NLA Tracks Bugs

ThomasSc

Hi,

I'm trying to use NLA Tracks in Carrara 8.5 Pro. However, I had the same problems in 8 and 7.

The problem occurs when I create several tracks (via Add Track). Then the keyframes of the clips, created within the tracks, mixes with one another. Any ideas or work arounds?

Best wishes,
Thomas
 

Dartanbeck

It sounds to me like the Track modes are set to "Additive" instead of "Override".

Tip:

When I know that I'll be using multiple clips as sort of a 'Construction Kit' approach to animating, I create special clips just for the occasion, only writing to the clip certain body parts. For example, I'll write an NLA clip for a walk cycle. During the "Save as Clip" dialog, I deselect the head, neck and all parts of the arms, hands and fingers. Now I have a clip of the walk that only includes the legs, feet, toes, hip, abdomen, and chest. 

Using this clip by itself means that I'll now have to create my own keyframes to counter the motions for the head and neck, and do some sort of motion for the arms and hands. But this is incredibly useful because now I can use a pose that makes my character hold a rifle, for example, and the clip won't override the arms and hands. It's also useful to then make other clips for the head/neck which track the motion of the walk, another of the same thing but with a head turn in the middle of it, etc.,

Often times I won't even make clips for those extra actions, since it's really only the hip through the toes that I really need to save time with.

Other times I'll make clips from aniBlocks of a person arguing, playing frisbee, waving at a friend, etc., and only record the arms, hands and head/neck. Now I can add this clip to the walk cycle.

To help keep all of this stuff straight, without having to search comments or having really long clip file names, I make special folders in my Browser. Like for Rosie, I have a main folder "Rosie", then if I click on the "Walk" folder within, I get clips controlling the entire body with no parts excluded from the clips. If I want to exclude the head and arms, I click the "No Arms Head" folder within the "Walk" folder. I'll select the "Upper" folder for clips that I've saved that work with walks for the head/neck/arms, etc.,

Folder structures can really make the whole thing easy to organize and use!

ThomasSc

Hi,

Thank you for your answer and your tips.

Please see this video: https://www.dropbox.com/s/b6zplszmegn011l/carrara-bug.mov

As you can see, I have 3 NLA Tracks. The 2nd is the one for the "blinks." Here, only the parameters for the blinks are activated. The 3rd track is for the mouth. I only activated the "Mouth Parameters" for this track, as you can see.

Now, adding a clip for a "Mouthopen" morph to the 3rd track will change the clip in the 2nd track. You can see that! Now, the first clip of the 2nd track does exactly the same as the first clip in the 3rd track. Can you see it?

If I change the method from "Override" to "Additive", the result is slightly better. However, as soon as I move the clips from right to left (or vice versa) in the timeline (or copy/duplicate the clips), it gets again really strange.

I noticed that you have to activate "Model -> 3D Shape" in the Parameters. If not, morphs are not visible. So, perhaps Carrara saves the shape of the model. This becomes apparent when I look into my clips. There, only the "Mouthopen" keyframe has been created, but as you can clearly see, the "Blink" morph is also visible in the face (but not in the clip -> there is absolutely no keyframe for it!).

Do you have any ideas?

Best wishes,
Thomas