using the parent rotation/position in timeline is the way to go, as you figured out. But it's simply a "hook" to another node, so you will need to potentially animate relative motions if you want a perfect match.

Thanks for the reply, I did record relatively close to eachother, by that I mean, the hand kind of 'hovers' over the back, but I do want it somewhat connected. But as you said, hooking to another node. I just cant seem to figure out how to do that. Besides parent linking it with a gap between them. And even with that, I dont know how to 'trigger' it or enable it through Timeline.

 

[SlimerJSpud]

You may need to use Collider Editor to get the hand closer. I use physics links a lot. One trick is to define the relationship to the other body part, but leave it off until the right point is reached. That means you have the node you want linked to defined, but the node you want linked is in the On/On state until the right moment. In my case, it's when I click an "Action" button that motion starts, and the state is Parent/Parent, or Physics Link, whichever works best. See attached. Note also the use of hip, not hipControl. If you're doing Parent Link, or Physics Link, that usually works better. Using the Control node seems to allow the hand to drift away.

 

[Preddie]

You may need to use Collider Editor to get the hand closer. I use physics links a lot. One trick is to define the relationship to the other body part, but leave it off until the right point is reached. That means you have the node you want linked to defined, but the node you want linked is in the On/On state until the right moment. In my case, it's when I click an "Action" button that motion starts, and the state is Parent/Parent, or Physics Link, whichever works best. See attached. Note also the use of hip, not hipControl. If you're doing Parent Link, or Physics Link, that usually works better. Using the Control node seems to allow the hand to drift away.

View attachment 576340

Oh wow, okay! Im going to try that later on, thank you much! Do I need to change anything at all with the springs and/or dampers?

 

[SlimerJSpud]

Oh wow, okay! Im going to try that later on, thank you much! Do I need to change anything at all with the springs and/or dampers?

I don't think so. Note that physics links can be land mines. If the physics link is active when the pose changes in a big way, people can get twisted into pretzels! It's not the "from" pose that matters, it's the new pose that matters.

 

[hazmhox]

Thanks for the reply, I did record relatively close to eachother, by that I mean, the hand kind of 'hovers' over the back, but I do want it somewhat connected. But as you said, hooking to another node. I just cant seem to figure out how to do that. Besides parent linking it with a gap between them. And even with that, I dont know how to 'trigger' it or enable it through Timeline.

It's in the timeline tab, not throught the node itself (because you will have problems doing throught the node itself as Slimer shows).
The only aspect you need to configure are the physical values in the node tab when you save the pose prior to playback.

But the way to do it is through this:

 

[hazmhox]

@SlimerJSpud Keep your pictures as thumbnails in threads man, we need legibility

@Preddie note: you can't swap parenting on the fly in an animation, the proper behavior needs to have it enable or disabled through different animations. If you have a long mocap, you will have to split it and transition from non parented to parented animations if you want this to behave properly.

There are a lot of cool and fun stuffs to do with this, using the weight slider to control more or less the parenting.
It's important to know that switching to a parented (ie: relative) animation COULD break the position of your anim, so be very very careful and save prior to experimentations.