Animations are about to get an upgrade...

immozz01

in order to make a smooth loop your end frame position needs to be same (ish) as first frame position. Im not sure if there is a build in way to do it, but perhaps suggesting a shadow image of first frame staying at its original position while you manually make a scene would be a great thing?

R_K

@immozz01 I love that idea -- it's brilliant and would be tremendously useful. Plus it fits in with one of my long-term feature goals: 3D build preview silhouettes. This is a complex feature set, but I will definitely do my best to make this happen.

mayasunrising

@R_K , I have question about turning lighting on and off using scenes; I can't seem to get any more than 2 lights to turn on/off per frame. Is there a way to have a group of say 5 or 6 turn on simultaneously, or is that a ZOS limitation?

Thank you!

R_K

mayasunrising wrote: »

@R_K , I have question about turning lighting on and off using scenes; I can't seem to get any more than 2 lights to turn on/off per frame. Is there a way to have a group of say 5 or 6 turn on simultaneously, or is that a ZOS limitation?

Thank you!

@mayasunrising That's a great question! Sadly, the answer is that it is the result of ZOS' message rate limit on that type of request (specifically, changing an item's "state"). For some odd reason, the system allows me to request 10 item moves per second without forcibly logging you out; however, exceeding an average of 2 "state change" requests per second will forcibly log you out [and quite quickly]. I requested an increase to this limit, but I was told that this restriction is a limit imposed by the Networking team over there.

immozz01

@R_K

how to make an object move properly?



if you press north, it doesn't go north, you need to figure out where north is, if you are unlucky the object is positioned SE for example and when you press N,E,W,S it will always be a sideway motion...

isn't there a way to produce a simple path from A to B (C,D would be awesome) and make an object follow that path?

and again, when you make an object go from A to B with a trigger, whats easiest option to reset the object to start again when animation is finshed?

R_K

@immozz01 All good questions... let me answer these one by one:

if you press north, it doesn't go north, you need to figure out where north is, if you are unlucky the object is positioned SE for example and when you press N,E,W,S it will always be a sideway motion...

Judging from the screen capture you included, it looks as though you are set up for "Absolute" mode. This allows you to move the selected item(s) as a group North, South, East or West; but, the thing that can be confusing in that mode is that the buttons don't rotate around -- even if North, for example, is behind you. So, whenever you use Absolute mode, just know that North points in the actual, cardinal North direction - which is whichever way the "N" is on that top compass.

Buuuut, you can switch to "Relative" mode -- which is now actually the default mode for new EHT users -- via the Settings panel (click the gear in the top-left of the window as a shortcut to get there). You'll see a drop down with "Absolute" and "Relative." Switch to Relative if you want to replace the N/S/E/W buttons with "Forward", "Back", "Left" and "Right" buttons. These buttons are more intuitive as they move the selected item(s) relative to whichever way your character is facing.

isn't there a way to produce a simple path from A to B (C,D would be awesome) and make an object follow that path?

There sure will be That's on my To Do list for EHT. Adding "key frame" functionality where you will be able to set up one or more items in Frame A, then move them to however you want them positioned in Frame B, and then have EHT automatically generate any number of frames in between. Odds are that this will initially come as a "straight line" form of "tweening" (with other methods of pathing to follow after that).

and again, when you make an object go from A to B with a trigger, whats easiest option to reset the object to start again when animation is finshed?

I apologize if you asked this of me before and I missed your question; but, if you simply want the item to appear back at the starting position, you can just save that item or group of items with a Saved Selection, in those starting positions, and use a "Saved Selection" Trigger Action with the "is" drop down set to "Restored". This will simply restore the items to those positions.

Conversely, if you want the items to return in the exact reverse path to their starting positions after an animation completes, you can load that animation Scene, and from the "Change this scene..." drop down, you can choose "Reverse Scene." Then, save that Scene as something like "Animation in Reverse" or whatever you wish. That way, you can create a second Trigger that plays that reversed Scene to move the items back to their starting positions.

I hope this helps and please let me know if you have any additional questions.

mayasunrising

immozz01 wrote: »

@R_K

how to make an object move properly?



if you press north, it doesn't go north, you need to figure out where north is, if you are unlucky the object is positioned SE for example and when you press N,E,W,S it will always be a sideway motion...

isn't there a way to produce a simple path from A to B (C,D would be awesome) and make an object follow that path?

and again, when you make an object go from A to B with a trigger, whats easiest option to reset the object to start again when animation is finshed?

