Plugins + Scripts Timeline: LightningBunnyWorkshop

[LightningBunny]

好的 谢谢，这太好了，这样方便在做的时候 人物手放到奶子上后，播放动画线 然后手就可以不停的抚摸了 这很方便 ，加了手动开关也方便了不同情况下的需求，太好了。还有一点，就是我们把时间线里的各种控制分类好后，比如 表情 部位 手指 都按不同标签分类好后，在新建下一个片段的时候 如果保留它们再选新建新片段 那些我们分类好的栏 它们又跑到一起了 比如 几何项目那里 呃.....表达不是很专业 不知道你能否看懂 哈哈哈

我知道你说什么了。分组信息没法继承到新建片段里是吗，变形只全部堆在一起

 

[carlosge]

是的 是的 毕竟有时候再建新的片段后 不想再花时间去再分类或重新添加了

 

[LightningBunny]

好的 谢谢，这太好了，这样方便在做的时候 人物手放到奶子上后，播放动画线 然后手就可以不停的抚摸了 这很方便 ，加了手动开关也方便了不同情况下的需求，太好了。还有一点，就是我们把时间线里的各种控制分类好后，比如 表情 部位 手指 都按不同标签分类好后，在新建下一个片段的时候 如果保留它们再选新建新片段 那些我们分类好的栏 它们又跑到一起了 比如 几何项目那里 呃.....表达不是很专业 不知道你能否看懂 哈哈哈

我检查了一下，时间线里面新建片段没有继承当前动画控制项的设置啊。你说的保留是什么地方设置的

 

[babul]

Can confirm the issue of not being able to set plugin storables as targets etc.. looks like it always defaults to person geometry and you can't actually add other targets.

 

[LightningBunny]

Can confirm the issue of not being able to set plugin storables as targets etc.. looks like it always defaults to person geometry and you can't actually add other targets.

I'm aware of this issue, and I've already fixed it. It will be released in the next version once I prepare the documentation.

 

[LightningBunny]

LightningBunny updated Timeline: LightningBunnyWorkshop with a new update entry:

Numerous updates.

1. Added base point baking, placed within the reference baking interface.
2. Fixed the time scaling feature.
3. Fixed the issue where various storage targets could not be added.
4. Fixed the issue where mirror baking was interfered with by existing motion.
5. Fixed the issue where flip baking did not include the head when the upper body was selected.
6. Optimized the loading logic for reference baking.
7. Added a semi-recording mode...

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[Electric E-Boy]

The clip sequencer could revolutionize any animation work, wow I have wished for that since i started with animations, tried to mimick it with several plugins, layers or multiple instances of timeline, used the wonderful screen tools/pose factory, but completely modular, relative and reusable animations - what a dream! I am so glad you continued your work

 

[LightningBunny]

The clip sequencer could revolutionize any animation work, wow I have wished for that since i started with animations, tried to mimick it with several plugins, layers or multiple instances of timeline, used the wonderful screen tools/pose factory, but completely modular, relative and reusable animations - what a dream! I am so glad you continued your work

Haha, I've always wanted a tool for making modular animations too – so we're on the same page there. To be honest, I didn't think anyone would actually speak up about the Action Sequencer. It wasn't until after I finished writing the tutorial that I realized I don't really have a gift for writing tutorials, which made it way too wordy and complicated.

 

[Electric E-Boy]

Haha, I've always wanted a tool for making modular animations too – so we're on the same page there. To be honest, I didn't think anyone would actually speak up about the Action Sequencer. It wasn't until after I finished writing the tutorial that I realized I don't really have a gift for writing tutorials, which made it way too wordy and complicated.

I think you just have done so many cool features, that it is difficult to recognize them all at first Your new hub page change with videos and descriptions for the clip sequencer is great, because of that i was able to grasp the potential of the already existing motion clip feature. Also all the curve manipulation features are very great and makes lot of keyframe work easier. Still lots of things to discover Thank you so much for your work! I think with time most animators will love your new features.

