barad_dur Posted June 1, 2011 Share Posted June 1, 2011 Hello all, I was wondering about the following: I have a set of takes of a mechanical object (a chop saw) doing different animations and I need to compile all the animations into one long animation. Is there anyway to extract the animation information from each seperate Take and "compile" them into one Take, or something akin to this? Thank you. David Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digitallysane Posted June 1, 2011 Share Posted June 1, 2011 When saying takes you are just refering to different animations in general or to the Takes feature of Houdini? Dragos Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barad_dur Posted June 1, 2011 Author Share Posted June 1, 2011 Sorry, I am talking specifically about Houdini's Takes feature. I have the exact same set of elements animated different ways in various Takes. I would like to grab all the Keys of all the elements and compile them into a master animation of all of the different animations one after the other. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digitallysane Posted June 1, 2011 Share Posted June 1, 2011 (edited) You need to create a channel group from your animated channels. Either manually or right click on the node>Create nested channel groups. Then go into each take, rt-click on the channel group in the channel lister, choose Motion Effects>Create clip... Check "Create new node" and "Lock". While still in the take, go to the Channel CHOP node just created and make sure it is actually locked, if not then lock it. In the end, in the main take, the CHOP net will be populated with locked clips, each containing the animation of one take. You can use the Sequence CHOP or any other CHOP stuff to do whatever you want with them. Dragos Edited June 1, 2011 by digitallysane Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barad_dur Posted June 2, 2011 Author Share Posted June 2, 2011 You need to create a channel group from your animated channels. Either manually or right click on the node>Create nested channel groups. Then go into each take, rt-click on the channel group in the channel lister, choose Motion Effects>Create clip... Check "Create new node" and "Lock". While still in the take, go to the Channel CHOP node just created and make sure it is actually locked, if not then lock it. In the end, in the main take, the CHOP net will be populated with locked clips, each containing the animation of one take. You can use the Sequence CHOP or any other CHOP stuff to do whatever you want with them. Dragos Dragos, Thank you for that information. I am certain that this is probably the way to get this done however, I am having difficulty and was hoping I could get clarification on this technique. I have several Geometry nodes at my Obj level and many are parented together in a daisy chain. When you say, "Either manually or right click on the node>Create nested channel groups" do you mean any of my Obj level nodes or each one in-turn? I had picked one node and created the nested channel groups, saw the parameters from that node drop into the Lister by node name. I figured I would have to do that for any node that had animation on it so I did the same thing for all my animated nodes and the Lister reflected the additions of parameters from each of the nodes I added so I thought I was on the right track. However, upon completing the rest of the instructions I cannot see that any animation data actually went into any of the clips I created from each Take. I was hoping to see the data in the Channel Editor for each clip node when I selected either the node or its Graph display flag. Do you have an idea where I might be going wrong on this? I would very much appreciate your help on this. Thank you. David Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barad_dur Posted June 2, 2011 Author Share Posted June 2, 2011 Oh! There's a thing called an Export flag on the channel node. Doh! Seems to be just peachy now. This is a great way to compile Takes. Thanks Dragos. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digitallysane Posted June 2, 2011 Share Posted June 2, 2011 Oh! There's a thing called an Export flag on the channel node. Doh! Seems to be just peachy now. This is a great way to compile Takes. Thanks Dragos. Great! You're welcome. I was preparing a more elaborate reply but I'm stuck with some shots for now and had no time Dragos Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barad_dur Posted June 2, 2011 Author Share Posted June 2, 2011 I'm glad that you took your time as it really forced me to figure it out on my own and that is worth a lot more than, "I'm stuck. Do it for me". I mean I still have some things to work out on it but I am over the hump so I think I'll be able to get it figured out. What I will say is that I think I have found a REALLY nice pipeline in the technique you taught me and I am very appreciative of that knowledge. Thanks a bunch. David Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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