Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[davdud101]

Wow. I guess (like I always do) once I acquired the information I needed from the manual/tutorials, I continued with a sort of "learn as I go" approach where I wouldn't / couldn't have picked that up. Pride truly comes before fall! I'm gonna consult the manual more often.

[EDIT]: in fact, this is the thing in Anim8or that for me will make it 40x as powerful and increase my animation speed by at least 10 times!! cooldude, this is what you're looking for!

[cooldude234]

Does this actually work for you?

Absolutely. Although sequence mode is easier for animating at the moment, because you have things like key all bones, and key selected bones. But animating in Scene mode is defineately a happening thing. If you've had trouble rotating bones in scene mode, try adjusting/changing the view.
 If you've allowed bone movement in the fig editor, you'll get it moving in scene.

WOW it actually sort of works. It just has a really crappy hit detection. I have to be on an 1 pixel wide line practically to drag the bone but heck it works!

all these years and I didn't think it was even implemented yet... :\

[davdud101]

Same here!! I had no knowledge of it and that was holding me back from actually being comfortable animating.

[cooldude234]

Same here!! I had no knowledge of it and that was holding me back from actually being comfortable animating.

I had knowledge of the button but I thought it was useless never could get any bones to move. I'm mean its not like I can get them to position easily right now, but hey it at least works.

EDIT: found out the problem, when you are locked on (or very very close to) facing a certain axis (x y or z) and you try to move the bone in a certain way it doesn't want to budge.
Not 100% sure the cause but I think it could be because of the angles related to the way the camera is facing and the direction of the bone and how the cursor is being calculated from 2D to 3D (2d movement in pixel sizes converted to 3D positions/angles are usually always relative to the cameras angle) if that makes any sense.

[johnar]

yes, theres always been particular angles of view where bones don't want to move, but 99% of the time there is no problem. Make use of thumb on alt button for quick arc-rotate view, and move view when bones seem stuck.
 2 views can be real handy for this. 1 view is camera view, so you can see what it looks like through camera. Then, you can use another view for animating bones, so you can rotate around that view as much as you like, while still having the camera view to check the final look of things.
 Glad you guys are now going to do a bit more animating.
 davdud You're no fool mate. Gauranteed i do a lot of things the wrong way, the long way, or not at all coz i never knew you could.  None of us know everything, and when you pick up something new, its just a good thing  ....... 

[davdud101]

Thanks so much for pointing it out, John! I've been in the dark about it for nearly a decade 
Well I feel like cooldude and I sort of hijacked the topic! Back to discussing Steve's new implementation...

[Steve]

cooldude234: Yes, you're right.  Anim8or uses the relative screen angle to position bones when you are rotating them. If you are rotating a bone on an axis parallel to the screen then it will rotate directly in to/out of the screen. It's not possible to tell what angle you want from the position of the mouse, so the bone isn't rotated.

I've experimented with other ways to do rotation that might work better.  I'll revisit this when I get to updating the Sequence and Scene editors.

[Steve]

I posted a new build 1171 that allows you to rotate/change-length-of existing bones in Add Bone mode if you hold the Shift key down. I also added a combination rotate/change-length mode to the toolbar (and plan to remove the old rotate and change-length modes is everyone thinks that's a good idea). Click-drag the tip to to change length and rotate, elsewhere on the bone to only rotate.

I also added Default Joint Settings so you can have any values that you want for the default when adding bones.

[Raxx]

Hey Steve, awesome changes. Here's my thoughts:

• Disabling "Default Bone Angles" keeps using user-specified default limits, rather than no limits which is what I expected.
• I think it's safe to remove the rotate and scale bone tools
• Rotating/scaling using the edit or new bone tools snaps the bone to the user's plane of view. I think it should keep it relative to the parent bone's orientation when creating a new bone, and keep it relative to its original orientation when editing the bone. It'll be pretty annoying otherwise when trying to tweak bones that have children (you have to go down the entire chain of bones changing it back to the way it was, since it becomes a domino effect), or when making minor adjustments by itself.
• Having the left/right/middle<->single/add/subtract selection mouse functionality doesn't really make sense with the add/edit bone tools. There's not a whole lot of need for them (use the select tool for multi-bone selection). Instead, something like this might work better (combined with the X/Y/Z axis buttons working on bones):
• Combine the edit bones tool with the add bones tool, and just call it the "Bone Tool" or something
• LMB: Edits bones like it currently does
• RMB: Moves bones
• CTRL: Child independent manipulation is triggered. It'll rotate or move bones without affecting the children. Until you get moving/offset implemented, this could be restricted to just rotating a bone along its roll/Y-axis without affecting the children
• Holding shift activates the add bone functionality, and creates it like the current add bone tool does
• Widgets sure would be nice right about now

[captaindrewi]

1171 maybe we just want to rotate without messsing up the scale or scale without messing up the rotate accidentally....just a thought not everyone is an expert.its not as if the menu is overcrowded.

[cooldude234]

cooldude234: Yes, you're right.  Anim8or uses the relative screen angle to position bones when you are rotating them. If you are rotating a bone on an axis parallel to the screen then it will rotate directly in to/out of the screen. It's not possible to tell what angle you want from the position of the mouse, so the bone isn't rotated.

I've experimented with other ways to do rotation that might work better.  I'll revisit this when I get to updating the Sequence and Scene editors.

From what I tried when the screen is parallel it doesn't move at all or on even on some slightly non parallel angles. I think it also might be because of the z rotation of the bone having an effect on this.

[nemyax]

Steve
The new tip manipulation tool (shift-drag in add bone mode and the new icon) would be complete if it only affected the bones that meet at the tip you're dragging. Currently it affects everything down the road from the tip.

[cooldude234]

Just checked out the new build (1171) and I think its amazing (this specific functions anyway).
I do have a suggestion though, have a function for positioning bones that do not affect its child bones positions. IE moving the parent bone would change the length and angle of the of it's connected bones (even it's own parent bone if it has one) but all the other bones down the chain wouldn't change at all.
(refer to picture below)

EDIT: nemyax beat me to it because Firefox is bugging out
EDIT the second: I don't for this to replace what the edit bone does already but rather having another function associated with it (or a whole new button altogether) possibly make use of the already existent move button which is currently useless for bones.

[nemyax]

Come to think of it, the new edit mode should probably let you select a single tip or multiple tips and let you transform them exactly like polygon points, as if they weren't part of any hierarchy.

[thecolclough]

1171 maybe we just want to rotate without messsing up the scale or scale without messing up the rotate accidentally....just a thought not everyone is an expert.its not as if the menu is overcrowded.

seconded; i'm sure i'd still find uses for the separate tools sometimes