Hello Folks, I am trying to animate my character through the Edit Motion Layer. With "Motion Puppet" and "Direct Puppet" I am not getting what I want. What I am not able to get with "Edit Motion Layer" is a smooth and fluent Motion. It Looks Kind of weird. More like a Robot. Doesn't look natural at all. An example: I want to have the right Hand to draw a circle, so I set about 8 Keys but the result is that the Hand draws an octagon, not a circle.  I know I can smooth paths, is there a way to do the same with Motion keys? Any suggestions?

This is a tricky thing to do in iClone. You know, you can only animate "linear" movements. There is no curve editor - one of the top wishes of the community for future releases.
You can create more then 8 keyframes. the more you create the more will your animation get closer to a circle.

But there is a workaround. Just create a path that looks like a circle and place it where the drawing takes place. Load a 3D block (a box or a ball) and conect it to the path. It should move to the beginning of the path. Now you need to use the "reach target" function of your character. You find it, where the "motion editor" is located. Just connect the hand of your character with the 3d block, which is connected to the path. Now you go to your timeline and set a new keyframe several hundret frames further. Then click the 3dblock and look for the "path" section of the "modify" tab (on the right side). There you change the "position" from 0 to 100.

The 3D block should follow the path. The hand of the character is connected to the block, so the character will do the same motion. After that you will have a lot of tweaking for the animation, but i think this will work ...

Direx

Bummer! I was hoping there was a hidden Setting for that! :-( Yes I was thinking about a path too... but it's not just a circle, it's way more complex than that. "Motion Puppet" and "Direct Puppet" are driving me crazy. In "Motion Puppet" I can't find what I Need and in "Direct Puppet" I am not getting the results I Need. I own the Mocap but even that one is not working well, I feel like I have just thrown a lot of Money out of the window. :-(
I am working on a Project where the character is presenting a product and all the motions I find, like "The Show Host", don't sync with the Story the character is telling. I tryed to cut them together, but evet that is not working because I cannot separate upper Body movements from lower Body movements. If there would be a way to mask out some parts of the Body, using just some movements from the Clip, then they would be very useful. But right now I am stuck! Oh well... Thanks for your help anyways! :-)

i agree,  and this is a huge issue for me too!  -  the motions are baked down when you try to export it to another software to fix,  so even work arounds are limited.

what you can try -  which is hit and miss,  is exporting fbx or bvh from iclone and using Ikinema http://www.ikinema.com/ 
"web animate" product to try and smooth things out  -  sometimes Daz is good at smoothing things out -  then reimport the smoothed out motion to iclone. -  sometimes it works great,  other times it does nothing or goes haywire.  

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The only mask is in the Motion Puppet, and so makes it much harder to use for any motion. I've been asking them for a mask at the outside layer for years. Go put in a request in the Feedback Tracker. http://www.reallusion.com/feedbacktracker/

That being said, there is a work around! ;) Still a PITA though.

Feeling your pain, been holding out for a solution for some time and have a hard time understanding why this highly requested feature is ignored while more bells and whistles are constantly being added. :crazy:


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a) I was going to mention the need for a "curve editor," but I didn't want to steal sw00000p's thunder.  :)
b) This is not in Feedback Tracker?  I did a search for "curve" and an obvious one is not jumping out at me.  But Reallusion is well aware of our cry for support in that area.  Much needed!!!

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

IMPORTANT UPDATE:

Of course, NOW I find the original entry.
Put your vote HERE instead:
http://www.reallusion.com/FeedBackTracker/Issue/A-Grapheditor-would-be-superb-to-extend-the-Timeline-Features

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Making it official....

Issue #562:  <---------  Do not vote for this one
http://www.reallusion.com/FeedBackTracker/Issue/Need-a-proper-Curve-Editor-for-improved-animation-control



P.S.
Hi, sw00000p.  I knew you'd chime in on this precisely because I know it's a topic you're passionate about, and I am a convert (didn't take much).  Now we just need Reallusion to join the band.

P.P.S.
Oh poo, I'm out of votes.  I think I'll have to un-vote for one so I can put one on this topic.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

and swoop side swooped and paradoxed me in this thread,  so i can't say nothin cuz I agree, swoop knows dang well how much i don't like agreeing with him,  it's like kryptonite to me!  :crying:    

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Well... so far it concernes myself... I just Need two Buttons: Linear and Smooth! Easy as that! :-)