Plugins Timeline

[Acid Bubbles]

Acid Bubbles updated Timeline with a new update entry:

Timeline v6.1.1

- Fix nasty NullReferenceException crash when collapsing groups
- Allow grouping triggers, controls and morphs in a single group

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[ajtrader23]

One bug I can't get past that's infuriating - when I'm dealing with many animations and many plugins, if I manually press "stop" in an animation it defaults to a pose that I have no idea where it comes from. It's not a default pose, it's not from an animation, and they all default to it, and throws the atom off. any ideas?

 

[Lamp]

One bug I can't get past that's infuriating - when I'm dealing with many animations and many plugins, if I manually press "stop" in an animation it defaults to a pose that I have no idea where it comes from. It's not a default pose, it's not from an animation, and they all default to it, and throws the atom off. any ideas?

Are you using a plugin preset / general preset to load everything up?
I had a very similar issue, where I had body targets saved in my preset.

 

[ajtrader23]

Are you using a plugin preset / general preset to load everything up?
I had a very similar issue, where I had body targets saved in my preset.

It's just a saved scene with atoms that have presets. It doesn't always happen, and sometimes I can somehow break out of it by enabling/disabling other instances of timeline. I just can't find the pattern.

 

[Lamp]

It's just a saved scene with atoms that have presets. It doesn't always happen, and sometimes I can somehow break out of it by enabling/disabling other instances of timeline. I just can't find the pattern.

If it's just one, it's more likely you've bugged timeline while you were creating that scene - and then saved it.
See if you can recreate the problem on a fresh scene. If not, then at least it's just that one scene.

 

[Acid Bubbles]

@ajtrader23 when you press Stop once, it should just stop playing, but if you press stop twice, it will apply the pose of the current animation, and that of the first animation of other layers that have the same animation name, or the same animation set, or just of the first. If you go to the Pose tab, it should scan all layers and tell you if a pose will be applied. It will also send a message to all other Timeline instances so they can do the same.

You can go to the More, Diagnostics, page to also check exactly which instances exist.

Finally, triggers will be called; that includes two things; first, the Enter trigger of frame 0 (if the Live option is on for that triggers track), and second (I feel this might be hard to find if you do have this), the Leave trigger of where you were in the animation.

This really feels like how this scene is setup rather than a bug (not saying the behavior is desirable in your case, just that it's by design) since Timeline doesn't "invent" poses.

If you really can't figure out where it came from, send me your scene JSON along with how to reproduce the problem, and I can take a look

 

[Lamp]

Bubbs I'm having a hard time accepting some of these new changes.

Case and point after rage quitting from a scene.. Add a new animation and select 'create new on other atoms', there will be a new animation, but the tab does not change. Which means you still have to open the other plugin and select the new animation. If you don't, anything you do assuming that you're working on Anim 2, you're actually overwriting Anim 1 on the other atom(s). Anger ensues.

Also, why move these ?

 

[WanderingWomble]

Also, why move these ?
View attachment 157951

this is confusing me too, but i'm hoping once i get used to it i'll stop accidentally changing animation when trying to move through the selected animation. curse my silly fingers!

 

[Acid Bubbles]

@Lamp @WanderingWomble I have to be honest, this is one of the rare occasions where I "took a chance" and updated the UI to try and avoid a problem that plagued me, at least, for a long time. I ALWAYS mixed up the next frame and next animation buttons. Moving all "keyframe operations" down and keeping "animations nav" on the top seemed logical to me... if there's a consensus on one way or the other I can probably undo the change or accept the hate, I'll ask around. But it never hurts to let me know though.

But @Lamp for your first comment, are you referring to something that changed in recent versions? "Create on other atoms" was always a tricky one, however, if indeed it doesn't select the newly created anim, that's a straightforward one to fix... hopefully. I'll look at this later, and see if I can change that. But just so you know, having people rage quit on my stuff never leaves me indifferent.

 

[kruppo999]

Hi!

I have looked everywhere in the thread but it appears this "issue" has never been discussed. When I import an animation from an existing scene it sometimes includes the position of the atom. So, as soon as the animation starts, the whole atom is moved to that position.

Is it possible to move the atom AND the animation to a specific spatial location?

I tried using the overwriting the root location in the pose tab but the Atom "slides" into its old location as soon as the animation starts.
The offset mode seems to change the location but not as I was imagining it: it moves the atom and rotates the atom back to its original position when the animation starts

 

[Acid Bubbles]

@kruppo999 yeah this was one of the big questions around making animations reusable, flexibility makes reusability harder.

- The animations may have a pose, that may or may not contain a root position (false by default, see the Pose tab).
- The "control" can be animated, depending on the case. You could delete the "control" target and move it whenever you want, or if you want to offset it then the More, Bulk screen can help you do that for one animation at a time.

Both things could also be true...

