Question How would you create this simple animation?

[Jocks3D]

The base VaM animation tab, Timeline, Animation Poser and now State Manager are all great animation tools but I must admit I'm kind of confused on which to use for a very simple animation. For example, suppose you wanted to create a scene with a model doing jumping jacks? Yes, I know that scene already exists and even the base animation tab has that movement, but for the sake of an example lets say you wanted to create it from scratch, or maybe modify the basic jumping jack movement. Which tool/plugin would you use and why?

Here's another example. Suppose you have three poses: #1 is the model standing with arms at their sides, #2 is the t-pose and #3 is the model with their hands overhead. Which tool or plugin would you use to blend these three poses together into a smooth animation of the model going from pose 1 to pose 3 and back to pose 1?

 

[atani]

The only one I know is Timeline, the other ones I still find them too confusing as I am not familiar with the State machine concept.
I would suggest Timeline as is the more user-friendly option and a very powerful tool. Besides, there's tons of scenes with Timeline that you can deconstruct and learn from, and also lots of people who know how to use it.

Home

Advanced and intuitive keyframe animations for Virt-A-Mate - acidbubbles/vam-timeline

github.com

 

[DTB247]

I would use timeline for multiple control points and synchronized movements. I use animation pattern for quick easy single controller movement or for multiple control points that are linked.

 

[Jocks3D]

I tried Timeline for the second example I gave, with several poses uploaded as individual key frames. Unfortunately the model slid around a lot and the feet would not stay on the floor. I need to figure out how to keep them grounded in one spot but with their other body parts moving.

 

[atani]

The feet won't move unless you tell them to (set as targets) or if they're being pulled by another body part.
If you set the Person control as a target you'll probably make it move as a whole, so don't use that as a target.

 

[atani]

Here's an example scene, put that in /Saves/scene.

#1 is the model standing with arms at their sides, #2 is the t-pose and #3 is the model with their hands overhead

 

[DTB247]

Those poses sound simple to recreate. I would skip the step of loading them as keyframes and just animating the hands and feet through the steps . you could add knees and elbow controls if you need to control the rotation in those joints. I haven't tried it yet but if you can add the root control maybe you could add a little hop too.

 

[Jocks3D]

Here's an example scene, put that in /Saves/scene

I did that but when I imported it in Timeline it would not play. I also tried loading it in Animation Presets and could not navigate to the file. Sorry, still kind of new to making animations.

 

[atani]

Open the scene, which is just the default person plus Timeline in the person plugins, and in that Timeline just press play all. There's no importing or anything, just play all in the person's Timeline plugin.

 

[Jocks3D]

Ok, got it. I was looking in the All Scenes Browser folder and didn't think to look in the Open Scenes folder. I rarely use that. Anyhow, thanks!

Atani, I take it from your example that you suggest creating a separate animation for each pose, correct? I tried doing that but ran into problems. Here was my workflow:

1. On animation1, loaded pose of model with hands at side. Saved pose and animation.
2. Created 2nd animation, loaded and saved pose of model in t-pose. Saved animation.
3. Created 3rd animation, loaded and saved pose of model with hand overhead. Saved animation.
4. Clicked through each of the three animations to make sure proper pose was saved.
5. Hit Play All and only the first animation played.

(By the way, for anyone else who sees this I wanted to point out I'm not really trying to create an animation of a model raising their hands up, I'm just trying to determine the best method for using poses and stitching them together to make a fluid animation. I'm just using a model raising their hands as an example.)

 

[atani]

It would still show up in the scene browser as "example" but without a picture, you might have missed it. Anyway, you found it, so all good.

There's no better workflow, whatever works is good and you'll later see that different ways to do the same have pros and cons on their own. You need to set a sequence so that anim 1 goes to anim 2 - sequence tab - and can also adjust blending times.
As you're very new to Timeline you'll need to play around with it to get it going. You have the example I shared, it's one way to do it, but you can do it in other ways and is thatexperience of trial and error that will give you a foundation on what strategy you can try to make the animation you want.

You can also try the other tools you mentioned, for pose transitions they probably work great if you figure out how they work. Even so, if you want to start making animations you should definitely explore Timeline as it is a very versatile tool.

 

[HolySchmidt]

I used the animation patterns in the beginning, now I use Timeline only for even the smallest animations. One big benefit is to choose from how the animation-waypoints float into another, like linear or smooth for example. But besides that, Timeline is a mighty tool though it could have a more intuitive UI but it's so complex, like VaM too, that I don't even know what it is capable of. Try and error is the best you can do, with VaM and with Timeline. Learning by doing. Understand how things work together. And when you know, you will know how to do what you wanted in the first place.

 

[Jocks3D]

Try and error is the best you can do

I've done an awful lot of trial and error with VaM and many times I figure out what I want but other times I don't and either come to this forum for help or just give up. I'm about ready to do that with animation and Timeline. For example, it was nice of Atani to create an example file for me but have you ever heard that phrase "Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach him how to fish and he'll never be hungry"? With that in mind it would be much more helpful if I was given step by step instructions for how that example file was created. Or if that's too time consuming, maybe look at the workflow description I provided above and point out what I did wrong or what I still need to do.

