The "ANIMATE" Tab in Layout. Lets design it.

[pdrake]

What I am trying to imagine is LW not having to depend on 3rd party software for animation (Kaydara, Messiah etc).


already have one in the mac version.

oh, wait, i forgot. that's the first rule of mac club.

[Kvaalen]

Hmmm... sounds like a good idea. But do you want only new tools? I'm asking because there are many tools that already exist that I'd stick in there. :)

[RobertoOrtiz]

I favor a healthy combination of old and new tools.

I am very interested on how you guys would feel more comfortable animating.

-R

[Miyazaki]

- MB like Pose Tools and Viewport speed
- Synoptic views
- Serious constraints
- setting keyframes for different items simultanously
- XSI Marking Sets :bounce: and general keyframe abilities
- faster FK/IK
- Spline IK
- Build in FK/IK Blending
the list is long ;)

[scotttygett]

Stereoscopic button, which I suspect the pro's are faking with dual displays and X3D and fog or some such combo...

I haven't seen 8, so I don't know if there's a slider for moving around the "Current items and descendants root parent" while running the animation you've got selected.

[FLOw]

Originally posted by RobertoOrtiz

What I am trying to imagine is LW not having to depend on 3rd party software for animation (Kaydara, Messiah etc).

:surprised :rolleyes:

[aurora]

I was at a Maya6 pres last night and saw some great new animation tools.
- The ability to take the full animation from one object and 'project it' onto a seperate, completely different object by just specifying a few constraints.

- The ability to redirect motion direction. As in you have a walk cycle going in a straight line. But now you want it to turn a corner. You can easily move to the key frame where you want the rotation to start, do a rotation transfor,specify over how many frames and the rest of the change is automatically calced.

- Mirroring. This was acutally part of the toolkit release. It automatically allows you to mirror your object and the baked animation with a single stroke. There are also options for how you want it mirrored and on what planes, ect.

- Faster, easier mopcap integration

- Faster, easier fbx integration

- Onion skinning like you see in Flash!!!! That would be a great thing.

- AI treatment of objects. No not really Massive type but simple things like automated collision/plane detection. Path finding. Relatively simple things like that.

[chrisWhite]

How about some good rag doll dynamics like CAT, not as essential as some of the other suggestions (IMHO), but it'd still be great to have.

Oh and with the Spline IK, it needs to be able to attach to the dynamics like the new Maya feature.

Now if they want to throw in Massive it wouldn't hurt my feelings :drool: Kidding, though I'd love to see a little be of crowd simulation technology, nothing to fancy, just something for simple stuff.

[hrgiger]

I would like to see the ability to non-destructively move bones around in a rig similar to messiah. If the deformation isn't right, we should be able to go to a setup mode, move a bone's position in the rig, back to animate and not have moved the mesh with it, nor destroyed any keyframed motion we had assoicated with it. The motion would just now be offset by the positional change.

Some sort of optimize feature that would let us see our bones/IK move in realtime, sort of like bounding box threshold, only allowing us to keep the mesh visible during it. THey need to find a way to move only what needs to move and throw the rest in a buffer so it doesn't have to be calculated on the fly. It would be like moving a character's arm and as far as Lightwave was concerned, there was nothing else in that scene to process other then that moving arm. I'm no expert on how Layout works internally so I don't know what bogs it down when animating.

An auto skinning feature that works like smartskin in Animation Master that takes all three axises into consideration instead of per channel. Set it up once, and it remembers that moprh with that combination of bone rotations and interpolates between other poses.

Definately built in IK/FK blending.

[aurora]

Hey N2 do you mean like the ragdoll dynamics we saw at the Discreet meeting for the new 3DSMax? That would be cool!

[chrisWhite]

Yep, weren't they showing off CAT there? Or was that built into 3DS Max now? I know they were demoing CAT at the meeting, but I might be getting which demo switched up :cool:

[RobertoOrtiz]

Ok guys I added an empty template.
Feel free to grab your favorite paint program and
show us your ideas with it.

http://66.242.144.2/animate.jpg
-R

[VirtualFM]

I couldn't let this ocasion slip through my fingers without stating how much I hate those black borders around buttons. Right now, I consider L[8] as the ugliest interface I have in any installed program in my computer, including games... Heck, including shareware Kid's games.

