peg keyframing problems

Hi,
I’m having terrible problems using pegs. Sometimes if I try to copy and paste a keyframe the pasted frame is not in the same position. For example, if I try to copy a keyframe from my body peg which holds the legs and feet, when I paste it all the pieces are placed all over. It looks like it blows up. I have had problems with pegs for a long while so I would appreciate your help. Also is there a way to reposition pegs so my rotation points are where I want them to be? Everytime I try to do that I get the exploding pieces problem.

It might help if you could be more specific about what you are trying to do. It sounds like you are trying to copy keyframed parameters from a parented peg to some other element not parented by that same peg. If you have elements attached to a peg then I don’t believe you can just ignore that hierarchial relationship. When dealing with pegs you create relationships between elements and those relationships influence what you can do and how things work.

As to rotation points and pegs, if you set the rotation or pivot point with the transform tool and then deselect the element, the rotation point reverts to the default position. If you want the rotation point to be set and maintained at a new location you need to set it using the rotation tool in the camera view window. -JK

Let me give a more concrete example of what I do which results in the explosion of my character’s parts. I have one peg for my character’s leg, a peg or the character’s foot is parented to the leg peg. When I try to copy or move a keyframe from the leg peg to another place on the leg peg’s timeline, the result is that the leg has moved relative to the character’s body.

My peg heirarchy usually has one master peg for the whole character, then next down are the head and body, these then contain their respective parts and so on. I often run into the problem that when I want to move or copy keyframes from the main peg the result is that one or multiple pegs in my heirarchy when coppied are moved relative to their original position. The result sometimes looks like an explosion of pieces and othertimes it simply moves the parts to another position relative to the keyframe it was copied from.

Yup, I’m having the exact same problem, among others. I must say that TBS is the least intuitive piece of software I’ve tried. Strange things happen all the time for no apparent reason. I’ve only used it for a couple of weeks, but in sceneplanning mode I still can’t rig a simple charachter and animate a walkcycle without strange stuff happening, like limbs suddenly moving to inches away from the body when I paste a keyframe. Or rotation pivot points suddenly appears in new places (and yes; I have red all the posts, seen all the tutorials, even bought a couple of them). I’ve been working as an animator for ten years and TBS seem so right for my use if I just could figure it out.

Hope the following helps:

I’ve experienced similar problems with pegs but I think I’ve figured it out. I’m cutting and pasting pegs successfully at this juncture. I am not a TB staffer, so if you are a staffer and reading this and the advice I’m giving is incorrect, please correct me.

It seems that pegs in the timeline are relative to the previous peg and the next peg. That’s the key. You can only get predictable behavior cutting and pasting pegs if you remember that and “anchor” your cut-and-paste motion to two known pegs. Take, for example the following sequence: I have a character move his head to the right, then to the left, then to the right again, then down. Now if I cut and paste the middle “left-right” sequence after the down movement, you might expect my character’s head to mimick the same exact positions as the middle sequence, but it doesn’t because the head’s relative position is changed. You might think the head will stop moving at the last peg that I pasted. But it doesn’t, because at the very end of my head-peg, I’ve got an end-peg that leaves the character’s head in the same position it started. So, after the final “right” movement, the head will continue to drift, slowly, back to the end position, which I set.

Further, there’s the function editor to take into consideration. Taking a look at it might help. What it will demonstrate is that when you start to play with motion paths, you’ve got 3 planes in which your object can be moved. So, sometimes, you may not even be aware of the spatial variables affecting your object/character. The function editor can help you. I’ve found it’s easier to zero out the effects of unwanted pegs in the function editor. When the motion and rotation and scale and camera trucks start to pile up, I have found that the just looking at the timeline won’t tell me the whole story.

I hope this helps. Check out my cartoon at http://hassleheadnews.blogspot.com and see if what I’m doing is anything like what you’re trying to do. There’s only one there but I’ll be coming out with another later this week that’s a little more “cartoony” because of feedback I’ve received here. Alternatively, email me if you think I can help at: castingtalent-at-gmail-dot-com.

Cheers and hope this helps.