[Bf-committers] Q about poses/channels + A from Ton + follow-up Q

Roland Hess rolandh at reed-witting.com
Fri Nov 18 18:04:29 CET 2005


Ton wrote:

>With Toni I've looked at a nice Python API call to do "arbitrary"
>actions. He now has a call like this (forgot the real naming);
>
>Object.Pose.extract_from_action(Action, framenr, blendfactor)

I looked at that code yesterday. The version of pose.fromAction() I 
saw calls extract_pose_from_action, which is what I'm already doing 
in my code. I've found that the pose_mat's from the extracted pose's 
pose_channels show only the identity matrix, though.

>This is unclear to me, it would help if you can indicate how that
>functionality fits in the current system we have.

Here's a full explanation (and I mean full, sorry it's so long, but I 
didn't want continued vagueness on my part to further confuse things) 
of what I'm working on, and why I need to get accurate pose_mat's 
from pose_channels, given an arbitrary action and frame for an 
armature object.

Let's say I have this setup in the NLA:

http://www.harkyman.com/animprop/matchbone01.gif

Both the actions "ReachDown" and "Backflip" are full-body actions, 
and the feet at the end of the "Backflip" action are at a different 
location in object space than the feet at the beginning of 
"ReachDown". If I use normal NLA tools, both feet will slide along 
the floor when transitioning from the end of "Backflip" to the 
beginning of "ReachDown", creating unrealistic animation.

The feature I am building examines the action of the NLA strip above 
the "ReachDown" strip, corresponding to the place in time of the 
first frame of "ReachDown":

http://www.harkyman.com/animprop/matchbone02.gif

What happens in the GUI is that the user sets a "MatchBone" on the 
"ReachDown" strip. What happens in code is that the bone position of 
the MatchBone (in this case the main bone of the left foot, for 
example) is determined in object space at both the first frame of the 
"ReachDown" Action and the frame of "Backflip" (in this example it 
lines up with frame 23 of "Backflip") that is in line with the 
beginning of "ReachDown" in the NLA timeline.

The difference is found between the object-space matrices of the 
MatchBone in the different actions at the given frames (1 for 
"ReachDown" and 23 for "Backflip"), and cached within "ReachDown"'s 
NLA strip. This caching is cumulative, so that you can have entire 
chains of NLA strips, each possibly using a different MatchBone to 
match it's starting point to that of the preceding strip. When NLA is 
evaluated for display, the cached matrix of only the final relevant 
NLA strip is applied. When used with blendin in the NLA strip, it 
gives a smooth, anchored transition between Actions that may or may 
not line up properly within the armature's object space. This in turn 
allows you to build Actions without regard to where they take place 
within object space and align them in NLA - great for creating 
libraries of actions, and even better (later) for putting together 
animation procedurally.

Because the matrices are cached within the strips, and only the last 
one is applied at display time, the feature is very fast in effect. 
Recalculation of the caches takes place on NLA edits (resizing 
strips, moving strips, etc.).

To make this work, I need to be able to cause Blender to fill the 
pose_mat matrix for the pose_channel that corresponds to the 
appropriate bones. Since Blender will not be displaying these poses, 
and in fact they will be evaluated while an armature is under control 
of the NLA system, I don't think that the DAG is the way to go.

I almost think that I'm going to have to, for each action, 
temporarily set the armature object to evaluate the action while 
ignoring NLA, setting cfra to the action time (frame 23 in the 
"Backflip" example), evaluate the armature object, copy the matrix 
for the bone in question, then set everything back to its original 
state. In fact, it seems like that's what was done in drawarmature.c 
for ghost armature drawing. Is that the route I'm going to need to 
take on this, or is there a more direct way?
-- 
Roland Hess - harkyman


More information about the Bf-committers mailing list