Animation comp for stop motion sequencer

Beginners
1

So my friend and I have this long running debate about making an animation sequencer for triggering an external camera to record single frame animations. Somebody told him years ago that the timeline in TD has to be running all the time and he’'s stuck on this idea. I say no. I want to lock to the TD timeline and use the global transport controls as my main time interface - that way I can advance frame by frame, go to beginning , end, or a specific frame. I can stop, play, etc. He insits on building a network of counters and triggers etc in order to basically create a transport. this seems like reinventing what is already there (to me)

At one time I thought I was able to summon a completely secondary transport control GUI that was dedicated to the anim comp - now I’m unable to find any of this- was this my imagination ?

Anyway, the only downside I can see to using the main transport is stopping it would stop certain realtime processes -but I’m not seeing this as a problem for a stop motion sequencer that is mainly going to trigger an external camera(with its own memory card capturing frames). What think you ?

2

OK, so I discovered 'component time and added such to my animation comp for an independent time system. I somewhat grudgingly accept the idea that the main timeline should keep running at all costs to avoid various hiccups .

I’m able to toggle the main transport to my animation comp’s sub-time system. But can I instead have this secondary transport system show up in my Perform GUI rather than at the bottom of the main edit window?

3

Have a look at all the OP Snippets for the Timer CHOP. That may be a better foundation as it gives more control over time vs component time or the main timeline.

4

Thanks. I see the ‘logic’ of this approach, so to speak. I’m going to work with this.
I’m looking through widgets and such and am surprised there isn’t a ‘transport widget’ made for Timer CHOP. Somebody point me towards it if it exists, before I start building one from scratch :slight_smile: