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…