Maya for 3D Printing - Rapid Prototyping
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# 1 10-04-2012 , 09:02 PM
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Visibility Not Keying

I'm trying to change out geometry in my animation - I have rocket geometry constrained to a motion path, and I want to turn off the visibility on one key and have the original geometry replaced with duplicate geometry that is not constrained to the motion path so I can freely animate it. However, after I set the key frames for the visibility and play the animation back, the keyframes don't show up and the visibility doesn't work the way I meant it to. I have the AutoKeyframe on, and I am setting the keys. Does anyone have any suggestions as to why this might not be working? Thank you!

# 2 10-04-2012 , 10:32 PM
EduSciVis-er
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Autokeyframe is a headache waiting to happen. Unless you know exactly how you're planning to key something and you work in a directed intentional manner, it's not worth using.

Can you check in your graph editor to verify that the visibility got keyed on the right frames?

# 3 10-04-2012 , 11:03 PM
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It sounds to me like it's not actually keying. For auto keyframe to work, you need to have a manual keyframe placed on the channel you want to keyframe. So set a manual key on visibility, then whenever you change the visibility, it should change automatically.

Also remember that visibility is a binary value (0 -> 1) while the graph editor works on floating point values (-n -> n). Make sure that it's interpolating the values correctly.


Imagination is more important than knowledge.
# 4 11-04-2012 , 02:46 AM
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The graph editor showed that the keys were on the right frames, but I'll have to look again and consult with my instructor about the interpolating. He was trying to help me figure it out this afternoon, but we were a little short on time. Thank you both for responding so quickly!

# 5 11-04-2012 , 06:20 PM
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Hi again! I emailed my instructor about your suggestion, and this was his response, which explains the issue better than I did:

No, you are keying; I keyed manually. It is reverting to off, even though the Graph Editor says it should be set to on (1); when we move it in the timeline, it reverts to off (0) on its own.

Does that suggest anything to you? Thanks!

# 6 11-04-2012 , 06:44 PM
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Is something else connected to it? Otherwise it's hard to say. Send me the file, and I'll take a look.


Imagination is more important than knowledge.
# 7 11-04-2012 , 08:31 PM
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It's the rocket group and rocket1 that I'm trying to key visibility on, and no, they don't have anything attached to them that I can see. Rocket1 is attached to the hair follicle though. Thanks for taking a look!

Attached Files
File Type: zip RocketRenderCamB.ma.zip (469.0 KB, 265 views)
# 8 11-04-2012 , 11:14 PM
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Wow, that is very strange... I think your scene might be corrupted, as things aren't evaluating on the same time as the key (which is what's happening here) If you move your visibility key to 120, it turns off at the right moment (even though it's result shows up at 169)

I have never seen anything like this, and unfortunately I don't have time to dig any deeper into it.


Imagination is more important than knowledge.
# 9 12-04-2012 , 12:53 AM
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Well thank you for taking the time to look at my scene! I really appreciate it. I think I'll try re-creating a new scene and see if that does the trick, if this one is possibly corrupted. Thanks again!

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