I don't know what you're building @immozz01 , but it looks really amazing!

playfull_kitten

I have got it!!! Thank you R_K for your help, i finally got the snowmortals to dance. I even made a little video of it, but sadly don't know how to post it here.

If someone could help me with that, it would be much appreciated.

R_K

playfull_kitten wrote: »

I have got it!!! Thank you R_K for your help, i finally got the snowmortals to dance. I even made a little video of it, but sadly don't know how to post it here.

If someone could help me with that, it would be much appreciated.

@playfull_kitten Awesome! So glad you got it working -- and yes, we would love to see it! Also, I use YouTube to share my videos. In fact, if you already have a YouTube account, you can just post a video in just a few steps. Just find the Upload button at the top of the YouTube page that looks like this to get started:

playfull_kitten

Thanks R_K. As requested here are my dancing snowmortals.....

https://youtu.be/qy9BVGI6BHc

In hindsight i would have liked a smoother dance, but for a first try it's not so bad.

R_K

@playfull_kitten I love your video so much. And a perfect time of year to start getting into the spirit of the season. Great job, Kitten! Here it is again, embedded in the post, just for convenience:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy9BVGI6BHc&feature=youtu.be

Also, the smoothness thing is ancillary -- it still looks great. For your next animation (because I really hope you make more =P), you can check out the "Change these items..." drop down's "Link Group" option. It'll link your selected items together and then you can just animate the first (parent) item, reducing the total number of items that'll need to be animated per frame (and therefore making a more smooth animation). I plan to make a video soon to show how this works in practice.

Thank you so much for sharing!

playfull_kitten

Thank you R_K for your kind words! And yes, ofcourse i will be making another animation. But i think i'll wait for your tutorial vid first.

Gune

Is there a maximum to the amount of items that can be in a frame for a scene? Specifically when not all items in the scene will move between frames. I know about the max number of items that can be moved due to the message rate limit to the server (and the wonders grouping can do for that).

I'm planning to animate the Be Our Guest scene in the Grand Psijic Villa, which basically has a lot of smaller animations that I want to merge into one big scene. For example, the dishes will only be dancing around during part of the animation and just sit in a neutral place for most of the scene (while other things are moving). My guess is that non-moving items between frames will not have the effect of sending a message to the server, but I want to be sure to prevent me starting this extensive animation project and then finding out it's not technically possible now. I expect I'll need somewhere between 225-275 items for the whole thing.

Also, am I correct in assuming that I can get around the 3600 max frame limit by splitting an animation in multiple scenes and having the second scene trigger on a state-change in an item in the first scene (for example, a light that turns off)?

R_K

Gune wrote: »

Is there a maximum to the amount of items that can be in a frame for a scene? Specifically when not all items in the scene will move between frames. I know about the max number of items that can be moved due to the message rate limit to the server (and the wonders grouping can do for that).

I'm planning to animate the Be Our Guest scene in the Grand Psijic Villa, which basically has a lot of smaller animations that I want to merge into one big scene. For example, the dishes will only be dancing around during part of the animation and just sit in a neutral place for most of the scene (while other things are moving). My guess is that non-moving items between frames will not have the effect of sending a message to the server, but I want to be sure to prevent me starting this extensive animation project and then finding out it's not technically possible now. I expect I'll need somewhere between 225-275 items for the whole thing.

Also, am I correct in assuming that I can get around the 3600 max frame limit by splitting an animation in multiple scenes and having the second scene trigger on a state-change in an item in the first scene (for example, a light that turns off)?

@Gune You are getting quite advanced with your EHT skills! I would love to see this build when you are done with it, it sounds poised to be something epic for sure. To answer your questions:

Is there a maximum to the amount of items that can be in a frame for a scene?

I did not build any hard limit into the number of items that can participate in a given Scene or even in a given Frame of a Scene; but, as you already know regarding the 10 item moves/second limit imposed by the server, the more items that you move in a given Frame, the longer that Frame's overall display time will be. But, since you will have many different groups of items moving in different directions, this will of course be unavoidable to some degree.

Now, there are things that you can do to optimize the playback as you eluded to. For example, if you wanted to make a feasible recreation of this Be Our Guest scene (starting at 2:45 of the clip)...

https://youtu.be/afzmwAKUppU?t=165

...you would want to make 3 Linked groups of items:
* Plates
* Glasses
* Pie Dishes

and animate each individual group in a Scene of a few frames each and merge those Scenes together into a single Scene.

