Help Organizing animations

Discussions about animating in SOFTIMAGE©
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nuverian
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Help Organizing animations

Post by nuverian » 07 Nov 2013, 16:13

Hi there. I am making a heavy bunch of animations for a game. You know small ones. Currently I have the control rig and game rig along iwht all animations layed out in the timeline in a single scene file and I know that's ridiculus. The thing though is, that most of those animations are also depended on other reference objects which for example might be parented to the hand of the character or those reference objects might also be animated in sync of the character.

I really want to organize the animations, but I can hardly find a way due to those reference objects, else I could just made the animations Actions I guess(?)

Thanks a bunch
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Rork
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Re: Help Organizing animations

Post by Rork » 07 Nov 2013, 19:16

Are the reference objects part of the character, but not the rig?
If so, it's all still one Model and Actions will apply.
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nuverian
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Re: Help Organizing animations

Post by nuverian » 07 Nov 2013, 19:47

Unfortunately they are not part of the character or the game rig

--EDIT--
To clarify a bit, those reference objects are for example vehicles (bicycle, pongo, skateboard), playground stuff, or holdable objects like a guitar, a cake etc that are instanced in game to the appropriate transform and then character and object each play it's animation which is made in sync.
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myara
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Re: Help Organizing animations

Post by myara » 14 Nov 2013, 17:54

You can always use the SceneRoot as the model for your actions. Not the best solution in my opinion.

I usually plot the animations and store them as actions to use them with mixers if needed, while keeping the original scene with constraints.

For short animations, always use different scenes for each animation. It's easier to modify, store and organize.
You can copy the same scene, and move the timeline if you want to change your workflow from now.

Changing the model hierarchy, parenting different models, specially referenced ones, isn't a very good idea. You'll have serious problems with actions, mixers, layers, etc. Use constraints instead.

I don't usually use referenced models if it isn't necessary, and when use them try to keep only one model node per referenced model or the deltas can break.
M.Yara
Character Modeler | Softimage Generalist (sort of)

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