Anim8or Community

Ugh, unfortunatly it doesnt  help the way I thought. Ensoniq5 hit on exactly what I really need; a "Key all bones" option in scene mode. My method has always been to skip the sequence mode unless I specifically wanted to create a repetitive motion like walking, if it's just a conversation shot or something complex like a fight scene it just feels ridiculously slow and inefficient to have to do all my key frames in sequence mode and import them into scene mode, it kills my momentum not only in the process of making animation but also the character's movement. It's not a very intuitive process.

RudySchneider: I've tried this and I always find that even though I moved a bone on the X and Y axis the Z axis isnt recorded so when you DO move that axis pasting over it doesnt always fix the problem. So you still have to make sure you moved every bone on every axis before you can copy it.

Mak: I rarely use the sequence mode but I guess in this case that's probably my best bet, still it seems like the problem may still bite me if the sequence doesnt record every axis, here's hoping.

I've got maybe 18 or 19 bones in my figure and while I understand the way they move and know that if I want a character to stand still and then move I have to copy the pose from the start of his stillness and paste it on the frame just before he starts moving. But there's an annoying issue I run into every time I start animating with Anim8or:

In the scene editor, if I dont move a bone the first time early on in an animation there's no key frame for it's axises, so when I go to move it later and then scrub backwards in the timeline that bone maintains that position backwards in time forcing me to have to find the start point of the animation and reposition that bone to where it should be. Usually I solve this by moving as many of the bones as I can on every axis but that's a lot of moves to do for the beginning of every scene and god forbid I have multiple characters.

While this might not be a problem for a single bone when you have more than a dozen and several of them suffer this at the same time it snowballs really quickly. Is there a way to assign positions to the axises of all the bones at one time so that I dont have to try and move every one of them on frame zero just to make sure they dont give me this problem again?

Yeah The browser is useful but it only works for the individual parts, not things like the bones. What I mean is when you look at the Object menu, you can have a huge list of parts in a short time. It'd be nice if you could group the objects under one "folder" for lack of a better word. This way you'd have all the parts for your character separated from other elements and also this way the bones wouldn't cause conflicts since they'd automatically be associated with a specific model sort of like how materials can be assigned to an object. As is stands now I'm naming everything this way: Character.part.left/right

As for materials it's not so much about the name (although I name those too), I try to put them in the "file" tab that way they're available for all of the objects instead of having to remake them over and over.

Do people generally build all their assets for an Anim8or animation in one file or do you build them seperately and import them into a final project file? I have one main character and a weapon, I plan to build a second and a generic badguy as well as the sets and what ever other props I might need but I keep getting the nagging feelings that I should split them up into multiple files and import them into one file later.

Anyone have thoughts on this?

Yeah unfortunately while it fixes the example to some degree, the over all situation still causes the lock up with other poses. Using Ensoniq5's solution helps a little, still not a perfect fix but I'm getting the animation I was aiming for, I suppose only time will tell if there are any further limitations I'll encounter.

Okay thanks that helps me understand why it happens. But it still leaves me with the problem because as far as I know there's not way to adjust the hierarchy in an8, which means the character's motion will have to end up unnatural looking regardless of how I want the limb to move.

understandably designing this program is a hobby for him but at the same time a lot of people would look at how far the thing has come and feel like with a few tweaks it could fully rival some programs that cost hundreds of dollars. Over a year of silence on the development side of things is just kinda depressing when you see so much potential in something.

If he's simply moved on to other things, I wish him luck and health, but it'd be nice of him to say it so some of us can stop hoping for those little tweaks to eventually come.