Organizing Swapsets - Is there a better way?

[spencere72333303]

Hey All,

I've working on a puppet with multiple head poses. In each head pose there's a swaps set for different mouths and eyebrows and triggers (like glasses). For each head I build a unique swapset and trigger.

Basically, I end up with a TON of what feels like redundant swapsets and triggers. Which takes forever to setup, which is fine... but when I'm in record mode it gets  a little more challenging/confusing.

For instance. I have a glasses on and off swap set for each of the 5 head positions. When I'm recording there ends up being 5 layers of glasses on and off. Add to that the mouths and hands etc etc... there's a TON of layers. It becomes really hard figure out whats what when you go in and edit the performance.

Is there a better way of doing this? What are your techniques/strategies for organizing tiggers and swapsets?

[TDFAP]

Hi Spencere, I just wanted to give you a couple things to think about. Are you actually using all 5 heads (I'm assuming with head turner behavior) with all the swap sets, glasses trigger AT ONCE? You can simplify your timeline by creating multiple puppets in a swap set that only use 1 behavior each, so that your head turned puppet is on one trigger while your mouth swap set/trigger puppet is on another. That way you only record behaviors to the timeline of the specific puppet you're using. This will prevent you from having a take recorded for EACH head unless you're using the head turner behavior.

I will admit though that for what I think you are describing, you probably want to use everything at least once during the same scene. The honest answer is that it can be a bit confusing, but there really is no way to eliminate the NEED for each take in the timeline, because your puppet actually has that many layers of control. My best advice if you aren't already aware of the keyboard shortcut, is to click into your timeline to highlight it, and then press ~ which will make the timeline fullscreen, and make it a tad easier to work with. Press ~ again and you're back to record mode.