I’m not sure if I’m using the right terminology but basically what I want to do is this:
I have a keyframe at frame 20. I want to copy it to frame 40, and have changes to the one at 20 also affect one at 40, somewhat like a linked object – except it’s a keyframe.
Is there a way to this in Blender?
Hi,
honestly i don’t think it’s possible. Maybe with a handler, but that would be a bit complicated to setup. You want your animation to loop exactly is that it ? If I’m correct, then the usual worklflow is simply to copy the end pose from the start pose once it’s absolutely final. Actually, you could even write a short macro for that - I’m not super familiar with Blender python api but I would hazard that’s pretty straightforward (pseudocode, take every keyframe at frame 1 on this set of objects/bones, copy them at frame 100).
Hadrien
Yes, I’ve been looking into the looping animation workflow, and it’s a bit of a pain to have to copy everything every time a tiny change is made. Some good ideas right there, though. I’m not much of a blender wiz (yet to learn what drivers / handlers do, or anything more advanced about python than pointing blender to .py files), but I’ll look into trying that. Thanks!
Tell us exactly what you want to do, with pictures please. You may be free to look at drivers, etc. I can’t help if I don’t know what is what.
Cheers, Clock.
My question relates to seamlessly looping a keyframe animation. Example – I want a cube to move up and to the right, then go left, then go back to initial position:
[video]https://gfycat.com/CoolOrneryGraysquirrel[/video]
To accomplish such I use keyframes. My question is this: if I want to change initial position of the cube, is there a way to change it at both frame 1 (start) and frame 40 (end), while keeping all the other key-frames intact?
When it’s just one cube things are p. simple – copy the keyframe. However, when you got more complex stuff where parts are connected (f. example gears, engines, interlocked patterns, fantasy armor with floating bits, etc.) having to copy and check so many keyframes adds up to a lot of work. What I’m asking is if there’s a simpler shortcut, than copying keyframes to where they need to be each time I change them? Or is that the easiest way to do those sorts of animations, and alleged ‘shortcuts’ add up to more than they’re worth?
Well, there WOULD be a way… you could parent-constrain the object A to another object B and key the constraint influence gradually from 1 at the beginning and back to 1 at the end. Then, moving object B would change the location of object A both at the beginning and the end of the cycle. But that’s just convoluted. Simply put, I think you’re overestimating the problem - I do a lot of walkcycles and although the start pose changes a few times along the making, copy/pasting the keys once in a while (if it’s more than that it’s probably just lack of practice) is really not so inconvenient. As I said earlier though, a button is doable. Maybe someone with better python skills can chime in.
Hadrien
Well not sure how you have your objects, but this might help if you set them in a group and then hit the little arrow in the dope sheet(only include selected channels), when you select a group, that will be the only keyframes that show in the dope sheet. Then you can select them all at once. If it is bones, put them in a bone group and the same will apply.
I saw a video tutorial series covering animation nodes here on YouTube. Perhaps there’s something in there that would help.
Now this is very interesting! Thanks for sharing.
