using poses to move characters problem

#1

hello all,

thanks for the advice so far on baking out and activating keys from the trax editor. now i have a new problem.

i have a clip that i am applying to 10 different characters. but of course i do not want them standing on top of each other. so this is the method i was going to use, but it only worked on one, and not the others. it is basically i think a question of ‘relative’ vs. ‘absolute’

so each character has a character set and has the clip applied. they are all standing in the exact same space doing the exact same thing.

so i took character 2, moved him a bit to the left, created a pose, and then inserted this pose back into the trax editor before the animation clip. this worked the first time. he is now in place a little bit to the left with the same animation.

so i took character 3, moved him even farther to the left, and tried the same process. the pose works, but the clip does not function now.

on character number 2, who was moved and added a pose and it works, the pose is all on ‘absolute’ and the clip is on ‘absolute’ for everything except the trans and rotate of the controller that i moved, these attrs are on ‘relative’

i noticed also while trying to do this, i thought it would be simple, i sort of had to mute and unmute stuff for it all to update properly.

hope this all makes sense, thanks in advance for any help. still not sure why the process worked on one guy and not the next.

#2

I don’t know if I fully understand what you did to answer your question, but the solution I use for your original problem is that I parent all the character and IK joints to a locator in the character file, and place the locator where I want the character to be after I reference the character into the scene. In essence, all the animations play relative to the position of the locator, not the scene origin.

<* Wes *>

#3

heya thanks that is a great idea. right now i gotta work with a particular rig, so i cannot make changes like that add a locator.

i am having some more success now using a pose to move the character, really kind of odd still though. also the update of the trax editor is totally wonky . . . but oh well. i am using 2011 btw.

thanks again for the answer, might try to use that solution in the future.

#4

Have you tried Character>Redirect?

http://download.autodesk.com/us/maya/2010help/files/Character__Redirect.htm
http://download.autodesk.com/us/maya/2010help/files/CS_Animation_redirection_example.htm

You can relocate, rotate, whatever you want with it. I usually select a character’s global control and apply a redirect.

#5

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