Plugins Timeline

[Acid Bubbles]

Acid Bubbles updated Timeline with a new update entry:

Timeline v6.0.4

- Fix new animations copying position setting into rotation
- Fix sequence randomize group using own group name instead of specified group name

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[VRmatt]

That's a scene. If they contain Timeline animation, you need to export them, but they might be native VaM animations too, in which case you'll need another plugin (mocap transfer or something)

Exactly the help I was hoping for. Thanks a ton!

 

[mikael]

Hello timeliners,

I am using one timeline plugin to animate the"scrubber" of another timeline (which is 2 seconds long) with real-time recording. The problem is that it only seems to record the scrubber values to a resolution of .10, so it doesn't look smooth when I play it back. Any ideas?

 

[Acid Bubbles]

Can you try "Time" instead of "Scrubber"? I might have to check if there's a better solution if that doesn't work.

 

[mikael]

I tried adding "settime" but I couldn't keyframe it or change it's value.

I had better luck by changing the "option/edit options/snap" to 0.001 and it seems smoother now. Don't know if that's actually related to the issue or I changed something else and haven't realized. I can do more testing at the weekend. I also added a big UI slider to give a bit more subtle control over the scrubber value. Seems to work ok now.

 

[Acid Bubbles]

What you did is right, it's still unfortunate because any snapping is lowering the playback resolution Set time should actually work though, but it might be forward-only or something like that. Scrubber works but it's actually built for edit-time scrubbing. Can you maybe explain more why you need that and what you're tryin to do? Maybe there's another solution or maybe I could do something about it!

 

[mikael]

What you did is right, it's still unfortunate because any snapping is lowering the playback resolution Set time should actually work though, but it might be forward-only or something like that. Scrubber works but it's actually built for edit-time scrubbing. Can you maybe explain more why you need that and what you're tryin to do? Maybe there's another solution or maybe I could do something about it!

So I've made a 2 second timeline for the guy which is his thrust into the lady. In the same timeline I'm animating her glute morphs/hips in sync with that. My thinking was then to animate the scrubber to create a more organic feeling so I can control the speed/thrust amount by just sliding the scrubber back and forth as a real-time recording. So he can start off slow, get faster more naturally rather than procedurally. Right now it kind of works but maybe you can think of a better way? (sorry for all the edits, just trying to be clear!)

 

[abjohn]

I am facing some issue with export and import animations feature. I wanted higher jump and specific walking style animation for new animation which was making and i found that jump and walking animation in another animation available free on virtamate but that animation was having a "PLAY" Button and multiple animations in layers on acidbubbles timeline. when i do export, it exports all animations and import all animations. if i want to selectively export/import only part of animation i can't do it and layered animations don't autoplay, there is some kind of control which i am not able to remove.
To resolve this issue, i deleted animations from layers and decided to keep only walking /jumping animation and do export/import but still when i do import it shows import as only one animation but when i play it starts playing all animations which are included in original longer animation.
I am not sure if it is bug/issue in acidbubbles timeline plugin or i am missing out something and doing something wrong.
Do you have any tutorials on -
How you selectively export and import specific animation into another scene and avoid situation of explosions by making sure specific pose is selected?

how layered animations are controlled by play button and how to remove control button and do autoplay?

 

[Acid Bubbles]

@abjohn let me try to answer this all the best I can.

- When you import, it always create a new segment right now. This might not be what you want, and I plan on improving that.
- When you play an animation, all other layers will play. This is normal; if you want a layer not to play, you could create an "idle" animation at the beginning that determines where the nodes are for that layer.
- If you want to have full body animations, they should be on the same layer. If they are not, I'd expect them to conflict.
- If you want to move imported animations into existing layers, you can copy all keyframes at once in More, Bulk.

Let me know if you have other questions

 

[abjohn]

@abjohn let me try to answer this all the best I can.

- When you import, it always create a new segment right now. This might not be what you want, and I plan on improving that.
- When you play an animation, all other layers will play. This is normal; if you want a layer not to play, you could create an "idle" animation at the beginning that determines where the nodes are for that layer.
- If you want to have full body animations, they should be on the same layer. If they are not, I'd expect them to conflict.
- If you want to move imported animations into existing layers, you can copy all keyframes at once in More, Bulk.