 

[LightningBunny]

I think you just have done so many cool features, that it is difficult to recognize them all at first Your new hub page change with videos and descriptions for the clip sequencer is great, because of that i was able to grasp the potential of the already existing motion clip feature. Also all the curve manipulation features are very great and makes lot of keyframe work easier. Still lots of things to discover Thank you so much for your work! I think with time most animators will love your new features.

Thank you for your recognition and support!

 

[babul]

I've been playing a bit with Noise baking feature and I have a request: maybe make it possible to fine tune movement to be even slower than the slowest setting? And also allow optional rotation noise baking (with selectable axes). My use case was to bake in noise to WindowCamera, so when I record a video, then the random camera movement would loop perfectly. It works nicely with position, but if I wanted bake in rotation, I would be stuck. Same would be useful for body parts maybe, like slight head/hand rotations etc. I mean, presets are nice, like hip sway/head bob, but I think it would be nice to have customizable baking of any number of controllers and parameters, which could achieve anything that the presets are doing.

So to give an example of what I have in mind:

- select Person control/atom
- select range of baking (we have this)
- select movement/rotation
then for each one select axes, so e.g:
- movement X/Y/Z; rotation X/Z (if you selected both)
- select speed for both
- select min/max range, maybe even with randomness (something that's in Morph Sequencer plugin, e.g. minimum value 0.1-0.3, maximum 0.5-0.7), or constant (so I guess for moving atoms value would be Unity coordinates? Then movement of 1 would be huge, but maybe with added decimals wouldn't be too bad)
I guess negative values would simply go on the opposite side, so if you want to move hand perfectly left and right from the initial point by the same amount, you simply to min -1, max 1 - different values would allow for more movement in certain direction, if you wanted
- OR, specifically for atom/body part movement... how about reference frames? Let's say first frame is our initial point, second frame is minimum point, and third frame is maximum point. So it would work as if you'd make a simple animation with only minimum/maximum point frames, and baking would swing between those 2 keyframes with the first frame (initial one, not the reference one) serving as anchor. It could allow to make custom curved movements etc. And randomness of values still could be easily made, if those reference frames are 0-1, then make it so they interpolate between those range values you set earlier (so that example of 0.1-0.3, 0.5-0.7)

I haven't tried, so I am not 100% sure now, but if you could bake randomness of morphs, it would be nice. Something like, select speed and range of morph values and bake it like noise.

I'm half expecting it to be not feasible, but just saying.. how about another crazy idea:


Bake sequence recorder

Let's say for a given controller that has keyframe on 0s and in the middle (so 1 in default animation), I am doing sequence of bakes. So first let's say motion speed on 0-1 with specific settings, then few times value bake on specific segments, then slight noise bake on everything. If you could save that sequence and apply it, you could then easily make for example highly polished thrusting loop just from 2 simple keyframes, with 1 click. That would be insane. (It's different from clips, right? Because clips would save entire movement, and you can't simply apply it to any custom keyframes?) If there's no strict requirement that animation needs keyframes at exact times, then you could do 10s loop or 60 seconds loop, if both keyframes are in the middle. If not then I guess you can just simply stretch the animation with noirmal Timeline tools. So basically kind of like macro recorder in VIM If you could combine that with more advanced baking I mentioned in previous idea, it would be ultimate.

I am aware I got waaaaaaaaaay carried away, sorry... but just wanted to share my thoughts anyway, as the plugin is really good and I thought maybe some of this is actually possible. Cheers!

 

[LightningBunny]

I've been playing a bit with Noise baking feature and I have a request: maybe make it possible to fine tune movement to be even slower than the slowest setting? And also allow optional rotation noise baking (with selectable axes). My use case was to bake in noise to WindowCamera, so when I record a video, then the random camera movement would loop perfectly. It works nicely with position, but if I wanted bake in rotation, I would be stuck. Same would be useful for body parts maybe, like slight head/hand rotations etc. I mean, presets are nice, like hip sway/head bob, but I think it would be nice to have customizable baking of any number of controllers and parameters, which could achieve anything that the presets are doing.

