Helpp ! Can't select Action Mode in Choreography !! Driving me nuts !!

Drop a model in, then select action mode to create pose etc. Then after 10 minutes or so the action button gets locked or something - greyed out - you can only select the choreography button - which is already selected.

Poses Still work , eg. eyelids etc - BUT you cannot enter action mode to pose model with bones ? Has anyone had this problem before ?

Very Very Strange.

You mean Skeletal Mode, right?

I've noticed a similar problem while modeling, where two buttons would be greyed out and at least one should stay on, but I haven't been able to repeat it.

Save and restart gets thing reset again.

If you can come up with steps to make it happen, that would be good to know.

Ahhh . . . problem solved ! It seems that AM doesn't like your character default pose to be an on/off switch - rather a slider. I don't know why I was deviating from what I know - I always do the "defcon" pose as a slider - dunno what happened this time - experimenting or trying to be too efficient !? Either way now I know better !

Thanks for the input Robcat ! I had to sleep on it , then the answer came to me in a dream :-)

A.

This is interesting. Can you make a simple lest case that shows this? I'm not sure what you mean by "character default pose"

Definition of " Defcon " or " character default pose " :

• Old Defcon : Once the model has been completed and and skeletal system in place, the old method I was taught was to create an action, then set your bone constraints, hip leg kinematics etc. Then you save this action as a pose, so that when you want to animate the character in a scene ( Choreography or even another action ) , you can turn on the " default constraints " hence " Defcon" and start to animate your character without setting constrains each and every instance of the character being used - but doing it this way doesn't seem to work properly any more ver 15 etc. , all kinematic constraints regardless if " compensation" mode was selected or not produce weird artefacts, like they get twisted or reflected the wrong way - this is not apparent when you are setting the constraints in the action window - but the artefacts appear when you actually use the pose in production as in a choreography or another action.

• New Defcon Method : Right Click and select " Create New Pose " - then set the skeletal constraints as usual and you have a pose slider which allows you to turn on a default pose with constraints in place in a choreography or action - ready to animate.

What was happening is that I was setting the pose as " On / Off " rather then as a slider with percentage of 0-100% - the " Defcon " has to be created as a slider, if you set it as a " ON / OFF " pose then it some how corrupts the ability to animate using skeletal mode after you create a couple of keyframes, however making the " Defcon " pose as a slider seems to not cause this problem.

Hmmm . . . I do need to make a video don't I, it's much better explained that way, just have to find the time, have a lot of stuff on at the moment and am practically getting less then 5 hrs per week to indulge in AM, over xmas holidays I was spending like over 18 hrs + a day cause I could in the holidays, but I'll see what I can come up with.

I'll post it up here when I get around to it

A.

My rigs are TSM2 rigs which have kinematic constraints and I'm not having trouble with them.

I didn't have a problem with the Squetch Rig either...do you have two keys set in your on/off Pose that are the same? Like having IK arms turned off at both the "off" and "on" setting in the Pose? If I did that, the baking (which allows for FK/IK seamless switching) would keep the arms in their original position in an Action/Choreography.

Hope that helps.

Hi Guys,

since it was raining down here, I had some time to chilax and make a video . . . hmmmm . . . it's not doing it any more . . .

Here's the video :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24DvDCc5lfc

You will see in the video, me setting constraints, then putting the model in a choreography, switching to skeletal mode, animating bones randomly, then creating new keyframes, then animating randomly again, then switching back to choreography mode, moving the model and then going back into skeletal and animating bones randomly again - this is the exact same thing I did, but once you get out of skeletal mode it would do the lock thing . . . I did fix another thing though - this model was done in AM 98 - then bought over to 2002, then 13 - then to 15 - so you see I have chipping away at it for a while - BUT - I did notice that when I converted the model over to Am Ver. 15 - the bones were all messed up - so I created a fresh skeleton rig from scratch and this may or may not have been the main culprit ?? Don't know - but that's what I did to fix what I said - create new skeleton, then re rig, save the pose as a slider - but in the video which I did today - I used the on/off as pose and it didn't do it arrrrrrggghhhhh !!!!

Maybe also AM was having a hard time to compute the actual choreography I was working on - pretty complex and I have noticed that when your throw really complex stuff at AM it begins to choke and do funny things to GUI etc. Oh well, I love Am for its faults and its powerful set of tools. After you have trouble and your find the solution it gives you a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction :-) Aahhhhh !

PS. I checked the double keyframe thing - there really is no double key frame as once you turn on the " Defcon " you really don't need to tun it off for the entire shot.

Thanks for the input.

Cheers

A.