Custom Object Animation Patch

Value historian isn't too bad either...

What I am going to describe is a way of thinking about programming movement that is probably not too natural for others.... hard to say!

You can feed an audio input into value historian; take the output of the audio, multiply it, add it, turn it negative, scale it to control a rotation with math so that you are getting a desirable value output- reign it in with range controls if desired. So I may watch something in render and go "oh, I want it to move back in z", and tap on my laptop surface or desk, to trigger it when I want it, while recording with the value historian. Then, I put the VH in play back mode, and set up the math for the x rotation or whatever the next param to program is.... then I plop a new value historian on the editor, and record that parameter.

You could use an audio player to trigger the movements of an "arm" of a character, by using an audio player. Or you could even use something like the kineme audio file to create a set of volume peaks that would get translated to movement when you run your qtz, without even having to "hear" the related audio.

You don't have to use audio either... you can use your trackpad, motion sensor, optical flow plugin, whatever- anything that creates a value output. You can do all of those methods either on the fly, or by recording into a value historian and playing back later.

You DO mention graph editing, so I understand that you may be saying "curse you, this doesn't answer my question at all"... I'm just conveying a thought approach that has allowed me a way of getting unique and natural movement without timelines/interpolate/lfo's. It also bears merit to try out how things look the smooth controls, as that can help with natural looking movement, if you are trying to make say, an arm move, and don't want it to look as "jerky" as the the raw values you would get from your trackpad or whatever.

Though I do have to say that on a personal level, the more I use qc.....you really can get a heck of a lot of stuff out of interpolate and lfo's especially if you get into controlling the time base externally, "work" the tension controls, use interpolates in "non repeat" over time, plug lfo's or interpolates into others to change time curve,wave types, durations, etc, on the fly, etcetera. That way of getting movement can get kinda convoluted, but I occasionally find myself conceptualizing one of those quickly and will tend to do that weirdness instead of something seemingly more straightforward, such as timelines.

I'll take a look. Thanks.

Wow, this doesn't like my MacBook Pro. I have crashed QC twice editing curves in the timeline patch. Totally workable solution for animation, however.