??? This is a basic question from a newbie. After I create a basic cutout animation scene using pegs, I want the same characters and props to then go on to perform different actions.
It seems the best way to do this is to start a new scene using the same characters and props in the same final positions of the old scene. Those characters and props would be attached to new pegs with different motions from the first scene.
How do I transfer the characters and props and their last 3-D scene positions to a subsequent scene?
There are lots of ways to attack this production problem. Just to satisfy my own approach to cinematography I need to preface my answer to your question by pointing out that by definition a scene is a single location environment experienced from one or more view points, shots. So if the environment, location and the props are all the same, you normally would just create several shots all in the same scene. I’ve written about this approach before in some of my articles.
As to answering your specific question. One solution would be to create a new peg element to act as a “scene peg”. Move it to the top of your scene’s time line then select all the tracks in your scene by holding down the “shift” key as you select them and then dragging them all on top of the “scene peg” so as to attach them to this peg. Then you collapse the scene peg and drag it and all of its attached children tracks to your local library. Now you just need to create a new scene and drag this template you just created in your local library down to the time line of your new scene. You will now have an exact copy of your previous scene. Everything will be there. Next you will want to use a combination of the “remove keyframe” or “remove all keyframes” commands to remove the unwanted keyframes. You can also adjust your new scenes total frames as desired. If you are careful you should be able to get the result you want with this approach. There are easier ways to just create additional shots within an existing scene and you might want to read the following article CREATING MULTIPLE SHOTS IN A SINGLE SCENE to get some insights on that approach. -JK
Thank you. I had read your articles, which had given me ideas on tackling this problem. Your fish example showed how to use a duplicate of the object to provide different actions to the same (apparent) object.
In experimenting, I found that as long as the copied object remained on its peg, it would keep the same 3-D space coordinates as the original. However, if I tried to unhook it from the parent peg, it would revert to some default coordinates.
Let us know if you have any additional questions. You sound like you are making good progress. -JK