Plugins Timeline

[hentailondon]

Hi. Maybe this has been answered already but i couldn't find a mention with the search function.

I'm trying to combine Timeline with animation plugins like SilverBJ.

So i have a Timeline animation set up where the girl teases the guy and then gets in position, and now the SilverBJ should take over (with active trigger in timeline), however her head does not move because it's control is "priotizing" timeline (even though there are no set keyframes after the trigger).

Is there a way to combine Timeline movement with plugin animation or any good work around?
(Could swear this was working with Autothruster earlier, but i'll have to try that again...)

I guess i could create a new segment just for the SilverBJ part but maybe there is a preferable solution?
Sadly could not find a way to just have the next animation include no targets, to let the SilverBJ plugin take over...

Edit: Ok i think i have found a solution. In SilverBJ's case the head target was problematic because it was "controlled" by Timeline. So i changed the "Controller Weight headControl" in receiver target: VaMTimeline to 0, with the same trigger which set SilberBJ to active. Now just set it back to 100 with a trigger at the start or end of the animation or set a timer (neat!) and you're set.

 

[Acid Bubbles]

That's exactly it, @hentailondon ! You could also make another animation and dial down the controller weight only for that animation, but what you did is simple and works too Nice!

 

[hentailondon]

Hi. Thanks for your replies here Acid Bubbles.

I was wondering if there is a easy way to have triggers active only while the animation is playing? I know you can setup a second trigger to deactivate the actions at the end of the timeline but what if there is a loop, you could set deactivate actions at the start of the next anim, but is there a easier way?

For example at the start of anim1 clothes get deactivated but then the anim gets interrupted by a button, so because anim1 is not playing anymore that "clothes off" trigger should get turn off again.

I guess you could have a block move and collision off scene with a transition trigger, and put everything in there (if i understand transition triggers correctly), but that would be rather complicated.

 

[Acid Bubbles]

@kiwimatsch I'm... confused The Loop toggle will indeed "delete" your last frame (that's what "loop" does, your first and last frame are the same) but it shouldn't delete your record. I'll need more details (screenshots or a video maybe) to understand what you mean?

 

[Acid Bubbles]

@hentailondon you can have an animation with an enter trigger and an exit trigger; if you have a single segment, simply create a layer with only one looping animation in it, and a single trigger. It'll activate when playing, and deactivate when stopping. If you have multiple segments, you can create a "shared segment" to achieve the same thing

 

[hentailondon]

@hentailondon you can have an animation with an enter trigger and an exit trigger; if you have a single segment, simply create a layer with only one looping animation in it, and a single trigger. It'll activate when playing, and deactivate when stopping. If you have multiple segments, you can create a "shared segment" to achieve the same thing

 

[bill_prime]

Heyo @Acid Bubbles ,
I am building something with 1 Layer/Segment and 12 animations, and I want to to Auto Play and randomize all the animations for the sequence.
However, when I load the scene or plugin preset, Auto Play does a strange thing where the first animations plays and then it waits for like 370 seconds.
Not sure if it's a timing issue where it is starting to play before all the animations or loaded, or something?

All these animations are under 15 seconds:

EDIT:
Annnd I fixed it. I had to change this setting under options to Game Time:

 

[Acid Bubbles]

Oh? That's.... very very weird. That really sounds like a bug. Game time might be broken? I'll check it when I can, thanks!

 

[bill_prime]

Oh? That's.... very very weird. That really sounds like a bug. Game time might be broken? I'll check it when I can, thanks!

I changed it to Game Time to fix the issue, Real time (default) was what was having the problem.
Each time I loaded the plugin, the time got longer lol. It was up to 450 seconds.
It was these animations btw, you check the plugin preset:

Flirty Expressions + Eye Contact Demo Scene - Scenes -

Animations of flirty expressions built in Timeline using many different expression morphs from the awesome morph creators on hub. 12 different animations that will cycle automatically in semi-random order. Load up your favorite dance/mocap, load...

hub.virtamate.com

 

[ShinyAndroid]

I'm having an issue keeping the audio synced with the timeline animations.

So I'll have, for example, a 200 second timeline. I'll add an audio trigger to frame 0 that starts with the timeline animation, and it's exactly 200 seconds long.

As I add in animations (particularly using the Record Animation function), what happens is the timeline runs just a bit slower than it should and the audio will actually finish about 10-15 seconds before the animation does.

I figured I might have too many keyframes, so I used the reduce function to get ride of about 20%. But it didn't seem to help at all.

What makes it even more cumbersome is that I'll animate, say, the head. And it syncs fine. Then while I'm animating the left hand, the timeline runs a little slower and the audio ends before the timeline does...and now my hand isn't in sync with my head lol.

I also tried turning the performance settings all the way down...thinking that would help, but it didn't.

