Plugins Timeline

[Babell99]

** EDITED FOLLOWING ACIDBUBBLES QUESTION

Hi AcidBubble,

GREAT plugin. VAM would not be the same without it.

I found a serious bug that is easy to reproduce. I struggle with it a lot. Not sure what I am doing wrong.

How to reproduce

1. Create a short animation named "A" with a single character. Go in the "Pose" tab and check "Use current pose" and "Apply pose in transition". At this point you have a short animation that works perfectly.

2. Time to create a second animation. Do not move the character and create a new animation named "B". Do not copy the setting, just plainly create a new one.

3. Then move the character to a new location and LOAD A POSE PRESET, make sure the animation "B" is selected. Go in "Pose" tab and again check "Use current pose" and "Apply pose in transition".

4. Click "Play", the animation B will play some frames of the animation "A". The animation is corrupted and cannot be fixed.

Seems like when creating a new animation, some ghosts of the previous one reside when playing around with the "Pose" feature.

Do not hesitate if you have any questions.

 

[Acid Bubbles]

@Babell99 When you say "scene", do you mean "segment"? And what do you mean by "play some frames"? In any case I'll check it out but since you're not creating any keyframes in your repro, I'm not sure if I'll be able to see what you mean.

 

[Babell99]

@Babell99 When you say "scene", do you mean "segment"? And what do you mean by "play some frames"? In any case I'll check it out but since you're not creating any keyframes in your repro, I'm not sure if I'll be able to see what you mean.

Sorry I meant to say "Time to create a new Animation". My bad ... sorry buddy. I will re-edit it. Read it again, it is clearer now.

 

[Babell99]

Ok I was missing a step in my repro step. After creating a new animation (in my step 3) you need to LOAD A NEW POSE PRESET (instead of manually pose the character). I will edit my posting. You can read the repro step again ...

I can reproduce at will. If you cannot let me know, I will repro it for you click per click.

 

[Acid Bubbles]

Aaah @Babell99 when you load a pose preset, Timeline isn't aware of it and will not update the keyframe internally. This is why animated nodes will move back to what they were, but non-animated nodes won't.

After you load a pose preset, you can go to More, Advanced Keyframe Tools, and Keyframe All (Pose).

 

[Babell99]

Aaah @Babell99 when you load a pose preset, Timeline isn't aware of it and will not update the keyframe internally. This is why animated nodes will move back to what they were, but non-animated nodes won't.

After you load a pose preset, you can go to More, Advanced Keyframe Tools, and Keyframe All (Pose).

Awesome! Seems to work so far! I did it twice without reproducing the issue. You just saved me a lot of headaches Acid bubbles. I owe you a beer!

THANKS A LOT!

 

[Babell99]

Another easy question Acid Bubble.

Does having multiples params in the "Geometry" section of an animation is resource intensive even if we leave those to "0"? The reason I am set that way is because I have many expression that are used, but across many different animations that share the same segment. So I could have 25 different expression in that list, 90% of them at 0. Should I rather have different segment?

I am asking because I am having a monster machine and do not really see the impact. But I would like the scene to run smoothly on lower end ones.

Sorry for all the questions / bugs. I am using your component a LOT lately. I will go visit your patreon later on today, you deserve this.

 

[VamWizard]

Hi.
To transition from an animation called "walk" in segment 1 (21 controls) to another called "kneel" in segment 2 (8 controls), is it necessary to manually disable via trigger all controls that are not used in segment 2? Or is there another way? Thanks

 

[Acid Bubbles]

@Babell99 thanks, and no worries about Patreon, it's really on a voluntary basis For your questions, it's "almost" free if the animation is _really_ flat, because VaM will skip computation on morph value changes when it's set to the exact same value as before. I'm saying "almost" because nothing is free, but I'd be surprised if anyone saw a single frame drop because of this

 

[Acid Bubbles]

@VamWizard it depends;

- The easy solution is to use a "Pose", so you can position nodes that are now non-animated, from the ones that are animated. But it makes a "teleport" not a transition.
- The harder solution is to make sure you always target the same nodes across animations, so they are always in the expected position.
- You can also just ignore the non-animated nodes of the second segment, but this means they will "fade out" into the new position, which will never be exactly where you want them to be. However, once in the new segment, it's fine for them not to be animated.

 

[VamWizard]

Thank you for responding!

- The harder solution is to make sure you always target the same nodes across animations, so they are always in the expected position.

This would be the best solution, but unfortunately I am using imported MOCAP animations.

- You can also just ignore the non-animated nodes of the second segment, but this means they will "fade out" into the new position, which will never be exactly where you want them to be. However, once in the new segment, it's fine for them not to be animated.

The problem is that the segment 1 controls are still green and stuck in the position they were in when the character was walking, which prevents my character from kneeling on segment 2.
Here is how it should be:

Here is how it is when I make the transition (it stays stuck on this position) (the green controls that are in the segment 1 walking animation (but not on the segment 2 kneeling anim) are stuck in the position they were during the transition). Is this behavior normal?

- The easy solution is to use a "Pose", so you can position nodes that are now non-animated, from the ones that are animated. But it makes a "teleport" not a transition.

I am thinking about turning off the green controls manually through triggers, but if the result is not good I will use this solution. Thanks!

 

[Acid Bubbles]

The pose will actually "remember" the state of all controls, so that's what it will do. But it will also restore the bones into the desired position, which is much more reliable than just switching the control state. As soon as the list of which controls are animated changes, it's almost impossible to get a smooth transition.

