Change starting keyframe after designing the resulting layout.
So I'm having a bit of trouble.
I created a scene with a lot of specifically-placed parts that I realized later I wanted to animate into position after a certain trigger occurs.
I could create a keyframe with the final state of everything, but that would require me to re-do a lot of the work and I'm afraid I'm going to lock all of those coordinates into the keyframe rather than the final default scene... I'd rather not accidentally delete my keyframe and lose the final layout. I want to start the scene with the keyframe showing things unassembled. And then trigger turns on and everything animates into the default. So... Backwards from what we learned in the tutorial.
What gadgets do I need to do that? A timeline with the "unassembled" keyframe set to trigger immediately at the beginning of the level? Am I overthinking this?
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Yes, timelines and keyframes, mostly.
I can sympathize with the problem of having all actions undone, but you can bypass that by using multiple keyframes in a timeline (or if you want, separately works fine as well). I made a quick example called "Rocky Keyframes", should be pretty clear. The keyframe below is for the quick camera for some minor eye candy.
This example basically demonstrates the easy way of using keyframes, without transitioning from one to another and all that jazz from the advanced tutorial. Since you only have two states, one keyframe is enough to describe those: the default one and the one where the KF is activated. Using curves (which only works in timelines I believe) allows you to transition smoothly (good for cameras and all kinds of stuff) or abruptly for sudden, jerky movement.
The limit being that you don't have neat visual feedback about where your animations start or stop (I'd like some kind of envelope for that), for more complex stuff you'd want to just put separate keyframes, capture the parameter's state you'd like to change and then arrange those keyframes in your timeline. Another limit of the single keyframe method is that by the looks of it, five seconds is the max for the blend time sliders. Might not be enough.
One thing I noticed, not sure whether by design or not, is that starting the keyframe right at zero will trigger it fully from the beginning, so look out for that as well. Take a look at my example, it should make things pretty clear. -
By the way, I think it's so unbelievably cool how Dreams allows you to just sketch a scene for others to learn from. Couldn't be more intuitive if you ask me - picking apart tiny problems is almost rewarding in its own right.
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Thank you, I will check it out tomorrow when I get home from work. My scene is pretty complex at the moment, and the intended animation *to* its current state is going to have a lot of parts, so it's definitely going to need a timeline.
But yeah, I just am a bit confused by which other gadgets I should be using initially? Can a timeline's bar just sit on (and display) a different keyframe and play to the end when a trigger is activated rather than playing automatically? I'm pretty sure I'm overthinking it...
Thank you again, I'll check out Rocky Keyframes tomorrow after I've slept on it. :) -
'@skillphiliac
Just to throw this out there, because I'm at work and I won't be able to look at things until I get home, so I just wanted to be sure what I'm saying was being understood, which might also clarify the issues I'm having by detailing why I'm confused.
Imagine that my scene includes a big tree with lots of leaves made of paints all over it. The tree itself is grouped to the paints for ease of use. Later I discovered that it would be cool to be able to activate a trigger that animates all of the leaves growing out of the tree with music and sound effects, camera moves, etc. So let's say on top of that, I want the leaf animation to be staggered as well. I want the top to fill in first, followed by the middle, and then the bottom. And then the animation is done.
For the player, he should enter the scene with a bare tree.
My assumption is that I need to work backwards now, since I have the final view already constructed. So I would create keyframes of "Tree complete", "Tree top and middle constructed", "Tree top constructed", and then one final one for "Bare tree."
Then I'd create a timeline in the reverse order. Lock "Bare tree" to the 0 of the Timeline, then blend animate to "Tree top constructed", then to "Tree top and middle constructed", and then "Tree complete." Music, sound effects, and cameras cued up within there.
So then this timeline is its own little sequence that needs to only play when I activate a trigger.
I have questions about staggering those little moments so that the animations happen on top of each other, BUT, where I'm getting stuck is how to get the static keyframe for "Bare Tree" to be the first thing that the player experiences when he enters the scene. Then he activates the trigger, and the animation starts.
So, then I'd be just having that timeline be active, but stopped on the main "Bare Tree" keyframe until it's triggered? Does that work?
How does that work with multiple similar objects? Like multiple trees that might be triggered by different things in the world? Do these timelines need to be inside of groups so the whole world isn't being affected/recorded?
See, I'm getting all tied up about this and I'm confused. :) -
'@skillphiliac — thank you again for creating Rocky Keyframes, though I actually needed the reverse. BUT, after exploring your logic something clicked, so it still really did help a lot!
I ended up creating a keyframe for each Unassembled and Assembled state, then made a copy of each Unassembled state piece and linked it to a counter setup so it was powered immediately when the level started. The trigger dropped the counter from One and turned off those wired keyframes, and then also started a timeline.
A quick note: I was extremely surprised that I was able to create keyframes for different items without trying as hard as I thought I would. Since I was working from an Assembled scene, the process was:
1. Place keyframe and start recording — Click Record again to record "no changes." Name this "[Thing1] On"
2. Place another keyframe to the left (to keep track of things as I work) — Make any changes needed on any level to the thing until it looks "Unassembled." Click Record again to record changes. Name "[Thing1] Off"
So moving on, the timeline consisted of the Assembled states (On) and a copy of each Unassembled state (Off), with the Unassembled state locked to the beginning frame. Because I wanted the animations to blend in a staggered timeline with keyframes after the timeline began so everything didn't happen all at once, I had to duplicate the Unassembled frame again where I wanted the transition to begin (after having some weird glitches I need to report about resizing keyframes which is very fickle at times). The final Assembled Keyframes had a "Keep State" added to them.
So basically it looked like this (= are blends):
[Thing 1] Off====[Thing 1] Off=============[Thing 1] On
[Thing 2] Off==========[Thing 2] Off==============[Thing 2] On
[Thing 3] Off=================[Thing 3] Off====================[Thing 3] Off
...............[Music, etc.]..........
It worked out great! Thank you again for your time in helping to teach! -
Ha, that last thing in my timelne should have been "[Thing 3] On" not Off. oops.
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Sounds like you got the hang of it, glad it worked out. I think it's possible to modularize "state" keyframes for setups like these so you can expose stuff like staggering, especially if you don't need to rely on timelines, although I wouldn't mind a dedicated manager for making it a tad simpler - I don't mind though, I've gotten used to clips and sequences and like how simple previewing is in Dreams. Just being able to see how things play out with L3 > R3 is a godsend. Not even going to touch on baking lights and all that jazz, things just look good without all that much effort.
Resizing keyframes... yeah, having issues myself. I always resize them before I stamp 'em, still difficult to grab and place. Other than that... looks like you got exactly what I meant to convey, great!
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