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Advanced Motion Tutorial 2

by Michaël Samyn (28 July 2006)

B. Cropping and Fading

Set up a scene with a character

• Import a Skinned Character (see Tutorial A)
• Attach a Motion Blender to it (see Tutorial A)
• Add a Motion Set from an X File (see Tutorial A)

Cropping Motions

• Double click the Advanced Motion Data to open the Advanced Motion Data editor.
• Select one of the Motion Sets (top left list) and click on the top right button: “Create Motion Set Subset”.

• Drag the slider or type in numbers to set the start and end frame.
• When you click OK a new Motion Set will be added to the Motion Sets list. This is a cropped version of your original motion.
• Select the new Motion Set and click the “Add Motion-Bone Set Group from selected Motion Set” button to add it to the Motion-Bone Set Groups list. Set it to loop and give it a priority of 0.
• Close the Advanced Motion Data editor and play the new motion with an “Add instruction to list” Advanced Motion Command called by a OneTime (see Tutorial A).

Playing Motions with Fade

• Double click the Advanced Motion Data to open the Advanced Motion Data Editor.
• Select your original Motion Set and create a new subset (see part 2).
• Add it to the Motion-Bone Set Groups, set it to Loop and give it a priority of 1 (see Tutorial A).
• Close the Advanced Motion Data Editor.

• Make a trigger with a UserInput channel as first Value child.
• Add a new Advanced Motion Command channel and connect it to the second child link of the Trigger. Double click it and select “Add instruction to list with fadein”.
• Connect the Advanced Motion Blender to the first child connector of the Advanced Motion Command, a Value with the number of the Motion-Bone Set you want to play to the second and to the third a Value with the amount of milliseconds you want the transition between this motion and the previous one to last.
• Trigger the Advanced Motion Command and the second motion will start playing with a smooth transition.

Removing Motions with Fade

• Copy and paste the Trigger logic from part 3, change the Value to Check child of the Trigger and connect the Advanced Motion Blender to the Advanced Motion Command.
• Select “Remove instruction from list with fadeout” in the Advanced Motion Command Interface.
• Trigger the Advanced Motion Command and the second motion will disappear with a smooth transition.

Crop and fade with the Looping Envelope

• Add a new Motion Set from an X File with three parts: beginning, middle and end. The beginning will be played when the motion starts playing, the middle will be continuously looped and the end will be played when the motion is removed.

• Double click the new Motion Set in the Motion Sets list to open the Motionset editor.
• Zoom and rotate the preview on the right to get a good look of your character’s skeleton.
• Drag the play head in the timeline under the preview to the frame where the middle part of the motion starts and click the “Set Looping Start” button.
• Now drag the play head to the end of the middle part and click the “Set Looping End” button.
• There should be four square nodes in the diagram under the timeline now.
• Drag the first one and the last one all the way down. This creates fade-in and fade-out transitions.
• Adjust the tension with the slider underneath and click OK.
• Add the Motion Set to the Motion-Bone Set Groups list, set it to loop and give it a priority of 2. Close the Advanced Motion Data Editor.
• Make triggers to add and remove this new motion.
• In the current version of Quest3D (3.5.4), combining this envelope fading with fading through an Advanced Motion Command doesn’t work as expected. So use normal Add and Remove commands for now.

Samples

Advanced Motion sample B

See Also

Advanced Motion Tutorial 1

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