copy and paste keyframes between actions

[buijon]

I have my character who needs to always come from a default stance at the beginning of every action. So action "idle" he starts in his ready to fight position and breathes. His "punch" action he needs to start in his same exact ready stance then punch. However when I highlight the ready stance frames keyframes in "idle" then went to "punch" and hit paste....nothing happens. No keyframe pastes in. I tried adding a keyframe then pushing paste....nothing. So how can I make every new action start from the same pose?

[Rasheed]

I think you will need to select all points in frame 1 for every action. Your common pose should be there, in frame 1. The disadvantage is that you now cannot combine actions, because all points are used for every action.

[buijon]

i tried "select all" and it selected all of the bones....then paste in a new action....nothing. I don`t have the option to select points because i have it on the skeleton layer. Any other ideas?

[Rasheed]

I'm sorry if I was unclear about this. I meant to write: "Select all objects with the tool that animates your character in the action." So for bones animation, if you change the bone angles, select all bones and click on them in frame one with the Bone Angle tool.

However, this will not help you, so forget about it. For every action you will an equal, but opposite counter action to the common pose. So if your character, for instance, pushes forwards with his arm in an action, it should also have an action to go from that pose back to the common pose.

[Gnaws]

I think you will need to select all points in frame 1 for every action.

My apologies in advance for the noob question:

What's an "action"?

[Rasheed]

See Tutorial 5.6.

[Gnaws]

See Tutorial 5.6

D'oh!! Right.

Thanks, Bad Rash!

[artfx]

It seems the easiest way would be to build the character already in the default pose. This way the beginning keyframe is always correct and then each action has he character do the move and then return to the default pose.

[buijon]

i thought of that, but you can`t pose them in frame 0, when you use manipulate bones in frame 0 it resets to default any time to do anything else. The one other thought i had was can i nest actions? Maybe make one action called 'deafult pose' that is one frame long and insert that into every other action? Because yes he will punch and rest to default, kick reset to default etc. Thanks so far for the feedback

[Rasheed]

Animation starts in frame one, frame zero is meant for editing your character.

1. In frame one, select via the menu Bone -> Reset All Bones, to copy the keys of the Bone Angle, Selected Bone Angle, Bone Position, Selected Bone Position, Bone Scale, and Selected Bone Scale from frame zero
2. mold your skeleton to the correct position (the default pose), still in frame one
3. create a new action (or select an existing one) and insert a copy of the Mainline
4. go to another frame and mold the next pose in your action, and if needed, another pose in another frame, etc.
5. go back to the Mainline and do the same for the next actions from (3)

[buijon]

finally got it all figured out, i did what you suggested, only 'duplicated' the idle position in an action to use over and over because if i change main line and then make another action with it its different. Thanks so much for your patience.