How can I get around this annoying Timeline issue?
Ok, I'll try to explain this clearly although I've only just started exploring Timelines and Keyframes so please bear with me.
I made a little helicopter and at the front, just under the nose, I did a cutout with a cyclinder for the landing gear. So I then scoped out to get at the new sculpt and captured it's position (still inside the chopper) in a keyframe. Next I got another keyframe and animated the cylinder coming out of the chassis (i.e to act as a landing gear).
So far great, no issues. I have a 5 second Timeline with one keyframe at each end. It plays a lovely animation of my landing gear extending out of the chassis and I'm happy. So I make another Timeline, the same length, and on this one I simply swap the position of the two keyframes, so it plays an animation of the landing gear retracting back into the chassis.
So I have a 'Gear Extending' Timeline and a 'Gear Retracting' Timeline. So far, all is good.
Now I want to do the same thing at the back of the helicopter and have two more of the cylinders, one each side of the chassis at the back acting as the rear landing gear. So I played my 'Gear Extending' Timeline, to get the front gear out, then I cloned it twice and moved the clones round to the back to put them where I want them.
Got the two rear pieces in position, all perfect. Now to my amazement, when I then hit Play on the 'Gear Retracting' Timeline, it animated all three landing gear sliding beautifully back up into the chassis. I couldn't believe my luck when I realised that cloning the original cylinder also cloned the attachment it had to the animation keyframes I had created, giving me the animation on the two rear gears for free! An awesome feature that will no doubt be very useful.
But here is the problem. After getting over the shock of not having to go through animating the rear landing gear manually, I hit Rewind Time to carry on with the project. And oh dear. When I hit rewind, I got back to 'normal time' (without the Timelines active) to find that the rear gear are sticking out the back of the chopper while the front gear is in it's 'retracted' state inside the chassis.
They are out of sync because I used the Timeline to get the front gear out before I cloned it, but that's not REALLY where it was in real space, it was just a Timeline. In real space it was still inside the chassis.
So hopefully you get the nature of the issue. Is there any way for me to re-sync the two rear pieces with the front piece without having to reposition everything by hand. Right now everything looks perfect and I want to keep it except the front gear is retracted and the two rear ones are extended.
If it makes any difference, the last keyframe of both Timelines does have 'Keep Changes' active. But it guess it only keeps the changes in Play mode, not Edit mode. Is there any way I can get it to keep changes in Edit mode or anything else I can do to sort this out?
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First thing, you don't need separate timelines for extending and retracting, you can do it all with one. You also only need one timeline for all three wheels.
Connect your landing gear button (or however you are triggering it) to "advance" a Selector.
Wire "A" to "+" on the Counter
Wire "B" to "-" on the Counter
Output the "Counter Full" signal to a Signal Manipulator
Set the Signal Manipulator to "Smoothing Only" and make the Rise and Fall values the length of your animation, or how long you want it to take for the landing gear to extend or retract. 1.5 seconds is a good starting point. you can always adjust later
Output the signal from the SM to the Playhead Position of the timeline. NOT the power. Open the timline and look for "<>" on the bottom left. Attach to that.
Your timeline should start with a "retracted" keyframe and end with an "extended" keyframe with smoothing in between. Your original timeline will probably work fine.
Now when you press the button, the timeline moves forward, extending the landing gear. Press it again, it moves backwards.
You can put the keyframes for the back wheels on the same timeline. Now you don't have to worry about timing at all.
I have an example of this technique, but I'm not sure I published it. I'll make sure to do so when I get home so you can remix it or just take a look. I'll put it here when I do. -
I forgot to add, you may have to re-record the back wheels if you were copy/pasting them. You can also do all three wheels with one keyframe, but I like to keep them separate for troubleshooting.
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Let me do my first paragraph over.
Connect your landing gear button (or however you are triggering it) to "advance" on a Selector.
Now place a counter. It's set to "1" by default, that's what you want.
Wire "A" from the selector to "+" on the Counter
Wire "B" from the selector to "-" on the Counter -
Great method, thanks for taking the time to explain. Now I've read that, it seems kind of obvious but it probably would've taken me a long old time to get it that clean.
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NP. I hope I didn't miss a step. Lol.
Like I said, I'll post my example when I get home in a few hours. -
I just sent you Bi-Directional Timeline by thebiv
Any questions, letbme know. -
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