TRAX with characters/subcharacter

[3derik]

Hi !

I just have a question about TRAX Editor working with Characters/SubCharacters,

I've a character defined by lots of subcharacter something like :

..everything
.....blocking
.........arms
..........leftarm
..........rightarm
.........legs
..........leftleg
..........rightleg
.........body
..........root
..........chest
.....Facials
..........eyes
..........lips
.....secondary
.........helmet
.........kirt

Then in TRAX I just select node "everything" and in export clips options checking on

"include Subcharacters" then save file ... when I want to import the clip into different
scene, I select the clip in visor, right-click, copy, select the node "everything" and
paste, Maya gives me this errors :

Paste Method : By Attribute Name
Warning: Unable to paste by attribute name: attributes with same names had no animation.

Paste Method : By Attribute order
Warning: Unable to paste by attribute order: channels had no animation.

Paste Method : By Node Name
Warning: Unable to paste by node name: there was no animation on the nodes with same names.

I discard by Character Maps paste method because, it was exactly the same character.

Then I tried another test just selecting the character nodes that had directly attributes attached
to them,and pasting the clip, and It was fine, it works!! What I don't understand is that Maya let me
create the clip on the top node but it doesn't let me paste the clip again just selecting it!
so, any workarrounds arround this ?

Another problem I found was that working with clips on top nodes is quite difficult,

for instance, I have a clip in all nodes under "blocking" and want to split them, I select node "blocking",
do the split and what happens is that it splits the clips of the nodes below or what it's the same, the
nodes that have direct attributtes attached directly to them (like "leftarm" "rightarm" "leftleg" ...
hopefully I'll express me fine!) but I can't see that split when I working over the node "blocking"
which is a lot more easy than working with all his childrens at the same time.

Am I loosing something or am I trying to use TRAX in a way it wasn't thought for? or, it

has lots of incompleted features and/or bugs ? Someone have a better ideas about structure of character
nodes ? I'll find very easy to key attributes when you're animating but difficult when you want use
TRAX, Which kind of structure do yours use ? ...

Thanks in Advance !

Erik'01

[dddfff]

Well. I have a similar problem. And the fact that it is now THIRTEEN YEARS LATER does not really inspire confidence....oh dear...oh dear...

Some advice would be appreciated!

So, I set up a nice (I thought) character set with neatly organised subcharacters for stuff like left arm, right arm, eyes, etc. Now I've done a little walk cycle, which I'd like to reuse. It seems to be possible to export a single clip for the whole character, and then, on a fresh scene I've (after some messing around) successfully imported it (using 'import animation clip to characters').

BUT:  now there's a separate clip on each of the 30 or so subcharacters. Which makes it impossible to work with - check out the screenshot, I can't even see all the frickin' subclips on screen at once, let alone do anything useful with them. Say I want to do a blend to another clip - I have to manually set that up blend for every subcharacter?! That's insane!

Is there not some way of selecting the clip at the character level, and editing like that? Or should I just delete all my (useful) subcharacter sets just so I can use the trax editor?

Or, of course, should I give up on the Trax editor? I'm working on a big project with lots of walk/run cycle reuse, so I was hoping it would just, you know...work?

Advice appreciated!

[dddfff]

So, you know what...f*** the trax editor

I've worked around the problem using a combination of the animation import/export plugin, post-infinity looping, and keying weights on animation layers. It ain't pretty, but it works

Still, if anyone has an answer, I would be interested to hear it...