Object Track, SUB Group Object Animation Separate axis and Camera Issues

[Matt Rhodes]

Hi Aaron.

If you put objects into a hierarchy, the children of the hierarchy aren’t affected by the Pose and Transition controls.
Their top-level parents are, however, as I’m sure you’ve seen.

It sounds like you may want to set up your hierarchy and use Tweaks to animate the Group parents.
This can be seen as keyframing the objects at specific points in time. If you ignore the Pose settings,
you may be able to get the effect you’re looking for.

Unfortunately, we don’t currently offer sub-Tracks for only certain objects.

Simple example:
I set up a simple person hierarchy and used Poses to make the person walk across the screen.
I used the Pose Controls to move the whole body, but I used Tweaks (hand-set Rotation values)
to animate the arms and legs. The hands and feet are children of hierarchies, and I wanted them
to not move, so I didn’t Tweak them.

Click to see the movie.

You can get the simple scene here:
https://zaxwerks.com/zxpr/person_walk.zip

This may not exactly fit your scenario. Feel free to email me directly if you’d like to describe
what you’re trying to do. Perhaps I can offer some suggestions.

[Matt Rhodes]

Hi Aaron.

You’re right about the camera controls in the ProAnimator app. We’ll be improving this in the future.
The camera type in the ProAnimator app is an Orbit style camera.
You can only zoom in as far as the camera’s focus point.

Here are a few camera usage tips:
– To focus on a particular object (or objects), select them and then press the f key.
This changes the focal point to that location.
– Pressing capital F will focus on everything in the scene.
– Each Camera Pose has its own set of camera parameters,
including focal point, tumble left, tumble right, distance, etc.,
so you can animate from Pose to Pose with different focal points.

Simple example (Click here for the project):
– We have an Object Track with the word “Zaxwerks” and a Camera Track.
– We unlink the text so that we can select individual characters.
– We select the Z object and then press f on the keyboard. This changes the camera focus to the Z.
– We create a second Camera Pose and then select the s Object – the last letter. (Make sure the second Camera Pose is selected).
– We press f on the keyboard and this focuses the camera on the letter s.
– When we play back the animation, the camera pans from Z to s.
– I added a third Camera Pose where I focused on everything in the scene and animated to that.
I did this by Selecting All (Cmd+A on the Mac or Ctrl+A on Windows) and then pressing capital F on the keyboard.

By using the f key or F key, you can change the focus of the camera at each Pose. You can achieve a lot of different camera moves this way.

Let me know what you’re trying to accomplish. We can provide suggestions.

Matt Rhodes
Zaxwerks, Inc.

[Brent Willett]

Hi Matt!

If you haven’t thought about it already, you should denote the F and f key shortcuts next to the menu commands in the “View” drop-down. I use those commands, but I didn’t realize they had keyboard shortcuts.

Good to know, though. Thanks for the tip!

Brent Willett

[Matt Rhodes]

Good idea, Brent. It will be in the next build.

Matt

[Brent Willett]

Yay! That’s why you guys are the best!

Brent

[Aaron Freeman]

Thanks for the little walker animation, it did help with what I was doing. I kinda see what you are trying to do with the tweaks. I have a question…

To learn, I tweaked the leg in object control and it auto key framed between poses, however…
I did try to tweak the left foot with your pose positions but instead
of auto-key framing from one pose to another, it snapped into position. So I guess you can only tweak one hierarchy, not the sub links and so on?

And I agree with other users you guys have done a great job building the software and the fact you listen and are on top of trouble shooting anything is awesome.