Keyframed Anim To Driven Key Anim?

Maya
1

this keeps coming up in projects i work on and i havn't found a solution yet:

i have an existing keyframed character going thru a walk cycle, i want this walk cycle to loop as the character moves thru Z-space... speeding up and slowing down the cycle automatically as his velocity changes, and i do not want to use expressions... i want to use driven keys...

unfortunatley you cannot create driven keys when there are keyframes already present on the joints.

is there a script around that will convert keyframed animation to a driven key animation?

2

this is called nonLinearAnimation.. read help about TRAX.

3

well... theres realy realy no such thing as driven keys in maya. Its a optical and semantic illusion(meaning they are just called driven keys) . A driven key is just a anim curve (keyframed data), thats not connected to time. I actuality theres a different curve form for this that acceps nontimed attribs but maya does know how to use alxiliary nodes for conversions tough so its no prob.

But instead of connecting like this is suggets you make 1 new time node and connect thet to the anim curves instead.

What you do is

you make custom time, connect it to your keyframe nodes.

So select your keyframe nodes and run this.

CODE
{ //global pollution blocker
 $animCurves=ls -sl;
 $driver=createNode -n drivenTime time;
 for ($animCurve in$animCurves)
   connectAttr -f ($driver+".outTime") ($animCurve+".input");
}

then you can connect the times out to some attrib:

CODE
connectAttr -f someObj.someAttr drivenTime.outTime;

Maya will now act as if the attribs walue is the frame to evaluate on your anim, NOT the real time, now this attrib can be animated as usual. Even driven by other driven keys (the chain can be as long as you wish maya does not care, there can be expressions feeding to attribs feeding to keyframes feeding to aux nodes feeding to color nodes feeding to expressions feeeding to destinatisn ... well you get the point)

hope thi helps

PS. maya will insert 1 unit to time conversion node inbetween your attrib and time. you can adjust it to tell seconds or whatever...

4

Oh and dont double post, the thereads will be merged, or the other deleted if no one has had the time to answer thet therad.

Theres NO point in asking same thing many times, on different forums choose one that you think is most appropriate.

5

sorry bout the multiple posts... thats a totally new angle on the problem... I like it! did a quick test on what i have and it seems to work, i may have some questions for you later when i get into it more,,,

thank you Joojaa!

-jake