Accelerating Animation-Sequence of Multiple Objects

[Frank1000]

Hi,
I have a quite static animation of multipleanimated objects, appearing each one after another in the scene. Now i wanted to add an acceleration in timing for the whole animation of the multiple objects.
In Animation/Sequence there is scaling, but not acceleration. Any tip on how to tackle this in a dynamic manner, so that I can play around with the acceleration of the scenes timing until i have found a good value ?

[missingkey]

There's a retime tool in the animation editor. It's destructive though. You can also retime/timewarp clips in the animation mixer per fcurves, in the clips time properties..

[Frank1000]

Thx for hints
Hadn’t used the retiming tool yet. It’s quite usefull, though i didn’t see it having a way to accelerate statically repeating keyframe, so that the distance between keyframes changes exponentially. Probably if the retiming scaling area was given another fcurve to handle acceleration, that’d be cool.

For the Animation Mixer, have tested it and watched some Animation Mixer YouTube / Vimeos and checked into the Animation Mixer in the manual.

Is the Animation Mixer use able to display / manage multiple objects ? It wasn’t yet clear to me how I would manage multiple objects in the Animation Mixer.

My goal is to have a Y-Pos animation per object, where the objects start moving one after another. Now I wanted to accelerate when each object starts picking up its turn to move.
So lets say first object starts anination on frame 1, 2nd object starts 10 frames later, 3rd object starts again 8 frames later, 4th starts again 5 frames later ... so there is an acceleration on when the objects start their animation. This is NOT about the acceleration of the y-pos move.

Also, how do I assign my clip, which contains Y-Position-and-Visibility-Off-On, to my different objects in the scene ? Apply Action is not it.

I checked “Restoring (Applying) the Animation in Action Sources to an Object”, in the manual, but it is not to apply a Mixer-Source-Animation to another polygon object.

Thinking of when i'm able to apply the Animation -Source that contains the Y-Pos and the Hide animation, then I probably need to do the timing of the different objects in the Dope-Sheet. Is that correct ? And does the Dope-Sheet have a tool to re-time / warp the staring point of the animation for multiple objects? So to control the "Acceleration" of when each object starts its animation ?

[Frank1000]

The Dope Sheet works fine for manual re-arranging of the objects animations, but has no directly built in time-warp function or so. Guess that’s to be done with scripted Expressions.
Any tip available in that direction ?



Also, any hint on where the connection between the Animation Source and the Object is to be established / viewable / editable ?


Regards,
Frank

[Frank1000]

ok got the answer. Neds an object to be selected, then go to Animation Mixer, right click on a track, click Insert Source, and select the desired source. Was wondering if there also is a more direct way to drag and drop an Animation Source onto an object.

[Frank1000]

... well actually i was wrong. There seems to be not such a thing as an animation track or animation mixer per object.

I recognized that when i store the "Marked Parameter - Fcurves", then the stored clip already is bound to the object, and I can copy the object and it has its own "instances" of that clip that can be re-arranged in time in the dope-sheet-editor.

But it's unclear to me, how i would proceed to add a clip to any given object.

Don't know how to add an Animation Source to an object ... does someone know ?

[Frank1000]

hmp ... when i was able to copy an object (cube above) with its Animation Source and change each objects timing of that animation source before, ... i now can't replicate the same thing any more. Copying the object does not copy the tha connection to that Animation Source any more.

Anyone know how to add an Animation Source to an object ?

[Hirazi Blue]

Mere guesswork here, but as the Action Source and Clip "live" on the model level, not the object level, you could try to create a model for your cube before starting to copy it...

[Frank1000]

ok thx for hint. Tried it with a model in different variations (with Mixer, dragging Mixer etc.), but behaves the same so far. The mixer always belongs to the Scene Root, and is not revealing yet how it's clip is connected to the single object. I once had it actually multiple objects using the same clip (without multiple models), and changing timing per object's animation in the dope-sheet ... but can't find back to the accidental solving path.

[Hirazi Blue]

Exporting the action from the Scene Root Mixer, importing it again in your model's mixer,
deleting the action from the Scene Root mixer afterwards?

[Frank1000]

just exported the action as .xsi and dragged it onto the object as described in the manual. The drag & drop is accepted, but still no animation is arriving on the target object ... just nothing happens.





The whole Animation Mixer / Clips / Non-Linear Animation concept in SI still is a bit of a mystery to me. Didn't find a revealing YouTube / Vimeo or spot in the manual yet for it.

I read the whole Non-Linear Animation stuff in the manual, but it never tells about how to add it to an object, even not tin the specific chapter "Restoring (Applying) the Animation in Action Sources to an Object"

[NNois]

Hi,
Usually for this kind of animation I rely on ICE instances.
Since we can control de instance animation time, you can dynamically start stop all item gradually with one simple fcurve profile, to drive the accelleration etc... ;-)

I don't have the time right now to explain it but in brief:
- you need to create a point cloud and an ice tree in the modeling section
- add point with a build array from constant node to determine how much object you need
- set them a scale 1, set them to instance shape and use a group as source (your objects to be sequenced)
- then use this compound of mine attached here, who can control particles animation over time to drive the "Self.ShapeInstanceTime".
With this compound the order is determined by the "Motion Tools Axis". If set on "Order of creation" he use the particle IDs, if it's set on "Custom step" he use a custom value from 0 to 1

... If i have the time i'll post a demo scene today or tomorrow

nono

[Frank1000]

yea that sounds good, thx. I've setup the scene so far, but am a bit stuck at where you say

- set them a scale 1, set them to instance shape and use a group as source (your objects to be sequenced)

i tried to connect them but don't know which port to which port yet ...

[NNois]

Here an example how to control proceduraly animations ;-)

One thing, the animated cubes are under nulls ! this is because with ice you can control the SRT animation only under a children object (ICE need a start point)

Another thing is than with a fcurve node placed after the second rescale you can control per particle animation fcurve (but keep the rescale between 0 and 1 then do a third rescale after to control the instance duraction)

[Frank1000]

ok thx.
Seems that the nnMT_Modulate compound you've attached is something different than the depicted ice-tree. Do i need to rebuild the ice-tree and add the nnMT or how do i need to proceed ?

[NNois]

This ice tree is a fully working example, you can rebuild it.

You can decide further if you want more control on the animation or not (based on your feedback and what you want exactly). This can be done by customising this ice tree or by using a more advanced method with my previous compound for example)