This is not an issue, since depending on what you want, both behaviors are valid (e.g. you load "kiss male" and "kiss female" animations, you want them positioned correctly; but if you load "idle" animations, you might not want the position to change; but in both cases, what nodes are animated and what nodes aren't must be compatible, and the only to ensure that is through loading a pose...)

 

[Acid Bubbles]

@Lamp the animation not being selected in other atoms after creation will be fixed

 

[Lamp]

Many thanks!

The keyframe buttons are probably fine, just have to rebuild the muscle memory.

IF however, the buttons aren't super hard coded, if it's possible to toggle the position (top or bottom) via plugin options, that would please both sides of the fence. Something to at least consider.

 

[ajtrader23]

@ajtrader23 when you press Stop once, it should just stop playing, but if you press stop twice, it will apply the pose of the current animation, and that of the first animation of other layers that have the same animation name, or the same animation set, or just of the first. If you go to the Pose tab, it should scan all layers and tell you if a pose will be applied. It will also send a message to all other Timeline instances so they can do the same.

You can go to the More, Diagnostics, page to also check exactly which instances exist.

Finally, triggers will be called; that includes two things; first, the Enter trigger of frame 0 (if the Live option is on for that triggers track), and second (I feel this might be hard to find if you do have this), the Leave trigger of where you were in the animation.

This really feels like how this scene is setup rather than a bug (not saying the behavior is desirable in your case, just that it's by design) since Timeline doesn't "invent" poses.

If you really can't figure out where it came from, send me your scene JSON along with how to reproduce the problem, and I can take a look

Thanks, Acid! I agree it's most likely the complexity of the my scene setup. I learned after writing the above that the mystery pose comes from another instance of Timeline. And when you wrote above that it checks ALL instances of it, there was probably a weird communication between the two. Perhaps the solution was to re-enable the one where the pose was coming from.

In any case, I think I resolved the issue now.

Last thing - when you bulk change > translate from the base pivot point, it seems to be ok with translations that are linear, but not rotations. Not sure if that's a limitation or not.

My use case is that I've been trying to consolidate say, many of my favorite Kitty mocaps into a single animation. But because they all have different anchors, when I import them it's kind of a pain in the ass to align them. Any insight on doing that more easily?

(and then of course there are the animations that have differences in targets, which aren't compatible I guess).

 

[Acid Bubbles]

@ajtrader23 it should be ok with rotations, at least in my tests it was. However if items have parenting, then it might not work as well, I think offset doesn't take parenting into account (it could, if you have an example I can take a look).

And yeah, the whole idea of those Bulk tools was to align different mocap animations, but doing it well isn't simple, you might need hand tailored transition animations, and indeed they have to share the same targets, otherwise you can "teleport" from one mocap to the other, but not smoothly blend.

 

[ajtrader23]

@ajtrader23 it should be ok with rotations, at least in my tests it was. However if items have parenting, then it might not work as well, I think offset doesn't take parenting into account (it could, if you have an example I can take a look).

And yeah, the whole idea of those Bulk tools was to align different mocap animations, but doing it well isn't simple, you might need hand tailored transition animations, and indeed they have to share the same targets, otherwise you can "teleport" from one mocap to the other, but not smoothly blend.

I was always ok with a sudden teleport - BUT you do have a good point in creating transition animations, which would entail just copying the pose of the end of one and beginning of the other, and splining over a second or ten

Nothing is parented though, and sometimes rotations work and sometimes they don't. Hm. I'll see if there's any pattern to it.

 

[kruppo999]

@kruppo999 yeah this was one of the big questions around making animations reusable, flexibility makes reusability harder.

- The animations may have a pose, that may or may not contain a root position (false by default, see the Pose tab).
- The "control" can be animated, depending on the case. You could delete the "control" target and move it whenever you want, or if you want to offset it then the More, Bulk screen can help you do that for one animation at a time.

Both things could also be true...

This is not an issue, since depending on what you want, both behaviors are valid (e.g. you load "kiss male" and "kiss female" animations, you want them positioned correctly; but if you load "idle" animations, you might not want the position to change; but in both cases, what nodes are animated and what nodes aren't must be compatible, and the only to ensure that is through loading a pose...)

Thanks @Acid Bubbles ! I missed that aspect and will look at my issue again with that in mind

 

[WanderingWomble]

@Lamp @WanderingWombleI ALWAYS mixed up the next frame and next animation buttons.

Me too! The faster I go the more likely I am to fumble, so while it's confusing for now I think it will help in the long run.

 

[Acid Bubbles]

Acid Bubbles updated Timeline with a new update entry:

Timeline v6.1.2

- When creating an animation, select it in other atoms
- When adding animations in all atoms, correctly sync the position, copy settings, copy keyframes and create an all layer options
- Improved readability of the Import screen
- When deleting an animation, select the previous one instead of the first one
- Fix instead range / reset range not working in the Targets tab
- Fix force-apply min/max range of morphs on load not working anymore

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[vamurai]

Acid Bubbles updated Timeline with a new update entry:

Timeline v6.1.1



Read the rest of this update entry...

