CGTalk - Turn off an object's animation & manage multiple animations

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groutcho

11-10-2010, 09:05 AM

Heya all,

I am currently working on a complex project involving multiple animations triggered by a .NET application in a 3rd party engine. To put it simply, we must simulate the assembling of a tube holding high pressure gas, involving the use of tools, bolts, nuts and camera animation in a real time environment with many interactions allowed to the end user.

I have two problems closely related, as far as animations are concerned.

1) In the 3ds max scene, all the animations are played according to the scene timeline :
- ie. I can't desynchronize animations when I want.
- I can't turn off some objects' animation to make the things clearer.

Is there a way, a script or a 3rd party plugin allowing the deactivation of some particular animations tracks ? like an "isolate" for animations.

2) All the animations for a single object are stored next to each other in the object's timeline. Which can be really messy when modifying the length of preexisting animations (implying to offset the following animations, which is out of question)

is there a way to store each animation in its own "timeline" or clip (similarly to character studio) ? Tips, scripts or 3rd party plugin are welcome :p

Thanks in advance

fael097

11-10-2010, 09:50 AM

i have a similar trouble.
the only solution i found, is to use animation layers.
each animation you want to play separately, put each of them on an individual layer.
you can "mute" animation layers, so they wont playback when you hit play.
you can control the layer muting with maxscript, for example

AnimLayerManager.setLayerMute 2 true

if you need more contol, read this:

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=6753724#post6753724

hope it helps :)

groutcho

11-10-2010, 10:01 AM

That seems great, and quite close to what I want.

Is that compatible with the motion mixer ? Could be the ultimate combo...

edit: Animation layers are not compatible with our 3rd party realtime engine...

JHN

11-10-2010, 10:58 AM

Then have a look at list controllers, almost similar to animation layers but a bit simpler, I think you're going to have to make an intermediate tool to convert the data to max animlayers or list controller values.

-Johan

groutcho

11-10-2010, 11:43 AM

List controller would mean putting the animation on 1st, and then read the 2nd block (which is empty) thus no playback at all ?

It seems heavy, i would rather use a bypass on the reading than actually modifying the objects' controllers, to maintain full compatibility with the external engine.

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