So, here is a version with some tools and no &/"#$&# black borders.

http://www.isisds.com/Testes/animateFM.jpg

PS: And for those who will start saying 'we no need no stinking walk generators', please try to make a series with 8 characters and do 1 minute of animation per day (doing tons of stuff wich include a lot of walking and running around) and you will change your mind in less than a week.

[cgman27]

Easy enuf to make one, thanks for the template.

http://www.onarom.com/Warhammer/animate.jpg

[mix]

Oooohh Yeaaaa!:buttrock: :buttrock:
Good idea cgman27

[RobertoOrtiz]

Be nice guys....

Remmber the first rule.
No third party programs.

-R

[Nemoid]

Hey guys try to be serious and develop a real animate tab design pls.

[hrgiger]

Originally posted by RobertoOrtiz
BNo third party programs.

-R

Yeah, let's get rid of FPrime! It's no good....

;)

[VirtualFM]

Originally posted by Nemoid
Hey guys try to be serious and develop a real animate tab design pls.

Well, I was serious!

[trilocom]

[Off Topic]

Its not an "animation tab", but since you all are talking about an interface desgin for lightwave, thought if you havent seen this it might be of some interest, and NT's


http://www.creactive-design.co.uk/lightwave_vx/index.htm

http://www.creactive-design.co.uk/lightwave_vx/gfx/lightwave_vx_interface.png
Copyright © 2003 Matt Gorner

Peaked my interest at what could be...

Howard

[Nemoid]

Touchè. i was actually talking about cgman27's post and mix reply.:rolleyes:

[chrisWhite]

Now that is an awesome interface design.

[Kvaalen]

Originally posted by N2ChristTheKing
Now that is an awesome interface design.

Please... please... Matt has a better version on that same site (darker) but lets not get off topic. There have been many threads created about that design, and you can start another if you like. But lets try to not get off topic and do what Roberto wants. :)

I'd like to have on the animation tab a mirror motion command where you select the object whos motion you want to mirror and the object that should have the mirrored motion, select what frames, and select an offset.

Hope that makes sens. If someone doesn't start working on it by the time I am less busy (in quite a while), I'll consider creating such a script myself.

[chrisWhite]

Yep, yep, sorry about that. How about we make out a list and get have everyone semi happy with it and then have one person implement it all into Roberto's template at that point?

[mix]

Sorry Nemoid,
Well not so much a tool, but all I would like is realtime everything.
There are some real cool and time saving plugs around for lightwave animation, but workflow is sort of stuttered becouse a lot of them don't work in real time, (eg.. Setdrivenkey from the spread), would be one of my most used animation tools if it wasn't for the fact that you don't see the the effect until you play the animation, dosn't work while scrubbing timeslider.
Maya has spoiled me in this regard.
RealTime:bounce: :bounce:

[RobertoOrtiz]

Come on guys,
we have some creative people on this forum.

Lets use the template I posted, and lets come up with our fantasy version of the Animate tab.
http://66.242.144.2/animate.jpg
-R

[RobertoOrtiz]

Ok I created this, to bounce some ideas....

Tell me what u think.
http://66.242.144.2/animatetab.jpg

-R

[scotttygett]

I like the humanoid picker, split the color dots or toggle so it can be either rotation or moving?

Should there be a dotted line or something for the picker to indicate expressions, favorites sets or morphing?

For hair, you have to block edit a bunch of strand groups to have similar movement... is block editing friendly? Do we get a ghost set of bones to adjust rest rotation to match with previewing? (I'm talking out my ear on this one...) Dare I mention motion mixer?

Should there be "weighting" as an option on the timeline to indicate where sticky and or lone keyrames are, or is that too newbie?

I like permuted morphing, but my system stops dead when I try it, so unless the PV lives there, I guess that isn't a control.

Was or is there a way to do face-shape to skelegon conversion for automated morph-derived bone-keys?

Just some thoughts, delete this if it doesn't fit please.

[Miyazaki]

Roberto, nice pose recorder. Add some good mirror pose tools with the option to mirror parts from one side of the rig to the other.
And a nice match pose function :bounce:

[Locutus]

Ok I created this, to bounce some ideas....

Tell me what u think.
http://66.242.144.2/animatetab.jpg

-RI like the idea of an animation recorder. All you would need to do is add buttons for copying and pasting poses for individual limbs and for the entire rig. Kind of like what Character Studio does in 3dsmax.
I'm not sure if anyone has said this yet, but pre-made rigs equiped with easily switchable (or blendable) IK/FK solvers.

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