Has anyone else experienced this? Anyone have a solution other than make shorter timelines? I can do that, but I'd have to cut up the audio further and it's a bit of a pain to start over entirely.

 

[Acid Bubbles]

@neoajdude yeah you're right there are still timing inconsistencies. You can however use the audio link feature which will match timing perfectly. In Edit, at the end you can link an animation with an audio source. Make sure the trigger at keyframe 0 plays something on that audio source and Timeline will sync up with the audio source timing.

 

[Burli1980]

Maybe someone can help. I have problem with using scenes., but not every. If i want to start them, it will not work. I just see a screen and the animation will not start.
Can it be a problem with the timeline plugin?

 

[ShinyAndroid]

@neoajdude yeah you're right there are still timing inconsistencies. You can however use the audio link feature which will match timing perfectly. In Edit, at the end you can link an animation with an audio source. Make sure the trigger at keyframe 0 plays something on that audio source and Timeline will sync up with the audio source timing.

Thank you so much! That worked perfectly.

 

[Acid Bubbles]

@Burli1980 very hard to tell without more details. Maybe to help you figure things out:

1. Check the Error Log in VaM. If it's filled with errors, then the reason is somewhere in them. After starting vam, first clear errors that may be due to missing packages, load the scene, and check if there's an error. This should pinpoint if something's missing or broken.
2. Sometimes you need to actually start the animation, by pressing a button or interacting. But asking for a specific scene with a precise explanation of what you actually see (screenshots, for example) will help - reach out to the author first, they know how their scene works so they'll always be the best person to help (and to help the next one who has trouble with their content!)

I mean, it _can_ be Timeline, but usually if it fails, it's either because you have the wrong VaM version (error), there's a problem with the scene's data (error) or there's something wrong with the scene itself (may have an error or just do nothing, depending on what's up).

Hope that helps!

 

[ShinyAndroid]

I have another question regarding timeline. So I've added the Audio Link to sync with one of the characters. And it works great in terms of keeping the audio synced with the animation.

However, it now seems to have an issue playing the next animation. It seems that it will play the animtion, and then loop and play like 1/5th of a second of the beginning of the animation. And when I set it to play another animation afterward, it doesn't do it.

I've tried a few things but it just keeps looping back to the first 1/5th of second and stopping.
-I tried setting the play next timer lower so it plays the next before the end of the animation but that didn't work. It just keeps playing past it and looping back.
-I even tried adding a trigger in to play the next animation that way. This MIGHT work, but it doesn't seem to apply to everyones saved pose. So I might have to add it to all the characters timelines, or make multiple triggers that reference everyone.

I'm willing to add the trigger to everyone, if that's what it is. But I thought I would check first if there is a setting or something that I'm missing.

EDIT: I think I figure this out. I have a habit of making my segments about a second longer than the audio (just to have some room at the end). Once I adjusted the lengths, and moved the trigger to go to the next segment a little earlier in the timeline, that seemed to help.

 

[vamurai]

I think I might be going crazy. After the added audio sync in timeline, I've been creating scenes as one single, long animation which I plop the audio clip in and then get to work. The scrubbing is awesome because I can very accurately scrub to various audio beats in songs and add animation accordingly.

I've been working on finishing up my scene for elf month and as I neared the end, I decided to check it out in VR to see how it was coming along. Much to my disappointment, I found the audio to not be synced as it was in desktop mode. After trying all of the usual suspects, I was able to reproduce the same audio sync problem on desktop. It seems when I start the animation with a trigger (the button has a stop and reset action for timeline, then a start animation (name) action, and nothing else.

When I play the animation this way, the audio is not synced to the work I animated. If I stop the animation in timeline, scrub back to the parts I can spot that are not synchronized, and play again, the audio is suddenly synchronized again. It's as if once you start scrubbing, the audio is not syncronized to the same frames as when you start it with a trigger.

What's strange is that I've not noticed this before working on this scene. I think the only major thing I am doing different with audio in this scene I that I have it starting about 15-20 seconds after the animation start, rather than the very first trigger at the beginning of the scene. Could this maybe impact it? I've added a short clip below so you can see what I mean (hopefully without spoiling the scene too much!) Don't forget to click the audio button for redgifs!

The first playthrough is starting the animation with a trigger, then I scrub back and start the animation again. The elf is giving Attom a handjob here, and if you listen to the beats of the music, there are two bass thumps which are supposed to be timed with two downward motions of the elf's hand. In the first clip, these are not timed, but they are timed after I stop, scrub back, and start again. What gives?

Any help would be appreciated it!

