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Animation and Pose Help

Mia_Mia_ Posts: 42 Member
edited March 5 in Nominated Threads
Hi,

Thought it might be useful to start a thread where people can ask questions about Animating and Posing in particular. I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm more than happy to offer up any advice, tips and tricks I've learnt so far. If you have a question (or an answer) feel free to post them below.

I've made two really basic video tutorials on a few aspects of blender, posing and animating so I'll link them in to get the ball rolling.

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Setting up the workspace


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The hidden power of Blender
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Post edited by EA_Cade on

Comments

  • PsychoSimXXPsychoSimXX Posts: 4,403 Member
    Oh I love this idea!!! I actually came here to ask a question. Do you know of any tutorials out there that will teach me how to incorporate a sim holding an object that can be added to the poss though buy mode and not CAS?


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  • Mia_Mia_ Posts: 42 Member

    @GoddessSims After having a quick trawl through the web I found two videos that cover aspects of this:

    How to Use Poses with Props
    by ElectricBF Sims Go to about 1:40 for the main section on moving items into place in game.

    Sims 4 Tutorial Pose making (accessories etc)
    by Shibui Sims. This goes into far more of the construction side of things within Blender.


    As ElectricBF says in her tutorial, holding down Alt whilst moving objects is also really good in game for tweaking object positions beyond the usual "hit boxes", and can allow you to really customise your creations to a much greater extent.

    As far as I know there is no way as of yet to completely seamlessly intergrate objects into poses or animations using pose player. Someone would have to try and write an ingame mod that opperates in a simillar way to the interaction tunings you have for pre-existing reading and cooking animations, where "props" are called to be a part of the actions.

    Hope this helps
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  • PsychoSimXXPsychoSimXX Posts: 4,403 Member
    @Mia_ Thank you so much!!! I'll look at them better when I get home this evening.


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  • jennabennawennajennabennawenna Posts: 23 Member
    I downloaded a dancing animation for adults and children, and I wanted my teen sim and child sim to dance in sync but one always starts a little earlier than the other. I tried contacting the person who made it but they haven't answered yet
  • Mia_Mia_ Posts: 42 Member
    I downloaded a dancing animation for adults and children, and I wanted my teen sim and child sim to dance in sync but one always starts a little earlier than the other. I tried contacting the person who made it but they haven't answered yet

    Are they run through pose player?

    If so get both parties to use a static pose first, then pause the game, que up the dancing animation, then whilst still paused cancel the static pose from the action que. Once you unpause the game the two animations should start at the same time.

    Out of interest which dancing animation is it? Could you put up a link to the creator? I'm always intrigued to see dancing animations, havn't tried to tackle them myself yet and I love seeing how others go about setting up rhythms and stages.
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  • coregurlzcoregurlz Posts: 5 New Member
    Hello Mia.. so I want to ask you a question about the animation I just created. The problem is... when I tried to test my animation on the sims (two sims), they didn't spawn at the position I wanted. In the blender, I positioned the male character laying on the bed at time 2 and positioned the female character standing beside the bed. When I tested it out in the game by using the sims teleporter statue, they just started doing the action at the same position as the located statues. The male sim just did the action while standing and not laying. How can I fix that? Maybe I miss something. Btw, this is my first animation and there is not much information on the problem I faced and I am too tired to explore myself right now. Thank you. :)
  • Mia_Mia_ Posts: 42 Member
    Hi @coregurlz

    Sounds like b_ROOT_ bone has been moved accidently during your time in blender. Either that or the rig was first moved as an object in 'object mode' rather than 'pose mode'.

    Best way to check for the second issue is to select any bone from either of your rigs in blender then switch to 'object mode' down on the lower toolbar of the 3D view window, then hit the keys alt R and alt G. If either hotkey moved the rig in any way then leave it where it has been moved to, and reposition it back to the location you want in 'pose mode' using the b_ROOT_bind_ bone.

    The first problem is a little bit more complicated and requires you to go to the outliner and reveal hidden bones. Try the 'object mode' fix first, if that doesn't work drop me another message and we can go through the other fix.
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  • coregurlzcoregurlz Posts: 5 New Member
    @Mia_ Oh wait, I think you are right about the 'object mode'. I did remember that I positioned the characters while they are in 'object mode' and not in 'pose mode' because I didn't know it at first but when you mentioned about that, I completely understood my mistake. I will try to follow your suggestion and I will inform you any news. Thank you so much for the quick reply! :blush:
  • coregurlzcoregurlz Posts: 5 New Member
    @Mia_ Sorry for the late response. It really work! But I want to ask another question. I used propagate to make the same position for all the keyframes but I don't know if it's suitable or not. Is there any proper trick to achieve the same purpose? It took pretty long time to positioned all the character's node properly. If you are facing the same problem, what will you do?
  • Mia_Mia_ Posts: 42 Member
    @coregurlz Does your animation feature IK? If so have you already 'mapped' out your empty target points?
    If the answer to both is yes I would avoid using propogate.

