How to paste rotation keyframes on single Translate channel?

spineappletree

Hi,

In v4 I want to copy the rotation-keyframes in the Translate Y channel of another bone. I thought I could do this before, but it doesn't seem to work (now). How can we paste rotation-keyframes on a single translate channel?

[edit] The same goes for copying the Translate X keyframes to the Translate Y channel of the same bone; for some reason it's saying it pasted keyframes, but they don't appear in the Graph, even though the Graph is selected during paste.

Thanks!

Nate

You can't paste rotate keys to a translate timeline. It doesn't make sense to use rotation values (degrees) for translation (position).

You can copy translate X keys and paste them to the same or a different bone, but that bone must have separate translation checked (note it is per animation). Spine doesn't automatically check or uncheck separate translation because that can mess with your existing keys. In 4.1 we'll likely show a dialog or a toast message to make it more clear what is happening.

spineappletree

Nate wrote
You can't paste rotate keys to a translate timeline. It doesn't make sense to use rotation values (degrees) for translation (position).

I have a moustage that's divided into two parts which rotates up when the person speaks. When these rotations happen I also want other parts of the face to move up with a translation. So it makes perfect sense to me to not have to do that animation by hand again, but copy the keyframes instead. In the end these are just numbers and we can scale and flip these keyframes and move them to another center, so if we're able to paste the keyframes unto the translate channel that makes it a ton less work.

Any chance this could be added to the program?

Nate wrote
You can copy translate X keys and paste them to the same or a different bone, but that bone must have separate translation checked (note it is per animation). Spine doesn't automatically check or uncheck separate translation because that can mess with your existing keys. In 4.1 we'll likely show a dialog or a toast message to make it more clear what is happening.

Yes, I have seperated the translate channels and I would like to copy 'translate X' to 'translate Y' of another (or the same) bone, but it doesn't seem to work. Is there something holding back in making this possible?

Nate

If you have a key that rotates a bone 200 degrees, why would you want to paste that key as translation 200 pixels? The chances that this is ever useful seems pretty slim.

It sounds like what you want is not copy/pasting rotation keys to translation, but instead you want a constraint that positions a bone based on the rotation of another bone. We do have plans to add that.

Note when you say "key" in Spine it means a stored value on the timeline, as shown in the dopesheet and graph.

Pasting an X key to a Y timeline isn't possible. It's more likely to be useful than pasting rotation to translation, but it's not allowed just because we didn't expect anyone to find it useful. Can you describe more about what you are wanting to achieve?

spineappletree

Nate wrote
If you have a key that rotates a bone 200 degrees, why would you want to paste that key as translation 200 pixels?

Please see my previous post where I described this in detail.

Nate wrote
The chances that this is ever useful seems pretty slim.

Not for me. I'd use this a lot as it's a huge time saver.

Nate wrote
It sounds like what you want is not copy/pasting rotation keys to translation, but instead you want a constraint that positions a bone based on the rotation of another bone. We do have plans to add that.

No, that's not what I'm after, as I need to be able to edit the keyframes after pasting and change the timing and/or values.

Nate wrote
Note when you say "key" in Spine it means a stored value on the timeline, as shown in the dopesheet and graph.

Yes

Nate wrote
Pasting an X key to a Y timeline isn't possible. It's more likely to be useful than pasting rotation to translation, but it's not allowed just because we didn't expect anyone to find it useful.

Nate wrote
Pasting an X key to a Y timeline isn't possible.

That's unfortunate. I find this very useful for reasons as described and see it as being a huge time saver.

Nate wrote
Pasting an X key to a Y timeline isn't possible. It's more likely to be useful than pasting rotation to translation, but it's not allowed just because we didn't expect anyone to find it useful. Can you describe more about what you are wanting to achieve?

Yes, of course; I want to copy the keyframes from the X channel to the Y channel. For basically the same reasons I'd like to copy keyframes from a Rotation channel (single value) to a single X or Y Translate channel (or shear or scale for that matter in other occasions). See above.

Would it be possible to make all single-channel keyframes interchangable in the future for copy'n'pasting? That would be awesome! 8)

warmanw

Hi spineappletree,
What you want to achieve is very clear and makes perfect sense. How you want to achieve that has no sense to me.
If you paste rotation key that contains 30 degree value, to the cheek bone it might fall off from the face while you might need to move cheek by tiny bit 2 value or so.
why would you want that.

Maybe you want to have the exact timing as rotation timeline has? so you can adjust the cheek bone manually knowing where exactly rotation happens.

Nick

Obviously, he needs a kind of Transform Contraint that could map rotation to translation.

spineappletree

warmanw wrote
Hi spineappletree,
What you want to achieve is very clear and makes perfect sense. How you want to achieve that has no sense to me.
If you paste rotation key that contains 30 degree value, to the cheek bone it might fall off from the face while you might need to move cheek by tiny bit 2 value or so.
why would you want that.