Let me know if you have other questions

Will try to follow what you mentioned but difficult to follow without a video tutorial for a new comer to VAM like me. Let me give you example of what i wanted to do. @flyroxy has one animation with name embrace which has one specific situation of girl jumping up into boys arms and penetration happens. i was trying to do something similar. That embrace animation specifically at the time when jump happens cause screen explosions also sometimes so i was trying to figure out a way to stop explosion and make some changes which could fit to movie what i was trying to make- for e.g. after jump i wanted a lip kiss and boy's hand moving down and pushing the penis in with hand.
This is the scene for your reference-

https://www.reddit.com/r/VAMscenes/comments/sbsis4

To achieve this in a easier way i decided to export animations and import only part of jump and add kissing and use acidbubbles timeline to move hand of male below to show penetration.
Flyroxy created around 5 layers, if i export and import it does import and export of all animations. so i removed 4 animations and just kept that jumping animation to export and import again, After import VAM Shows import of one animation in acidbubbles timeline but when i play, it plays all animations. so i could not figure out the way to make that jump animations and learn how @flyroxy did it. Best way to learn animation is by looking at other's how they are doing it but for me it didn't worked.
So i am getting some ghost effect- even though acidbubbles timeline shows only one animation in list but VAM plays entire scene.
Another example of @KittyMocap real estate scene animation. In this particular scene there was time when girl moves her hands and effect of males pant pulling down comes up. i wanted that effect and wanted to learn how she did it. Again same issue, she has 6 layers of animations and she has PLAY Button to trigger all animations.if i remove that PLAY Trigger button, animations won't play. same issue with export and import similar to @flyroxy , i wanted to check and learn how she did it so i could do something similar but could not find a way.
This is her real estate agent scene where she has effect of Pulling males pant down.

KM329 Real estate agent - Paid Scenes -

Mocap about 10 minutes long. This mocap is for "Daddy" Patreon tier. Hey guys, I am KittyMocap - a girl who likes to create mocap animations in VAM. Enjoy them and follow me on Twitter for new animations! Support me on Patreon for private mocaps...

hub.virtamate.com

So any possible way of only exporting and importing selected animation out of multiple layers and see how it has been done so other's can follow and try to achieve something similar if they want to ?

 

[flyroxy]

Will try to follow what you mentioned but difficult to follow without a video tutorial for a new comer to VAM like me. Let me give you example of what i wanted to do. @flyroxy has one animation with name embrace which has one specific situation of girl jumping up into boys arms and penetration happens. i was trying to do something similar. That embrace animation specifically at the time when jump happens cause screen explosions also sometimes so i was trying to figure out a way to stop explosion and make some changes which could fit to movie what i was trying to make- for e.g. after jump i wanted a lip kiss and boy's hand moving down and pushing the penis in with hand.
This is the scene for your reference-

https://www.reddit.com/r/VAMscenes/comments/sbsis4

To achieve this in a easier way i decided to export animations and import only part of jump and add kissing and use acidbubbles timeline to move hand of male below to show penetration.
Flyroxy created around 5 layers, if i export and import it does import and export of all animations. so i removed 4 animations and just kept that jumping animation to export and import again, After import VAM Shows import of one animation in acidbubbles timeline but when i play, it plays all animations. so i could not figure out the way to make that jump animations and learn how @flyroxy did it. Best way to learn animation is by looking at other's how they are doing it but for me it didn't worked.
So i am getting some ghost effect- even though acidbubbles timeline shows only one animation in list but VAM plays entire scene.
Another example of @KittyMocap real estate scene animation. In this particular scene there was time when girl moves her hands and effect of males pant pulling down comes up. i wanted that effect and wanted to learn how she did it. Again same issue, she has 6 layers of animations and she has PLAY Button to trigger all animations.if i remove that PLAY Trigger button, animations won't play. same issue with export and import similar to @flyroxy , i wanted to check and learn how she did it so i could do something similar but could not find a way.
This is her real estate agent scene where she has effect of Pulling males pant down.

