Question What do I need to learn if I want to create my own animation by timeline

[fyxtc]

Focus on body animation like @noheadnoleg

 

[atani]

1. Open a existing scene you like that uses Timeline and get an overview of how it's made. A simple scene is beter.
2. Then create a new scene with a person and try making a simple animation.
3. And then off you go expanding on that and checking how others did their scenes.

I'm not promoting myself for vanity, but you can use a scene I shared to see very basic movement in Timeline:

Scenes - Walking as subscene

A simple subscene using animation patterns to mimic a basic walking movement. It is a bit robotic in movement, but the idea is to make it simple to use and adaptable. ## Update I include on v2 a demonstration of the person walking a set route...

hub.virtamate.com

Besides being a simple animation, the reason I picked my scene is because triggers and atoms have nice names and descriptions to make it easier for anyone who wants to deconstruct it.

 

[Acid Bubbles]

The question is pretty generic, so I'll try to give a generic answer, hopefully it'll be helpful

Check out the wiki and read about the options: https://github.com/acidbubbles/vam-timeline/wiki - this contains tons of information, and it also contains a quick walkthrough.

You might also want to look at the YouTube tutorials I made, they aren't perfect but they should get you up and running:

But if you never did any animation before, you might have a small learning curve with keyframes and curves. If you're serious, learning animation is an art that you can learn by looking at people making them in other software too (blender, SFM, etc.) though a ton of those techniques might be software-specific. Also, VaM animates targets, not bones, so there's a delay and collisions that you need to keep in mind.

Really, if you're able to move a hand left and right, the rest is just practice and experimentation. There are tons of animations you can look at, you can do mocap if you have the VR hardware, you can manually animate everything (which is what I typically do) too.

Have fun <3

 

[fyxtc]

The question is pretty generic, so I'll try to give a generic answer, hopefully it'll be helpful

Check out the wiki and read about the options: https://github.com/acidbubbles/vam-timeline/wiki - this contains tons of information, and it also contains a quick walkthrough.

You might also want to look at the YouTube tutorials I made, they aren't perfect but they should get you up and running:

But if you never did any animation before, you might have a small learning curve with keyframes and curves. If you're serious, learning animation is an art that you can learn by looking at people making them in other software too (blender, SFM, etc.) though a ton of those techniques might be software-specific. Also, VaM animates targets, not bones, so there's a delay and collisions that you need to keep in mind.

Really, if you're able to move a hand left and right, the rest is just practice and experimentation. There are tons of animations you can look at, you can do mocap if you have the VR hardware, you can manually animate everything (which is what I typically do) too.

Have fun <3

Very useful, thank you

 

[LuCas23332]

For newcomers like me who just began this adventure yesterday, this is what I needed to get going. The timeline plugin/feature! I was too confused reading so many tutorials telling me to "To install ___, download ___. You first need ____, then ____, and if you dont know ____, read more at ____, you might want to download the newest version at _____. You might want a fresh install of VAM to make it small and fast because having so many of these plugins might slow down the loading times. Also support these patreons providing these with donations click HERE" what? so god damn confusing. I just wanted to make a 5 second animation first so I know what they all mean later because I don't know if I even need these "looks" or 50 custom scenes or all of these other terms until i feel like my "movie"/"animation" needs more in it. We already get to started off in a scene with a girl and a dark background. I read through the beginner youtube tutorials that is recommended in the front pages but it's all the same thing! They just talk about the UI and how to add more atoms/textures/scenes/looks/hair/skin etc but they don't mention how we can make this all go live with a 5 second animation! I had to sit silent and think clearly for a minute and tell myself "Why is it so difficult to start off? What am I REALLY wanting to see? Oh... the end goal! How to make a video/animation!" Then I typed in "vam animation" on google and voila this thread showed up on the first result. Now VAM is starting to make sense. Why don't any of the beginner tutorials put any focus on the general goal? It's like all of these tutorials are for people who've already been using VAM for years and already know the bits and pieces and can follow up easier than the ones who get bombarded with all of these downloads/terms/donations without first going straight to making something go live.

 

[atani]

For newcomers like me who just began this adventure yesterday, this is what I needed to get going. The timeline plugin/feature! I was too confused reading so many tutorials telling me to "To install ___, download ___. You first need ____, then ____, and if you dont know ____, read more at ____, you might want to download the newest version at _____. You might want a fresh install of VAM to make it small and fast because having so many of these plugins might slow down the loading times. Also support these patreons providing these with donations click HERE" what? so god damn confusing. I just wanted to make a 5 second animation first so I know what they all mean later because I don't know if I even need these "looks" or 50 custom scenes or all of these other terms until i feel like my "movie"/"animation" needs more in it. We already get to started off in a scene with a girl and a dark background. I read through the beginner youtube tutorials that is recommended in the front pages but it's all the same thing! They just talk about the UI and how to add more atoms/textures/scenes/looks/hair/skin etc but they don't mention how we can make this all go live with a 5 second animation! I had to sit silent and think clearly for a minute and tell myself "Why is it so difficult to start off? What am I REALLY wanting to see? Oh... the end goal! How to make a video/animation!" Then I typed in "vam animation" on google and voila this thread showed up on the first result. Now VAM is starting to make sense. Why don't any of the beginner tutorials put any focus on the general goal? It's like all of these tutorials are for people who've already been using VAM for years and already know the bits and pieces and can follow up easier than the ones who get bombarded with all of these downloads/terms/donations without first going straight to making something go live.

A new user should watch the tutorials and enjoy first a little of the immense amount of content others have produced. Using content is very different from making content, not only in VaM but in everything else. You can see movies without having a clue how they're made, and rest assured, the demands for making a movie are immensely larger than the ones for seeing one. And when I say movie I can change that a load of bread, same concept, consumption is much simpler than creation.

