Global PLAY button (like in After Affects)?

[skinnytorus]

Hi, all.
I realize all too well that sMode is made with live performance in mind, but I really can't figure how to make the scene play altogether without manually pressing Play for each animation in the scene.

I got really stuck trying to animate noise offset in the Position Noise Modifier. The Play button in the default timeline plays just keyframes which I can't create to animate the Position Noise offset. Is there a way to animate noise offset other than through creating an independent Transport bar? Thank you.

P.S. I'm terribly sorry, guys if I misused the category, but I couldn't find any other one suitable for my question.

[francis]

Hi @skinnytorus,

Each time you have a transport, you have basically two options to animate it:

• either thanks a local player => this will make the whole thing standalone and it's when you activate your compo that the animation starts,
• or by putting it into an existing timeline to link it with the rest of the animation.

To do the latter:

1. Ensure you have a timeline (when creating a compo you can check the "create timeline" option, or latter on create a timeline with right click menu)

2. Go into "normal view"

3. Press alt+click to create a block for your effect containing the noise. This block will control the transport of the effect
4. You can then configure playing options of the block (or create multiple blocks if needed, or do not automate activation if you want to keep the effect always active):

Space bar is a shortcut you can then use to play the global timeline as in AE.

Important note: if you want your timeline (or any other cue) to start when you activate your compo, you've to put it's launch mode into "restart with activation":

Does that answer your question?

ps: I simply created a new category called "Questions" and moved this topic into it.

[skinnytorus]

Yey!!! The new category is just what the doctor ordered!
Many thanks for the detailed explanation. I do appreciate your quick response.

Now to business:
The alt+click combination seemed to do the trick which is just wonderful. However, along with solution, it brought around a couple of problems. Below I will try to describe my workflow step by step:
1) I create a new compo with a Timeline.
2) I create a Grid Points 3d layer.
3) I right-click the Grid Points 3d layer and add a Position Noise modifier.
4) I go to Timeline and set my view to Norm (yellow)
5) When in Timeline I unroll the Grid Points list and select the Position Noise modifier.
6) I alt+click in timeline and it creates a clip for the Position Noise modifier.
What I see is this screen:

As you can see, my screen is different from yours. And here comes the first problem: Yes, I can now
animate the noise, but I can't control it's offset direction (xyz). Besides, how do I control the other noise parameters within this newly created clip?

The second problem is that from this point on I'm unable to resize the clip by stretching it in the Timeline.
Whenever I try to stretch it's beginning or end, the cursor becomes a double-sided arrow and once I start stretching sMode freezes dead on me. Force-closing the application is the only way to go then... Perhaps that's just another bug?...

FYI, here's my full specs:

Smode Synth 7.2 version 7.2.588.f575f85

OS Type: 64 bits

CPU Threads: 12
_CPU Manufacturer: Intel _
CPU Version: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3930K CPU @ 3.20GHz
CPU Socket: LGA2011
CPU External Clock Speed: 100MHz
CPU Max Speed: 4000MHz
CPU Current Speed: 3200MHz
_CPU Features: MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, AVX, _

BIOS Vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
BIOS Release Date: 07/25/2014
BIOS Version: 4801
BIOS System Version: 4.6
BIOS Firmware Version: 255.255

Mother Board Manufacturer: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
Mother Board Name: P9X79 PRO
Mother Board Revision: Rev 1.xx

Memory size: 16325 MBytes

OpenGL vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL render: GeForce GTX 780/PCIe/SSE2 version: 3.3.0 NVIDIA 376.09
OpenGL shading language version: 3.30 NVIDIA via Cg compiler

[francis]

For the first point, maybe you miss another strategical action which is to drag and drop the parameter you want to animate inside the timeline to enable animating it. Note also here that I used the "full width layout" button to have a larger timeline:

For the second problem: indeed there is a bug for rescaling blocks associated to infinite transports.
To workaround it, select your block and activate an "out" point corresponding to the length you want:

Once it has a finite length the block then becomes resizeable normally.

I know leave to week end, so further answers next week

[skinnytorus]

I see now. My problem was that in your example you used a simple noise layer rather than the noise from
the Position Noise modifier. That's why I didn't see the offset controls available for the noise layer in my setup.
It's just that the Position Noise modifier doesn't allow us to modify it's offset direction at all.

So... That might be a good point for one of the future sMode releases. OK for the infinite clips stretch bug.
Hopefully it'll be fixed soon.

But there is another issue of graphical nature. Compare these screenshots:

Your clip:

Mine:

Is that a bug or you just run a newer sMode version?

P.S. Francis, don't bother to answer my ramblings while you're away. I respect your well deserved leisure time. Just have a nice weekend.

[francis]

Yep, I'm on Smode 7.3
Good news: it will make it public very soon and brings a number of improvements on timelines!

[skinnytorus]

Very cool!
Can't wait to lay my hands on the new version. Any spoilers?

[francis]

Well, I can tell you that timelines are an active topic

[skinnytorus]

Cool! By the way, you might want to add a new category called Announcements to the forum and publish the latest news and release notes in there.

[francis]

Good suggestion for the "Announcements" category, we'll do this.
About blocks referring to infinite-length transports, I just made a bunch of fixes that will be integrated in 7.3.

[skinnytorus]

Good to hear that! Many thanks, Francis! As I said, I can't wait to try out the new release!