"Allow grouping triggers, controls and morphs in a single group"... This. Is. Huge. I updated the version of Timeline in my current animation over the weekend and immediately was saddened that I didn't have this since I originally started animating with Timeline. I'm just wrapping up an over 8-minute animation with lots of controls. My heart hurts thinking about the mistakes I might have avoided along the way if I'd have been grouping those controls. ?

I can't overstate it: THANK YOU so much for this one, it's a lifesaver/game changer/world maker/heartbreaker!

 

[Toddy]

I just started using Timeline. I was working on facial expression animations to start out. By using the morph sliders I automatically created the keyframes. I decided to manualy update the animation but realized that I had a bunch of extra keyframes slowing my progress. Deleting them one at a time was very tedious. I used the reduce keyframe option but I only created more problems. Is there a way to select multiple keyframes for deletion?

 

[ajtrader23]

I just started using Timeline. I was working on facial expression animations to start out. By using the morph sliders I automatically created the keyframes. I decided to manualy update the animation but realized that I had a bunch of extra keyframes slowing my progress. Deleting them one at a time was very tedious. I used the reduce keyframe option but I only created more problems. Is there a way to select multiple keyframes for deletion?

Check the "bulk changes" tab. It lets you select ranges.

1. check the targets you want to edit.
2. Bulk changes > play with the sliders at the top to select your desired timeframe. Now delete those targets.

If you want to delete a huge swatch in between your keyframes, you'll have do to a few iterations of this, but still easier than selecting individually.

 

[vamurai]

I just started using Timeline. I was working on facial expression animations to start out. By using the morph sliders I automatically created the keyframes. I decided to manualy update the animation but realized that I had a bunch of extra keyframes slowing my progress. Deleting them one at a time was very tedious. I used the reduce keyframe option but I only created more problems. Is there a way to select multiple keyframes for deletion?

I did a write-up with screenshots for something similar a few pages back in this thread. I quoted below, I hope it helps!

Absolutely!

First, click on the "More..." button, which will open a whole list of additional buttons. From that list, choose "Bulk changes..."

View attachment 134348

From there, you will do a few things. Use the screenshot below for a visual explanation of the method I use.

View attachment 134355

First, I select the triggers on the left that I'd like to move, by clicking on their grey buttons so they turn white/light grey. In this example, I have selected the hip and lHand controls, and you can tell this by the corresponding white dots in the timeline. Next, I will select the exact point (keyframe) where I have dots that I'd like to move. In my example, I am at 1.4 seconds in this animation. I do this step to make it easier to determine exactly where I need to start my cut.

Next, on the right-hand side, I drag the "Selection start at" slider to that time that matches the keyframes I selected in the timeline. If you chose a starting point in the timeline like I did, you can also use the "Start at current time" button below. This will be the starting point of our cut. At this point, I will usually go back over in the timeline and find the keyframe/dot at the end of the sequence, so I can note its time as well, but that's not really shown in the screenshot.

Once you know the end time of the group of keyframes you would like to move, head back over to the right-hand side, and drag the "Selection ends at" slider to that time. This is 3.4 seconds in my example above. If you selected your end keyframe in the timeline as I noted, you can also use the "End at current time" button to move the slider automatically.

Either way, always double check that you have selected the correct group of keyframes. You can do this by looking below the "End at current time" button and seeing what your selection is. In my example above, you can see that Timeline is telling me I have 5 keyframes selected in hipControl, and five keyframes selected in lHandControl, which is based on the controllers I have selected, and my start and end keyframes. If I went over and added the chest control, I would then see "chestControl: 1 keyframe," since there is one keyframe in that selection. If I added the left or right feet, I would not add any additional keyframes, since they have no dots on the timeline in that section of time.

Last, you choose what do do with your bulk selection. The buttons below are pretty self-explanatory. You can cut or copy your selection, and even delete the whole selection. Once you've made your cut or copy, go back to your timeline and choose where you would like to paste them. You could choose a keyframe on the timeline, or you can use the scrubber bar at the top to make sure you've selected the right time. Note: You must use the Paste button in the Bulk Changes over on the right. You cannot use the Paste (or Cut/Copy) button below the timeline/keyframes.

I hope that helps!

 

[Toddy]

I did a write-up with screenshots for something similar a few pages back in this thread. I quoted below, I hope it helps!

ajtrader23 and vamurai thanks very much for the simple to follow instructions. Without the support from the more experience members, I would more than likely only collect scenes from other creators. Guys like you help beginners like me stay motivated to create my own vision. Once again, thanks very much!!

 

[vamurai]

ajtrader23 and vamurai thanks very much for the simple to follow instructions. Without the support from the more experience members, I would more than likely only collect scenes from other creators. Guys like you help beginners like me stay motivated to create my own vision. Once again, thanks very much!!

Glad to help! It's a lot to undertake, for sure. I'm very grateful for all of the more experienced people who helped me along the way.