Wiki Article 03. Animation

Animation



“Name Space” By default this will say “Person”. This will display the name of the currently selected Person Atom. You can rename it here as well.


”Scene Animation” The following settings relate directly to the recording and playback of scene Animations inside VaM please see Scene Animation for more detailed information.


”Armed for Record” Toggling this On will allow the Root Node of the Person Atom to store recorded scene animations.


“Playback Enabled” All atoms have this “on” by default. It allows any recorded animations on the selected atom to playback recorded animations when played.
This has no effect on animations driven by plugins or the Person Built-In Animation settings.

”Clear All Animation For This Controller” Erases all recorded animations on the Root Node of the Person Atom.
This has no effect on plugin driven animations, Person Joint animations or the Person Built-In Animation settings.


”Speech Bubble Duration” Unfortunately there is a bug with this function and it can not be adjusted here. They can be set through a trigger: Person->SpeechBubble->bubbleLifetime




”Thought Bubble Duration” Unfortunately there is a bug with this function and it can not be adjusted here. They can be set through a trigger: Person->ThoughtBubble->bubbleLifetime




Person Built-In Animation

”Activate” Clicking this button on will activate the Person Built-In Animation panel. Any animations loaded in the “Sequence” panel will become active and can be played.
Be aware: This overrides plugin animations that animate the control nodes and will conflict with any motion capture animations that are applied to the Person Atom.

”Animate Fingers” Toggling this on will animate the fingers with the recorded motion contained within the Built-In animations.
Toggling this off the fingers will be influenced by whatever morph setting is currently applied to the hands.


”Set All Joints Control All (Recommended)” This toggles all of the Control Joints to the “On” state. This is the same as the


”All Joints: Control All” setting in the Control & Physics 2 Tab.


”Animation Speed” Controls the playback speed of the currently playing animation sequence. This has no effect on plugin animations or Scene Animations.




”Rotation Speed” This rotates the Root Control of the person atom. Positive values rotate the Root Clockwise, Negative values rotate it Counterclockwise.
The higher the value (positive or negative) the faster the rotation speed.



”Animation Selection” Panel: This panel is where you can choose from 192 different built-In animations and apply them to your currently selected Person Atom.
These animations are all drawn from the Adobe Mixamo library.





This is the dropdown menu that you can use to choose from the 192 different built-in animations. Use the “Filter” text box to narrow down your choice. Some of the categories available are: Catwalk Heels, Dance, Exercise, Expressions, idle, and Poses.



”Add” Clicking on this will add your currently selected animation in the dropdown menu to the “Sequence” panel.


”Replace” This will replace the currently playing animation in the “Sequence” panel with the currently selected animation in the dropdown menu.


Crossfade is when a previous clip’s Joint Control animations are blended into the currently playing Joint Control animation clip giving you a smoother transition between two clips that may be in radically different poses. Crossfade is applied every time you add a new animation to the “Sequence” panel. It is not a global setting.

”Use Crossfade” Turning this on means that the set “Crossfade Time” will be added to your selected clip as it is added to the “Sequence” list.


”Crossfade Time” This is where you set the amount of time you want your added clip to take to fade into the next clip in the “Sequence” panel.


The “Sequence“ Panel is where your animations are added and played sequentially from the top down.

“Sequence” Panel Empty














“Sequence” Panel with animations added.













Example of an added clip: In this case “Catwalk Heels - Idle”



“0.500” this number in the above clip example represents the amount of time that this clip will “Crossfade” for.



When playing the clip will be highlighted in a light green and have a toned playback progress bar.
A playing Crossfading clip is shown in grey with a darker grey playback progress bar. As shown in the below example.


This example demonstrates “Exercise - Idle To Burpee” Cross fading for .5 seconds into the “Exercise - Burpee To Idle” clip as it is playing.





The Person Atom on the left has no crossfade between the animations “Exercise - Idle” and “Exercise - Plank”.

The Person Atom on the Right has a “0.5” Crossfade between the two animations. Note the blending between the two animations and not an immediate snap.














Arrow Up and Arrow Down will move the selected clip Up or Down the “Sequence” list. Please note that animations are played from the top down.


”Clear” Removes all animation clips from the “Sequence” playlist.


”Reset” Resets the Person Atom back to a default pose and puts the playback of the “Sequence” back to the beginning of the first clip in the list.


This button will restart your “Sequence” playlist at the beginning.


This button will jump to the beginning of the previous clip in the “Sequence” playlist. It will have no effect if you are playing the first clip.


This will pause the playback of your “Sequence” playlist.


This button will jump to the beginning of the next clip in the “Sequence” playlist. It will have no effect if you are playing the last clip in your list.


”Loop Sequence” Toggling this on will loop your “Sequence” playlist. Having this off will stop the playback at the end of the last clip in the “Sequence”.