Help me understand the NLA Editor please...

Hello… So i’m in the process of making a fairly long animation… probably around 15 minutes here…

I’ve gotten through the first scene which is a bunch of casual talking and messing around…

but now i’m moving onto a section where they begin to do some walking and talking before action happens.

I want to use the NLA editor to make a walk cycle for the two characters (or even one for both to use) but i’m so new to the action editor and NLA editor i really don’t quite get what i’m doing…

first of all should i do this in the character’s project files and try and append them over to the animation file? Can i do that?
And if not, i’d like to create a “new action” to get started, but i don’t want the new action to include all of the previous animation that i’ve laid out previously…

I really hope this makes sense T^T

Ask questions if you needed, i really believe that if i get this NLA editor down i will save myself hours of time from having to animate every step they take…

As you probably know, actions are kind of ‘animation blocks’. As soon as you push down (NLA Editor, down arrow next to the channel) a series of keyframes of a particular animated bone selection or an animated geometry, it turns into an action strip.
This strip you can use for other objects, as long as they have the same bone structure.
You can also append actions to other scenes.

“first of all should i do this in the character’s project files and try and append them over to the animation file? Can i do that?”

If you want to work with separate files for character and animation, you link the character and its armature into the animation file (Link --> go to blend-file --> Object --> select Armature + Geometry).
Then you select the armature and Make Proxy (Ctrl Alt P). Now the armature is animatable in Pose mode.
If you have an action in another file which you want to use here, append it (Append --> go to blend-file --> Action --> select action).
Apply the action to the proxy armature by selecting it in the Action Editor (which is the DopeSheet with switched editing context).
Push the action down in the NLA editor.
If you want to edit the action, select the strip and press Tab (Edit mode), which lets you edit the keys in the Action Editor.

running out of time here, if you have more questions feel free… I will get to it later :slight_smile:

Okay this is working! :smiley:
I pushed down all the previous actions down into a strip, and i ended up making some walk and run cycles in the character’s file so that i could see him without the clutter of the environments and the lag that comes with it all.

I was able to get those actions into the Animation Project file and turn them into NLA strips and edit them with both characters as a i please :smiley:

this will save me countless hours of work!

[Edit] Alright i’ve headed back and edited this a few times now…
In the end here it seems like i got it all working fine and dandy… very thankful too because this, in the future, will save me countless hundreds of hours of worktime.
However, it seems that i can’t use NLA action strips while the rig still has it’s own…non-strip action going. And when i try and turn the animation i had prior to this post (about 2 minutes of stuff) into a strip, it looses track of all the location data for the rig and they go correctly animate standing in weird random places… however if i open the strip in edit mode, they return to where they are supposed to be…

So is there either a way to place NLA strips after an action that isnt a strip and have it work?
Or a way to refresh a strip so that it remembers it’s location data without being in edit mode?

And here i go just editing and editing my post again…

So all in all it seems if my rig has an Action in the NLA editor… i cant add any NLA strips… they simply will do nothing…
And if i push down or stash the action, it looses it’s location data and all the previous actions play right, but the two characters are just standing around in random places…

and i simply just can’t figure out how to get past this…

[Edit] So i’ve gone through and re keyframed the location for each character… so… i guess i can continue now but i really hope this doesn’t happen again >-o

[Edit Again…] Nope… I have never seen blender act so inconsistent… Sometimes they stand in the right spot in pose mode, but then stand in the wrong spot in object mode… if i rewind they’ll just disappear even when i go back to that frame… Sometimes they shrink or get bigger for no reason even though i wasn’t even editing that character… then i click on them, and they dont do that anymore…

Any time i click anything, they do something different… there’s zero consistency or rhyme or reason to any of this…

I’m just trying to make these characters walk T^T

Yes, first you have to push down an action in order to blend it with other actions (if setting key frames for the same channels of the same bones/objects). Once turned into a strip, there are different types of blending (replace, add, subtract, multiply), and other options (like extrapolation mode, blend in /out,…) in the N-panel of the NLA editor which are crucial for the behavior of the action with the other strips.

Your problem of characters ‘jumping’ around in space:
Once you edit your action in edit mode (select action strip --> Tab), the contained animation gets isolated and jumps to its original space where it was keyed. Do your edits, then get out of edit mode again.
More:
Parent the top hierarchy bone to an empty which isn’t part of the action (no key frames in the same action). This way you should be able to place the character in space by moving that empty where you want the relative character space to be.


One way I like to do it:
Make sure the Gramma (as I call the top hierarchy bone) isn’t part of the walk cycle action. This way you can animate the Gramma (translate the char in space) separated from the walk cycle.

Generally I find blender’s animation system rather consistent and cool to work with, with some minor issues maybe which - once aware of them - can be worked around…

Attachments


sorry, double posted pic…

Thank you! i think that is something i really needed to see. The how someone uses it part…

So it seems that you wouln’t add keyframes to your rig in Object mode then. But rather, through the whole animation, keep using keyframes on the Root/Gramma for moving the character around.

I keep messing with the animation and that’s usually what is tripping me up is how to use the cycles but create keyframes for their position as i go at the same time…

I like the idea of the Empty as a controller. I just wish i had thought of that before i started this animation… i feel like switching to that part way through will only destroy what had been animated previously…unless maybe i animate the value on a child of constraint perhaps… Man learning is tough sometimes xD

I’m still trying to wrap my brain around a little in the edit mode of a strip… like for example, i used edit mode to fix a location i just animated… ut then i go back and rewatch the thing… and 2 minutes before that at random a moment where the character pops to the background of the scene to sulk for a quick moment gets messed up because he never moves farther away now… it’s almost as if it just forgets the location differences when i edit it…

it feels like i have to forget everything i know and relearn a new method now…

I guess what i need right now is to know how the work flow would go for an example…

If i wanted a character to walk down a windy road, and all i had was the walk cycle strip… would i add action keyframes for the location of the rig? or would i Add a strip for the location? and would i want it above or below the walk cycle?

I’ll keep tweaking and testing in the mean time.

[Edit2] I think i’m begging to finally understand this. i know no one else sees how many edits i’ve really done, but after so much reading forum stuff and blender manuals and all… i feel like i’m finally understanding this!
All i can say is Non Linear is definitely right… depending on what order i click on things my animation appears to be different…

So i’ve learned that my general workflow should be to add a single frame for an action and push it down right away… because if there’s actions on the top layer, nothing else will work.
Then after that i extend the strip i just made to a reasonable amount to work with, and then make the segment of animation in edit mode of that.

Now the next day here what i seem to struggle with is the Hold/Hold Forward/ and Nothing section… It seems i want them for the most part to remain on Nothing or else it will keep certain strips later on from having any effect either… it just looks like my transition from old animation to the newer area where im using the empties as location controllers is having some trouble with this because i made a action strip for the switch and i need to keep that one on hold forward or else they stand in the wrong spots… so hopefully that one i should be able to keep on hold forward without problems…

(Also it looks like if an important change is made in a strip… like location data… is skipped over from frame dropping in the play back, it wont apply to the character in the viewport… which is kind of scary thinking that if something doesn’t appear right, it might just be that the playback skipped over a frame and it wasn’t applied to the character that way… but if i play it again it might not miss that frame…

[Edit4] Nope i’m not understanding this… I did just as i mentioned for the workflow and the animation will play fine in edit mode but just refuses to play normally… and nothing is above or below this strip and nothing is set to hold forward… I can’t figure out what’s stopping it…