Animate same asset twice

Omniverse Apps USD Composer (Create)
1

Hi,

I want to animate one asset (a plane for instance) two times. In one animation I want it to go in one direction and in the other one I want i to rotate. Is that possible? And when I want to render it, how do I choose which animation should be active/rendered?

2

Hello @Jack_Jensen! I sent your question over to the animation team to help!

3

That’s the great thing about USD. You can have these on separate additive layers and add them together.

So you can have one layer called “directionAnimation.usd” and another layer above it called “rotationAnimation.usd” and the animation of rotation will be added to the layers below it (translate).

Then if you turn on/off any layer, you will activate/deactivate the associated changes with that particular layer.

4

I dont get it to work. How would I set it up?

I have a cube in the root layer.
Should I activate Layer1 and animate a translation there?
And then activate Layer2 and animate the rotation there?

When I try to do that it just says “Overridden in multiple layers”

image
image404Ă—544 23.4 KB

5

Same problem here, I get a similar error when switching to another layer to update.

6

So in this scenario, what you would want to do is:

  • open a new stage
  • bring your cube in as a new layer
  • create an animation layer above the cube layer & animate on that layer (not the root layer)

What that allows you to do is:

  • changes to the cube are able to be brought in such as materials etc still on the cube layer
  • animation is now separated out and applied to the cube through the animation layer, think of this like an additive layer in Photoshop

That way, if you want to change the animation, you can; or if you want to have additional animation choices, you can have different layers you turn on/off.

One of the powers of USD is this layering concept. There is no “Right” way to do this for everyone’s pipeline to be exactly the same, so experiment to find the workflow you find best. Some studios have each department have their own layer; others separate it less or more depending on their scale. But the ability to change things without destroying the original item is super poweful.

7

I should also mention that there are a number of animation features and improvements made in the new 2022.1.0 Beta that would make these workflows even easier such as a graph editor and more. Check it out!
Release Notes — Omniverse Create documentation (nvidia.com)

8

Thanks, I tried and it works. So I guess the rule of thumb is to import all assets separately?

9

No problem!

I think there is no real rule of thumb, it is highly dependent on what you would like to do.

Many studios for instance bring all the characters and animation in one one layer, then the lighting for a particular shot on another layer. Then some put the materials and shading for the characters as choices with the character layer while others do that as a separate layer.

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