KM329 Real estate agent - Paid Scenes -

Mocap about 10 minutes long. This mocap is for "Daddy" Patreon tier. Hey guys, I am KittyMocap - a girl who likes to create mocap animations in VAM. Enjoy them and follow me on Twitter for new animations! Support me on Patreon for private mocaps...

hub.virtamate.com

So any possible way of only exporting and importing selected animation out of multiple layers and see how it has been done so other's can follow and try to achieve something similar if they want to ?

This explosion caused by Grab points. You can just remove them from the scene but then you will lose thrust effect. The VAM physics behaves differently depending on your PC specs. and the game settings. You can play around with the physics settings and see if there are any improvements . It is impossible to predict whether the scene will work for everyone.

 

[abjohn]

This explosion caused by Grab points. You can just remove them from the scene but then you will lose thrust effect. The VAM physics behaves differently depending on your PC specs. and the game settings. You can play around with the physics settings and see if there are any improvements . It is impossible to predict whether the scene will work for everyone.

You have 5 animations in Layers, i was trying to keep only jump animation to see if it fix the issue but could not find a way to do it. how can i remove all animations and just keep the jump animation layer from the scene?

 

[flyroxy]

You have 5 animations in Layers, i was trying to keep only jump animation to see if it fix the issue but could not find a way to do it. how can i remove all animations and just keep the jump animation layer from the scene?

Timeline plugin only has loop animations. You need the main animation which is located in Scene Animation Tab.

 

[Acid Bubbles]

@flyroxy That's not right, Timeline has non-looping animation, it's being used for mocap and linear animation purposes. https://github.com/acidbubbles/vam-timeline/wiki/Edit-screen#loop

You can record mocap in the Scene Animation tab OR Timeline. @flyroxy recorded using Scene Animation and that's perfectly fine, but you can also record in Timeline in More, Record. That does explain why you had animations playing "outside" of Timeline when you checked though. There's a ton of ways to achieve what you want (including other plugins), so when looking and people's scenes it sometimes requires some detective work

 

[flyroxy]

@flyroxy That's not right, Timeline has non-looping animation, it's being used for mocap and linear animation purposes. https://github.com/acidbubbles/vam-timeline/wiki/Edit-screen#loop

You can record mocap in the Scene Animation tab OR Timeline. @flyroxy recorded using Scene Animation and that's perfectly fine, but you can also record in Timeline in More, Record. That does explain why you had animations playing "outside" of Timeline when you checked though. There's a ton of ways to achieve what you want (including other plugins), so when looking and people's scenes it sometimes requires some detective work

Oh sure! I was talking specifically about the Embrace scene. (there are only 5 loop animations)

 

[Acid Bubbles]

You never know, there are so many buttons it's easy to miss some Great animations by the way

 

[Case]

Great fan of the added trigger in the latest Embody version - I use it to disable/override animations of the headnode in mocap'ed scenes.

However, I've yet to figure out how to override Timeline animations of the headnode? Is that possible at all? (I use the Passenger sub-plugin with rotation/translation locked, so I can adjust my orientation via thumbstick)

 

[Acid Bubbles]

@Case You have a trigger called e.g. "headControl Weight", that specifies the "strength" of Timeline over the node; if you set it to zero, that means Timeline will stop affecting that node for all animations.

 

[Case]

@Case You have a trigger called e.g. "headControl Weight", that specifies the "strength" of Timeline over the node; if you set it to zero, that means Timeline will stop affecting that node for all animations.

Ooooooooooooooooh ... Elegant!

Should have figured it'd be smth like that - fits right in with the MO you used for Rubberleash & later for blending animations.

Thx!

 

[Acid Bubbles]

Let me know if that worked!

 

[Case]

Let me know if that worked!

It does ... really, really nicely I have to say: It also has the nice advantage over a simple toggle to offer the possibility of a "hybrid state of control" over the headnode - and with the weight being a float, also the option for gradual transition between the two extreme states (ie "completely user-controlled" vs "completely creator-controlled"). The one node that most immediately affects user experience ...