So to give an example of what I have in mind:

- select Person control/atom
- select range of baking (we have this)
- select movement/rotation
then for each one select axes, so e.g:
- movement X/Y/Z; rotation X/Z (if you selected both)
- select speed for both
- select min/max range, maybe even with randomness (something that's in Morph Sequencer plugin, e.g. minimum value 0.1-0.3, maximum 0.5-0.7), or constant (so I guess for moving atoms value would be Unity coordinates? Then movement of 1 would be huge, but maybe with added decimals wouldn't be too bad)
I guess negative values would simply go on the opposite side, so if you want to move hand perfectly left and right from the initial point by the same amount, you simply to min -1, max 1 - different values would allow for more movement in certain direction, if you wanted
- OR, specifically for atom/body part movement... how about reference frames? Let's say first frame is our initial point, second frame is minimum point, and third frame is maximum point. So it would work as if you'd make a simple animation with only minimum/maximum point frames, and baking would swing between those 2 keyframes with the first frame (initial one, not the reference one) serving as anchor. It could allow to make custom curved movements etc. And randomness of values still could be easily made, if those reference frames are 0-1, then make it so they interpolate between those range values you set earlier (so that example of 0.1-0.3, 0.5-0.7)

I haven't tried, so I am not 100% sure now, but if you could bake randomness of morphs, it would be nice. Something like, select speed and range of morph values and bake it like noise.

I'm half expecting it to be not feasible, but just saying.. how about another crazy idea:


Bake sequence recorder

Let's say for a given controller that has keyframe on 0s and in the middle (so 1 in default animation), I am doing sequence of bakes. So first let's say motion speed on 0-1 with specific settings, then few times value bake on specific segments, then slight noise bake on everything. If you could save that sequence and apply it, you could then easily make for example highly polished thrusting loop just from 2 simple keyframes, with 1 click. That would be insane. (It's different from clips, right? Because clips would save entire movement, and you can't simply apply it to any custom keyframes?) If there's no strict requirement that animation needs keyframes at exact times, then you could do 10s loop or 60 seconds loop, if both keyframes are in the middle. If not then I guess you can just simply stretch the animation with noirmal Timeline tools. So basically kind of like macro recorder in VIM If you could combine that with more advanced baking I mentioned in previous idea, it would be ultimate.

I am aware I got waaaaaaaaaay carried away, sorry... but just wanted to share my thoughts anyway, as the plugin is really good and I thought maybe some of this is actually possible. Cheers!

Honestly, Noise Bake was one of the first features I ever created, and once I added more tools, I pretty much forgot about it. I was actually planning to prune some of the underused features in the next few versions, and Noise Bake was on that list. That’s why you never see it mentioned in my update notes. Your feedback caught me off guard, and I have to admit I’ve barely touched it since the day I created it. Your ideas are genuinely valuable, and I’m taking them seriously.

I’m not sure I fully understand what you have in mind for the noise part, but if I’m reading it right, you want more parameter control for Noise Bake itself, rotation noise with selectable axes, and per-cycle variation so each repetition of a looped motion feels different from the last.

About your bake sequence recorder idea, I really like it. That’s essentially a macro system for baking, like recording a VIM macro and replaying it on any animation. It would turn a multi-step workflow into one click, and I honestly haven’t seen that proposed before. It’s a genuinely smart direction.

Speaking of controlling motion, here’s something you may not know about: we already have two tools for pacing, the Custom Velocity Curve and the Custom Momentum Curve. The velocity curve lets you draw a speed multiplier over time, so you can redistribute the motion across the timeline, slow-mo here, fast-forward there. The momentum curve does the same for amplitude. There’s a video on my release page showing them working on looping animations. I’m not sure if that’s the kind of “speed” you meant, but they might be worth a look before we talk about new baking features.

Honestly, I’m still not 100% sure what exactly you’re after for the noise part. If you could walk me through, in a bit more detail, how the end result would differ from what those curves already do, that would clear things up a lot for me.
.

 

[babul]

Honestly, Noise Bake was one of the first features I ever created, and once I added more tools, I pretty much forgot about it. I was actually planning to prune some of the underused features in the next few versions, and Noise Bake was on that list. That’s why you never see it mentioned in my update notes. Your feedback caught me off guard, and I have to admit I’ve barely touched it since the day I created it. Your ideas are genuinely valuable, and I’m taking them seriously.

