Total Newb Maya questions

[greebo]

I dare to ask: there is no other way to achieve that? It seems rather unintuitive to me...

[squill]

yeah i know. Ideal would be to have 2 shelf buttons, one to save a pose and another to apply that pose. There are some tools around to save and load poses but they either aren't working properly or have to many complicated options for such simple actions.

 

at work i sometimes used some shelf buttons to apply these kind of poses for characters but i'm not that into mel to write my own. You can read out a lot from just checking the script editor after each action you make in maya and create your own custom shelf buttons to simplify actions. Anyway this is one(working) method to distribute new changes on our animations. I'm searching for new methods and open to suggestions.

[greebo]

Ok, newbie question of the day: how can I rotate a joint (namely the "joint4" in one of the spider maya files) and rotate it such that the child nodes stay the same?

 

I can do that easily in Blender, but in Maya the entire hierarchy gets rotated along. Probably an easy thing in Maya too, but I'm looking for ten minutes now and I can't seem to find it.

[Noisycricket]

Well, i hope squill has an easier way to do this, the only way i know to do it is make the "inherit transform" attribute keyable and key it as you need it changed, for each related joint. To make it keyable for each joint you must select it, open the channel box, right click in the box, select channel control, select "inherits transform" in the nonkeyable-hiddle column and click move left. Then key that attribute by right clicking it in the channel editor window as many times as needed to so Maya knows what to do with it and when.

[greebo]

Squill, is there an easier way to do that?

[squill]

Squill, is there an easier way to do that?

 

press F8 (component mode) select the ? button in the toolbar and use the rotation tool to rotate one of the local rotation axis on your joint.

[Crispy]

You said you're not an animator, but you pretty much nailed it

Well, I don't call myself "an animator" since I don't consider animation to be one of my core skills. I dabble; I took 3 semesters of digital animation as electives at uni, which is why I know as much as I do. I had to quit the stream early due to increasing workload in year 3 of my degree. So I'm no beginner, but I'm no expert either. I'd like to practice more, just don't have the time these days... bloody Honours year.

 

(Replying to an old post, I know - must have missed this thread earlier due to my forum hiatus.)

[greebo]

press F8 (component mode) select the ? button in the toolbar and use the rotation tool to rotate one of the local rotation axis on your joint.

Thanks for the info.

 

I could get it to rotate like this (for the records):

 

- Select the head joint

- Hit F8 to switch to component mode

- Make sure the rotation axes are switched ON when right-clicking the ? toolbar button

- Use the arrow tool to select the local axes (they turn yellow)

- Use the rotate tool to rotate it

 

But, unfortunately this didn't have any effect when exporting the idle animation and the md5mesh to D3. The exportmodels command went through, but the "head" joint is still oriented as before.

 

Is there the necessity to bake the transformation into the skeleton somehow, am I missing an additional step?

I tried to "Freeze Transforms" but this just threw an error in the status window.

 

(It's funny, because people tend to criticise Blender for its weird user interface - I guess they haven't tried Maya so far. )

[rebb]

Maya 2009 has an Option to Preserve Child Transform for the Move/Rotation/Scale Tools, but i guess you have an older Version than that.

[squill]

But, unfortunately this didn't have any effect when exporting the idle animation and the md5mesh to D3. The exportmodels command went through, but the "head" joint is still oriented as before.

 

Is there the necessity to bake the transformation into the skeleton somehow, am I missing an additional step?

I tried to "Freeze Transforms" but this just threw an error in the status window.

 

Freezing transforms on a joint with skin won't work. You can also rotate the joint using the command line: rotate -r -os 180 0 0; (X rotates 180 degrees) but it's the same doing it manually.

 

 

(It's funny, because people tend to criticise Blender for its weird user interface - I guess they haven't tried Maya so far. smile.gif)

 

i've had too many discussions about 3D apps in the past so i'm not going to join a discussion. Some people like Maya other swear by Max, Lightwave, Cinema4D or whatever. It doesn't matter, just use what fits best to you.

[greebo]

Freezing transforms on a joint with skin won't work. You can also rotate the joint using the command line: rotate -r -os 180 0 0; (X rotates 180 degrees) but it's the same doing it manually.

Then it leaves me puzzled why my change didn't have any effect - could you try this out sometime? I wonder what I'm doing wrong.

 

i've had too many discussions about 3D apps in the past so i'm not going to join a discussion. Some people like Maya other swear by Max, Lightwave, Cinema4D or whatever. It doesn't matter, just use what fits best to you.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that this is better or worse than this and that - I totally agree, and I can work with any software, it always just takes that given amount of learning time. I just noticed the same as you, that people tend to "swear" by their favourite software, thinking "their" software is so much better just because they're used to it. A few months ago the only app I knew was Blender (which has not the best reputation for its user interface design, but I didn't have any comparison) and after working a tiny bit with Lightwave and Maya I can state that it's the same problem for every piece of software in this realm.

 

@rebb: Yup, I'm using Maya 7 right now because I figured that's what everybody around here is using (is that even true anymore?)

[greebo]

Then it leaves me puzzled why my change didn't have any effect - could you try this out sometime? I wonder what I'm doing wrong.

I'm going to quote myself, how cool is that.

 

@squill: last time I tried I was failing on setting the rotation of the spider's head joint. Could you help me here a bit?

[Springheel]

I'm sure this is ridiculously easy, but how do I delete frames from an animation? I want to take the first 80 frames of an existing animation, but setting the "Endtime" to 80 and then exporting didn't work; it exported the whole 200+ frames of the original animation.

