Record Time Scrubbing (DJ Style Animation Sequence)?

[Atom]

Hi All,

I have a geometry sequence of a dancing character. I can scrub forward and backwards through the sequence in near real time. I like that kind of look and I wondered if there is a way to record my scrubbing of time into an attribute that changes over time?

After recording the scrub I could then use the attribute to drive the frame number of the sequence to load.

Is this possible in Houdini? I know After Effects has a similar control for recording the mouse into keyframes.

[ikoon]

Hello Atom, I have tried the Mouse CHOP before and it is possible if I remember. There is also this Record CHOP:
http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/nodes/chop/record

Or maybe you could also "cheat" and Draw Curve SOP. It has stroke_time atttrib.

[Atom]

Thanks for the tips, I have come up with a CHOP solution that I think will work.

Locate a series of sequential frames in the timeline that you like, in my case it was frames 710-1410.

Create a CHOPs waveform in the form of a ramp with an amplitude equal to the number of frames, in my case 700.

Drop down a noise and a warp node in stretch mode. Ramp on left and noise on right.

This produces a pseudo random output in the range of 0-700.

Drop down a math node to map that range into the original preferred range, in my case 710-1410.

Now, anywhere along the time line I can get a ramp based random number between 710-1410. Because I am using this output as a frame number to drive my character when the noise goes negative time flows backwards for my animated character.

 

Edited January 21, 2017 by Atom