"keyframe button" Avimator

I'm using Avimator to make a moving pose. My question is i'm not sure what the Keyframe button is supposed to do. If i have an animation that has 900 Frames at 30 FPS do i need to hit the Keyframe button for each one ?

OKay new issue. I ignored the keyframe button and went just uploaded my BVH in SL , ( previewed only). I didn't pay my 10 L when i noticed that my animation was completely different then the one i made. In mine i have the hips drift to the left sligly while the legs feet stay on the ground, unmoving. This isn't the case with my preview though as it appears the whole body seems to "ice skate" or slide to the left. My avimator preview is perfect though, there is no Skating. What is going on ?

is this because i didn't hit the keyframe button ?

Although I am new to SL, I can take a good guess at your problem. I know that a lot of animation tools (and thus, possibly avimator too) behave as though the beginning pose is a keyframe, even though it isn't. Within SL however only explicitly set keyframes are considered. Thus, the fact that you have set keyframes on the hips but not on the legs is the problem. You should try setting keyframes on the legs and then seeing how it looks in SL.

Well the keyframe is supposed to be on frame one and the body movements should all be at zero before you make the keyframe. This is called zeroing by most 3d animators. This in SL will cause the body to use the default animation unless that body part is moved ie unless you move the legs slightly they are still going to move as if they were on the default SL stands. So while your avimator preview may look great its still not based off SL's method so it still needs to be done a certain way. This holds true for many many animation programs out there including poser, and daz studio (which by the way daz is free and great if you know how to use it you just need to make sure that you set it from 1 - whatever frames instead of 0 - whatever frame hehe). Just make sure if you want the legs to stay still that you move them a fraction of the way basically

My problem is I still don't understand the point of the keyframe button. I have no idea what it does. My best guess at pressing it and observing it is that the keyframe button is a reset button for all the joint rotations and positions. I have 4 positions in my 105 frame 30 FPS animation that allow me to press the KF button. if i press it at each position i basically end up erasing all joint positions and reset my body back to 0 0 0 for all limbs. That is if i just press the keyframe button without selecting a body part.

So i'm completely confused here. i have managed to have some success clicking on the hip and the leg With the keyframe button and they maintain their position for some reason, though in latter animations where the hip continues to move to the left and right, pressing the KF again on those frames reset the hips position , but not to zero. I don't understand the significance of that at all.



I'm not sure i understand what your saying here. Are you saying that frame 1 has to be 0 0 0 for all body parts ? If so then i'm in the clear. My frame one is 0 0 0 T pose. Only on Frame 2 do i begin any movement of limbs, including the hips. This doesn't, however, solve the problem of the ice skating i'm seeeing.

Okay i Tried something a little differnt. I went back into my animation and hit the key frame button on every one of the 105 frames. Every one of them. This corrected the problem of reset that i saw in Avimator. When i went into SL however the same problem persisted and my AV is still Ice skating back and forth in the preview, Keyframe button pressing or not.

As i stated the only frame that is supposed to be on a keyframe is the 1st frame. It is a default frame that doesnt even count in SL. Keyframe frame one then start your animation on frame 2 that should fix your problem. This is the same exact way it is done in poser just in a stripped down enviroment . Just the 1st frame try that and if that doesnt work im not sure what is wrong..... However i have made a few "practice anims" in poser this way so i'm sure it works. Also make sure all your joints movements are set to ZERO on frame ONE before you keyframe it and start the animation on frame two.

As i stated your moving the hips right? But your leaving the legs alone and not moving them at all? Also All Joints are to be keyframes from frame One not any other frames you dont create more keyframes. I wouldnt mess with it after frame one at all. However if the legs are left at 0 the entire time they will move as if they were the default aniamtion for the avatar ie. the stances you would use if you didnt have an ao on and will cause things obviously to look a bit off. You dont need to keyframe more then Once per animation Also just a tip make sure the last frame and the start frame (frame 2) are close so the stuff loops nicely

Here's what i found out when i uploaded the animation for 10 l and looked at it really close. It seems that the The hips move just like i made them, however the legs do not. This is producing the sliding effect. The Major problem is that hwen i made my animation i DID instruct the legs to move, creating the illusion the foot remained in the same place at all frames of the hip movement. So if you view the animation in avimator you'll notice that there is not any sliding. Somewhere at the animation upload stage in SL These leg frames seem to be erased completely. Yes it seems the rottaion i put on the leg is Erased at the upload stage causing it to be as if i put no work at all on the animation's legs.

This is a serious problem because if i tell SL to upload a file, and it only uploads 50 % of it, theres not much i can do. I can just sit back and watch as my animation is destroyed. So it would appear to me that if you want to move the hips at all, unless it's up, your going to have leg slide as SL will erase leg movement data.

As i explained to you last night in world hips are moving the entire body. Not just a part of it but if you are moving the hips back and forth you are "sliding" the entire body in that direction. Even with the leg movement data in there you would slide slightly because you moved the entire body in diff directions a few times. The fraction on the rotation of the leg may be to small but i am not 100% sure on that. Try moving the leg position a little to to remedy the problem. Also while it may not look like its moving inside Avimator if the hips were moved its telling it to move and your going to notice it a bit more in SL you tried to make it look like keeping balance but one leg isnt moving and im not 100% sure what the problem is there live help or a liason (linden) might be able to help you a bit more as that is kind of peculiur. They should be able to tell you the correct fraction needed per frame to make it look right.

I was aware of this 15 minutes into working with avimator after i downloaded it. Before i even talked to you infact. That was never the issue.

If you look at the animation file i gave you at the left leg you'll notice there is Zero movement. Nothing at all. Leg movment (not hip or anything else) is erased upon upload. That is why i'm sliding.


Okay i just talked to an animation maker and she sais i'ts a bug involving hip movement. Therefore, there's pretty much nothing i can do about it. Not to mention it's my understanding that LLabs has been ignorig this problem for a while. So not much i can do about it, other then stop making animations and hope they fix this problem.

Thanks anyway. if somebody notices the problem being fixed. please post here or somewhere visible.. Thanks

Try giving qavimator a shot to understand what the keyframe button is for. It has a rough timeline editor which will show you all set key frames and enable you to drag them somewhere else and even shift-copy them.

http://qavimator.org/

In a nutshell: If no body part is selected, the keyframe button creates a key frame for the whole set. If there is a bodypart selected, the button will only create a key frame for this body part. In both cases, looking at a frame will show the key frame button as "pushed", so you are best off using the timeline editor.

i understand the keyframe button now. it prevents later animations from moving earlier ones. by locking down the earlier animations joint positions.