    As a general rule I prefer to manually manipulate the keyframes within the Dope Sheet, it allows me greater control of the timings and movements. Personally I us Shift D whilst having the key frames of the bones I want to remain static in the animation selected in the dope sheet, then I move duplicates along the timeline.

    I hope that makes sense.
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  • coregurlzcoregurlz Posts: 5 New Member
    @Mia_ Nope, I never used it before. Is it better to use IK?

    I see. I had been using the dope sheet a lot too. Alright, I got it. Thanks. :D
  • Mia_Mia_ Posts: 42 Member
    @coregurlz IK is good for giving an action weight. Like a character stepping forward. or jumping.
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  • coregurlzcoregurlz Posts: 5 New Member
    @Mia_ Thank you so much! I don't know what to do without your help! I learnt from my mistake. I'm so grateful that I found this discussion thread and found someone that is willing to share her knowledge and help others with their problem. :3
  • Mia_Mia_ Posts: 42 Member
    @coregurlz No Problem :) Let Me know if you need any more help
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  • frannieweefranniewee Posts: 4 New Member
    Hi Mia_,
    I just watched your first video (actually I watched it 3 times..). You have some useful tips there (giving each rig a name and different colors for the dopesheets. But I'm lost in how to do it. The thing is that I cannot clearly see what you are doing and were in the screen I should be. Perhaps you could add some colored arrows or something like that to pinpoint were to look? Just a thought. In the meantime I will give it a try. Trial and error seems to be my way of learning.
  • Mia_Mia_ Posts: 42 Member
    @franniewee Hehe yeah... that was my first video... kinda bad all round really.

    To assign Rigs colours go to the Armature section in the Properties window (Bottom Right hand side of the screen in most default blender set ups), double tap A with your mouse hovering over the 3D view to select all the bones in the said rig, the go down to bone groups in the armature settings and click the little +. This will create a new bone group for your rig. Now select one of the options from the Color drop down menu just below the little darker grey window that should now have a new Group. Once you've found a colour scheme that you like, or made up your own one, click the assign button. The colour change does not imeadiately show up in the dope sheet or on the rig, but once you select a bone or add a new key frame, or simply hit A again (whilst your mouse is over the 3D view) the change should appear.

    To change the rigs name go to the navigator window (above the properties window, top right) and Double click your rig. This should allow you to type in a new name. Make sure you click the pre-exsisting name when you double click, and make sure you hit enter once you've typed in the new name.

    Hope that helps
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  • frannieweefranniewee Posts: 4 New Member
    @Mia_ , Yes it helped. When you know were to look it's quite obvious. Thank you!
  • Dcmbr6Dcmbr6 Posts: 1 New Member
    I created a pose but when i test it out in game my sims just stands there like a default rig. Idk where i went wrong :(
  • Mia_Mia_ Posts: 42 Member
    @Dcmbr6 Ooops... Sorry for not replying to this sooner, haven't been on site for quite a while, kinda on a whim that I checked in today tbh.

    Sounds like an issue with the blender/Sims 4 Studio end of things. So let's go through a quick checklist of possible issues before we get onto the more technical problems.
    • Have you Keyframed the pose in Blender? In Pose Mode press A until all your sims bones are selected, then press I to keyframe them, select LocRot from the dropdown menu that then appears.
    • In Sims 4 Studio under the Warehouse tab of the Clip Pack section, check that you have a Clip and Clip Header file for each pose you're importing. You should find these at the bottom of the scroll list underneath all the String Table files.
    • Each Clip file should have its own unique Instance label, with a corresponding Clip Header file with the same label.
    • Within the Data tab to the right of the Warehouse screen you should have a list of fields such as ActorName, Clip, Channels, F1Palette, excetera... Find the SourceAssetName section and check that the blend file name is there for your pose. If it isn't reimport your blender file under the Studio Tab then Clips.
    • Next check that your TickCount is higher than 0.
    • Finally and I sounds a bit patronising, but make sure you've saved the package file before you quit Sims 4 Studio.

    If you still have problems after this drop me another message on this forum, or come and message me over on Tumblr, and we'll try and get things working for you.

    Again sorry for the late reply.
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  • SimtellectSimtellect Posts: 1 New Member
    My Sim appears black in Blender with no texture when I try to make an animation, can you help?
  • ZikitheturtlZikitheturtl Posts: 35 Member
    omg ty sm for this. it's perfect for storytelling!
  • Writer_InkWriter_Ink Posts: 19 Member
    Wow! Modding seems like a lot of work. I'm willing to start learning for Machinimas. This will be a tense adventure for me.
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