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Animation Help: Object Rotation without pauses

Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 11:01 am
by Tweek
I have a few Ages which have animated objects in. One of which has a floating statue like the one found in Eder Kemo. I have it animated to slowly rotate 360 degrees however at the end of its cycle before the animation loops it freezes for about a second before starting again.

Does anyone know what I would need to do to have a continuous smooth rotation animation? I'm still pretty new to animating objects and textures.

Re: Animation Help: Object Rotation without pauses

Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 11:43 am
by dendwaler
I recognize the problem because i have the same issue by some objects.

Are you using Blender?
If so then in the IPO curve window choose the pull down menu " Curve"
There you find " Extend mode" and choose for cyclic extrapolation.

For Max i don't know.

Re: Animation Help: Object Rotation without pauses

Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 12:08 pm
by Tweek
Ah yes should have clarified sorry, yes I am working in Blender.

I will check that out, thanks.

Re: Animation Help: Object Rotation without pauses

Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 12:22 pm
by Karkadann
I was just poking around and found out in Max under the Curve editor, one of the key tangents buttons called "tangents to Linear" does the trick

What it seems to do is take the animation represented by a curved line at an angle shaped a little like an "s" and straighten it out so its a straight line at an angle.
I also noticed if you don't rotate the object exactly 360 degrees it skips
Im kinda new as well But I like to experiment which is how I get a lot of my answers, that and bits and pieces of all the tutorials available.

Good luck and if it aint fun, put it a-side and work on something else,
which is why I have so many prefixes reserved,
I always have about 2 or 3 projects going at a time and merge or import them later.

Re: Animation Help: Object Rotation without pauses

Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 12:58 pm
by dendwaler
Oh and don't forget to delete your sav file after each export when you changed anything on an animation.
Otherwise nothing will be changed!

I have been searching for about a month for it.

Re: Animation Help: Object Rotation without pauses

Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 8:09 pm
by Tweek
I tried that out but it did not seem to solve the issue, the animation still pauses.

Re: Animation Help: Object Rotation without pauses

Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2012 4:52 am
by tachzusamm
Question: Does it pause the animation in Blender as well when you animate your object there, using Alt-A or sliding the frames?

Re: Animation Help: Object Rotation without pauses

Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2012 6:25 am
by D'Lanor
For rotations I have the habit to set RotZ in the last frame to slightly less than 360 degrees. I don't know if that makes the difference but my rotations do come out smooth.

Many people set RotZ to 0 in their first frame and 360 in the last. However, that makes the effective rotation at the start and at the end the same which may cause calculation problems.

Re: Animation Help: Object Rotation without pauses

Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2012 6:35 am
by Tweek
I'll take a look at it, could be that is what is causing the issue.

Re: Animation Help: Object Rotation without pauses

Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2012 12:52 pm
by Tweek
Well I had followed suggestions without a great deal of luck. I set the rotation just under 360 degrees but it did a weird glitchy thing when it got to the end.

However, I have now fixed the issue with the help of Nadnerb.
Nadnerb wrote:By default animations use cubic splines, that means objects slow to a stop before reversing direction or ending motion in any axis. You need to open up the curve editor and change them to use linear interpolation if you want something to have constant motion


I figured I'd share what he said just in case it helps others in the future.