Pasting a pose over an animation

joker0720

I know I can change the pose of an animation using the 'adjust' function, but what about pasting a pose from another animation into that animation? For instance, I have an idle animation for a set of creatures that is basically a breathing loop. I want to be able to reuse that breathing loop, but in a different pose, that has to match up exactly to another animation.
In example: Breathing Idle animation of character bent over and holding a two handed spear (A1). I want to use that animation, but with a different pose that is pasted from another animation where the character is standing up straight and holding a sword (A2). I cannot use the adjust function, and just manually change it, because the pose will not match animation A2, exactly. So, I need to be able to paste the pose from A2, onto A1 and have it adjust all the frames to match, but keep the motion from A1. I could just make a whole new breathing loop, for each pose, but this will be very time consuming.
Thank you in advance for any help!

joker0720

Nate

You could play two animations at once using tracks. See the Preview view:
Preview - Spine User Guide

That's the real way to combine two animations. Otherwise you could duplicate the idle, then adjust it to be standing, but you'd need to do this for every animation.

joker0720

Nate schrieb
You could play two animations at once using tracks. See the Preview view:
Preview - Spine User Guide

That's the real way to combine two animations. Otherwise you could duplicate the idle, then adjust it to be standing, but you'd need to do this for every animation.

Using the tracks, this shows what I could do on a runtime side of things, but that isn't something that can export to a single animation.
If I wanted to do the 'adjust to be standing' but by pasting the pose, how would I do that? I cannot figure out how to make it adjust all the frames, from a pasted pose. What would be amazing, would be something like 'layers' in Maya, 3dsMax, Cinema4D, etc. Since we don't have that, having a way to paste a pose over an entire animation, is our next best option. Is there a way to do that?

Søren

Can't you just copy the keys containing ONLY the breathing animation, and leave out keys that change the pose?

It's possible animation layers could make it in later on, but it's not really on the horizon yet.

joker0720

Shiu schrieb
Can't you just copy the keys containing ONLY the breathing animation, and leave out keys that change the pose?

I'm not awfully sure what you mean. What i'd like to do is take a single frame of animation (just the pose of standing upright and with a sword), and paste that over the hunched over animation that has the breathing; giving me the pose from standing but the breathing from the hunched over.

Søren

you can do that.

Enable the animation where the pose is standing upright and with a sword.
In the dopesheet, select only the keys containing the part of the animation you want to copy, do not select all keys.
Change to the animation you want to paste your keys on.
Go to the right frame and paste the keys.

I hope this clears it up.

joker0720

Shiu schrieb
you can do that.

Enable the animation where the pose is standing upright and with a sword.

In the dopesheet, select only the keys containing the part of the animation you want to copy, do not select all keys.

Change to the animation you want to paste your keys on.

Go to the right frame and paste the keys.

I hope this clears it up.

I've tried several different ways of doing this, all not working as I'd expect. Here's what I would do in Maya or the like:

create an animation with the breathing loop and make it my 'base layer'
create a new pose in another file, or just a safe frame space in the same file
create a new layer over top of the 'base layer'
paste the new pose into that layer
watch as the base layer animation shows through the new pose.

Søren

There is an extra step you might have to take which I forgot to mention.

In the animation you want to copy your keys from, on some bones/meshes you might not have a key at the frame you want to copy from, in that case you will need to create a key at the frame.

It would be nice to see exactly what it is you're working on, maybe I will get a better understanding of the problem.

joker0720

Shiu schrieb
It would be nice to see exactly what it is you're working on, maybe I will get a better understanding of the problem.

Sorry, stuck behind an NDA, unfortunately.

Shiu schrieb
1. Enable the animation where the pose is standing upright and with a sword.

In the dopesheet, select only the keys containing the part of the animation you want to copy, do not select all keys.

Change to the animation you want to paste your keys on.

Go to the right frame and paste the keys.

I keep trying this method, with different mixtures of keys being selected (where I'm pasting), 'adjust' being on and off, etc. with no luck. Maybe Spine just doesn't have any functionality to make something like this work? Adjust is pretty much what I want to do, but with pasted keys, instead of rotating and translating each bone.

Nate

Pasting keys from another animation will not merge with existing keys. Eg, if you paste idle over standing and they both key the same properties, you'll have a mess. There is currently no way to combine them. It is technically a difficult problem to combine animations like they are shown in Preview when using multiple tracks. Animation for a property is a linear list of times and values. Combining two such lists could result in the graph of the change in values over time to be curved. It is not easy to make a new list that matches that curve. The easiest way would be plotting, which would set keys every X frames, but this is inefficient and difficult to change later.

Are you exporting images or video? If so then Preview/tracks won't help either.

joker0720 schrieb
If I wanted to do the 'adjust to be standing' but by pasting the pose, how would I do that? I cannot figure out how to make it adjust all the frames, from a pasted pose.

Pasting is not affected by key Adjust. It sounds like what you want is the ability to paste keys additively. Eg, if a key moves a bone 50 on X from the setup pose, then pasting it additively would take whatever the value is in the current animation at that time and add 50 to it. This is currently not possible, sorry!

joker0720

Nate schrieb
Pasting is not affected by key Adjust. It sounds like what you want is the ability to paste keys additively. Eg, if a key moves a bone 50 on X from the setup pose, then pasting it additively would take whatever the value is in the current animation at that time and add 50 to it. This is currently not possible, sorry!

Yeah, that is kind of what I was looking for. Much like a layering system. Hopefully it's something that comes in the future! Here is what I did as a work around:

created a new key after the end of the animation I wanted to alter into a new pose
pasted the pose I wanted it changed to
turned on adjust
selected the keys I wanted adjusted
went through bone by bone and copied the numbers directly from the pose I wanted.
deleted the pose key