 

[1776DT1]

hi i cant figure out how to add music to the scene can someone help

 

[CheersMate]

hi i cant figure out how to add music to the scene can someone help

Check out the excellent Wiki page: Timeline Wiki Audio
1. In edit mode, select "Scene Audio" and add sound from folder
2. Add a Sound->AudioSource atom
3. Add Audio track or normal trigger track target to timeline animation
4. In the trigger add "Audio Source" -> "Audio Source" -> "Play now" -> select song you just added in step 1: Scene Audio tab

 

[1776DT1]

Check out the excellent Wiki page: Timeline Wiki Audio
1. In edit mode, select "Scene Audio" and add sound from folder
2. Add a Sound->AudioSource atom
3. Add Audio track or normal trigger track target to timeline animation
4. In the trigger add "Audio Source" -> "Audio Source" -> "Play now" -> select song you just added in step 1: Scene Audio tab

thank you so much

 

[brasileirinho]

Is it possible to globally disable timeline from controlling facial expressions? I know I can delete the morphs, but it has to be done manually for each scene.

 

[kiwimatsch]

am not able to move an simple cube one meter with this plugin, maybe there is someone what make a SIMPLE and SHORT beginners tutorial :/
what called : "how to move a cube one meter and back with acidbubbles timeline plugin"

 

[Acid Bubbles]

@brasileirinho No, there's no way to do that automatically.

@kiwimatsch did you see my YouTube tutorials? The first one is pretty move "move something from point A to point B" At least, I tried my best to make it simple.

There is also documentation in the Timeline wiki, if you didn't see it.

But in short:

1. Add Timeline to the Cube
2. Go to Targets
3. Add the control target
4. Scrub to 1s
5. Move the cube to the new position

You're done If you play, you'll see it move back and forth between the original and new position.

Good luck!

 

[1776DT1]

@brasileirinho No, there's no way to do that automatically.

@kiwimatsch did you see my YouTube tutorials? The first one is pretty move "move something from point A to point B" At least, I tried my best to make it simple.

There is also documentation in the Timeline wiki, if you didn't see it.

But in short:

1. Add Timeline to the Cube
2. Go to Targets
3. Add the control target
4. Scrub to 1s
5. Move the cube to the new position

You're done If you play, you'll see it move back and forth between the original and new position.

Good luck!

Check out the excellent Wiki page: Timeline Wiki Audio
1. In edit mode, select "Scene Audio" and add sound from folder
2. Add a Sound->AudioSource atom
3. Add Audio track or normal trigger track target to timeline animation
4. In the trigger add "Audio Source" -> "Audio Source" -> "Play now" -> select song you just added in step 1: Scene Audio tab

im trying to add a song to where it starts playing when she starts dancing.
where both animation and song starts simultaneously.
i have added the scene audio correctly. green dot and test.
i have added the atom source "audio source"

the part im not getting is adding to normal or track target trigger.

do i click on her then click root then from the timeline plugin add the audio target from there?

 

[1776DT1]

or do i click on audio source and add the timeline plugin from there

 

[Acid Bubbles]

@1776DT1 Can't give precise steps, but in short:

1. In VaM's main menu, Audio tab, add the audio clip there. That's required for VaM to know about that clip.
2. In Timeline, add a Triggers track (Targets +, Create audio track)
3. In the Targets tab, on the right you can now click on the edit/create trigger button on the right (move the scrubber to where you want the clip to play, usually at frame 0 which is the one selected by default)
4. From there, find the Audio (or HeadAudio if on a person atom) storable, the "Play Now" trigger, and your clip will be in the "web" category (can't remember it all by heart but it should be close)

Now the audio will play with your animation.

If you need perfect sync, go to the Edit tab and at the bottom, you can link the audio source. You MUST play the audio at frame 0 for this to work.

 

[BigBoobCoomBlast69]

I seem to have greatly misunderstood how layers work or there's a bug. When I make a layer with audio track and a trigger track, set it to audio sync then make an animation layer that is also synced to same audio, the animation refuses to play if it's non-looping, audio-synced and not the first animation - so you can play the first one, but not the one after that etc. unless the tracks are precisely sequenced using play next, which is sometimes not possible due to way it flows (for example animation A->B->A->C, no way to go from A to C this way) and I either don't get how to make the animations play (I tried both animation trigger as well as play trigger in timeline) or it's a bug. You CAN make non-synced animations play fine, which makes me think it is.

One workaround seems to be making yet ANOTHER layer, let's call this one "sync" which plays together with audio, and only has a trigger track which plays the animations in the order and time I want them to. But it seems like this isn't functionally different from just having the trigger track in the audio layer, in theory? Am I wrong? Apparently not, triggers just don't seem to want to cooperate if it's synced and not looping.

 

[Acid Bubbles]

@BigBoobCoomBlast69 Audio sync actually locks the animation's time to the audio track, here's what happens:

1. You play the Timeline animation; it "plays" frame zero, but won't move forward at all.
2. The trigger at frame zero is ran, which plays the audio
3. Since the audio is playing, Timeline is playing
4. Any other layers that are not linked to the audio clip will advance freely

It's tricky

 

[mori_e]

hi guys, How do i export ONLY the face expression animation from the plugin?
There is an ahegao face expression animation from a scene i really like, i want to use it on other scenes. How do i do it?

 

[Acid Bubbles]

Your best best @mori_e is to delete everything BUT the morphs you want to keep, and then export that animation (you can only export one animation in the export menu).