 

[Acid Bubbles]

@vamurai With audio sync?? My first theory would be that it's because the audio takes some time to load, but the audio timer should still be fine, unless I misunderstood how Unity works... that would also explain why it works the second time. To be honest I'm very confused about this too. I need to review the timing of Timeline again (for the 5th time) I guess... Also, there's only one animation, right? Or are there other? Also I'm thinking _maybe_ it has something to do with FPS somehow, though the whole point of audio link is to be fps-independent. However, it could be that while Timeline plays at the right speed, the physics can't keep up so you get late movement. Could that be it? It would work when scrubbing because you start with physics already in the right place. Those are all theories though, that's the fun of fully dynamic, physics-based animation :| If you're willing and have some time (because recently I really don't, I've been trying to release Scripter and Keybindings for more than a week and I can't find the time to just open VaM and test it) you could add something like a cube and animate the alpha in sync, see if the cube and the hand are in sync. If they are, then it's Timeline. If not, then it's physics. (or animate the light, etc. as long as it's clearly visible).

My timing tests consisted of a beep every second in a long audio, and a flash every second in Timeline, and a log showing both the Audio Clip time and the Timeline time, and everything looked in sync, but there are many variables I might have missed.

 

[vamurai]

@vamurai With audio sync?? My first theory would be that it's because the audio takes some time to load, but the audio timer should still be fine, unless I misunderstood how Unity works... that would also explain why it works the second time. To be honest I'm very confused about this too. I need to review the timing of Timeline again (for the 5th time) I guess... Also, there's only one animation, right? Or are there other? Also I'm thinking _maybe_ it has something to do with FPS somehow, though the whole point of audio link is to be fps-independent. However, it could be that while Timeline plays at the right speed, the physics can't keep up so you get late movement. Could that be it? It would work when scrubbing because you start with physics already in the right place. Those are all theories though, that's the fun of fully dynamic, physics-based animation :| If you're willing and have some time (because recently I really don't, I've been trying to release Scripter and Keybindings for more than a week and I can't find the time to just open VaM and test it) you could add something like a cube and animate the alpha in sync, see if the cube and the hand are in sync. If they are, then it's Timeline. If not, then it's physics. (or animate the light, etc. as long as it's clearly visible).

My timing tests consisted of a beep every second in a long audio, and a flash every second in Timeline, and a log showing both the Audio Clip time and the Timeline time, and everything looked in sync, but there are many variables I might have missed.

No worries at all. I can attempt to run the test you describe, it's a good idea and I'd be curious to see (and will report back with) the results if I can find the time. I've got to wrap this scene up (what's the point of an elf month scene if it's not released in elf month? haha) so for now, I'll probably just drop in LFE's audiosync plugin to get me by.

To answer your question though, I do have a number of other animations running. I have two animations with the same name each running on the male and female atoms in the scene. Everything about those animations is identical (length, playback options, etc.) Then I have another timeline animation running the "ambient effects." It's running... wait a minute. I made the environment before I started animating the scene. I'll but my stupid ass has another audio sync in THAT timeline animation.

I will check that and report back. Fingers crossed that I've simply just wasted your time here.

 

[vamurai]

Darn, that didn't seem to be it. I was hopeful for a second! Regardless, I still set the ambient sound to just be enabled by a trigger, rather than syncing audio. It's just some crickets and "night in the forest" style ambience, no need to have it synced to anything.

I'll try and run a couple of experiments and see if I can get you more detail. I actually just skipped LFE's audiosync and adjusted the start of the audio file to about half a second sooner. It'll be "close enough" for this release.

 

[Acid Bubbles]

Yeah, I really didn't expect audio syncing to be that hard. This or I just missed some very obvious things. In any case if you have something to go on I'll gladly take it and investigate further. My own tests worked fine but I know from feedback there are cases where it's not fine. Thanks and sorry

 

[vamurai]

Alright, I've done a buuunch of testing, and here are the results I've come up with.

This scene doesn't have a ton of necessary timing, so I am just focusing on the two earliest instances. I took your advice and added a cube with an alpha adjustment which I timed to match the movement of the person atom.

The first is the quick "double pump" from the example before. Note: I've already moved the trigger in the audio track to account for the difference I'm seeing between the scrubbed audio and its timing on playback (hoping to release this scene soon!), just so we're clear on why my earlier description is now backwards from what I'm seeing here. Here is what we see with no scrubbing, as played with my Start button trigger.

And here it is again when I use the scrubber.

Looking at the cube, it is in time with her hand movement in both instances, but the audio is off.

For me, this seems less noticeable than a later movement that has the same problem though. I don't know if this is my timing, the type of movement, or because the movement is later in the scene so it's farther off but the difference is certainly there. Here's the scene as played with the button trigger, no scrubbing.

And here it is again with scrubbing.

