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modernPrimitive
04-03-2008, 06:01 PM
Greetings all,

I'm not too clued up on the aniamtion side of things so I need a little help if anyobne's willing to oblige.

Firstly I have a character with a walk cycle (not as a character setup, just animated joints and IKs, I also haven't created a clip yet). Now I need to duplicate it several times and offset each one slightly to break the unison (which I assume can be done in the trax editor).

Problem is I'd like to retain the "connections" to the original so that if the walk cycle needs to change it will propogate through to the duplicates. I'd also like to be able to add other cycles to the original at a later stage and have that propogate if possible.

To top it all off, I need to apply a blendshape to morph the characters into a slightly different "base character" and then still apply the original walk cycle to the whole lot (which I think will work if the deformation order of the blend is post walk cycle?)

I can find my way around pretty well so if someone can just give me the basic workflow I'll be able to pull it off.

Thanks alot.

modernPrimitive
modernPrimitive
04-05-2008, 10:24 AM
Never mind. Figured it out for the most part.

For any noobs out there:

Create a character setup from the character menu by selecting all your controls for the rig that need to be animated then create your clips for those controls in the in the trax editor. Duplicate with input connections a group containing the rig and the mesh which will automaically create a new character setup for the new character. Now you can assign the clips to the new character in the trax editor and offset the timing slightly to create variation. Using the character mapper you can also assign the clips to a different rig.

I haven't tested whether this will propagate changes from the original character's walk cycle through to the duplicates, but I think it will.

Does anyone know if this can be combined with particles (using surface flow) to create an "army" of characters? I've done that before without using a character setup so the walk cycles couldn't be varied.
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04-05-2008, 10:24 AM
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