Storing and Recycling

Animation Files

by Adam Sale

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Objective: To animate and save actions that you can use over and over again.

Synopsis: The Softimage Database structure is extremely dynamic. Each element in Softimage is stored in its own separate database. Lights, Materials, Animation, etc. This tutorial deals with saving animation files, and then being able to recall them at any given time. This method allows you to re-use any actions that occur repetitively throughout your animations. Actions such as walk and run cycles, as well as hand gestures and facial expressions can all be stored in animation libraries. The re-usability principle can also be applied to lights, camera animation, shaders and more.

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Preparing your scene

You should have a good working knowledge of hierarchies, and character rigs before delving into this tutorial. As well, familiarize yourself with the low resolution to high resolution swapping techniques.

Animating

Whenever you animate a hierarchy in Softimage, all of your animation data is stored in an animation file that attaches itself to the Top Null of your hierarchy. If you open a schematic viewport, and engage the Motion mode option from that views pull down menu bar, you will see a green parallelogram attached to the top of your hierarchy by a yellow line. This is the icon for your Animation file. Although it is a part of your scene, it resides in the ANIMATION folder of your Softimage Database.

When you load a scene into Softimage, the scene file, which holds a .DSC extension pulls in information from all of your sub-databases to create that particular scene. It will look into your MODELS folder to retrieve your meshes, the CAMERA folder to glean camera info, ANIMATION folder to get animation data, etc.

In order for you to be able to apply an animation file to a character, Softimage requires the character to have the same skeleton structure that was used to create your original animation file. By this, I mean that your skeleton must have the same number of bones;as well the bones must share the same names between the two skeletons. For example; You have created a walk cycle, and have saved the animation file. The animation file stores all of the information concerning that characters arrangement of bones, constraints, as well as the names of all the pieces in the hierarchy. When you want to take that walk cycle animation file and apply it to another character, the file will try to match up the saved information by looking for pieces in the hierarchy with the same name. If the new character's bones or constraints have names that differ from those in the walk cycles animation file; or if one letter or number is different between the two, the animation will not work transfer between those particular elements.

As mentioned in the low resolution to high-resolution tutorial, the prefix of each object, found by selecting that object and clicking on Info> Selection, does not need to share the same name between the animation file and the target character. You do not need to enter a name in the prefix line at all. I use the prefix to describe the type of action or animation that I would like to save in my libraries, for example a walk, a jump, or run. This allows me to look into my ANIMATION folder and easily select which animation file I need to apply to a character in a given circumstance. The prefix that gets attached to your animation file can be named by clicking on Info à Selection on the top node of your character, and entering a name in the prefix line. As, you can see in your schematic view, the green animation parallelogram inherits the prefix from the top node of your character's hierarchy. This way, you can create an entire library of well-categorized actions, and readily recall them at any given time.

Saving the Animation

OK. So you've animated your character and are ready to store the animation file. In single mode, select your character's hierarchy as a tree.

In the MOTION module, click on Save> Selected Elements à Animation. A pop up box will appear prompting you to select a Database to store your Animation file into. I would recommend having one database within which you can store all of your Animation files. If you think of it in terms of a filing cabinet, at least you only have to open one drawer to find what you're looking for, rather than opening all of them.

When you've selected the proper database, click on SAVE. Your file will be stored safely

Recalling the Animation

You've saved a whole heap of animations, and now you're ready to apply one or more to a character. You could use actions, but lets just do it using a bare bones method.

In single mode, select your character's hierarchy as a tree, and click on Get à From Library> Animation. Browse to the database where you have stored all of your animation files, select the appropriate one and click LOAD. The file will load up and another pop up menu will appear asking you to specify an insertion point. The insertion point is the frame at which you want the animation to begin. Enter a frame number, and click OK. The animation file is now applied to your character with the insertion point taken into account.

You can load more than one animation file onto a character if you wish your character to perform a sequence of pre-animated actions. This is where the Action controls come in handy. You can still apply sequences of animation clips, however, by following the above procedures, and specifying different insertion points.

In many of the cases the end of an action, and the beginning of another action will not sync up. In cases like this, you must leave a frame buffer between the two files so that you can in-between from one file to another.

Of course, you need not worry about this if you have animated a hand, and then want to layer a lip sync or walk cycle on top.

This method of storing animation files can save you a lot of time, and redundancy. Even if you don't want to use the same action twice, you can still load in an animation file, and then tweak it to create the variety that makes great animation stand head and shoulders above the riff raff.

Storing Animation in Softimage 3D was written by Adam Sale. Adam is a Technical Director and co-founder of Joncrow Entertainment. He can be reached at adamsale@home.com.