Hello,
probably a simple answer, and maybe I don’t know the correct terms to be searching for to find this…
I want to select several keyframes on a object, and offset their xyz positions without fundamentally re-inventing the animation - but do it in the 3d viewport
I have learned how to select keys in the IPO editor and can adjust timing and stuff easily, but I am hoping to do this in a 3d window, where I can easily see what’s going on in a very precise way… and am having no luck.
The scenario: I have a chopper model who has left a ship, comes in close to the beach, hovers for a bit over the landing spot, lands on the beach, then takes off again. My initial landing spot turns out was placed all wrong, so I want to simply slide the xyz positions of all the keys that are involved with the landing spot/hover zone all at once. (closer to the water and down the hill a bit.) I could go to each Loc key and individually adjust them, but I figure there HAS to be a better, less error prone way to do this… Blender is just toooo fricckin’ cool not to have some way of accomplishing this…
The ideal workflow I have in my head is select in an IPO window the keyframes in question, grab the chopper in the 3d window and place it where it needs to go, updating the new xyz’s in all the relevant keyframes…
Simply jump to that key frame where you need adjustment, correct the position, then hit [I] to key frame it again. It will over write what was there.
For little more complex method, use NLA. Create an action of your sequence. Add new sequence with just offset value positional information. And, you “add” those two strips in NLA.
Hey Ridix, have been manually adjusting them like you suggested, but am hoping for a way to do that with multiple keyframes/times at once.
To maybe explain a bit better, I have steps 1-12 in my animation, and steps 5-9 are in the wrong location in xyz. Those steps are working perfectly and are quite complex - am hoping to mass move all of those in one fell swoop, so I don’t unintentionally introduce errors into my already sweet move.
I am sure I can do it by just grabbing the pertinent X / Y / Z sections of the IPOs, just hoping for an easier way.
Thanks!!!
jd
Kind of lacking some info, IPO curves was a blender 2.49 term, current versions of blender 2.5-2.64 use f-curves. So I’m not sure what version of blender you’re using. Is your chopper one mesh object, or several? How many IPO or F-curves do you need to adjust to make this change? Not sure about 2.49 & IPO curves, but I think you can do this, and definitely in modern versions of blender, you can move all the curves around while watching the 3d viewport. Yes, it’s not very convenient, or intuitive, or quick.
Hierarchy is key here, if you are dealing with more than 1 F-curve for the location of the chopper, then you need to set up some parent-child relationships. One part of your helicopter should be the parent object for all the other objects that make up your helicopter, and those extra parts shouldn’t have x,y,z location keyframes. When I animated one, the fuselage was the parent object, main & tail rotors were children and I inserted location/rotation keyframes for only the fuselage. So I only have one object to reposition and insert keyframes for if I desire to change it’s location.
Couple of other work around ideas come to mind, but it depends upon what you’re working with.
Hey Randy!
Am on 2.63a- IPO just sorta stuck.
Yes, am using a chopper rig that is identical to yours, and moving the curves around in the graph editor is what I ended up doing. Correct, is not too intuitive, but is do-able and sorta accomplishes the goal.
I want to be able to do the reverse, “wag the dog” by moving the object/s and having the multiple selected keyframes in the graph get updated.