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How to Bake/loop dynamic swim
Hi, I have a noob question. I want to create a smooth loop of this whale swimming. I thought it’s best to bake the dynamic animation and then make adjustments to the keyframes so the beginning and end are the same, but I can’t figure it out.
How should I do that?
Here’s the scene:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9k66htb3229vuzx/orcaforc4d_tylercheyenne_standard.c4d?dl=0
It’s hard to isolate the problem because there are a lot of different problems, depending on what I’m trying. I’ve been able to bake the animation, but then I get confused about how to turn off the original dynamics. The baked animation looks pretty stiff, plus I think the dynamics are still active. So if they’re still active, it prevents me from making a smooth loop.
Any suggestions?
Thank you!
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5 Replies
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you have to pick a start point after the first cycle since the first starts differently (obviously) I chose frame 61 to frame 102 (41 frame cycle it seems), baked that frame range to PLA then added a Time track put it’s keyframes at frame 61 and 102 then set the Time track to Offset Repeat for Before and After with enough repetitions to get to the start and end.
which gives this
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thank you!!
for some reason, the offset repeat isn’t taking effect, so the animation stops outside that frame range.. do you see anything i’m missing?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0k8l2juo2sh69cv/orcaforc4d_testing-animation.c4d?dl=0
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I’m not going to have time to look at it for a bit but I’ll bet you need to drag the Time track into the Time Track slot of the PLA track in the Timeline. It’s done that way so you can have multiple Time tracks and animate between them or have one Time track affect one set of parameters and another affect something else in the object etc. Powerful but it means you have to drag the time track into the PLA Time Track slot… then it should affect the PLA.
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yes, that was it. Note that when you Bake (assuming from 61 to 102) make sure you have played through to frame 61 – I don’t know if it’s absolutely necessary but it ensures the first frame of the bake is correct.
And a note about animation of a character with a lot of mesh detail – it’s generally better to make a character with a minimal mesh and use SubD to smooth that. It makes it easier to weight bones if you have fewer vertices to control and in this case baking to PLA isn’t such a weight in file size. -
ahh, ok thank you so much! got it now.
good to know about the mesh. this is just a free whale i was trying to learn with, but i appreciate knowing more about it. thanks again!
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