I have a job that needs people to walk along paths, but also perform an action as they are doing it.
Am I able to say - hand animate and layer on top a movement - such as showing a ticket or waving as they go?
Hi @JD3D_CGI
It is not possible to edit or compose animation layers directly in Anima. However, it is possible to import biped animations already crafted in external software and exported as FBX files and then apply it to the Rigged models. More details about that process in the following documentation:
That said, regarding your the use case you described, as we introduced a new animation engine in version 5 based on neural networks, it is not possible anymore to define custom Motion Clips on the Crowd Paths because now the neural model takes care of the simulation of the Rigged models in Paths. You can still manually apply any of the motion clips available to the Socialization Areas or to the individual models directly, but not to the Crowd Paths.
There is an alternative solution that would allow the use of custom walking/running motion clips with the Rigged models.The use case is limited to going ahead in a straight line without adapting the animation to any kind of Path or Background geometry, but that might be enough in some cases**.** You can do that by importing the complete FBX clip (witht the character already walking) and setting the Clip type as “Standing / Walking”. Then drag that motion into any Rigged model present in the scene that is not attached to a Crowd path or a Socialization Area [just dropped in the viewport]. After that, the Rigged actor should play that custom animation in a loop restarting the animation in the location where it ended.
You could use this to make it walk for an unlimited time with a simple 1 second seamless walk loop. However, in your case, you would need to create the whole walking + waving sequence [including longitudinal displacement], export that animation to FBX, and then import it into Anima.