Animation Sequences Workflow / Actor Animation node

[Alexx31]

Hello,

could someone please roughly tell, how I can define the range for an animation sequence?

A general Max question:
Do I have to define each sequence first with the "Motion Mixer"?
Adding the object with its rig is not showing anything.

I have a rig, that plays through different animation within 320 frames.
Currently, Tyflow plays only a few frames (loops around 30 frames).


Actor Animation:
I can see the animation "Base".   (I think I haven't written this, it's some time ago I started to build the file)
But I don't know where to see the "Base" animation, in case this is not just the full default animation range.

Starting Offset:
I remember there was a place to set start and end frame (but maybe I'm confusing this with Maya.
I can see in Actor Animation the starting offset,
which could mean
a) that this takes a different start frame (e.g. pose of 5 frames later) for the animation

b) that the start pose is the same, only the timing is shifted

The documentation does not clearly say, what becomes offset, only that it is offset.

I also don't understand what exactly "Variation" means in the Actor Animation Operator.
What means the "per particle amount" (description in the documentation)?

Thanks

   

[tyFlow]

Currently, all input sequence must be animated onto your single rig. If using biped you can do this by mixing .bip clips or just animating all the different clips manually across the same time frame. So for a character walking, running, then jumping, you might animate the walk loop from frame 0-20, then the run loop from frame 30-45, and then the jump from frame 50-100.

Then in your tyActor helper in the animation rollout you define the clips and their frame ranges.

Then in the Actor Animation operator you control when those clips play.

The offset variation defines when the start frame of a clip will be. So for example, if the run loop is frame 30-45 and your offset variation is set to 5, the clip (for a particular actor) may start at frame 33 instead of 30. However, when it loops it'll loop back to frame 30 and continue on from there. Offset only applies to the first frame that plays first for a clip.

Ironically, just yesterday I discovered that the offset variation parameter is not working correctly. The fix will appear in v0.16132 which will be out shortly.

[Alexx31]

Thanks, I have a loop animation for birds. So it’s not biped in this case.
I understand the workflow to load animation sequences (have also seen the RFX tutorials, which use mixamo and MotionMixer).
But I don’t know, how the animation of a bird can be prepared as single sequences, which then could be loaded into Tyflow.
Motion Mixer doesn‘t create anything, I did lots of tests which all did not succeed – probably a beginner question…!