Making a loopOut happen at random times?

[Erin Shelby]

I wonder if I could add something else…which is that if I had more animations on that layer, lets say keyframes at 10, 13, and 16 (10 and 16 are identical to 1 and 6). If I could write an expression to play one of the loops at random at random times.

Again, I will clarify if needed. Thanks.

-E

[Dan Ebberts]

What happens between those random times?

Dan

[Erin Shelby]

> What happens between those random times?

Nothing. So the end effect is that what I’ve keyframed happens randomly, with periods of nothing (resting position [keyframes 1 + 6, in my example]) in between.

[Dan Ebberts]

I think I’d precompose your animation layer (move all attributes), enable time remapping, and apply a time remapping expression like this:

minDelay = 2;
maxDelay = 4;
seedRandom(index,true);
t = 0;
d = 0;
while (t < time){ d = random(minDelay, maxDelay); t += d; } if (time < d) 0 else time - t + d Dan

[Erin Shelby]

I guess precomposing would make the most sense. I’ll try it out and post the results – thanks!

-E

[Erin Shelby]

Hey Dan, your expression worked well thanks for the help.

Slightly related, I was looking at your drummer/marker tutorial and it’s very cool. I was wondering if your arm animation in your demo had multiple different types of animation (ie: The right hand hits the drum between frames 1-10, and between frames 11-20 it flipped the drumstick in the air, and between 21-30 it did something else) – what do you think the best way would be to make a system that you could reference each animation “instance”. I was thinking maybe your marker system would work if adapted slightly (you can comment on markers, so perhaps different markers could have different comments. ie: “drumhit”, “drumstick_twirl”, etc. But I’m not sure if you can write expressions to check the comments of a marker…).

Essentially, I’m trying to figure out a system to character animate a bit easier then just swapping out heads, ligaments, etc.

[Dan Ebberts]

Unfortunately, at this time an expression can’t access a marker’s comment. However, it can get a marker’s time. So, with a little modification, I think you could set up your animations and apply markers where each animation starts. Then you could have a Slider where you use hold keyframes to set the marker number of the animation that you want to sync to the Slider keyframe. The expression would be somewhat more complicated (you’d have to make sure you didn’t run over into the next animation), but I don’t see any reason that it wouldn’t work.

Dan