Blocking more than one Character ?

#1

I am animating a scene with 4 characters and 2 cars. I have done a first blocking pass of the animation. But now I want to time it. How do I select it all so I can animate it. And !! using stepped/constant keyes. As it is now I have to select each charadcter separatley and move it around. And having 100% reach on T & R to use constant keys.
Is the program designed to only use 1 character at time ? or … ?
By ther way I am using motion builder 6 pro.

Anybody got any tips on this matter ?

/klingos

#2

It’s probably best to use story. You can create clips for the animation that you have now, then you can move around and re-time the clips in story. My experience was that story in 6 (standard) was buggy though–save often.

#3

But in this story thing, can i import poses ? or only takes ?
Because now i have 30 poses on 4 characters, that i want to time. Do i have to make 30 takes out of it.

And one more thing that bothers me in Motion Builder, it lags like …#¤%"… when i try to move around the keys of my 4 characters. I found one way to do it, moving around the keys. I have selected their nodes in the schematic view and made a set out of it. But it’s realy heavy for the computer to move the keyframes. Though it playbacks nicely.
Really strange. It’s like the program is made to do shorter game loops only. I have only used Motion Builder for a couple of months for game work. But I have noticed that the program don’t really like when you have long takes. Over a couple of hundred frames and the software is down on its knees.

well back to work.

/klingos

#4

Hey there !

What ram/processor power does your machine have? Story eats alot of juice (as it often references you animation clips/takes from outside the package)

Are you also ‘plotting your animation to the current take’ then playing it back? When plotting, in the plotting dialogue box, check ‘constant key reducer’ on. MB will plot keyframes on everything in that scene, inc. geometry. This will increase you file size massively and therefore slow playback rightdown.

Another option is to use ‘selective redraw’ on you viewer pane. This should speed up any lagging you are seeing.

Story is still a bit of a rough diamond in MB7…but you can easily create scenes over a 1000frms long, without too much trouble.

Hope some of this is helpful anyway ! ;o)

cheers.

#5

There is the pose control library, works only on rigs, but you can drop any pose you like anywhere you like.

We routinely animate scenes 3+ minutes of mocap data with around 3-4 characters, with Opticals, rigs and skeletons, all in story without any lag. To my mind the MB fcurve window and handling of keys is one of the smoothest i’ve ever seen (i still use maya and max regularly though less so for animation, thanks to Motionbuilder :slight_smile: )

MB really needs a fast gfx card and loads of memory + cpu - not a lot then :wink: It’s performance easily outstrips the same data loaded into Maya or Max.

To move all characters at once, I’m guessing you mean by the root? You can easily create a group and move them all at once.

In story you can create clips, selecting these and activating the ghost will accomplish the same.

#6

Thanks for all of your answer. I have 2.9 Ghz, 1 gig of ram and geforce gfx card. Well as I wrote before, the animation plays back niceley, It is when i select the control rigs that it lags right now.
Because I have done 30 poses on each of the 4 characters. And now i want to block up the timing, roughly. But ploting it to takes ? having 30 takes to mix max and then ploting it back, Sound a bit crazy. And using the pose window, it only works on one character at time. So what i want to retime my aimation. Doing any of thos 2 is a bit crazy if only want to shuffle around the keys as you do when animating.

#7

You should be fine with that system

I a change in workflow might help. Keeping all of the poses in the pose window means that you can just use 1 take and paste poses onto it there. Keeping all of the poses in takes is not something that i’d do.

You don’t really need to go near story for this type of work.

Also, in the key controls window, you can set the default key type here. that way you can just lay down constant keys.

Hope this helps

#8

I have one scene that’s over 3000 frames (2 characters) with multiple subtracks, shape animation tracks, audio tracks, a shot track, and eye control tracks. Though I normally split scenes into 1000 frame blocks. You can use poses with story as well since you can animate directly in story. There is a tutorial on 3dbuzz.com that shows how to use poses in story. I think if you’e going to work with multiple characters story is the best way to keep every organized and easy to change.

#9

Sorry, but I think you missunderstood me. I don’t really use the the “pose control” when animating that often. I pose out the animation. In this case I put a major pose on each fram. So there was no timing at all, only the main poses laid down on the time line for the 4 characters. About 30 frames = 30 poses on each character. I then want to block out the timing. But the thing is I can’t move all of the characters keys at the same time. If i select all the characters the program will lagg it selft down. And crash. After only a couple of “time moves” Motion Builder crashes.
Now i have blocked out the animation in Premiere and then matched the timing to the main character and then to the rest of the characters. But the thing is, it’s a pretty lousy work flow. At least I think, not to be able to select all of your characters controls and move the keys around. And not doing mumbo jumbo ploting, story thingis. Does anybody have any clever solution to this ?
I think it is sad that this great animation software doesn’t seem to suport “moving multiple characters keys”. Or I have not discovered the secret button yet. Time will tell.

#10

A better work flow that I would suggest is: instead of keying you key poses out one frame apart, key them at the time you think that you want them but set your curve type to step. Doing it this way lets you judge your timing easer. Youll have to do this one character at a time, but I be you’ll get use to doing it this way quickly.

I don’t think you can do what it is that you sound like you’r trying to do. ~

good luck

macgregor_oi

#11

I’m not sure if I follow your question, but here goes: In order to adjust the timing on two characters at the same time, I group selected each character:ctrl reference and then adjusted the keys in the dopesheet.

#12

donShole: I’ve tryed that thing before. And yes it works. Kind of. Because if you have more characters. it lags. It seems as if selecting a character rigg slows down the system a bit, and selecting 4 characters slows it down heavely.
For me it crashes after 3-4 time adjustments on my 4 characters.

And yes macgregor_oi, i could try to do a bigger effort on the initial timing, but I will always need to retime thingd.
But what if you have 2 “key” characters interacting, maybe I dont want to lead tha animation with one. And yes, I could time the whole ting from the beginning on paper. But I will always be needing to adjust the timing. Atleast a little bit.

I have one more question, how do i do to put sepped/constant keys, the pelvis is acting very spliny.

/klingos

#13

Hmmm I tryed to move the keys of multiple characters on Motion builder 7, and guess what. It works fine. Now I only have to wait for the current project at work to end so we can upgrade to version 7.
At work I use version 6.

/klingos, almost happy.

#14

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