Question How to use built in animations?

[CuriousWhiskers]

I'm a new user and I'm really trying to learn how to use this but so much is just so confusing and I'm probably going to be making lots of fourm post. Just trying to get the basics down. First how do I use the built in animations. I have absolutely no idea how to get them to play, I've triend hitting every "play" button i can see but the character does nothing? whether that button in the sequence block has a play symbol or pause symbol nothing happens, with both selected if i try to hit the green play button in the ui nothing happens any help would be appreciated.

 

[Femcore]

Yes, it can be tough in the beginning but if you give it some hours, you will get into it.

In your case, I think all you have to do is check the "activate" box. Then you should be good to go using the other buttons to play, reset and all that.

If you want to get deeper into animations and want to make some yourself, I recommend using the Timeline plugin and not the built-in feature.

 

[CuriousWhiskers]

Yes, it can be tough in the beginning but if you give it some hours, you will get into it.

In your case, I think all you have to do is check the "activate" box. Then you should be good to go using the other buttons to play, reset and all that.

If you want to get deeper into animations and want to make some yourself, I recommend using the Timeline plugin and not the built-in feature.

That kinda helped, ive got her finger making lots of idleing movements and in the sequence tab of built in animations playing, I can pause, restart, loop etc now. but the character herself is not moving at all besides flexing her fingers up and down so some progress. I'm assuming that I must have some sort of character movement lock active by default that I need to undo?

 

[Femcore]

I just loaded the basic scene from your screenshot and tried it. Added one of the dance animations to the list, checked the "activate" box and pressed play. For me she is moving as expected. I did not have to do anything else.
Have you tried closing VaM (or at least close the scene with the "Hard Reset" button) and loading it again? Maybe something messed up somewhere.

 

[CuriousWhiskers]

I just loaded the basic scene from your screenshot and tried it. Added one of the dance animations to the list, checked the "activate" box and pressed play. For me she is moving as expected. I did not have to do anything else.
Have you tried closing VaM (or at least close the scene with the "Hard Reset" button) and loading it again? Maybe something messed up somewhere.

I have, just tried it again today and same thing except now here hands are stiff and not idling anymore? Edit: I have now also verified core and did sync and repair all no problems found, and now her hands are idling again but still no animations seem to be working. Edit 2: I decided to just try it on a random scene/chacter tifa and all the animations and such are working for her. Which I guess its nice that its working for her. but kinda thought that when experimenting with stuff and how to do things that I could use the default character as a base and not have to worry about any addon mods/plugins :/, I still would like to fix this if at all possible. Should I just try uninstalling and reinstalling it?

 

[CuriousWhiskers]

Ok after messing around a little with changing appearance and things I can confirm that the default scene is bugged for me, its not an appearance thing, animation thing, hair thing, the atom(I think thats what its called) in this scene just refuses to do animations for some reason. Thought maybe I could test with adding a new atom but see that that is a creator subscription level, not totally against getting a creator subscription, but really dont want to right now if the entire reason is for well... bug testing to figure out what's broken. Doesnt really inspire confidence . Edit I FIXED IT. I have no idea why its doing this but if I go into control & physics 2 and click on "Key Joints: Control All" or any variation like "All joints: Control All" she now starts doing the animations. So now I have to wonder. Why is mine seemingly "off" by default (nothing else is selected by default so nothing should be getting in the way of it) and how can I make it so that I dont have to click this every single time I want work on this character. Well regardless its a slight annoyance but one I can live with. I hope this thread can help other people new to this game/software that have the same problem. Still dont want the thread to be closed just yet though as I would like to know how to have it on be default like you have.

 

[Femcore]

Good to see that you got it working.
I thought about the Joints as well but could not reproduce your problem when I messed around with the settings.

You can just save the scene to keep everything the way it is in that moment. But maybe that is only possible with creator subscription? I don't really know.

If you want to check the state of joints quickly you can turn on the visual reference for the targets at the very bottom of the menu ("Toggle Targets") and also clicking the button that looks like crosshairs to toggle seeing those who are red/turned off. The green ones are turned on.
Maybe there you can see whats wrong with the original model?

By the way: there is another (real?) default model which has, for example, all morphs set to zero. You get it when you just click "Load Defaults" in the "Appearance Presets" Tab.

Should I just try uninstalling and reinstalling it?

If you still consider doing so, first you could try to let VaM fix itself. There is the VaM_Updater.exe in the installation folder. If you open it you find some check/sync/repair options in the options menu.

Maybe just delete the scene (It should be the "MeshedVR.3PointLightSetup.1.var" located somewhere in the "AddonPackages" folder) and see if the repair function of the Updater downloads/installs it again.
Or do you remember if you already saved the scene somewhere else or with another name? Then try to find and open the original one and see if that scene works as expected.