Maybe you want to have the exact timing as rotation timeline has? so you can adjust the cheek bone manually knowing where exactly rotation happens.

Thanks for your response. All I want is to COPY the keyframes and PASTE them on another track. This cannot be done with any constraint because I need to be able to edit the keyframes afterwards; to offset the timing, perhaps change some values by individual key, add and remove keyframes on the destination channel etc.. It's not an issue at all that the range of the source and target channels differ, as we can easily scale the keyframe range within the Graph editor and move them to another position of that value after pasting. We can even flip the values if we want to invert the range.

Nick wrote
Obviously, he needs a kind of Transform Contraint that could map rotation to translation.

No I don't want a transform as already written in a previous post. See my previous posts.

I just want to be able to copy a range of keyframes, which are expected to be just simple singular number values, to another cannel which also can have simple singular keyframe values. Sometimes from Translate X to Translate Y, other times from Translate X to Rotation or Scale or Shear.
You guys make it appear as if this a weird thing, but I think it's not at all. I am very surprised this doesn't work out of the box as to me it's a simple thing which is a very important tool to use and as written before can be a huge time saver in lots of situations. Sometimes you just want copies of keys and edit them and not have everything completely the same as other channels. For one to make stuff look more natural and not 'too perfect' and not 'in sync'. But also to offset the timing or just use as a base track for a new part of the animation without having to create all hundreds of keys again, which obviously is a pain. These are just examples.

Nick

Obviously, he needs a kind of Transform Constraint that could map rotation to translation.

No I don't want a transform as already written in a previous post. See my previous posts.

Oops, I didn't read the post very carefully.

I am just wondering, may be what you really want is the position of keys for you to know about where you need to create keys to sync with another timeline? If that is the case, would it be solution if you are able to pin, lock and highlight a timeline in the timelines view so that you can see both the referencing timeline and the timeline you are editing at the same time? Not sure if this is what you want but from time to time I would imagine having this feature.

As for your suggestion, that could create confusion/chaos when people don't know about this feature seeing their copied value pasted to something else. Not to mention the paste action will require an accurate selection after the change which could slow down the workflow. Just saying that this requires careful implementation.

spineappletree

Nick wrote
Oops, I didn't read the post very carefully.

I am just wondering, may be what you really want is the position of keys for you to know about where you need to create keys to sync with another timeline?

Looks like there still is a misunderstanding after reading my post: I wrote it to be not 'in sync'. I made a little correction now, hopefully it's clear for other people too now.

It's not that hard what I'm after and it's explained very well with all the concrete details by now why we need this and why this is impossible with Spine right now.

@Nate It's been one week since my last question to you. I see you are answering pretty much every day on the forum so I had expected a response by now. Could you please add this request to the list? Or answer with concrete points on why it's not accepted as a feature request?
Thank you

Nate

I understand the feature request. I still think it's not useful to paste key values to a dissimilar timeline (eg translate to scale, rotate to translate, etc). That would give you keys on the same frames, but almost certainly not the values you need. I do see your point that with the 4.0 graph we can manipulate the pasted key values to try to make them useful. I suppose in some cases that could work out, even if in most cases it's unlikely the differences between the key values would happen to be what you need, and that can't be fixed by translating or scaling a box selection.

Ultimately I think allowing pasting across dissimilar timelines doesn't hurt and we can enable it in a future version. I've made a note on this related issue. There may be an issue with how to select a particular timeline, as we currently don't have direct selection. Instead it's based on the viewport or tree selection and what tool is active, which doesn't work for all timeline types.

spineappletree

Nate wrote
I understand the feature request.

Great! 🙂

Nate wrote
I still think it's not useful to paste key values to a dissimilar timeline (eg translate to scale, rotate to translate, etc). That would give you keys on the same frames, but almost certainly not the values you need.

Yeah, everybody has his/her own view. That's the beauty of creativity! Together we all have different perspectives and creative thinking and together we built this world while everybody had his/her own contribution by using his/her creativity and background. Didn't most new inventions came from people who saw things others did't yet, or had a different or other creative perspective?! :smirk:

Nate wrote
I do see your point that with the 4.0 graph we can manipulate the pasted key values to try to make them useful. I suppose in some cases that could work out, even if in most cases it's unlikely the differences between the key values would happen to be what you need, and that can't be fixed by translating or scaling a box selection.

Great! 🙂

Nate wrote
Ultimately I think allowing pasting across dissimilar timelines doesn't hurt and we can enable it in a future version.

Even greater! 🙂 🙂

Nate wrote
I've made a note on this related issue.

Thanks a lot! 🙂

Nate wrote
There may be an issue with how to select a particular timeline, as we currently don't have direct selection. Instead it's based on the viewport or tree selection and what tool is active, which doesn't work for all timeline types.

I understand.

Looking at the existing feature request I'm hoping it doesn't take another 4 years before this makes the top of the backlog though. 😉 And I'm pretty confident that people will start using this feature once it's available as people will start to see it's added value!

Thanks again and have a nice day!