Animating Poses question...

tyoung71_a1bb2d3374

I'm working on a project in 8.5 pro and had a bit of kismet when I realized if I set a pose on one keyframe and then another pose at another keyframe it would, sort of, animate from one pose to the next. I'd planned on doing this with the puppeteer tool, but this works well enough.

Unfortunately the first part of this project has a bunch of individual files all with the individual poses I've used. So, I went back through each file and using the NLA 'Create Master Pose' created a master pose and saved it to my clips tab in the browser. It doesn't drag and drop onto the figure any longer, but I am able to set a keyframe and load the clip data and have the figure change poses.

But, it doesn't animate between poses anymore. I'm not quite sure why and have many questions marks flying around my head.

Obviously I've done something wrong with the Master Pose creation, but I left all the boxes checked, so Im not sure what.

Anyone have any ideas?

TIA

- Todd

wetcircuit

Check the manual for NLA tracks. The poses you are creating are actually like "animation blocks" so you drag them not to the figure, but onto the NLA track in the sequencer.

*sorry for RTFM answer, off to work. Don't have time to find specific links, but I hope that helps you get started...

tyoung71_a1bb2d3374

Thanks for the info!

That answered my question...=D

Dartanbeck

Also, if you create your poses anywhere but on the first frame on the timeline before making your Master Pose, when you Load Data to get the keyframes instead of using the clip, it will load to where the pose was when you made it, so you can actually grab those keyframes and move them around. Otherwise it will load the data onto the first frame no matter what.

Puppeteer is also great fun, and most effective for making some really nice animations. I love how you can drag anywhere in the grid to get 'in-between' results from the various loaded poses. So you can really get some realistic movements that would be far more difficult to achieve without the Puppeteer tool. Especially for things like back and forth funny business! But many great animation affects can be made with this rather nice addition to the Carrara toolset ;) Try it sometime!

I like using NLA Master pose a lot. It's fast and easy. For transferring pose or morph data from one figure to another of the same type, I do always use the first frame of the timeline - as that's what I need - to get the data at frame 0.00

But to add single poses to use in an animation, I've discovered that it's best to pick a specific place along the timeline to ALWAYS use when making these types of NLA file, because then you can always move any keyframes off of that spot before using "Load Data from Clip" from a master pose. It seems that the Load Data function always places the keys where they were when stored.

So I'll load the first one, then select all of those keys by dragging a selection along that whole space in time, through the whole hierarchy of the figure, and shift them to some other location along the timeline. Then load in the next. You can, of course - as you've already found out, just use the clip file on an NLA track. But sometimes having keyframes gives us more control - so we can alter where they end up in time.

For example, shifting the left arm to finish its move at a different point than the right. And then changing where the hand, forearm, and shoulder finish their moves, etc., throughout the figure. But it also gives us a chance to just plain delete some of the keys that we just don't want anymore.

An example of that being a store-bought pose that also poses the eyes and some of the expressions. Sometimes I find it more efficient to just delete that frame key and pose the head by hand!

Fingers too - sometimes the pose might have the fingers doing something you just don't want them to. Select them and get rid of them!

Sorry for the babble. I find Carrara to be my favorite character animation tool on the planet - and can go on for days like this :ahhh:

Dartanbeck

So for an example of what I was talking about in the beginning of the above post, I'll use something like the fifteenth frame, at one half a second in a 30fps scene to make all of my NLA Master poses on, if they are to be used for poses along an animation later. I actually use the One Second frame. When doing so, I set the yellow scene timeline marker to that spot, so when I click the << button, it goes there instead of going all the way to 0.00</p>

This has the effect, too, that always and easily allows me access to the Frame 0.00 pose for any part of the figure, anywhere in my animation - might not sound like a big deal, but I find it ultimately useful over and over again!

So now whenever I'm loading in one of my Master pose files meant as a pose, I know that anything in the one second frame will get overwritten unless I move it first, when using "Load Data from Clip". Very useful because of its predictability. ;)

Dartanbeck

Handy to know:

Select keyframes and

Hold down Alt and drag
Copies each selected key and pastes it where you release the mouse

Hold down Ctrl and Drag
Evenly stretches or squishes the distance horizontally in time between the selected frames

Dartanbeck

aniBlock Importer for Carrara

Importing aniBlocks into Carrara is a one way trip - no undo.

So I have formed the habit, once again, to set my yellow timeline begin point marker to the 1 second point on the timeline, and moving there before importing.

This has the wonderful effect of leaving me with my default pose for the given character at frame 0.00

So if I decide against keeping the aniBlock that I just imported, I can select all of the keys beyond 1 second and delete them.

After all, if you delete keys from the 0.00 frame of a figure, you lose that figure.

It also allows the ability to get at those default rotations on areas that you might not want to become affected by the aniBlock, like fingers, for example, but it could be any body part.

All in all, I have found it to be very beneficial to begin animations anywhere but frame 0.00

I often end up beginning my animation at frame 0.00, but that will be the last pose I create, unless in doing so I need to make an in-between pose as a result.

I hope some of these notes help.
Using these simple practices have truly turned the tide from my animations being silly to actually working how I need them to.

Dartanbeck

If you do find this to be useful, perhaps consider poking around in the sticky in this forum:
►►► Carrara Information Manual ◄◄◄
I have several other thoughts, tips and tricks in there as well as many other useful places to look, like Holly's webspace and many other links and such.

Anyways, I really hope that you find even nearly as much joy animating in Carrara as I do - and, even more... I hope to see some when you feel like sharing! :)

tyoung71_a1bb2d3374

Wow, that was above and beyond.

Thank you for the time and the information.

Very much appreciated.

- Todd

Dartanbeck

My pleasure!
I love seeing more animation enthusiasts around here as I'd love to flood the webway with amazing Carrara animations - just to really show the world how incredibly capable this software is.
We've seen some excellent examples of this already. I love this Carrara 8 Promo Reel put together, I believe, by our own JetBird (Danis Anis), featuring many of our forum member's incredible animation work.

Rosie (My Wife, Hero, and True Love Forever) and I are working on a new project as we speak. I'm looking for a bit of a different angle on things - bringing Carrara to life in a fun and imaginative way. I hope it gets well received, but one never knows. The important thing is that we try it, right?

Anyways, Sorry it took so long to respond. Even when it appears like I'm very active here, as I always try to be, I'm not very fast at typing, and can only get to a limited number of replies sometimes. Other times I run out of replies to make and just start babbling about a topic that I feel might help someone, some day.

Anyways, glad to see you aboard! You'll see as I have, how incredible Carrara is as an animation creation tool! Especially when it come to rendering. If you don't go too nuts with soft shadows and super high render settings, Carrara can make your animation dreams come true efficiently and in good time! But more on that another time.

I just finished an article at the Carrara Cafe, Carraranimation Part 1 - Rotation of the Hip, if you're interested in more of my zany ideas! ;)

Some other articles at the Cafe as well.