I’m not sure I fully understand what you have in mind for the noise part, but if I’m reading it right, you want more parameter control for Noise Bake itself, rotation noise with selectable axes, and per-cycle variation so each repetition of a looped motion feels different from the last.

About your bake sequence recorder idea, I really like it. That’s essentially a macro system for baking, like recording a VIM macro and replaying it on any animation. It would turn a multi-step workflow into one click, and I honestly haven’t seen that proposed before. It’s a genuinely smart direction.

Speaking of controlling motion, here’s something you may not know about: we already have two tools for pacing, the Custom Velocity Curve and the Custom Momentum Curve. The velocity curve lets you draw a speed multiplier over time, so you can redistribute the motion across the timeline, slow-mo here, fast-forward there. The momentum curve does the same for amplitude. There’s a video on my release page showing them working on looping animations. I’m not sure if that’s the kind of “speed” you meant, but they might be worth a look before we talk about new baking features.

Honestly, I’m still not 100% sure what exactly you’re after for the noise part. If you could walk me through, in a bit more detail, how the end result would differ from what those curves already do, that would clear things up a lot for me.
.

About noise - I think you got what I meant. But I'll try to clarify what I think is not possible now and what would be nice. So, rotation noise and separating axes is not possible. In hardcore variant, speed and value settings per axe would mean ultimate baking. Use case: e. g. for head idle movement you might want it to rotate overall more in Y axis, but slightly less in X axis, and the least in Z axis. So it's all there, but subtle. And on top of that randomize only side to side movement with X axis. Also, as you said - per cycle variation, which is important for idle animation.

It's your plugin and you will decide what you want to have in it, but IMO losing noise would be a huge loss. Well, maybe my use case is niche.. but if anyone is doing animation loops and they want to loop them perfectly, there is basically no plugin that allows it, if you want to have random body movements and preserve the loop. There are great plugins to supplement random movements, like movement helper, miscreated Sub-motion etc, but once you record your clip, then it will very noticeably snap your camera and person etc, when it repeats. In classic timeline I guess you could just hit record on your body parts while random movement plugin is working, and then somehow try to fix the snap.. which is obviously tedious. Also, for camera random shake movement it's even worse - all plugins are affecting OBJECT (not control) of camera, so to record it, you have to create empty atom with shake plugin, then parent actual camera to its object, and then record camera. If you could just one click randomize position+rotation of window camera = boom, one click nice movement. Which brings me to another idea I forgot about:

So, when you're baking such noise movement etc, keyframes are very close, and especially when you are randomizing WindowCamera (with embody on it), it will very visibly jump positions on the loop. To make it more fluid I'm just deleting last 0.5 seconds of keyframes and enabling some smoothing in Embody, which is not ideal. But what if plugin could somehow ease in movement towards the end of the loop? I am not sure how it would be possible. So basically preserve randomized movement, but once animation comes to an end, slightly nudge the bias so that by the time it finishes and loops, it looks smooth. So basically avoid situation where last keyframes of controller are far awayfrom the first frame, which causes a glitchy snap. This is very important if you do a loop, alternative is to not use any randomized movement, or to keyframe it all yourself. That's why I think it would be very useful for your plugin to have it. I realize it's niche a bit - perfect loop. You can just ignore those problems and use camera cuts or fade in/out, so the glitch is not visible I guess. But if it worked with nice loop... you could make very custom idle body movements for various occasions (instead of having one arbitrary one), with Timeline instance that is just running in the background, and then use another one to drive actual animation - but I'm not sure if using same controls would override positions etc, or if it works as a difference of position - sorry, I forgot. Even if not, then you could leave what you don't animate on background instance, and just bake in specific body part in the animation layer.

So, combining all of "how it would differ": more control over separate axes, rotation noise, perfect loop! (with idea mentioned above).

About custom velocity/momentum curves: I'll check it out closer.. but I think I tried those curves and it applies one simple shape over keyframe selection (no no long curves over longer animations)? Or am I confusing that with momentum/velocity baking? If you can just draw a curve over say.. 20 second loop to control speed/amplitude, similar to 14mhz MultiCurveMapper, then it's perfect! Then I guess there's less need to have speed/value randomness in Noise, as you could just draw it yourself (but still, one click good effect is way more convenient than manual tweaking of both curves ).