Keep in mind that when you animate these 3 individual Plate, Glass and Pie Dish Scenes, you will want to move only the primary (parent). If you use EHT to Link these items together, it will be the 1st item on your Selection list at the time that you click "Change these items..." > "Link Group". Targeting that item should highlight all of the other items, so you will know that you are animating the correct "parent" item.

Additionally, if you animate each group with only a handful of frames -- for instance, the Plates move just far enough so that Plate 1 is now in the position of Plate 2 -- you may be able to leverage the new "Loop" option on the "Merge Scenes" dialog. So, for example, if you have the Plates dancing in a circle, and you animate them in this way (let's say 5 Frames) and then merge that Scene into a larger, group Scene of 50 Frames, you could then check the Merge dialog's "Loop" checkbox to loop the same 5 Plate Frames over and over throughout the longer 50 Frame Scene as the two Scenes are merged together.

But ultimately, even with all of these tricks up your sleeve, any part of the final, overall Scene wherein all or even many of these items are dancing together could end up playing back very slowly unless you have only a handful (10 or fewer) parent items for all of the ~250 dancing items. Exceeding 10 groups of linked items in any part of the Scene will appear choppy as EHT will only move groups of up to 10 items "instantly" for any given Frame.

Also, seeing as there is always the possibility of a game crash causing your add-on's saved data to get lost -- granted, this doesn't [or at least shouldn't] happen often -- I would strongly recommend that you use Minion to backup your SavedVariables for \SavedVariables\EssentialHousingTools.lua (from Minion's "Backup" tab), or manually backup that file yourself, often. Additionally, I would recommend using semi-frequent "/reloadui" commands to force your saved data to disk (so basically, type "/reloadui" and then once the load screen is cleared you can make a Minion backup of your Saved Variables). This will help to ensure that you don't ever lose all of the work it sounds like you are about to put into this amazing build.

I hope this information helps - and please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or run into any issues.

R_K

@Gune Oh, and regarding this question:

Also, am I correct in assuming that I can get around the 3600 max frame limit by splitting an animation in multiple scenes and having the second scene trigger on a state-change in an item in the first scene (for example, a light that turns off)?

Yes, yes and yes. That's a simple but elegant solution to overcome that limit.

Gune

@R_K Thanks for your quick and extensive reply! All the information definitely helps.

I'll let you know when I've finished the whole thing!

mayasunrising

Gune wrote: »

@R_K Thanks for your quick and extensive reply! All the information definitely helps.

I'll let you know when I've finished the whole thing!

Please post vids! I can't wait to see it!

immozz01

boat ride is done, nothing spectacular, long animation scene to have some motion in the background to make it more "lively" when you walk around. new video will be made soonish.

@R_K still waiting on video you promised me!

Gune

mayasunrising wrote: »

Please post vids! I can't wait to see it!

Will do! I almost have all the furnishings I need, and then I can start animating. It will take me a while though as this actually is the first house I'm decorating

immozz01

@R_K you are slacking been 2 months now!




1. easy to make 1 turn in circle, now how to make them all move in circle and maintain position to each other?
2. every time I use build it somehow pops everything back to a position in the house where I made my very first build (I think), how to make it use position the items currently are? somehow item(s) pop to somewhere total different in a house and I run around wondering wth they are..
3. lets say I spin an item in a circle, can I make it turn while its spinning?

hope you can find time to answer, if you do please include details like don't forget to switch on or off move items as group etc etc

ty in advance

R_K

immozz01 wrote: »

1. easy to make 1 turn in circle, now how to make them all move in circle and maintain position to each other?
2. every time I use build it somehow pops everything back to a position in the house where I made my very first build (I think), how to make it use position the items currently are? somehow item(s) pop to somewhere total different in a house and I run around wondering wth they are..
3. lets say I spin an item in a circle, can I make it turn while its spinning?

hope you can find time to answer, if you do please include details like don't forget to switch on or off move items as group etc etc

ty in advance

On this promise, I have "slacked" for sure. :-P First, as promised, here is a quick demonstration of how to use Murkmire's new "Linking" feature to animate a group of items. In the video, I explain how to use a secondary item to form an imaginary circle between itself and the item(s) that you are animating. This should hopefully answer:

1. easy to make 1 turn in circle, now how to make them all move in circle and maintain position to each other?

https://youtu.be/im8lG_cn1L0


Regarding:

2. every time I use build it somehow pops everything back to a position in the house where I made my very first build (I think), how to make it use position the items currently are? somehow item(s) pop to somewhere total different in a house and I run around wondering wth they are..

