Customizing Transitions

A good transition links two clips together seamlessly. The motion through the transition should appear natural, as though the motion was captured as one long motion sequence. If clips do not transition smoothly, you might find it necessary to edit or customize your transitions.

• Select a biped. > Motion panel > Biped rollout > (Motion Flow Mode) > Motion Flow rollout

There are two ways to manually edit transitions:

• In the Motion Flow Graph, you can right click a transition arrow.
• If you have defined a script, highlight a clip and click the Edit Transition button.

Transitions can be edited automatically by using the Optimize Transition features. When you create a script, default transitions are set between the clips. Default transitions use minimum motion loss and are quick to compute. However, the best quality transitions are the optimized transitions. Optimized transitions use a minimum foot sliding algorithm to compute the transition and yield very good results.

Procedures

To manually customize transitions between two clips:

1. Select a biped. On the Biped rollout, turn on (Motion Flow Mode).
2. Create or load a script with at least two clips.

   For information on how to create a script, see To create Motion Flow Scripts

3. Choose the first clip in the clip list in the Scripts section on the Motion Flow rollout.
4. Click (Edit Transition) to display the Transition Editor for the selected clip and the clip following it in the list.
5. Scrub the Frame spinners in the Ghost areas of the Source Clip and Destination Clip, to find a place in both clips to start the transition.

   Two stick figures appear to help you find an appropriate start frame. The yellow figure represents the Source Clip and the red figure represents the Destination Clip.

   The stick figures can be positioned far apart during this process. Look for body motions in the two clips that will transition well.

6. In both Ghost groups, click (Set Start Frame) when you locate a good Start Frame.

   character studio repositions the destination clip for a best body fit between the two clips.

7. Set the transition duration in the Length field.

   A transition duration of 10 to 25 frames is normal.

8. Click OK.
9. Click (Play Animation) or scrub the time slider to view the transition.

To automatically customize transitions between two clips:

1. Select a biped. On the Biped rollout, turn on (Motion Flow Mode).
2. Create or load a script with at least two clips.

   For information on how to create a script, see To create Motion Flow Scripts

3. Choose the first clip in the clip list in the Scripts section on the Motion Flow rollout.
4. Click (Edit Transition) to display the Transition Editor for the selected clip and the clip following it in the list.
5. At the upper-left corner of the Transition Editor, click (Next Transition In Script).
6. Click (Optimize Transition).3ds Max opens

   the Transition Optimization dialog.

   
7. Choose either Search Entire Clip or Search Near Existing Transition, and click OK.
8. Click OK on the Transition Editor dialog.
9. Click (Play Animation) or scrub the time slider to view the transition.