Wonder who'll be the first scene creator to start using this deliberately - either as a tool to add to immersion, or for a Brechtian "Distancing Effect" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distancing_effect). Imagine a scene where you walk into a haunted house thinking you've fully possessed the char and suddenly something starts literally "messing with your head" ...

(At a guess, my money would be on Vamurai or Krab. Or maybe XRWizard?)

--------

But there's a slight ... usability problem here: A trigger is a nice thing to have, but it's even nicer if it can be easily restored automatically ... which is most conveniently & safely done if it has a preset of its own?

With most other triggers, you simply use the containing atom's built-in presets to save specific trigger-setups ... And, ofc, you could use the person-atom's plugin-presets for that purpose, but whatwith Embody running on a person atom, that can quickly become fraught when you try to automatize the process of loading specific setups of the trigger without changing other things in the process ... (using a mergeload to restore specific configurations of a plugin is possible, but with a mergeload, you have very little control over the resultant numbering sequence of the plugins - and that can easily break other stuff (in-scene triggers, other automated plugin-presets etc) eg when the merge is done during scene-load load. I think Venkman's SceneNinja is the first plugin that has some modicum of success at safely "blending" plugin -presets automatically)

Is the trigger stored in the user-config? I think I was able to load specific configurations of the trigger via UIAssist, so you've probably registered it as a public jsonstorable?

 

[Acid Bubbles]

From memory, that setting is only a runtime setting, so not saved with presets. The idea is that releasing weight is only used for the purpose of transitioning node control, which makes sense "only" in the case of another plugin taking over (e.g. orgasm plugin taking over head movement), rather than being a preset. But yeah I'm looking forward to nice uses for this

 

[Gob]

I'm playing around with a scene between a male and female. The scene begins with buttons to choose which animation narrative to follow. Animations for each character have been grouped into different segments, 'male name', 'female name', and each have various animations to step through, with the occasional looping animation with a button to trigger 'Next Animation' to move along.

I structured and completed the 'female' segment and all worked fine. I have a 'reset' button to bring everything back and begin again.

I began working on the new animations in the 'male' segment and have hit a snag. Buttons to trigger 'Next Animation' do nothing.

A trigger to call the name of the next animation works fine, but that would require rewriting the button with each step, or creating multiple buttons rather than reusing the same instance.

Now, highly likely I've gone about structuring this animation all wrong, but if anyone has any advice it be greatly appreciated.

Also, apologies if this is the wrong area to be asking this, sorry.

 

[Acid Bubbles]

@Gob You can go to More, Logging and enable logging to see exactly what happens; Next Animation actually uses NextSegment?

Also something that might happen, when an atom plays a segment, all other atoms will switch to that segment. If e.g. Atom 1 plays Segment 1, then Atom 2 plays Segment 2, if Atom 1 has something that plays an animation in Segment 1, then it will make Atom 2 go back Segment 1.

You can send the scene if you still don't see how to make it work, segments are fairly recent, there might still be broken stuff in which case I'd like to fix them

 

[Gob]

Thanks @Acid Bubbles

Logging shows "Triggered 'Next Animation'", then nothing in log thereafter. No 'Enter', 'Broadcasting', or 'Schedule transition' messages appear like they do for the working segment.

Currently, Atom 1 and Atom 2 have synced segments with anim's that share names. Choosing the button Atom 1 at the beginning plays Segment 1 on both Atom 1 and Atom 2. After resetting, I'll hit the button for Atom 2 and Segment 2 plays for both Atom 1 and Atom 2. Problem occurs when Segment 2 hits an anim that is looped without a next anim specified (but ordered in correct sequence within Segment 2). Triggering 'Next Animation' does nothing (though it works fine in Segment 1).

I'm fairly new to animating and scene creation in VAM in general. This scene is already becoming large and complicated. I'm going to create a smaller scene to see if I can reproduce the issue, or if it's due to me overcomplicating the scene. If it still occurs I'll send that over in case it's a bug.