Cycle Layers - Questions about Pause Layers and Trigger modes

[bbryabb]

Hi.  I have a few "cycle layers" setups with multiple 'sections' implemented with the 'pause layers' function.

For example, the character lifts up a drink, pauses, then drinks it, pauses, then lowers it.  Each section is triggered by hitting the same key.

I'm finding that my rig is really fragile, and if I press the wrong key, or press keys too quickly, it starts to break apart.

- If I hit the trigger key repeatedly without waiting for each "section" of the cycle to finish, then the entire cycle restarts from the beginning.  Meaning, it is interpreting my trigger to mean"restart the cycle" rather than "continue to the next section". 

- If i trigger a gesture, starting a cycle, and then hit a DIFFERENT trigger for a different gesture on the same arm (they are attached to the same group, with "Hide Others in Group" checked), then things get really funky.  Nothing seems to happen immediately, but once the first cycle is finished, the second cycle is suddenly visible at its "pause" position.

- I am confused about how the "Latch" option on Trigger reconciles with the "Continue After" option of "Cycle Layers".  They seem to potentially kinda contradict each other.

Sorry, kinda hard to explain this.  Let me know if thinks makes any sense!

Thanks,

Bryan

[oksamurai]

Yes, I believe this is a current limitation of pause layers - you have to wait for the cycle to pause before triggering it again or it gets confused. I made this quick example where 1 makes the green dots go in a sequence until they pause as red, and ran into the same issue you did. https://adobe.ly/2tuYKcd. Agreed, there's a lot of contradictory stuff in there - we added it as a bandaid to a workflow that probably needs some more thought.

[CoSA_DaveS]

- If I hit the trigger key repeatedly without waiting for each "section" of the cycle to finish, then the entire cycle restarts from the beginning.  Meaning, it is interpreting my trigger to mean"restart the cycle" rather than "continue to the next section".

Yes that's the current design. If you hit the trigger before it gets to the Cycle Pause frame, what would you want it to do? (You mention "continue to the next section" -- but that's what it would do if you _didn't_ hit the trigger again, so do you just want to ignore such a trigger?)

- If i trigger a gesture, starting a cycle, and then hit a DIFFERENT trigger for a different gesture on the same arm (they are attached to the same group, with "Hide Others in Group" checked), then things get really funky.  Nothing seems to happen immediately, but once the first cycle is finished, the second cycle is suddenly visible at its "pause" position.

What's happening is the 2nd trigger is starting, but the 1st Cycle hasn't finished (assuming you have On Trigger End = Let Cycle Finish). Try setting it = Stop Immediately.

- I am confused about how the "Latch" option on Trigger reconciles with the "Continue After" option of "Cycle Layers".  They seem to potentially kinda contradict each other.

Yeah, it's confusing.

Two triggers with Latch enabled on layers in the same group will de-latch each other. In other words, if you have two hand positions Up and Down assigned to keys U and D, with Latch on both: after pressing and releasing U, it will be latched down (showing the Down hand). At that point, pressing U again will unlatch it, as would pressing D.

That latching/de-latching happens first, and then the Cycle Layers decision as to whether to unpause or not is made (for each layer, independently, that was just triggered/untriggered).

We're working on making the triggering situation clearer/simpler, especially to record & edit.

[bbryabb]

Hey Dave, thanks a lot for the detailed answer!

You ask a good question about what the expected behavior is if you hit the trigger before one 'step' of the animation has finished.  I guess my expectation is that the app maintains a smooth performance on the rig - in this case if I hit it too early, the "arm gesture" (or whatever it is) will always appear to "jump" back to the beginning, which I think is never something you'd want.  Well, at least with an arm gesture.  In this case I think I'd prefer if it either ignored the trigger completely (maybe thats the most sensible thing), or if it "queued" the trigger, so that once the animation finished for the first step, it moved right on to the next one.  Just a thought...

For the other issue, the Stop Immediately thing does work well, but doesn't cover the style of the rig I'm doing which requires some animation to "turn off" an arm gesture (The arm returns down).  I honestly have found that the best way to do arms like this is to NOT use Latch, and to use the "Hold on Last Layer" and "Forward and Reverse" options - this works well in my case and I'm trying to use that as much as I can.