I have a driver (created by baking sound to f-curves) that runs from the beginning to end of my animation. Another object has various parameters controlled by that driver. What I’d like to do is have multiple times where I take over control of the object by manually key framing it for a while, then returning control to the driver later. Is that possible?
I’ve tried a few things like adding a limiting modifier to the driver and also splitting the driver action in the NLS editor and muting the areas where I want manual control but neither of those options allow me to set a keyframe on my object once it’s been attached to a driver.
I should clarify that I’m trying to keyframe the same parameters that are controlled by the driver. I can of course keyframe the other parameters that are not attached to the driver.
I managed to solve this problem myself. The secret is to make the driver f-curve editable.
with the 3D window, select the object that is to be manipulated, display the left hand tabs (press “t”)
select the animation tab
click “bake action”, by default this will only bake the action for the selected object
set the start and end frame
click ok
it will take a moment, lots of points to create
Then delete the driver influence from the target object. This is done the same way as the driver influence was added. right click over the parameter (x-location, y-location whatever) for the target object and from the popup menu, select delete drivers or delete single driver.
Then, from the NLA editor, you can mute a section of what was the driver action, but is now just an action of the target object and replace that section with your own manual action instead.
So if I understand this correctly, you can removed driver after baking the animation?
Im using a plugin to create visualizations based on audio- but its driver based, and Sheepit Render Farm wont allow drivers- so I need to keyframe everything, and remove the drivers to render.
That post was 2 years ago and I haven’t used Blender much recently so I’m not going to be very helpful. All I can suggest is that you try what I previously suggested and see if it works for you. Hopefully my old instructions are detailed enough because I don’t remember much about how to use Blender anymore.