That's as far as I got with those tests. I have also tried some other stuff that may or may not be of assistance tracking down a solution. I tried recutting the audio in Audacity so the track length is the exact length of the animation. I did this by adding a bunch of silence before and after the actual song so I could start the audio as soon as the animation starts. Most of my scenes are this way, where the audio begins right away, and then finishes when the animation finishes.

I tried making the other long timeline instance the exact length and renaming it to the same name as the main "action" animation, so they would all play together (double-checking that the real-time playback was on for all of them.) I also tried just disabling all timeline animation except for the two main animations on the person atoms (which are both named the same, same length, etc.)

I had a weird instance where I began to think that maybe Macgruber's PostMagic was somehow involved, as I was seeing inconsistent results with a PILE of effects I have turned on. In my latest tests, the entire atom that contains PostMagic is disabled, so I don't think it's related (although, now that I think about it, there's a blurb in there somewhere about making sure it's disabled entirely by restarting VaM, so maybe I should remove it entirely, save the scene as a test, and restart VaM...)

Anyway, sorry that this post is long, just figured I'd throw out that I've tried some stuff, and I'm leaning towards it being something in Timeline right now. I don't believe I ran into this in previous versions with the audio sync, so it might be worth looking at any code changes that have happened since v274/275?

 

[vamurai]

Yeah, I really didn't expect audio syncing to be that hard. This or I just missed some very obvious things. In any case if you have something to go on I'll gladly take it and investigate further. My own tests worked fine but I know from feedback there are cases where it's not fine. Thanks and sorry

Haha, no worries! I was writing my reply when I got the notification there was another response in this thread. I knew it was you!

Good luck tracking this down, when/if you get time to do so. I've got a good scene to keep reproducing this in, so if you need me to test things, I will do my best to find time for it. I considered trying to look for the problem in one of my other scenes, then loading v280 to see if I can reproduce it outside of this scene. Might eliminate this specific scene as being part of the issue.

Thanks for all you do! Don't worry too hard about solving this one quickly, especially if you're working on other releases. I know all too well how that pressure to get projects done feels. I've got my workaround (haha, it's eerily similar to just running the scene from the start over and over again to time audio, like I did before this killer, free feature you added!) No skin off my back, truly!

 

[Acid Bubbles]

I have the feeling that there's a time difference that accumulates when using audio link, which is weird but by far my best explanation. And, just in case... your speed is 1.0 right? I'll have to create something like a 5 minutes audio clip of "1, 2, 3, 4.." because it's surprisingly hard to match audio and video and be sure that it's okay and not your brain playing tricks ...

 

[vamurai]

I have the feeling that there's a time difference that accumulates when using audio link, which is weird but by far my best explanation. And, just in case... your speed is 1.0 right? I'll have to create something like a 5 minutes audio clip of "1, 2, 3, 4.." because it's surprisingly hard to match audio and video and be sure that it's okay and not your brain playing tricks ...

I double-checked, and yeah, it all looks to be in order. These settings are identical in both atoms. If there are other audio related settings that I'm missing (or any of these look "wrong") let me know!

I noted the "Audio Link" thing in the edit tab, which I'd never used before. I went ahead and looked at the documentation on your github page for it to see what it was about. Here's a fun little thing, I don't know if it helps or not: If I set the Audio Link to the MusicAudio atom then play the scene using a button trigger (which normally works) it's out of sync the same way that the scrubbing is. At a just an eyeball estimation, it's the same amount of "time off" (the music is delayed slightly.) This happens if I enable Audio Link and have the Audio Controller run the audio, and also if I switch off the audio controller and have the music start using a standard trigger on the Trigger controller (which is how I assume this is supposed to be used.)

 

[vamurai]

Release day!

Before I started packaging everything up and getting the release ready, I decided to try a couple more tests, just to be sure. The big, obvious one was running it in VR to make sure all was cool. Lo and behold, the sync in VR is the same "delay" as when you scrub on the timeline, haha. Of COURSE it is. So I tried rolling all of the timeline versions in the scene back to 275, to see if maybe I could just mitigate that way.

The first weird thing that happened was when I reloaded the plugin to 275 on the male Atom, it worked just fine. When I tried it on the female Atom, all of her animations disappeared. Strange. So I reloaded the scene and tried a simple "reload" of the plugin, rather than replacing it. Same thing, all animations disappear. So I exported all of the animations, loaded 275, then imported them and the scene seems to work fine. Just a very strange occurrence, I think. The other atoms I have with timeline (some firelight and the ambience-controlling atom) also reload with 275 no problem.

Anyway, with 275 in there, ALL animation seems to be syncing the same way scrubbing is. When I start it with a button trigger, when I scrub, and when I view it in VR, they're all now in sync. I just have to move the music a hair and I think I'll be good to go.

Just figured I'd drop an update, in case it helps. Once this scene is released, I should have some more time to help look at the syncing issue, if you need it!