To Animators: How do I get motion graph...

[Suricate]

Hi Robert,

I describe what I do, I hope that's what you wanted.
1. Create a null with two bones.
2. In Setup mode, create a group 'Bones' that contains a channel of each of these bones, e.g. xpos for the first bone, ypos of the second, and enable 'Auto Select' for that group.
3. In Animate mode, set the item list filter to 'All items' ( if you would choose 'Bones' nothing will appear in the item list window) and select one of the channels of your group. Then the other channel of the group should be selected as well.
4. Now both channels of the group should show up in the motion graph, with one key selected. Drag a box around those keyframes that you want to edit and you should have mutliple keys selected. Now you can edit them the way you want.

[heynewt]

Christopher,

This setup DOES work for me. I went back to my Hand with armatures setup and it still would not work this way. Scratching my head. Let me just look carefully at the two setups. Clearly I have something not set right in the earlier setup. I'll figure it out.

One thing I had forgotten about was the item filter list. But I can't seem to get item filtering to work at all.

Here's the deal, when I open one of Messiah's previously created scenes, like a tutorial scene, item filtering works great. But when I create my OWN scene, if I select ANY option besides "All Items" then it shows NO ITEMS AT ALL in the list. When I pull down the itme filtering list to show that group I created above, the list goes completely blank. Same thing if I lock a couple of objects and leave others unlocked. Go to Item filtering, "locked objects", the list goes blank.

Again, if I go into a scene that came in the samples folder, and I create a group in that scene, the item filtering works exactly like it's supposed to.

Again, any idea what I'm doing wrong when I create my own scenes? Why doesn't item filtering work?

Robert Newton


Hi Robert,

I describe what I do, I hope that's what you wanted.
1. Create a null with two bones.
2. In Setup mode, create a group 'Bones' that contains a channel of each of these bones, e.g. xpos for the first bone, ypos of the second, and enable 'Auto Select' for that group.
3. In Animate mode, set the item list filter to 'All items' ( if you would choose 'Bones' nothing will appear in the item list window) and select one of the channels of your group. Then the other channel of the group should be selected as well.
4. Now both channels of the group should show up in the motion graph, with one key selected. Drag a box around those keyframes that you want to edit and you should have mutliple keys selected. Now you can edit them the way you want.

[heynewt]

Okay,

Found a post by Fred that helped explain it. THIS IS really bizarre. In my version of Messiah 2.0 Studio, you can create groups in one of several ways (see the manual). But if you create a group in any tab besides the "File" tab then you will not be able to filter it. In other words, if you create your group in the setup or compose tabs, it will look like a normal group, but it won't show up when you try to filter it. At least that's how my Messiah is behaving right now. Try it and see.

Is this just me?

(UPDATE: I think I found the problem. A group in the item filtering list can only be an "item" or an object, not a particular channel. You can create groups of channels, but you cannot view them as a group in the item filter list, right??? Right??? That would explain this weirdness. Why can't they code it so that you can view item channels as groups???? )

http://www.cgtalk.com/showpost.php?p=1432580&postcount=19

Robert

[dobermunk]

The channels can be assigned to groups, I've checked that.
I'm also getting strange behavior (dragging channel values not working) but it seems its something with my setup here. I'll report back when I find out what's up. But doesn't sound quite the same as what you're describing.

[heynewt]

Yes, the channels can be assigned to groups, but can they be FILTERED as a group in the item filtering process in the list? Meaning, can you assign them a group, then choose that group and only channels, not items, but channels only show up in the item filtering?

Robert

I've sent a message about this to TS at PMG, but seeing as how they've never responded to ANY e-mail I've ever sent them I don't expect a reply on this one either.

[heynewt]

My apologies to PMG. I just got an e-mail back from them confirming my theory that item list filtering only works for items, not for individual channels of items. Possibly in the future though. Whew, I'm not crazy.

Robert



I've sent a message about this to TS at PMG, but seeing as how they've never responded to ANY e-mail I've ever sent them I don't expect a reply on this one either.

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