All those people that told many things you needed to do before you can make a scene, even a simple one, they were rightfully telling you that you need to know plenty of things and devote time to do, learn, break, fix, redo, and so on. Being able to make a animation that goes for 5 seconds requires more or less the same knowledge and experience for making one that lasts 5 minutes. Picking up the bread example again, you can't make 1 small bread with just flour, you need the same ingredients as 1000 breads would.

Back to the start now, if you failed to find the tutorials, here are the most recent ones:

Guides - YouTube Tutorials

I have started making VaM tutorials for YouTube. As we all know there are some great tutorials out there but sadly they are quite outdated. This is my attempt to update the information and have it easily accessible to everyone. I've just gotten...

hub.virtamate.com

Adding plugins is one of them, and before these there were others by another creator. I've only been here since January 2021, before the above tutorials existed, so I used the ones I found and explored the scenes to try to understand how they were made. The learning process takes you in many directions and methods, be resourceful.
We're all users of this sandbox, many of us spend a lot of time helping others and doing stuff for free. I can't even imagine how much time and effort Acid has placed on Timeline, let alone everything else.

But here's something you should hear: we, vam users, don't owe you anything! So keep the rant for yourself.
If you think there's a lack of tutorials, then please go ahead and make them. The ones that exist didn't appear by magic, the creators made them to help others, not themselves.

 

[LuCas23332]

A new user should watch the tutorials and enjoy first a little of the immense amount of content others have produced. Using content is very different from making content, not only in VaM but in everything else. You can see movies without having a clue how they're made, and rest assured, the demands for making a movie are immensely larger than the ones for seeing one. And when I say movie I can change that a load of bread, same concept, consumption is much simpler than creation.

All those people that told many things you needed to do before you can make a scene, even a simple one, they were rightfully telling you that you need to know plenty of things and devote time to do, learn, break, fix, redo, and so on. Being able to make a animation that goes for 5 seconds requires more or less the same knowledge and experience for making one that lasts 5 minutes. Picking up the bread example again, you can't make 1 small bread with just flour, you need the same ingredients as 1000 breads would.

The first scene is already provided (the girl and a black background). We aren't able to make a 5 second animation with just this? Why do we need to download all of these other parts? Being bombarded with plenty of addons/textures/plugins/etc. is really confusing if we don't have to include them in the animation. If we know how to make a 5 second video with the girl just swinging her arm forward and back, we can slowly start learning to put more lighting/chairs/etc in. But we are bombarded with links that lead us everywhere giving us the assumption that these are all the first things we need to start implementing into our first frame in our 5 second animation video. I can't be the only recent newcomer going through this feeling like this. Maybe the only one speaking up about it. How was it like getting into VAM last year? How did other people's experiences into vam 1-2 years ago get to where they are now? I can't imagine this was how it was like for current senior vam users back then when they started, i'm sure it was much less resources/links and straight to the point. This is so confusing!

 

[atani]

You can make a animation with just the default girl in the black background. There's a Scene Animation tab that you can use, or animation patterns, or Cycleforces. There you go, no extras, built-in stuff.
Naturally you need to learn how to use these, but that applies to everything new. You can either figure it out by yourself or find information about it.

The above are not keyframe animation like Timeline does. If you want this other way of animating things you need to add that plugin in the scene. AcidBubbles created and shared this amazing plugin to have a new way of doing animations in VaM. But wait, there's yet other ways to make animations that are not built-in, other VaM users added new options to offer more options to the VaM community.

You see, the content you find in the Hub is 99.99999999999% community made. You can do some animation with a plain VaM software, but by using the other things the community created your options grow exponentially. This content includes the guides you see, and a whole host of people in the forum, Discord, etc, helping others.
You're not brave or special for saying that it's difficult to use, everyone knows that or quickly realise it. Yet, your first interaction with the community is bitching about why you can't immediatly know everything or expect this to be a 5 minute tool to learn. Sorry, but this isn't Candy Crush.

I can tell you that VaM has a steep learning curve. If you don't want to accept that then you can go do something else. However, if you're willing to devote time to learn, seeing the tutorials, experimenting, talking with the community, seeing how people do things, then you will quickly learn how to do the things you want to do, and I hope too you could help others do the same.

 

[LuCas23332]

You can make a animation with just the default girl in the black background. There's a Scene Animation tab that you can use, or animation patterns, or Cycleforces. There you go, no extras, built-in stuff.
Naturally you need to learn how to use these, but that applies to everything new. You can either figure it out by yourself or find information about it.

The above are not keyframe animation like Timeline does. If you want this other way of animating things you need to add that plugin in the scene. AcidBubbles created and shared this amazing plugin to have a new way of doing animations in VaM. But wait, there's yet other ways to make animations that are not built-in, other VaM users added new options to offer more options to the VaM community.

You see, the content you find in the Hub is 99.99999999999% community made. You can do some animation with a plain VaM software, but by using the other things the community created your options grow exponentially. This content includes the guides you see, and a whole host of people in the forum, Discord, etc, helping others.
You're not brave or special for saying that it's difficult to use, everyone knows that or quickly realise it. Yet, your first interaction with the community is bitching about why you can't immediatly know everything or expect this to be a 5 minute tool to learn. Sorry, but this isn't Candy Crush.

I can tell you that VaM has a steep learning curve. If you don't want to accept that then you can go do something else. However, if you're willing to devote time to learn, seeing the tutorials, experimenting, talking with the community, seeing how people do things, then you will quickly learn how to do the things you want to do, and I hope too you could help others do the same.

Thank you, it made a lot of sense that 99% of the content are community made