Were are working on a crash scene that I have done the vehicle motions and need to give them to another animator to use. My scene is live action and his is purely CG.
He wants his motions to be as close to mine as possible.

So... I exported my choreography action, then sent it to the other animator who imported the action into his chor.

As long as there has been nothing done to the vehicle in the CG environment, the action works OK except the initial position is wrong, causing the vehicle to go in the wrong direction.
If we adjust the position of the vehicle at all, the imported action stops working in x,y and z (well the vehicle stops moving).
Is there a way to combine them to be able to place the vehicle where we need it, then play out the imported action?
Thanks,
David

I can' t know what you did without seeing your chor but...

-when you adjusted the position of your model you created keys in the chor action which are overriding your imported action. Set the Chor action blend method to ADD.

-however, if you need to change the overall orientation/postion of the imported action, you need to modify the object's model bone, not its "rigging" bones. Actions take their basis from the initial position of the model bone. That's why you can't animate the model bone in an Action. (i'm not sure what happens to the model bone when you export an action from a chor )

Robert,
The model already had been manipulated in the chor it was exported from, by using the model bone.

When we were trying to position the vehicle in the new chor, we were using the model bone.
1. Imported the vehicle into the chor
2. Positioned it where it should be by using the model bone (skeletal and chor mode tried)
3. Dropped the imported action on the vehicle.
4. The vehicle just flounders when you scroll through the chor.
5. If you delete the chor action created by positioning the vehicle, the action works, but the vehicle is not in the right position now.

Ughhh.

Any other ideas?

David

ddustinreply



Since you dont' say you've I can't know that you

have. It's possible you need to re-order the actions in the PWS also.

I'm even more certain now this is a matter of the blend methods and the precedence of one action over

another.

heres a sample prj that incorporates everything I can discern from your description.

-an action makes the box drive forward then turn to it's left

chor: "Model Bone not moved"



- but I want it to drive away from the cam (this is like the orientation change you want t achieve)

-so I turn the model bone 180 degrees

chor: "Model bone moved"



next I mess with a bone in the model. THis creates rotate and translate keys in the chor action (not the

one I dropped onthe box) and they override the dropped action. the box no longer moves.

chor: "Interior Bone moved"


change the blend method of "choreography action 1" to "ADD" and the box will move again,

Robert,
Thanks for the examples. (did you create the action or export it from the chor?)

I understand how they work, or did not work.

I have not done a good job of explaining the problem.

We have chor-A where we have moved a truck around and everything looks good.
Chor-A is a live action scene, so there are no objects other than shadow catchers, and the vehicles.
Given the motion is already complete, we thought we would export the chor action generated from our efforts. All of our moves made in this chor were done in choreography mode, and moving and rotating the main model bone (not in skeletal mode), and using pose sliders for body roll etc.
Action was exported.


We have chor-B which is is a modeled environment and we would like to reuse the motion from chor-A so we import the action we exported from Chor-A. We would like the imported action to move relative to the starting point (around a corner, down a hill). It does not. Even using add or what ever, the action will not start in the physical location we want it too, it is always offset.

Hope this explains it better.
Thanks for your help.
David

new sample project

chor 1: original motion animated in chor

that was exported as an action to "exported Chor"

chor 2: action imported and dropped on object. that works as expected

chor 3: action imported, dropped on object and starting point shifted. that works as expected when I set the automatically created "choreography action 1" to "Add" blend mode

chor 4: action imported, dropped on object, starting point shifted and rotated. the object rotated but the orientation of the motion did not change.

chor 5: Simple solution... lights camera and ground childed to Null and rotated instead.