Animating weepy character

[Silver Quill]

Hello,

I'm attempting to create a rig for an animated character and am running into a problem with an animated sequence in a time-remapped composition. It may be easier to explain using this recording:

Each facial feature has a one second in the composition. Appreciate any ideas. Thanks!

[Dan Ebberts]

You can probably do it, depending on how you're animating the slider. If you use a slider keyframe for each facial pose, then you could have a time remap expression that finds the most recent slider keyframe and just uses that value unless it's pose 6, in which case it uses 6 plus how long it's been since the keyframe (you'd probably need that to loop if it could be longer than the animation). In any case, quite do-able if you provide more detail.

[Silver Quill]

Let's see what I can provide.

The tears are indeed the 6th possible pose, though I can rearrange them. It runs for 29 frames before being intended to loop back to the first.

I have a time remap going for the tears sub-composition, but I haven't done anything with it yet. I could always make the tears a separate comp. It's more for convenience if I can make it work within the larger comp and selectable by the slider.

[Dan Ebberts]

It's hard to see enough detail in your video to catch the comp and layer names, but it appears that your tears subcomp is inside another comp (along with the other poses?), which is itself time remapped with an expression tied to your slider. That expression is where I would see this happening, but I don't have enough info to give you something you could just drop into that time remap property. However, it would look something like this:

s = effect("Eyebrow Tear")("Slider");
n = 0;
if (s.numKeys > 0){
  n = s.nearestKey(time).index;
  if (time < s.key(n).time) n--;
  if (n > 0){
    val = s.key(n).value;
  }else{
    val = s.key(1).value;
  }
}else{
  val = s.value;
}
if (val == 6 && n > 0){
  val + (time - s.key(n).time)%framesToTime(29);
}else{
  val;
}

[Silver Quill]

I appreciate the expression template. Sadly, I wasn't able to impliment it correctly but I also realize that I'm making this more complicated than necessary.

What if I added an expression to the time remap where the Slider's position (1 through 6) was the start point and the composition played for 29 frames before looping back to the same Slider point? That way, each expression would loop in blocks of 29 frames, which no one would notice unless the facial feature was likewise animated.

I'm not very strong at scripting so I can only imagine modifying the LoopOut expression.

[Dan Ebberts · Accepted solution]

I think that would only make a slight difference:

s = effect("Eyebrow Tear")("Slider");
n = 0;
if (s.numKeys > 0){
  n = s.nearestKey(time).index;
  if (time < s.key(n).time) n--;
  if (n > 0){
    val = s.key(n).value;
  }else{
    val = s.key(1).value;
  }
}else{
  val = s.value;
}
if (n > 0){
  val + (time - s.key(n).time)%framesToTime(29);
}else{
  val;
}

[Silver Quill]

We're close but not quite there. The new expression works for the sliding control aspect but the tears are still fixed.

Hopefully this newer screenshot is easier to read.

[Dan Ebberts]

The expression will really only work if the slider has keyframes.

[Dan Ebberts]

This might work without keyframes:

s = effect("Eyebrow Near")("Slider");
n = 0;
if (s.numKeys > 0){
  n = s.nearestKey(time).index;
  if (time < s.key(n).time) n--;
  if (n > 0){
    val = s.key(n).value;
  }else{
    val = s.key(1).value;
  }
}else{
  val = s.value;
}
if (n > 0){
  val + (time - s.key(n).time)%framesToTime(29);
}else{
  val + time%framesToTime(29);
}

[Silver Quill]

Oh wow! I didn't realize about the keyframes. Works great as soon as I added them. Further proof I need to learn about expressions and coding.

I'll give the other script a go as well but this solves my challenge either way. Thank you!