Thanks for being open to suggestions, when I see a good plugin I guess I'll just start yapping .. which I did for Timeline when it was new, or CheesyFX plugins.. been slapping suggestions for Ruvik and I was very happy (and surprised) you added automated target addition for advanced fingers posing - this is golden. Regardless of what you do with it, I'm hyped for new updates! This is great stuff my man.

 

[LightningBunny]

About noise - I think you got what I meant. But I'll try to clarify what I think is not possible now and what would be nice. So, rotation noise and separating axes is not possible. In hardcore variant, speed and value settings per axe would mean ultimate baking. Use case: e. g. for head idle movement you might want it to rotate overall more in Y axis, but slightly less in X axis, and the least in Z axis. So it's all there, but subtle. And on top of that randomize only side to side movement with X axis. Also, as you said - per cycle variation, which is important for idle animation.

It's your plugin and you will decide what you want to have in it, but IMO losing noise would be a huge loss. Well, maybe my use case is niche.. but if anyone is doing animation loops and they want to loop them perfectly, there is basically no plugin that allows it, if you want to have random body movements and preserve the loop. There are great plugins to supplement random movements, like movement helper, miscreated Sub-motion etc, but once you record your clip, then it will very noticeably snap your camera and person etc, when it repeats. In classic timeline I guess you could just hit record on your body parts while random movement plugin is working, and then somehow try to fix the snap.. which is obviously tedious. Also, for camera random shake movement it's even worse - all plugins are affecting OBJECT (not control) of camera, so to record it, you have to create empty atom with shake plugin, then parent actual camera to its object, and then record camera. If you could just one click randomize position+rotation of window camera = boom, one click nice movement. Which brings me to another idea I forgot about:

So, when you're baking such noise movement etc, keyframes are very close, and especially when you are randomizing WindowCamera (with embody on it), it will very visibly jump positions on the loop. To make it more fluid I'm just deleting last 0.5 seconds of keyframes and enabling some smoothing in Embody, which is not ideal. But what if plugin could somehow ease in movement towards the end of the loop? I am not sure how it would be possible. So basically preserve randomized movement, but once animation comes to an end, slightly nudge the bias so that by the time it finishes and loops, it looks smooth. So basically avoid situation where last keyframes of controller are far awayfrom the first frame, which causes a glitchy snap. This is very important if you do a loop, alternative is to not use any randomized movement, or to keyframe it all yourself. That's why I think it would be very useful for your plugin to have it. I realize it's niche a bit - perfect loop. You can just ignore those problems and use camera cuts or fade in/out, so the glitch is not visible I guess. But if it worked with nice loop... you could make very custom idle body movements for various occasions (instead of having one arbitrary one), with Timeline instance that is just running in the background, and then use another one to drive actual animation - but I'm not sure if using same controls would override positions etc, or if it works as a difference of position - sorry, I forgot. Even if not, then you could leave what you don't animate on background instance, and just bake in specific body part in the animation layer.

So, combining all of "how it would differ": more control over separate axes, rotation noise, perfect loop! (with idea mentioned above).

About custom velocity/momentum curves: I'll check it out closer.. but I think I tried those curves and it applies one simple shape over keyframe selection (no no long curves over longer animations)? Or am I confusing that with momentum/velocity baking? If you can just draw a curve over say.. 20 second loop to control speed/amplitude, similar to 14mhz MultiCurveMapper, then it's perfect! Then I guess there's less need to have speed/value randomness in Noise, as you could just draw it yourself (but still, one click good effect is way more convenient than manual tweaking of both curves ).

Thanks for being open to suggestions, when I see a good plugin I guess I'll just start yapping .. which I did for Timeline when it was new, or CheesyFX plugins.. been slapping suggestions for Ruvik and I was very happy (and surprised) you added automated target addition for advanced fingers posing - this is golden. Regardless of what you do with it, I'm hyped for new updates! This is great stuff my man.

Oh my god! You must be using preset curves to say that. You have to check out my sixth video (counting from the top) — manual drawing has existed for a long time, and there's no time limit either