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Home ? Feedback ? Object Lock doesn't work properly.

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10/11/2013 21:18:08

primaveranz
primaveranz
Posts: 520 		Having been caught out several times by the inability to undo object movement caused by collisions and the lack of "snap-to" abilities. I have now got into the careful habit of locking every single object I put in place before adding another. But just now, after editing an existing movie I decided to add one more object. As usual this fell from the sky and landed on my locked road. No problem - it was locked.
I confidently changed the scale of the new object as it lay there and it knocked the locked road out of alignment!
So I have had to close Muvizu without saving in order to restore things exactly as they were.
At least I have only lost 5 mins work now because I am also paranoid about saving my work regularly due to the instability of the software.

Why does locking not work when a touching object is rescaled? The scaled object should move instead because it is not yet locked

Why can't objects be defaulted to "Float in Air" so they don't fall and catch out the unwary who have not locked everything on the set?
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10/11/2013 21:35:34

ziggy72Muvizu mogulExperimental user
ziggy72
Posts: 1988 		Once again, welcome to the club Everything should default to 'floats' on import, Lock should actually mean lock, and Muvizu's own objects shouldn't sabotage your set simply by using or resizing them, and yet...

It's all down to the inbuilt physics y'see, and although we've been asking (for years) for the option to turn these off we've never been given the option. Come on HQ, is it really that hard to remove abilities from the program?
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11/11/2013 01:32:02

Rebel
Rebel
Posts: 66 		Ha! So I'm not the only one that gets caught by this also. Today I just finished another set that was built from the middle outwards and at one stage went to move a small item only to find that I had also clicked on a large one too, was funny to see the whole building explode outwards, only funny because like you primaveranz, I also save all the time, from my programming days I use the Grandfather, Father and Son backup method, else I would have been devastated.

The set is a single Courtroom in a Courthouse and if you look at my screenshot in the assets section you'll see that like a dumbass, I forgot to put a floor in the lower holding cells, it's just grass! Thought I was screwed at that point because the area was so small that I couldn't create an object within so I was surprised to find that I could manage to squeeze a small ground plate in under the building from the outside, clip through the walls and manage to drag it into a center section from the inside and there expand the size to cover the area and all without disturbing any other objects, doesn't usually happen that way. Must have been my lucky day.
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11/11/2013 01:48:31

primaveranz
primaveranz
Posts: 520 		I must admit to being bamboozled by claims that Muvizu is a quick way to make animations. It is like playing snakes and ladders there are so many "gotchas" in store. Yes there are lots of nice animations and the special effects are cool so, as long as your movie consists of one guy standing talking to the camera, with random things happening in the background then I'll agree it can be fast.
But try and do anything remotely involved and you'd best be prepared for a whole lot of misery.
Sadly I suspect that if, as Ziggy72 says, they have not been listening to their customers for years, they will not have many more years left to get it right. E.g. If I was Muvizu and guys like Ziggy72 and UKBerty (with their track records) were telling me something was broken, I'd definitely be listening very carefully!
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11/11/2013 06:12:33

ukBertyMuvizu mogulExperimental user
ukBerty
Posts: 975 		Primaveranz - I too feel your pain.

The situation of re-sizing objects knocking out existing locked objects or objects falling and getting tangled with sets no longer happens to me. Why you ask ? Bitter experience.

Here's how I avoid these :-

  • When you import an object it will hang in the air. Before you do anything else right mouse on it and change the physical attributes to the opposite of the defaults. A number of us have asked for a mechanism to set our default settings for imported objects but there's nothing as yet. In some of my sets I have a couple of hundred imported objects and have had to do this on each and every one.
  • The above does not work for backdrops/ground planes. Always import these well away from your main set. In fact always import everything away from your main set - you can't really predict where things will appear anyway and it'll avoid the "object too big / too near other stuff" message.
  • Never, ever try to increase the size of something in situ. Move the object/backdrop away, resize it and move it back. This can take time as there is quite a bit of guesswork involved.

This is all due to C word. Collision. I know I bang on about it but life would be so much better without it and it serves no useful purpose. But I now have the official word that the engine that Muvizu is built around requires it and we're stuck with it. So my last tip would be..



What about getting characters to stand on things ? Take collision off everything and use invisible ground planes. I often use a ground plane at an angle when characters are going up/down stairs to try and reduce the jumping around. I find it's quite rare for characters to actually need to interact with objects so invisible ground planes are a lot quicker and more reliable than trying to perfect collision.


I hope this helps and reduces some of your frustration.
edited by ukBerty on 11/11/2013
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11/11/2013 19:32:56

primaveranz
primaveranz
Posts: 520 		Thanks for those tips ukBerty, especially the one about the inclined ground planes. Anything that gets me a bit further through the morass of what was meant to be a quick test of Muvizu's potential is greatly appreciated

I totally agree with you on the "C" word. It may be crucial for games development but, in its current form, it is worse than useless for movie-making.
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11/11/2013 21:01:54

ziggy72Muvizu mogulExperimental user
ziggy72
Posts: 1988 		Myself, I use Muvizu in exactly the same way as ukBerty described. For the Death Star Canteen, I built the kitchen outside the room (on a copy of the ground plane, on the 'floor' of the skydome) and allowed everything to jiggle about as much as it liked. Once I got everything sized, then I assembled it properly, then moved it (a bunch of objects at a time) into place inside the room. Tedious yes, but I suffered zero jiggling or set implosions. Damn collision...
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