Plugins Timeline

[fishcakes]

... continuing with the 'Master' conversation. I'm still a little confused. My understanding after your comment above ( and reading the wiki again ) is that an atom with master checked will fire all other anims in the scene that share the same anim name. But im finding this happens whether master is set or not. For example, if I have two people both with an anim called 'anim1' - pressing play on either person will make both anims play, whether 'master' is set or not. Even if I set master on person1 ( but not on person2 ), playing anim1 on person2 will still play the anim on person1.

I suspect this is more a case of me not understanding how its supposed to work as opposed to there being a problem. Can you elaborate a bit more as to how the master feature should work please? Thanks.

 

[mrlewie]

@mrlewie Thanks a lot! You can use the animation name prefix to do that, so if you have jump/high, jump/low and jump/mid, you can set the next animation as "jump/*" and it will randomize within that group (just prefix "group-name/" before your animation names). There's no way however to say "loop within that group for N seconds", that's something you can solve with another "master timeline" atom that only drives sequencing, but I think it's not as easy as it could. I'd have to eventually consider a separate setting for "group randomize" v.s. actual sequencing, each with their own durations. Maybe for a v5 (no plans yet)

Thanks for response. What is the basic approach for using a master timeline atom?

 

[Acid Bubbles]

@fishcakes right, master will affect sequencing. I understand why this is confusing though, that's the cost of having backward-compatible plugins, I can't break previous behaviors! I'll improve the wiki text.

 

[Acid Bubbles]

@mrlewie in a nutshell:

Empty#1 has group1/anim1, group2/anim1 (master)
Person#1 has group1/anim1, group1/anim2, group1/anim3, group2/anim1, group2/anim2, group2/anim3,
Person#2 has group1/anim1, group1/anim2, group1/anim3, group2/anim1, group2/anim2, group2/anim3,

Person#1 and Person#2 are randomized within their groups (e.g. 2 second loops) but Empty#1 runs group1/anim1 for 20 seconds. Empty#1 then sequences to group2/anim1, which switches Person#1 and Person#2. Note that this wasn't tested, but this is the idea. If there's a problem you could also have Empty#1 have group1/master, group2/master which would have a trigger to change the other atom's animations. That would work otherwise.

 

[mrlewie]

@mrlewie in a nutshell:

Empty#1 has group1/anim1, group2/anim1 (master)
Person#1 has group1/anim1, group1/anim2, group1/anim3, group2/anim1, group2/anim2, group2/anim3,
Person#2 has group1/anim1, group1/anim2, group1/anim3, group2/anim1, group2/anim2, group2/anim3,

Person#1 and Person#2 are randomized within their groups (e.g. 2 second loops) but Empty#1 runs group1/anim1 for 20 seconds. Empty#1 then sequences to group2/anim1, which switches Person#1 and Person#2. Note that this wasn't tested, but this is the idea. If there's a problem you could also have Empty#1 have group1/master, group2/master which would have a trigger to change the other atom's animations. That would work otherwise.

Awesome, thanks! I'll have a play and see if I can make it work.

 

[fishcakes]

Hey AB. One feature I use a lot is the ability to display the UI on a floating simple sign. It's very helpful and speeds up scene development no end. One thing I find myself really wanting is the ability to switch between multiple timeline plugins on the same atom. For example, if I have 2 timelines on a person, the simple sign doesn't seem to let me pick one or the other. It looks like it prioritises the topmost plugin only. Would it be an easy thing to allow multiple timeline plugins to be selectable on the floating UI?

 

[Acid Bubbles]

Acid Bubbles updated Timeline with a new update entry:

Timeline v4.0.14

- Minor fix when creating new animations from invalid or unloaded morphs

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[fishcakes]

Hi AB. Noticed a couple of quirks I thought might be helpful to point out. When making a copy of an animation using 'Create Copy Of Current Animation', the 'Preserve Loop' and 'Randomize Time Range' settings are not copied. They are both set to unchecked and 0.000 respectively.

Also, not meaning to bug you, but do you have any thoughts regards my last post above?

 

[Acid Bubbles]

Hi @fishcakes ! Good thing you pinged me, I missed the previous message I fixed the new animation fields not being copied, and will be released in the next version. I'll also take a look at showing multiple instances of the same plugin on an atom in the controller (though I'm not 100% sure how to display it yet), it would make sense to add this!

 

[Acid Bubbles]

Acid Bubbles updated Timeline with a new update entry:

Timeline v4.0.15

- Fix preserve loop and randomize time settings not carried when creating new animation
- Allow multiple Timeline instances on atoms in the controller UI
- Add missing keyframe data when importing (e.g. with LFE's face mocap for head movement)
- Fix mocap import issue with last frame returning to initial pose in some cases

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[Sedrem]

Thx for your work and free sharing.
I use it a lot.

for feedback, I think that the «auto key frame all controller» option sometime uncheck by itself.

 

[geo_gan]

Hello. I am trying to use a VAM scene which uses your plugin Timeline but for some reason, it is throwing a load of errors to the log during load and none of the character morphs are working at all. Can you explain how to fix this type of error? I can see all these morphs exist and are present and loaded in the scene/character... I can't even see where the plugin is actually using these morphs.

