I am wanting to know if an action can be started several frames before 0 in the choreography. Here is my setup. I have a water model (view the attachment) where a bone is assigned to each "ripple" spline. I have an on/off pose where each bone has a translate constraint to the next bone on out to the outer ring (bone1 no constraint. Bone2 translate constrained to bone1. Bone3 translate constrained to Bone2... etc.). Each constraint has a enforcement of 90% so the wave becomes smaller toward the outer ring. Each constraint also has a lag of x amount to cause the outward rippling. As you can see from the attachment, having a lag creates a problem when viewing this starting from frame 0 in the chor. Is there a different constraint that would work better for this or can the action be started before time 0 in the chor?

Also, is Nancy's fountain suppose to have water? It looks beautiful as is. (The water has a ways to go with tweaking by the way).

I think your water effects are fabulous - they always catch my eye - I definitely think the fountain should have water.

Don't know about starting an action before frame 0 in chor - but have you tried setting the crop range of the action in the chor to start at something other than 0? Maybe that might work?

Clever use of spline rings to produce wave action! Very elegant solution.

Thanks for replying. I was hoping it would be as easy as that or actually changing the chor range for that action but after I type in a negative number and press enter, it defaults to 0. I'm hoping to make this as easy as possible for the master architects of the movie so this little bit of refraction can be snapped in with ease.

Cool water effect!

You know of Emilio's Wave Machine or my wave texture, don't you? I think you might find them useful for your water experiments. Good luck!

Hello.

In the Timeline hit "M" to evoke the Move manipulator (the little hand) and then shove the 0 keyframe over to your right. You'll enter a negative realm, before the Choreography officially begins. Go as far back as your tardiest lag setting, and move the main control bone at that point.

This is a fairly recent feature, this ability to animate prior to frame 0.
I'm assuming you're working with v13.

Sincerely,

Carl Raillard

Mark,
Very nice water effect. Thanks for cluing us in on the technique.

I am not very experienced so I may be totally wrong but if you can you not set the chor range of the action to start so many postive keyframes into the action so the action starts where you want and ends were you want then repeats? So you want a contuning action in the action make two loops of what you want then in chor start action 1/2 into action then to end then you get a action that does not start from beginning of motion but were you want? we are starting all animation and renderer at 4.04 (100 frames) to have dynamics settle down you should be able to do this simarliar thing

or

in an action maybe you can copy or delete hte the beginning of the action so it starts were you want. Like I said inexperienced but just a secggestion

Markeh, I think Aaver's wave texture (or something like it) is a good alternative if your rig won't work out. A:M has pixel-level displacement so the level of detail isn't a problem and you can start a texture at any frame you want. What's your opinion between the two?

For your rig, don't forget what Mark Allen mentioned. All action in the movie is going to start at frame 100 for exactly this reason. You've got 99 frames of pre-roll to work with. Will that solve your issue with the lag constraints?

Thanks for the update. Now we know that the water in Oz is going to look great!

Rhett

For this movie project I wanted to stay away from lots of keyframes like the wave machine would add although I know newton dynamics, where applied, will add plenty. I just don't want to add to the number of key frames in a chor that others would have to step around. Also, as I understand, the drip plugin creates a number of sequenced maps that I would like to stay away from as well (But the secret is Aaver should have been forced to do all the effects, especially water, as his work in that area is phenominal. Do I sound like a broken record yet?). I want to keep everything as compact as possible. Pixel displacement works well with a sequence of maps. But if I wanted to keep it compacted, and use a procedural materal for pixel displacement, rendering becomes very intense.

However, knowing that that the official start of a scene is on frame 100 works out well.

Markeh- I believe thee are two (two) ways to do what you ask:

1- Is to move the timeline and shift the action below zero as Carl Raillard explained above.

2- Use the 'Ease' feature in the actions property window. Set ketframes for the percentage of the action you want to start and finish on, and drag and adjust those keyframes to suit.

Nice water effect!

Here is an update. I still have a tweak left with the waves on the bottom basin (in addition to the water actually coming out of the fishes mouth).

Wow that really doese look like water ,very impresive

Oh yeah! Now THAT is looking like some serious water.
B E A U T I F U L !

FABULOUS!

It looks quite impressive! One small thing, regarding the speed ... it looks like the water moves at a constant speed, instead of accelerating as it falls. It's especially noticeable with the water coming from the fish mouth; is this what you were referring to?

Very nice effect, Mark. Great Stuff!

That is true. I don't know how to fix this. It's an animated procedural. If it looks bad I'll experiment (except I don't have any ideas at the moment). Otherwise (years later) I think I'm ready to read PF_Mark's beginners help thread to properly submit this little guy.

Hi,

In version 14, I added the ability to set the chor range of an action to begin at negative numbers. So you can drag it back into the negatives, or type in a negative start time. The dynamic constraints will start simulating at the earlier time. It is really a new feature, and has some small potential to cause new problems, so you will need to wait for v14 to use it. At least it's on its way (in the pipe).

Thanks for the request,
Bob

How did you do the water falling off the top of the fountain, not the fish? is that particals, blobies or what?

Chad

johnl3d has a recent project using the same general concept.
http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=23650

As far as the surface properties of the water model, it is set to 100% transparent and relies purely on the beauty of the model refracted behind it. At some point you'll be able to download it and check out the specifics (once I'm able to upload it eh?). There are some sprites being used for bubbles. Blobbies are being used for splash droplets with blobbieness set to 0 so that render time won't be vicious as can be seen in the clip (rendered in shaded view). I could have used sprites for the splashing at the bottom but I felt bad for the lonliness of the blobbie. Otherwise, everything else is an animated material.

please keep in mind that my thread is not me telling others how to get everything setup it's just a place I keeped posting my HELP me stuff which may be of some help with the answears that I got. It's not very organized and kinda long but feel free to see if it helps. If you need help I found skype to be very usefull and there is members skype names in there and mine is PF_Mark same as forum name if you see me online and need help just call.

It's my impression that you could benefit from stretching the texture where you want it to be speeding up. I have no idea how, but that might be an easy direction to go in.

New Animation:Master User (since July) and still trying to get used to it. (Previous experience with Maya).

Can one explain how to create these water effects? I'm working on a short film which requires a large ship on a large body of water (done in A:M since there are no large bodies of water and ships near me, compositing into AVID later on)

I have a large grid with the water material applied to it (standard in v13), but i need the water to ripple around the base of the boat, and waves to splash onto the deck. I just now started rendering on my other machine, so once it's complete i'll put the vid. and some pics up here for reference.

Any help would be great!
e-mail: s_c_films@yahoo.com

-Chris
Thanks again!

It looks fantastic to me!

Incredible work Markeh!!!

George