A good question. So, the Build tab never resets itself - to allow you to begin a build and then return to it later, even if you forget to actually save it. The side effect of this is that it literally retains all settings, including the coordinates at which the build is built. For this reason, a best practice would be to use the following steps prior to any Build:

1. Create a New Selection (Select tab > "New" button).
2. Reset the Build (Build tab > "Reset" button).
3. Select your build items.
4. Build stuff.

Let me know if you have any questions about that.

As for this question:

3. lets say I spin an item in a circle, can I make it turn while its spinning?

To start, I would record the item moving around the circular path using the method that I outline in the video above; for now though, I cannot think of any way in which you could then rotate that item, as it travels along the circular path, other than manual editing of the Frames. I may be able to add a "Rotate individual items [1, 2, 3, etc] full rotation per circular rotation" drop down to the Circle template to accomplish something like this though, if you would be able to make use of it.

immozz01

what about something like yaw1 (start angle) yaw2 (end angle)? or are we loosing it now?

gj you are doing, cant say it enough.

just joined a housing guild, hundreds of members, basicly no one uses EHT... but! showed my progress on hunters and all who saw claim to start using the addon asap! (lets see first)

immozz01

https://youtu.be/QH5ji4yNNSs


was testing more creative ideas with EHT, made some lightning strikes

immozz01

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZkqBz3J0HjQ


@R_K just managed to destroy a chunk of the crown shop!!!

Mureel

Which candle is that? Murkmire?

Jaimeh

Hello @R_K! I haven't yet played around with animations (I know, late to the party ) because I'm scared it might be too complex, but I have this idea and I want to try dipping my toes in, so to speak I watched this video about animating groups of items, and I have a question: if you wanted to add an extra movement in one of the two little boats at the back in synch with the rotation, how would you go about it? Say for example you wanted for the far left boat to sway as it moves in the ciclular path, would you reposition the boat in every rotation? Or would you have to make a separate animation (and how would that work?). Thank you for your help!

immozz01

Jaimeh wrote: »

Hello @R_K! I haven't yet played around with animations (I know, late to the party ) because I'm scared it might be too complex, but I have this idea and I want to try dipping my toes in, so to speak I watched this video about animating groups of items, and I have a question: if you wanted to add an extra movement in one of the two little boats at the back in synch with the rotation, how would you go about it? Say for example you wanted for the far left boat to sway as it moves in the ciclular path, would you reposition the boat in every rotation? Or would you have to make a separate animation (and how would that work?). Thank you for your help!

i made 2 boats sail in "early" stages of EHT animation and made 2 scenes merge manually, its some work but done in minutes and looks more natural than 2 boats going in perfect circles.


its not complex, just watch his tutorials and copy what he does in your house, you will learn most tricks in like 20 minutes :P

Jaimeh

Hi @immozz01 thank you for the advice! I tried to follow the video, but failed I was trying for several hours, but I think what I want to animate is beyond my capabilty. I have a complex structure, made of many individual items, and I'm trying to make it rotate about itself (as if the boats spinned instead of orbiting, like in the video), and no matter what I did, it either went in a elliptical path, or I got an error message. If anyone has any suggestions how to do that, I would really appreciate it!

immozz01

Jaimeh wrote: »

Hi @immozz01 thank you for the advice! I tried to follow the video, but failed I was trying for several hours, but I think what I want to animate is beyond my capabilty. I have a complex structure, made of many individual items, and I'm trying to make it rotate about itself (as if the boats spinned instead of orbiting, like in the video), and no matter what I did, it either went in a elliptical path, or I got an error message. If anyone has any suggestions how to do that, I would really appreciate it!

as with everything, start with the basics, after that aim bit higher
I suggest starting with 1 item and try make it move in a desired path first

Jaimeh

immozz01 wrote: »

Jaimeh wrote: »

Hi @immozz01 thank you for the advice! I tried to follow the video, but failed I was trying for several hours, but I think what I want to animate is beyond my capabilty. I have a complex structure, made of many individual items, and I'm trying to make it rotate about itself (as if the boats spinned instead of orbiting, like in the video), and no matter what I did, it either went in a elliptical path, or I got an error message. If anyone has any suggestions how to do that, I would really appreciate it!

as with everything, start with the basics, after that aim bit higher
I suggest starting with 1 item and try make it move in a desired path first

That's the thing, it's not a path, it's a spin, I even tried it by turning it and adding individual frames one by one, but it then becomes stutter-y. Maybe the structure is too big to spin smoothly. Anyway, thanks!