basic questions - copying character, viewing, scaling

basshole · Post by **basshole** » Thu Feb 28, 2008 11:49 am

Okay, back to the viewing business. . .

I must be doing something wrong.

Let's say I go to frame one, and I want to to add a point or tweak the position of points in the hand of my character.

So I'm on my hand vector layer, in frame one, and I make my change. Now it looks like I want it to.

So, after that, I should just be able, on frame one, to select the newly created key for point motion on the layer, and then hit "copy", and then go that same channel ( point motion)in frame 0, select it, hit "paste", and the hand in frame 0 should now resemble what I did in frame 1, in regards to the number of points/position of points, right?

So for some reason, it usually doesn't seem to work at all, or when it does, it doesn't work right.

What I'd like to be able to do is make a change on frame 1, where my character isn't "exploded", and I can accurately see what I'm doing, and simply copy that change to frame 0, thus making it "permanent".

Maybe someone could elaborate on the process a little more.

EDIT:

Okay, I just discovered the wonderful "copy current frame" under the animation tab. Is this all I need? Just hit it, select the channel I want, and leave it selected to copy to frame 0?

YET ANOTHER EDIT:

No, that doesn't work quite like I thought it would either. I make a change on 1, do animation/copy current frame, check "point motion", have it set to copy to frame 0, but on frame 0, my points are in a different place from where I just put them on 1.

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Thu Feb 28, 2008 12:40 pm

What you copy is only the point motion channel. If you have animated the bones to which your hand is bound, you have to copy their keyframe as well.

DarthFurby · Post by **DarthFurby** » Thu Feb 28, 2008 1:05 pm

Each individual vector point has it's own keyframe, so even if you see a keyframe on frame one, it might only be set for one or two points, and when you paste to frame zero, only the edited points get pasted.

Here is a way to make sure you've created a keyframe for ALL the vector points:

On frame one select all the points of the hand that you want to copy, not just the points you edited, and create a keyframe by clicking anywhere on the stage with the Translate Points tool. This well set keyframes for ALL points selected. Now select the keyframes in the timeline, hit copy, go to frame 0, and hit paste.

DarthFurby · Post by **DarthFurby** » Thu Feb 28, 2008 1:10 pm

Also don't worry if the character is exploded on frame zero. As long as you copy and paste the keyframes in the timeline channel, you should be ok. Delete the keyframes on frame 1 to see if the changes still hold.

basshole · Post by **basshole** » Thu Feb 28, 2008 9:07 pm

I think I see where I went wrong, now. Seems like I was only copying certain points before. Thanks.