Two puppet animation help (interaction)

[kv]

I have been trying to work out how moviestorm makes two puppets interact, it`s handy in moviestorms two puppet animations that the puppets get into position themselves to perform the animation, I would like this for my two puppet animations.

The one I am currently working on is the strangle hold one , I need for the killer to automatically stand in the right place as created in MAX when I made it to perform the animation so that the end user does not have to do endless fiddling to make it look right.

Is there a tutorial for this? Can we have one please?

[Ben_S]

Instead of making the two animations gestures, then you need to save the transitions for the animations without the gesture option selected (and you would idealy start with a clean statemachine in that addon - the gesture transitions might well mess with making them normal transitions).

You would then need to make verbs for the mutual animation - these say both the subject character (the guy doing the strangling) and the object character (the guy being strangled). They would also specify the animation that each needs to play.

If you are making male and female versions of the animation this can get somewhat complicated, as you need four pairs of animations to make up one mutual.
This is because, for example, the hands need to go to a different height when strangeling a male, as compared to strangling a female.
The set of animations need to be named as follows:
[animation name]_[A|B]_[Male01|Female01]

For example, in the Base01 pack there are animations for a kiss - In Male01/Animatinos/Mutual are four anims starting Romantic_Peck_Standing
Romantic_Peck_Standing_A_Female01
Romantic_Peck_Standing_A_Male01
Romantic_Peck_Standing_B_Female01
Romantic_Peck_Standing_B_Male01

The three sections of the filenames are
[animation name] (=Romantic_Peck_Standing in example) - this needs to be the same for all the animations in the set.
_A or _B - This indicates whether this is the animation for the subject (A) or the object (B)
_Male01 or _Female01 this is the sex of the other person (not the one being animated by this animation).

You can get away with fewer than the full eight animations. You might, for example, only have an _A_Female01 animation in the male animations folder, and a _B_Male01 in the female animations folder, if your subject character is male and object character is female.
This would mean, though, that they only combination that allows your animation to happen involves having a male character selected, and clicking on a female character to start the interaction.

Once you have the animations in this pattern, and you have saved transitions for each of the animations, and possibly restarted the modders workshop, then you need to bring up the Mutual Stem Verbs tool in the modders workshop.
You should then find your animation in the list of all animations that fulfull the mutual stem verb patterns (discribed above). When you select your anim, it should say which combinations it is available for.
In the text box beside the 'Menu Name' lable, add in a menu name such as Interact/Strangle and then click save.

Then if you have not published your addon since the verbs or statemachine were added to it, or if you had renamed animations, then you should publish your addon.
Then give it a go.

When it doesnt work, please send me a copy of your addon so that I can work out where the steps went wrong.

[Ben_S]

A couple of notes:
The subject animations need to be set to start in IDLE, unless the animation is to follow on from another anim. It is easier if the objects animations also start in IDLE but you could have them start in a pose from another anim.

There are a number of bits of interface on the mutual stem verbs designer which you can ignore:
'With held prop' tickbox, 'Owner' and the dropdown under the menu name - these are only used if there is also a held prop as part of the mutual anim (eg hancuffs, christmas cracker).
Transitive, and the text box beside it - only used for verbs which either character can do the action to the other.
Tickbox for 'Create 4x mutual verbs' makes individual verbs for each of the combinations. This is better for long sequences of mutual activities.

[kv]

Thanks very much Ben, I successfully created the interactive animation and it works well in moviestorm, one problem I am having though is that after the killer has killed the victim I click for him to walk somewhere but he wont move, the marker appears but no walkpath is generated. Any ideas on that?

I have the killers end state set as Neutral. The puppet is able to perform gestures after the animation, just not walk anywhere.

Thanks again.

Edit: Here is the animation in action.

[Ben_S]

Thanks very much Ben, I successfully created the interactive animation and it works well in moviestorm, one problem I am having though is that after the killer has killed the victim I click for him to walk somewhere but he wont move, the marker appears but no walkpath is generated. Any ideas on that?

