How to control many "choreography" with only a single channel?

 (by Jean-Sebastien Perron)

Watch the videos

Left : the motion

Right : same motion totally controlled by a single channel of another object

When do you need this technique?

-To control a complex character animation

-To animate easily a complex animation that will be repeated many times at different speed

-To animate a complex animation by the characteristic of another object

-This is simply the most powerful animation feature of Realsoft

-To get more details look in the manual

Overview

-We need to change the animation of the desired objects relative to a controller object instead of time

-Normally an object is keyframed over time

-Now we want it to be keyframed over an object channel

-Then when we play with this controller channel it control all the animation of the other objects

-For this tutorial I will use a robot arm punching as seen in the videos above

Setup the controller

-Create a sphere

-Name it "Controller" this is the object we will use to control other objects

-Set it to invisible in realtime and in rendering

-Go to the first frame, activate the "Record" mode

-Set the alpha channel of the "Controller" to 0.0

-Now go to the last frame and set the alpha to 1.0

-Uncheck the "Animate only when selected"

Setup the robotarm

-Create a robot arm with more than one articulation

-Now select "Shoulder"

-And right click and chose "Make Choreographable"

-This will send the object in the "Choreography Window"

-Do the same for the "Arm", "Cylinder" and the "Blades"

-Now in the choregraphy window

-Select the "Shoulder.init0"

-And right click and add a "Keyframer"

-Go to the "Input Tab"

-Select the "Keyframer" of the "Shoulder"

-Set the "Input" to "Geometric Object"

-Select the "Controller" object in the "Select Window" this time

-Go back to the "Input Tab" and click "Change"

-And select "Alpha"

-This will make the choreography of the "Shoulder" dependant of the "Controller.Alpha" instead of regular time

-Repeat for the "Arm", "Cylinder" and the "Blades"

-Since we animated the "Controller.Alpha" to fallow time

-At frame 0 -> 0.0 and at frame 150-> 1.0 we can easily see where we are in time

-Observe in "Choreography Window" that the "Alpha" channel has replaced time

-Animate the arm like you would do normally, animate each articulations

-Important : you must create a dummy keyframe at 1.0 if you don't  have one

-Each choreography must have a keyframe at "Alpha : 0.0' and at "Alpha : 1.0"

Problems

-It is possible for an unknown reason that you may have problems with "Realsoft"

-It did not work the first time, and now it is and I still don't know why.

-Don't rely on the "step by step", try to understand the concept and look in the manual

-Be careful to select the proper "keyframer" while keyframing the corresponding object

-Also check that the duration of the keyframer goes from 0.0 to 1.0

Playing and having fun

-Ok, now if you can see your animation doing a single motion when clicking the "Play" button

-You have compleated this tutorial

-Now have fun an animate the "Controller.Alpha" channel

-This is the motion I have used for the video

-When the "Alpha" is 0.0 it is the beginning of the motion

-When it is 1.0 it is the end of the motion