Animation Clips And Traxx

[user_deleted]

5:58 am, Friday night / Saturday morning.
I am stuck...

I am trying to write a proc that deals with animation clips and I am running into serious voodoo.

when pasting clips into Traxx, using the "clip" command, and the "byNodeName" switch, I would expect that a character with a control called, "Head", for isntance, would get pasted to the new character's "Head" control.
Yet, not so.

And I would expect that behavior, Regardless of how many other controls the character has.
Isnt' that what "byNodeName" means???

Yet, it turns out that Maya simply seems to paste by attribute order, so that if the hand was turning but there is no hand control here, the head is now what turns. Everything gets shifted.

I've been at this for hours and I really can't understand it... any help is really appreciated.

ps. I opened up the clip as a maya file in itself, popped out the visor and selected the clip, opened the graph editor, just to see...
yet, there is no "Head.tx" or "head.rx" or whatever. The attributes look like :
clipEvalList[0].clipEval[1].ClipEval_Raw
clipEvalList[0].clipEval[2].ClipEval_Raw
clipEvalList[0].clipEval[3].ClipEval_Raw
clipEvalList[0].clipEval[4].ClipEval_Raw
clipEvalList[0].clipEval[5].ClipEval_Raw
etc
etc
Are the node names even stored in these clips?

[joojaa]

QUOTE(holographix @ 01/31/09, 04:05 PM) [snapback]300005[/snapback]
Are the node names even stored in these clips?

They are when you export it its just how they connect out of the clip node. So yes the clip itself does kindof know the deal as it knows what it refeers to.

I can assure it works its jut VERY convoluted, and easy to get lost permanently. Thing is most users can never wrap their head around trax without somebody setting it up for them.

[user_deleted]

QUOTE
VERY convoluted, and easy to get lost permanently

awesome!

QUOTE
somebody setting it up for them.

what do you mean by this?

I'm not going to be able to do without Traxx. So if there are any pitfalls or common mistakes, it would be sooo great if you can point some out...

[user_deleted]

some more specification:

say I have a motorcycle. character is called BIKE.
I import a clip called ROLL.

In that clip, there is animation for BIKE_Main_Ctrl (a control curve) which just translates in Z. The clip can be looped for the bike to just go and go.
There is also animation for each wheel (BIKE_Wheel_Front_Ctrl and BIKE_Wheel_Rear_Ctrl). These control curves are just circles, they rotate round and round for the wheels to turn.

Lets' say I have a proxy model of my bike, that does not have the wheel controls: just the main body.
If I import the ROLL clip to that character, what do I get?
The body spinning around like a wheel.
Obviously the wheel animation was pasted to the body.
Even with the -byNodeName switch.

I have seen it work during these past 12 hours, but only once, and I don't know why.

Now, with "SetCurrentCharacter", the Traxx Editor, that god damn "unused clips" folder in the visor, I feel like there are so many permutations. What is the proper way to do this?

[user_deleted]

Namely, here's what I'm finding:
pasting by Node Name on a non-identical character (non-identical to the character that the clip was created from that is), works if there is only ONE such character in the maya scene. All nodes are assigned their proper animation, as expected.

BUT if there is more than one such character, EVEN IF the nodes are named the same (and only grouped under a parent with a different name) then I get the behavior described above.

Ie. if outliner has:
PARENT
Bike_Ctrl
Body_Ctrl
Wheel_Rear_Ctrl
Wheel_Front_Ctrl
PARENT2
Bike_Ctrl
Body_Ctrl
Wheel_Rear_Ctrl
Wheel_Front_Ctrl

it doesn't work.
Note that "PARENT" is NOT part of the character node.

Shouldn't this work?

p.s.
the command I use is:
clip -paste -sc 0 -mm byNodeName BIKE2;

but I get:
// Warning: line 1: Unable to paste by node name: there was no animation on the nodes with same names. //
clip -paste -sc 0 -mm byAttrName BIKE2;

so maya re-pastes byattrName when byNodeName has failed.
But why does byNodeName fail?? There IS animation there.

[user_deleted]

turns out this has nothing to do with mel, I can have the same problems just using Maya's out-of-the-box gui functions.
So I made a post in Animation forum with a test file.
I've wasted Fri-Mon on this so I will be exceptionnally grateful to anyone who can help...