I have the killers end state set as Neutral. The puppet is able to perform gestures after the animation, just not walk anywhere.

You need to finish the animation in IDLE rather than NEUTRAL for animations that work on the base thread (which includes Mutual anims, Solo anims, Character/Prop anims).

Animations that should be ended in NEUTRAL are Gestures and Held Prop anims.

You dont need to animate any differently; the character still needs to go back to the same idle pose, but it needs to be called IDLE.

[kv]

Thanks again Ben, that worked perfectly, I should have realised it was that.

The animation is now working 100%

[kv]

I am in need of your help again please Ben.

I have created a mutual animation which was requested, in this animation one puppet places his hand on the shoulder of the second puppet.

Now the interaction is working fine, problem is that it was requested that it be two part, start and end.

The interaction works fine for starting, problem is that the option to end is not displaying even though I have set up the mutual stem verb with a menu name Interact/Hand on shoulder end.

Can you help me out in getting the end menu added?

[Ben_S]

The important thing about this is that you have to do the states for the different characters separatly.

So, supposing that the A character is the one with his arm up in the air, and the B character is just standing there not doing anything much:

The the start anim for the A character would go from IDLE to HAND_ON_SHOULDER (or whatever you call that state.
The start anim for the B character would go from IDLE to IDLE.

Then, in the finish animation for the A character would go from HAND_ON_SHOULDER to IDLE, and the finish animation for the B character would go from IDLE to IDLE again.

It will also require the positions to be the same for the two animations, so that the start animation finishes in the position the finish animation starts in. And that includes the relative positions of the two characters to each other.

You could send me a copy of the addon with the VERBS and Statemachine files you are working on, and the animations, if that isnt sufficient explanation, and I can try to see where you are going wrong.

[kv]

Once again mate your a star.

I went wrong with puppet B, I did not set both parts of it`s animation to IDLE, makes sense since he is not really doing anything. Also when I checked the Statemachine file I found a misspelling in the end animation, corrected that too and it works just fine now

Thanks again Ben for the great support.

[daleh]

Just starting to experiment with animations myself, had some basic success with Character/Prop animations but having a small issue with Character/Character animation.

I have made a basic character interaction animation, split into 2 parts so it has a start and end anim, much like KV's hand on shoulder.

and after setting stuff up in the workshop, saving states and making 2 Character/character verbs for the start and end anims I have had success....but...

Unlike KV's hand on shoulder anims where the start and end anims both appear in the radial menu, when i do my start anim it opens up the Choreography Customiser and my second end anim is selectable from there, similar to the Fight or dark Embrace anims, which seems ovr the top as i only plan to have a start anim, maybe 2 middle anims, and then the end anim.

My question is how do I get it to work where the start and follow on animations appear on the radial menu, like KV has done and also like say the handcuff animations of After Dark anims.

I cannot see anything when creating verbs or saving an animation state that would control this?

[Ben_S]

We have two sorts of mutual animation, and you have clearly selected the other sort.

If you want the sort that opens up the choreography customiser (which you have), then you need to create individual mutual verbs.
Either you do this by creating them as normaly you would for other types of animation that requires verbs (ie start by finding the Verbs section in the master browser, then creating a specific Character-Character mutual anim, and putting in two anim names for the subject and object).
Or you can do it with the mutual stem verbs interface, by ticking the 'create 4x mutual verbs'

If you want the other sort, (mutual stem verb) that doesnt open up the choreography customiser, then you need to use the Mutual Stem Verbs interface (from the tools menu), and dont tick 'create 4x mutual verbs' before saving. You still need to put in a menu name, though.
And your animations will need to be saved in the specific pattern for mutual stem verbs, as discribed in my first post within this thread.

[superswing40]

Interest in the given action on the Tug.

[corthew]

Interest in the given action on the Tug.

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[primaveranz]

Spam, but I spent a bit of time trying to figure out what the hell he was talking about until I noticed his tag:

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[corthew]

You know if you see Spam you just have to click on the "Report" Button and tell the staff don't you? They will remove the post or at least the links it contains.

Where's the fun in that?