Arhhhhh Trax me!

[Mark-J]

With Trax you have to get your head round Absolute and Relative channels / offsets. On your character Maya has assigned what it thinks is the correct mix between these 2 offset types..... so things like Root controllers are in Absolute space, clavs in relative. You can check this by selecting the clip and looking at the Attributes. What the hell does this mean?

Ok, They introduced this STUPID split back in Maya7, previously you'd assign an entire clip to be either absolute, or relative. This is still how we work today, I ALWAYS set clips to be fully absolute. Absolute means that the exact data in that clip is being used, relative means the data in the clip is added up with any current data in relative space, meaning that you're never actually sure if the pose of the character is what you added to the clip, or a mix there of. Relative works great IF you're doing corrections, or over-lays of data, ie..... I want to shift this whole data by 10 in the X. It is howevere very dangerous if you just want to use the Trax as a NLA mixer, mixing 2 animations together.

So, back to your example. If you have both clips ontop of each other in the timeline without a blend, then in Absolute mode, you're getting the data from Clip1+ clip2, hence the character flies off. If you were in Relative mode, then you'd get Clip1 + the relative data from Clip2.

In other words, at frame 1, Clip1 has the wrist translates at 10, 5, 2, clip2 has values of 10, 6, 1. Without a blend and the clips over lapping in Absolute you'd get 20,11,3.

So, working practice, Absolute is the safest way of working, and if you do have anims who's times overlap, blend.

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