The situation is I have a character I animated earlier in the time line. I wanted to reuse some of the animation so I collected the clip and saved it. I then imported that clip further on down the time line. The character is in the exact same position in both places. But when I bring in the motion clip the character is being placed somewhere completely different. When I look at the move and rotate values they stay the same, even though the character is somewhere else. I don't get it.

Hi Michael,

Can you check if the two top items are checked in the "Motion Settings" in the "Animation "menu?



"Align Actor Motion" tells iClone to set the root right under the pelvis at every frame.
"Reset Motion Root" tells iClone to insert the new motion at the current root position.

The two terms seem interchanged in meaning from what they should be, to me. Maybe they are.

So if "Reset Motion Root" is unchecked, the motion will be inserted at the position it was saved in. By default, both settings are checked so that whenever a motion is inserted it both tracks the root position to under the pelvis, and inserts new motions at the current root location. The last frame of a motion then always ends up being where the new motion is inserted.

Sometimes I have abdicated turning these settings off and manually aligning the motions. But this can cause major problems when you rotate the character.

Hi Rampa. It was. Here's what I've tried;
1. both settings on, like you said.
2. both settings off.
3. removing character animation before merging motion with character
4. saving motion clip with the bake animation check both on, and off.

Same thing every time, the character is thrown " 20 feetish" up and away from the ground. Yet the values in the transform menu remain the same, pre applying the motion to after applying the motion. And this would be right since the character is in the same place from where the motion clip was collected to where I want to apply it.  Which is weird, right? If the program is throwing the character away somewhere else from where it should be why didn't it show this in the transform menu? This is an old character for me, I started animating him back in May-June. And he's an import from Daz. I just need to go back and alter the ending for an animation I am doing. I wonder if the problem is something inherent with the character from the get go from back then. I can do a work around but it's going to take longer and I'd still like to figure out why it's doing this so I can avoid it in the future.

Okay I just did one final test. I cleared all animation from the character and used the motion puppet to apply a simple arm swing to the character. I then collected the clip and went a little further up the time line and under file, merged motion plus to the character. And again the character is thrown in the exact same position 20-30 feet upwards. I then went and started a new project, loaded in Mason and applied the new clip I just made and he too is thrown way up in the air. I then took the original character ( which I had previously saved as a character in the custom menu ) loaded him, and applied a NEW puppet motion. Collected and saved that, went further up the time line and loaded it back in and now it works. So there is something wrong with the original file scene that's causing all this to happen. Unfortunately I can't redo the scene because it is to complicated there are too many items in it.

Just for grins and chuckles -- where is the pivot for that character located?  Is it directly underneath the feet?

Even if it is, I think I'd bring the character into XChange again and make sure the pivot was centered at the ground.  Export again and then see if you have the same issues.

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

That would be my guess as to what's going on. If you used the "right-click/align" feature in the timeline earlier, your root (pivot) could be quite removed from your character. It being offset offset vertically is surprising though.

Hi guys. Just wanted to show you the pivot is right under his feet. He gets thrown into the middle height of the roof.

So what is it that you're merging using the Motion Plus? Are you merging facial motion? And was the character walking, or just standing still for the whole scene?

for body motion, it doesn't merge, but replaces AFAIK.

the character was talking but the motion is just applying a punching motion. I saved the motion as both motion plus ( where you choose merge ) and as a regular imotion, where you import and it does the same thing in each case.

Okay one final test so you can see what's happening. With the character selected I loaded in Mason. I cleared the character off all animation. I applied a puppet motion, an arm swing. Collected and saved that as an imotion. went up the timeline a little and imported it and the character was thrown up. Now here's where it proves there is something wrong with the scene itself and not the characters. I deselected everything, and loaded in a second Mason. Which you can see selected in the first image I am posting. I applied a puppet motion to him, collected and saved that, went up the timeline a little and imported that motion back to the character. And look what happens, it lengthens or separates the pivot from the character. Which is why he's being thrown up to the ceiling ( I guess ). The reason he's not in the same position vertically is because I slid him over a little to show him, otherwise he was hiding in the ceiling.