Bet that gets some attention.... :P

Now onto the real question.

I'm working up the figures for a short I'm probably out of my mind to be attempting. The current 'how do I' involves vibration effects. Specifically, what I have is the Vicki Electra character on the RDNA Freakin Beast chopper (and I have been dying to get that one moving). I'm planning on using Ockham's Jiggles Python script on varous soft bodies (besides Vicky's you dirty minded people) to simulate the effects of motion, or at least enhance them a bit. Can anyone think of a way to add the actual effects of vibration and the numerous visually imperceptible bounces that cycles typically have without keyframing each and every frame...and then finding a way to mask that work so it doesn't create more trouble (visions of spline implosion dancing in the forebrain)? What I'm =hoping= to render in VuePro is a long (20-35 second)pan in and around while the bike and rider do a little lane changing dodge, so there will be angular vectors relating to gravity; those are no prob; just bloody tedious. I'm also going to be experimenting with the windforce, to try and get those vortex effects you get from a non areodynamic body pushing through the air.

Message edited on: 07/15/2004 11:02

Jiggle the camera?

If the camera was the biker-viewpoint, it would be easy; Vue's time splines are great for that kind of thing. This is a 'God view', and that would vibrate everything. Gross impact actions like hitting a major bump is doable--that's just putting in the actual displacement and letting the script handle the boing-ing of boobs and saddlebags. It's that few degrees up and down displacement of the shocks, and the effects that has, I'm trying to get (as the Beast mesh doesn't have discreet shocks to animate....that would be best of course, and just a little script to displace them a few degrees over time. Ultimately, I may have to find a killer bike with articulated shocks...but I'd rather not. The Beast is just so what I want to play with...). I know it would be subtle, but those are the things that really breaks the illusion of life and motion( I about died of joy when I saw that Judy had articulated toes, f'r instance. I could run a dance bvh, and take the time to twist the tootsies to match the motions of the body. Again it is subtle, but that 'ballet slipper' effect on a barefoot dancer really kills the illusion, just like most Poser meshes 'shovel foot' sameness kills it).

I haven't looked at Jiggles for a while, but I think the latest version will control regular parameters, not just morphs. So you could parent the camera to a "vehicle", and set the appropriate parameters of the vehicle to respond to its acceleration. The camera would then move appropriately. If parenting won't work, you could just copy and paste the Jiggles-generated parameter to an appropriate parm of the camera? IM me if this isn't clear or doesn't work... I'll bet there's a similar way to do it.

Extract from a thread we discussed in the Poser Python forum in February: Yet another idea. If you feel like updating your steering script, you could add some of the features offered by Vue. Basically Vibrate and Spin. Vibrate is useful for when you want your vehicle driving along a rough road, you apply vibrate, choose which axis, and the amount, and your vehicle shakes as it drives along. If you add the ability to apply this to only certain frames, then you could do the effect of the camera shaking as the train goes by, or the buidling shaking as a bomb goes off , etc. Spin is useful for when you want an object to keep spinning uniformly through an animation. You have a rock being thrown by a catapult. To make it look more realistic you choose the rock object, choose an axis, set the spin speed, and your object spins while it flies. This could be added to the gravity script, but you may want to also use it on a satelite in orbit, so it would make more sense to add it to the steering script, and it could then be run on an object after that was animated with the gravity script. This script could be useful for various things, like matrix style bullet effects, rolling wheels or balls, making siren lights turn, rotating a minigun barrel, etc. It would be easier to adjust the speed in Python that to have to keep retiming animations to make things move properly.

Please make a cup of tea whilst the gif loads... Dale B, I am very new to animation, just posted my first one about a week ago, so forgive me if my solution is not appropriate to the circumstances. Your Vibratus Interruptus idea got me interested, this is what I came up with.

In a text editor, I used the Sexy Walk, just to get the frame numbers for x, y, and z translations, I then typed in a new set of values for each frame. I pasted the frames into the appropriate channels of the Poser CANE prop, then stripped down and edited the pp2 to turn it into a pz2, replaced the prop name "prop cane_1" with "actor cane_1", and set it to "off" (invisible), replaced the "doc" section with an empty "figure" section and saved it to a pose folder.

In Poser 4 I loaded a background prop, a car prop, Posette, and the CANE prop. Applied the pose to the cane, parented Posette to the car, parented the car to the CANE, and ran the annimation.

The point is that for this sort of thing it's easier to edit library files than it is to edit every frame in Poser.

Here is the same annimation without the vibration, for comparison.

Attached is the text of the vibration pz2. Note that the pz2 is for the Poser "CANE" prop, and that a figure must be loaded in the document before the pose can be applied to the cane, the cane will be invivible after the pz2 is applied. Of course the frames could have been pasted directly into the car, but using a pz2 on a prop was more a more universal solution, and saves on disk space.

Thanks, les! I'll give that a try as well! Ockham's given me one possible solution, but any trick I can use is a good trick.