Cineversity

I used pose morph to create a sequence of opening and closing drawers. I want to attach a polygon plane to a point on the animated drawer using Xpresso so that it moves in and out with the drawer. I positioned the plane in the center of the drawer as desired, then used the “Enable Axis Tool” to move the center point of the plane to match up with the corner point of the drawer. The theory was that when I hooked everything together in Xpresso, the plane would retain the new center point and move accordingly. However, when I hooked it up, the plane popped back to the original center point, and so is hanging off the edge. Of course, once Xpresso is activated, everything is locked in place.

I would like the panels to move in sync with the drawers, and that seems to be the most direct way since the ease-in/ease-out interpolations are different for the two objects. Other ideas for the same thing would be welcome. The point node is working fine, it’s the center point that’s out of place.

Model attached.

Any suggestions?

Hi mford610,

Thanks for the file.

To get the Polygon “Applied Mov” to the position where you need it, do the following:

Switch off the Xpresso Tag (Attribute manager>Enable.)

Use the Axis Modification tool, to place the Object Axis of the Polygon object where you need it.

Disable the Axis modification tool.

Switch the Xpresso Tag back on.

Please note that the Xpresso is calculated before the Pose Morph, as they have the same priority, but any XPresso is above the Pose Morph.

As a side note, it might be comfortable to use the Set Driver/Set Driven command, but as you can see, it creates a lot of Xpresso Tags. As a side effect, you have the Position.Z of the Controller twice in this.
Invest the extra second to drag connections manually. As all user-data of the controller can be accessed with one node and the Controller’s Parameter get fed by it, after each range Mapper, the organization of priorities and nodes will be much more streamlined. The X-Manager should be sorted from top to bottom, as in first and then last, to provide a clear idea of how it is processed and keeps things organized.

Here is your file back:
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/eOAKUSKFkKJuWmktVmiFDWgkfxfovArsKNIVUM9gSKv

You might see a flickering between the drawer and the polygon objects. Perhaps use a Null for the positioning and the polygon as a child under it with a tiny little distance.

Have you considered Constrains instead of XPresso, they allow for an Offset, to avoid the flickering.

What do I miss not getting the point of the image?

All the best

Mford610,

I wanted to follow up on your question, what alternative or options would fit the target of this setup.
The first one might be the obvious choice, just go with keyframes, and use the dope-sheet as “Partitur” to get things orchestrated.
Once all keyframes are created, and the objects are named wisely, the Dope-sheet or F-curve window have all in one place.
The next one, since you have a drawer with a front-lit attached and an image plane moving, the motion clip system would work here perhaps even better.
Sequential animations are sometimes done with just one additional object moving. This movement is then transferred to the parts via XPresso. To avoid that all are moving at the same time and at the same speed, a Rangemapper is used. The Rangemapper for each separate part can be then seen as a personal F-curve. Which allows in a very nice way to change the overall speed of the scene, by changing that one additional object only.

To use the Pose Morph for one object and one linear move only seems a little bit less useful than to create a UserData slider on a central object and connect the rage of that slider to the parameter of the targeted object.

A drawer could also be created in phases, and via MoGraph> Mode> Blend animated with a Plain Effector.

Of course, there is always the method to prefer that leads to the least resistance during animation. The setup work is done once, but the change and fine-tuning efforts of the animation should be as low as possible.

Cheers

The solution you proposed (turning off Xpresso, re-centering the panel, turning on Xpresso) worked perfectly. For some reason when I did it the first time, it didn’t stick. But when I followed your step-by-step process to the letter, it worked as expected. I was able to avoid the lag created in the execution sequence by setting the Xpresso tag to “Generator.” Not sure why, but the attached panel tracks the pose morph vertices perfectly.

I will have to re-read your alternative suggestions more closely to understand. I used the pose morph because I find using scale to change the size of an object non-uniformly be less controllable. Might be my process is flawed. Since I don’t have to texture the object beyond a solid color, moving the vertices seems the most direct route.

You’re very welcome, mford610.

To just set the Priorities, is one way. To sort the scene in the Object Manager and the XP-manager is undoubtedly a better way. I will put a mentor hat on, and I hope you don’t mind. Given that I regularly get since around 14 scene files from all over the world, always with something that doesn’t work. So, allow me the following:

Have a look at this file.
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/uQBFcQojCvhK1vBGCbaRuKQVzEiA87LPSwwvuN4oYM5
You could set up all the Priorities, dialing them higher the lower the position is in the Object Manager, or sort the scene and have a clear flow of information. The settings of the priority are not that easy to read. Yes, I have also reversed the flow inside the XPresso editor, but with such small node amounts, it might not even matter. Anyway, scenes are getting larger, and at a certain point, something is left behind… The search is then stressful, as it is mostly close to a deadline, or after a long render session. This will bite, and worse, it was perhaps avoidable with not so much extra-time. Mentor hat off.

ENJOY

P.S.:
Just one moving Linear Field directs the whole scene.
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/4lLJLb2POYUu0cely19cKx3VKVtcoI2qwR94HIJtX37

ENJOY.

Ha! The Plain Effector design is super. Very clever! I’m sure I would have thought of that eventually - like in 50 years! I will have to take that apart and figure out how you did it, then tuck in in my pocket for a later date when I can wow my customer with my genius!

On the first version (using the data node) - I haven’t seen the Xpresso node before, and wasn’t able to find it in the Xpresso help section. I assume that is where the motion/scale data is coming from to drive the animation?

Thank you very much, mford610.

The only danger with those Plain Effector setups is that the initial position is not stored. Save early, save often, or use autosave.

Do you mean the UserData connection? This is only available after introducing User Data options on an object or tag. Let me know if you like to have a little intro on that.
I went through all files in this thread so far, I can’t make any other sense out of the question. What do I miss?

Cheers