!> VamTimeline: Atom 'Person#3' does not have a morph (geometry) 'NicoShock'
!> VamTimeline: Atom 'Person#3' does not have a morph (geometry) '08-Eyes Rolling'
!> VamTimeline: Atom 'Person#3' does not have a morph (geometry) 'Concentrate'
!> VamTimeline: Atom 'Person#3' does not have a morph (geometry) 'Deserving It'
!> VamTimeline: Atom 'Person#3' does not have a morph (geometry) 'Disbelief 1'

 

[fishcakes]

Acid Bubbles updated Timeline with a new update entry:

Timeline v4.0.15
Read the rest of this update entry...

Hi AB. Thanks as always for the update. I've been trying to get the controller UI to show multiple Timeline instances on the same atom, but cant get it to work. Is there a process involved? I have a scene set up with a person that has 3 Timeline plugins, but in the controller UI, I can see the persons name in the Atoms dropdown, but there doesn't seem to be any obvious way to select different Timelines. Can you clarify how this should work please? Thanks.

 

[Acid Bubbles]

@Sedrem thanks for the nice comments! This checkbox is per atom, if you think it's unchecking on the same atom, can you provide a way for me to reproduce the problem? Usually these things are not random, even if they seem to be.

 

[Acid Bubbles]

@geo_gan I'd guess that you're using a version of Virt-A-Mate before 1.20? In the newer versions there were changes to how morphs are named internally, so to use this scene correctly you might have to upgrade VaM.

 

[Acid Bubbles]

@fishcakes well it's not anything fancy, if you have 2 instances on Person#1, you should see Person#1 twice (I know it's not perfect). Isn't it the case? If not, it worked in my tests so it would be useful to get a .json scene to reproduce the problem (even if it looks obvious, it'll help)

 

[geo_gan]

@geo_gan I'd guess that you're using a version of Virt-A-Mate before 1.20? In the newer versions there were changes to how morphs are named internally, so to use this scene correctly you might have to upgrade VaM.

No, I'm using the very latest version producer version of VAM actually (think its 1.20.1.5 now)

But the user scene I am trying to load is from February I think.

 

[Acid Bubbles]

@geo_gan is it a free scene? I could try for myself. If not maybe the author would be willing to share with me so I can debug it. Let me know

 

[fishcakes]

@fishcakes well it's not anything fancy, if you have 2 instances on Person#1, you should see Person#1 twice (I know it's not perfect). Isn't it the case? If not, it worked in my tests so it would be useful to get a .json scene to reproduce the problem (even if it looks obvious, it'll help)

Thanks for getting back to me AB. Attached is the default VAM scene with 2 Timelines on the Person, and a controller UI. I can only see one instance of timeline in the Atom dropdown. I'm still on VAM1.20.0.10, in case that's relevant.

 

[Acid Bubbles]

Thanks @fishcakes, figured it out, will be fixed in the next release The problem was that it worked, except when loading a scene. This is why it worked for me ?‍

 

[Sedrem]

@Sedrem thanks for the nice comments! This checkbox is per atom, if you think it's unchecking on the same atom, can you provide a way for me to reproduce the problem? Usually these things are not random, even if they seem to be.

@Acid Bubbles, thx for your answer. Sure I had checked the box for each atom, maybe uncheck when I load the scene or work on it.
Was wrong working on a very long animation, maybe the reason, or not. Now working on a series of shorter. Will have an eye on this.

Another issue I had is in fin movement of fingers...
Create a hand start position, then a end position 1 seconde later, I go back to the start position and adjust curve each 0.1 sec.
After some position/rotation adjustement thumb can't be move in/out pose, change value doesn't move it and switch to other 0.1 sec step
show that the value of in/out thumb is not saved.

thx once again Mister Acid Bubbles!
I hope my english is good enough to be understood!

I take this post to suggest a "Undo button" will be greatly appreciate and maybe an auto save/load for animation preset
(like check/uncheck loop) when a new scene is created

 

[Acid Bubbles]

@Sedrem you probably try to animate morphs that actually affect other morphs, like the "fist" morph which actually animate all finger morphs, so animating both will "conflict" and result in only one of them working. Check in the Morphs screen, they should be identified as such.

For the undo, yeah I did have that implemented but I removed it, because it was too expensive and not reliable enough. Doing a good undo is hard, and a undo that only works half of the time if worse, so for now you're better saving often :|

 

[Acid Bubbles]

Acid Bubbles updated Timeline with a new update entry:

Timeline v4.0.16

- Fix StopAndReset not updating the dope sheet
- Avoid setting very close values during flat animation to avoid triggering physics reset on rescale
- Show multiple atom timelines on controller (floating ui) on load
- Better message when morphs won't load in an old VaM version

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[fishcakes]

Hi AB. I have a question: As of version 4.0.5 you added a feature to turn off/on controller position/rotation at animation level. Can you explain how this is done please? Thanks.

 

[Acid Bubbles]

In Targets, under controller settings, you can uncheck "control position/rotation" which will stop Timeline from affecting the node. It's not the same as "Off" though, it'll just stop trying to move the controller.