Problem/question About Simple Polygonal Vertex Animation

[salvatoretheintern]

THE SET UP:

The only thing I was trying to achieve in Maya (I have Maya 6.0) was to make an Animated Bar Graph...i.e. I wanted to have a Bar Graph (a simple Cube Polygon) grow in size vertically. Now I know there are many ways to do this...but the problem/question I have concerns THIS WAY.

Now I KNOW that I have animated successfully things this simple before...so I'm guessing that some SETTING is messed up somewhere.

THE PROBLEM:

The way I chose to Animate the Bar Graph was to:
- go to Frame 1 on the Timeline
- select the Top 4 Vertex Points on the Polygon
- then go over to the Channel Window (whatever you call it) and selected 'KEY ALL'...that was successful
- then I go down the Timeline to, oh, say, Frame 30
- select same Top 4 Vertex Points on Polgon
- drag the Vertex Points up vertically, thus, "growing" the Bar Graph
- go to Channel Window and selected "KEY ALL"

However....the Second "KEY ALL" that I do seems to Mess-Up/Do-Something-Weird b/c when I go to Play the Animation the Second KEY that I selected is not in THE POSITION that I selected....rather, it is about DOUBLE THE POSITION that I selected....A simpler way to describe this would be to say that: If I wanted the Bar Graph to grow 1 INCH in 30 FRames, then I KEY the Vertexes as such, but when I Play it back, Maya has grown the Bar Graph 2 INCHES....

As well, it's not that Maya extends the Vertexes EXACTLY DOUBLE the Size/Point that I Select...rather it's almost like 2.2 Times or 2.3 Times...which makes even less sense.

Like I said at the top, I have done the Vertex-Keying Operation Numerous Times before and have done it Successfully. I had actually done it Successfully with one Polygon, and then on the next Polygon Maya started to do it's strange DOUBLING THE SIZE/VERTEX-POINT thing. And the ONLY ACTION that I did in between it Working and Not Working was to DUPLICATE the original Polygon that worked successfully...i.e. I wasn't messing with stuff. Now any time I open Maya and create a Polygon, they all fall under the Spell of this weird DOUBLING THE SIZE/VERTEX-POINT action.

THE QUESTION:

? Anybody have any idea what causes this...what could possibly be causing Maya to MORE THAN DOUBLE the Size/Vertex-Point that I am selecting/Keying?

[gmask]

It's a bad idea to try to animate vertices directly.. usually you'd want to assign a cluster to them and animate the cluster. However if I was going to make a bar graph with cubes.. I'd just put the pivot at the bottom edge and then scale it on the Y axis.

[fortner_mike]

Problems with transformations huh...?

Well first of all don't use key all, because when you will be working on heavier scenes you will get TONS of unneeded information and the result will be an awful LAG(because it keys EVERYTHING although most of the objects are not even moving, they still are keyed). Use "set key"(s).

Next, why do you do it all so complicated? Simply set the cubes pivot to be just where its bottom is, and then key the Y scale. Simple.

One of posible reasons might be that you accidentally duplicated an instance, check that.

[joojaa]

When you duplicate, you end potentially up with history, now if your move something with history like this it will gain the height form movement you made + the change of its history which also moved upwards.

Anyway do use clusters, its much easier on you

PS saying the solution must be this and this is not sane since the solution is not working so obviously its not the way to go.

[salvatoretheintern]

Thanks guys/girls. Honestly, I don't know what Clusters are or how to use them...I'll look into it when I have time. But really appreciate the guidance.

[joojaa]

Cluster is just a way to bind a set number of vertices's to a trasform. it gives you also a nice handle to play with. NOt only is it faster but its also easier on you.

Read the manual its actually going to make your life a lot easier.