At the beginning of this post I provided a super simple animation example, a model with their hands at their side and then raising the hands to a T-pose then overhead. I assume it took Atani a few minutes to create the example file of this movement, so this leads me to also assume that detailed instructions on how to do it could be written in a paragraph or two. Just my opinion, but more people would probably make and share animations here if they were taught the basic steps. Almost everyone needs training wheels before they can ride a bike.

Tomorrow is Christmas where I live. Is there any kind Santa out there who would consider taking 10 or 15 minutes to describe how to make my example animation in a step by step easy to follow process? You might just be lighting the spark not just for me but for others who stumble upon this post trying to learn animation.

Thank you and I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas!

 

[HolySchmidt]

Ok, I'll be your Santa

SIMPLE INSTRUCTION
1. Set all your targets you want to animate to "Position and Rotation to ON" and put them in the place where your animation should start.
2. Go to the Timeline plugin and add the targets you want to move via the targets "+", you can also choose to add morphs there under "geometry", right underneath it. For instance expressions like laughing. If you are missing something in the list, make them a "favourite" in your morphs-list under female/male morphs.
3. Under the "Edit" tab select the length you want your animation to have (expand the range with 10X), hit "Apply". Select "Loop" if you want a loop-animation
4. Your "time counter" is now on "0s" of your animation total time. Go to "+1s" to set the counter to "1s", move all your targets to the position you want them to be on "1s".
5. Go to "+1s" again and move your targets to the place they should be on "2s".
6. And so on. If you wanna see how the animation turns out without hitting "play", you can move the time-counter with the mouse by clicking in the timeline at whatever point you want and move the mouse from left to right.

TIPS
By clicking on the "<f" or "f>" you can switch to the previous or next keyframe you have in your timeline. By selecting one or more targets, you can switch the keyframes of only these targets.

You can select which target should behave in what way by selecting one or two targets (highlight them by point-click) and edit the "curve type" at the bottom of the window, or change it for every target by selecting none and edit the "curve-type".
If you choose smooth (local), all your targets will head to the original first position "0s" in the rest of the animation time in a continous, smooth movement. If your animation is 10 seconds long and you edited the positions of them until second 3 for example, they will continously move to position "0s" in the rest of the 7 seconds if you have a loop, so they can start from "0s" again. And they will move continously to the next keyframe between "1s" and "2s" for example. Just play around.

You can change the speed of the animation under the "Edit" tab for all or just for the active one.
By selecting one target or two, you can edit the keypoints like delete one or copy for only the highlighted target. You have to be on the specific time-stamp with the marker.
Under the "More" tab and then "Advanced keyframe tools" you can delete all keyframes or all animations, or you can reverse all keyframes for a "back and forth" animation by adding another animation for example (so you have two), and copy all keyframes of that animation to the second one, then reverse all. That would be kind of a reverse loop with two animations.

Yes, these are some basics and I'm doing pretty well with it. No need right now for a deeper understanding to me.
If you wanna trigger (start) an animation via a button for example, create an "UIButton" with "add Atoms" under "Triggers". Select the button, go to "Button trigger" and add a "click action". Go to "settings", select the person as "Receiver Atom", as "Receiver"select the Timeline plugin under "plugin ....." and as "Receiver target" set "play anim1".
Click the button and the animation should start

Time spent on this post: ~1 hour. Merry Christmas!

 

[atani]

Keypoints on the scene I made:

• 2 targets added: right and left hand controls
• 3 animations at 6 seconds each, non-looping
• 1st anim: 0 and 3 seconds points keyframed with hands by side; 6 seconds keyframe with hands in t-pose
• 2nd anim: 0 and 3 seconds points keyframed with hands in t-pose; 6 seconds keyframe with hands overhead
• 3rd anim: 0 and 3 seconds points keyframed with hands overhead; 6 seconds keyframe with hands side
• All animations with use the Sequence tab to move on to the following one, and 3rd one to 1st

That's how the scene was structured, but you can do it in other ways. See @HolySchmidt's answer for more Timeline information, but note that learning Timeline requires time and lots of frustration, it is how it is.

 

[Jocks3D]

Thank you @HolySchmidt and @atani, your posts are very helpful! I'm sure others trying to learn animation will benefit from them as I did. The part about the curve type was especially helpful since I never understood that. Any tip for which curve type can help keep a models feet planted on the ground to avoid sliding and floating?

One thing I have not been able to figure out in VaM is how to select multiple body parts to move together. In Daz I believe you hit shift or control and then select multiple connected parts like the arm, forearm, elbow and hand to move everything at once. I'm assuming this is not possible in VaM, although since it can be done in Daz I thought maybe VaM could do it also.

Believe it or not I think I'm finding the posing harder than the animation! I've read and watched the pose tutorials but have a lot of trouble posing models in the way I want. I'm thinking about doing the posing and animation in Daz with a Gen 2 model and then exporting a BVH to VaM.