[greebo]

There are two entry boxes at the bottom right, one is called "Set the End Time of the Playback Range" and one is called "Set the end time of the animation" - did you set both of them?

[Springheel]

I only set the end time of the animation, but the other box changed automatically to match. When I Export All though, I still get the whole thing.

 

edit: Hmmm, working now...I just saved the scene and reloaded it.

[Springheel]

Ok, here's a question that I might not even be qualified to understand the answer for....

 

Basically, I'm trying to learn a bit about Maya by taking existing idle animations and playing around with them to make new alternate versions, like isolating a small part of a larger animation.

 

I want to make sure that the beginning and end of the animation are the basic AI idle pose for blending, but how do I do that? It seems like it should be as easy as copying the first frame of the animation and pasting it at the last frame, but I'm not sure exactly how to do that. Is there a way to copy and paste an entire pose?

[squill]

Ok, here's a question that I might not even be qualified to understand the answer for....

 

Basically, I'm trying to learn a bit about Maya by taking existing idle animations and playing around with them to make new alternate versions, like isolating a small part of a larger animation.

 

I want to make sure that the beginning and end of the animation are the basic AI idle pose for blending, but how do I do that? It seems like it should be as easy as copying the first frame of the animation and pasting it at the last frame, but I'm not sure exactly how to do that. Is there a way to copy and paste an entire pose?

 

Hi Springheel,

 

to copy an entire pose, the easiest way is to turn on the character set.

http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Image:Time_line.jpg

 

Go to the first frame and set a key (press S on your keyboard) and copy that key(RMB on timeline -> copy). Then go to the last frame of the timeline and paste (RMB -> paste). This pose copying will only work properly if you have the character set turned on because once you key that first frame it will set a key on all animation controls.

 

also i haven't been around for a while and the last rig i was working on was the heavy or forger character. I'm thinking about how to properly finish this and what else is needed.

[Springheel]

also i haven't been around for a while and the last rig i was working on was the heavy or forger character. I'm thinking about how to properly finish this and what else is needed.

 

Hey, welcome back.

 

Off the top of my head, here's how things stand:

 

Well, we still nead "heavy" animations, for the forger and other fat characters.

 

The female character works relatively well with the default animations, but could use some more "feminine" animations for some things (like searching, running, etc).

 

Some of the existing animations need a bit of tweaking for characters that have robes. The lower legs clip through the lower skirt joints in some cases, and the lower skirt joints get badly stretched in others. You can see the stretching here: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/3118-springheels-stuff/page__view__findpost__p__200511

 

Also, we could use a "cower" animation for the regular skeleton. http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/10266-ai-crouch-cringe-animation-needed-for-flee-points/

[Springheel]

to copy an entire pose, the easiest way is to turn on the character set.

http://modetwo.net/d...e:Time_line.jpg

 

Is it okay to use the "citywatch_body" set? I don't seem to have any others.

[Springheel]

Here's another question...what's the best way to test new animations in D3? I tried testAnim, but it complained there was no test model. I tried spawning a testmodel AI but kept getting an *.ase not found error.

[Springheel]

Cool, it worked. I basically took the nosewipe animation and made a shorter version that didn't have the "flicking snot" part. My first Maya animation.

 

I'm hoping to learn Maya the same way I learned LW...by tweaking existing assets until I get comfortable enough to make my own.

[squill]

Is it okay to use the "citywatch_body" set? I don't seem to have any others.

 

citywatch_body is the set all characters use. If you open this set in the outliner you'll see the information stored of the animation controls (translation, rotation etc.)

 

The difference between turning the character set on and off is like i said before. In off mode it only sets keyframes on the current animation control you have selected. When it's on it sets keyframes on all the animation controls, no matter which control you have selected. Also after setting a key with character set on check the script output beneath the timeline, it should say result 143, meaning 143 attributes are keyed.

 

When i'm animating i'll turn the set off because i don't want keys on every control. But it's usefull if you start a new animation, first creating the poses (pose 2 pose) and then turning the set off to edit and key individual body parts.

 

 

Here's another question...what's the best way to test new animations in D3? I tried testAnim, but it complained there was no test model. I tried spawning a testmodel AI but kept getting an *.ase not found error.

 

I usually did the following:

 

-Export the new animation

-Add it to the def file

-Start DM

-Open test/walk_ik02 (made a custom local map with no characters)

-Open console -> testmodel tdm_ai_proguard

-either you could use testanim [name animation] or scroll thru the list with nextanim and prevanim

[Springheel]

Thanks for the info.

 

Next question...is there a way to copy the animation controls from one animation and paste them to another? Could I take the arm position from a torch animation, for example, and paste it into a run animation?

[squill]

Thanks for the info.

 

Next question...is there a way to copy the animation controls from one animation and paste them to another? Could I take the arm position from a torch animation, for example, and paste it into a run animation?

 

there are more ways to do this. On the wiki is a small part i had written about the use of poses. I see it doesn't cover creating poses so i added a short paragraph at the top about creating poses.

Wiki Poses

 

The pose creating/saving thing is usefull for full body poses. If i just need the arm position on another animation i usually just open 2 maya windows and copy and paste the values between the 2 which to me goes a lot faster then creating a separate pose. Although if you need to apply this to a lot of animations it's easier to create a pose.

[Springheel]

I'm trying to adjust the blind walk animation to create a limping stagger for the beggar. However, the entire right arm seems to be locked somehow. I can't select any of the joints.

 

If I use the heirarchy window I can see them, but can't do anything with them. I tried unmuting them, but just get a "no channel found can be unmuted error".

 

What do I need to do to unlock the joints?