Cyclic rotating animation. (?) Maya2DTS (maybe others)
by J. Alan Atherton · in Torque Game Engine · 10/05/2004 (9:21 pm) · 3 replies
I am trying to create a rotating gear. That's all. Just a DTS with a rotating gear. My first attempts were really bad, and after a few attempts I've got it to almost work. I am using Maya, though I think this applies to exporters generally.
The first problem is that the animation rotates the gear 360 degrees, then pauses for 1 second, then rotates 360 degrees, etc. This is very undesirable for what I am trying to achieve. The second problem is that the animation plays at lightning speed. I created the animation over 300 frames, so it should take 5 second per revolution, right?
I will describe how I created the animation. In the first frame, I set a key in the usual position. At frame 100, there is a key with the gear rotated 120 degrees. At frame 200, there is a key with the gear rotated 240 degrees. At frame 300, there is a key with the gear rotated 358 degrees (for cyclic motion). At frame 301, there is a duplicate of frame 300's key. I added the final keyframe because when "cyclic animation" was enabled, the last key was discarded, and only 2/3 of the animation was exported.
I followed Danny Ngan's tutorial on simple shape animation in Maya, and the bouncing ball works wonderfully. I mimicked the parameters for my gear, with the only difference being the actual shape, the keyframes, and the sequence time range (0-301 instead of 0-30).
What am I doing wrong?
Many thanks!
The first problem is that the animation rotates the gear 360 degrees, then pauses for 1 second, then rotates 360 degrees, etc. This is very undesirable for what I am trying to achieve. The second problem is that the animation plays at lightning speed. I created the animation over 300 frames, so it should take 5 second per revolution, right?
I will describe how I created the animation. In the first frame, I set a key in the usual position. At frame 100, there is a key with the gear rotated 120 degrees. At frame 200, there is a key with the gear rotated 240 degrees. At frame 300, there is a key with the gear rotated 358 degrees (for cyclic motion). At frame 301, there is a duplicate of frame 300's key. I added the final keyframe because when "cyclic animation" was enabled, the last key was discarded, and only 2/3 of the animation was exported.
I followed Danny Ngan's tutorial on simple shape animation in Maya, and the bouncing ball works wonderfully. I mimicked the parameters for my gear, with the only difference being the actual shape, the keyframes, and the sequence time range (0-301 instead of 0-30).
What am I doing wrong?
Many thanks!
#2
The lightning-speed problem was a parameter called "override duration". That was set to 1 by default, but when set to -1, it shows up as I animated it. That's all there was to it. Thanks, Danny!
10/06/2004 (10:22 pm)
We figured out the problem. It turns out the pausing problem was related to the framerate. Make sure it's 30fps in Maya! The lightning-speed problem was a parameter called "override duration". That was set to 1 by default, but when set to -1, it shows up as I animated it. That's all there was to it. Thanks, Danny!
#3
10/07/2004 (7:05 am)
The current version of the dtsUtility properly sets the override duration default to -1, which is off.
Torque Owner Danny Ngan
If this doesn't work for you, email me and I'll send you a sample file.