Animation controls can and should/should not be improved?

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
1

Hello all.

Just a word in advance, I’m not starting a flame here.

Does anyone find it harder to control animation in Blender compared to Maya and Max?

I’m not starting a “mine’s bigger than yours” thread, buth rather, I’m just wondering why they didn’t improve the animation system so it’s easier to control.

  1. For example, say if I want to move a keyframe in the time slider. I can’t. I believe if I can grab a keyframe and move it, it would be much easier to control my animations.

For now, the only way I could move (indirectly) a keyframe, when I have it set, is to undo the setting keyframe and change the time slider to the desired frame number, then set the keyframe again.

In the case of posing bones, this can be a real mess if the 3D artist is not careful.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v639/Ryu_Kaiser/armature.jpg
armature.jpg799×536 155 KB

If a keyframe is misplaced at the wrong frame number, then the user will either have to undo and position the time slider at the right frame or move the keyframe via the Ipo curve editor which is hard (for me) to move to a appropriate frame number.

  1. There is no delete key frame button (unless I’ve overlooked it). I can find the delete marker (which I’m not sure what the marker is for), but not delete key frame.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v639/Ryu_Kaiser/deletekey.jpg
deletekey.jpg800×600 172 KB

I can delete the keyframe from the Ipo curve editor but lets say I had a complex animation graph, with millions of dots - which dot’s which?

Obviously, it would take a while to find the right dot, at least not as neat as selecting the key frame from the time slider.

  1. When I want to add keyframe to just a channel, for instance, the local X channel (i.e. I want to add a keyframe for a cube moving along the X axis), I tried selecting the local X channel and pressing the " I " key but no keyframe appeared on my graph.

Currently, the only way I could make a simple transition animation along the X axis is if I press the " I " key in the 3D viewport, but that adds not only a keyframe to 1 channel, it places a key frame all three translation channel (local X, local Y and local Z).

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v639/Ryu_Kaiser/translation.jpg
translation.jpg800×600

What do you guys think - would it be beneficial (more / less) if these additional features were included in Blender?

2

You can do all of this in Blender’s Action editor.

3

Check out the action editor and the NLA editor. You can move/delete keys in both of those quite easily.

I think the only one of your points that is valid is #3. It would be nice to be able to key only 1 channel at a time. Furthurmore, it would be nice to have access to the X,Y,Z channels independently in the action editor (like Maya’s dope sheet).

4

Wow thats a lot of questions. heh right now I can only remember one of them, so ill just answer that one.
Its the one with the dots. If you have these super many dots, and you know that there is a place in ur anim where feks. where your character raises his arm, and its too quick. Then you just scroll to the frame where his arms is up, cos then the pointer in the Action editor, will be on the exavley right dot. Then you mark that dot and alle after that and move it. voila :smiley:

1 Like
5

Yeah?

What if I had an animation like this:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v639/Ryu_Kaiser/frame6.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v639/Ryu_Kaiser/frame6.jpg799×536 71.4 KB

Some people are colour defficient, so they might not be able to recognize the different channels and the respective curves.

Sketchy and CD38

The action editor did you say?

Wouldn’t that mean we have to bring up the action editor everytime we want to move just one key frame ?

Thanks for sharing the knowledge however. So it was the action editor was it?

I’ll give it a check.:stuck_out_tongue:

6

to display (and move, and delete) keyframes, hit K in the IPO window.

Some people are colour defficient, so they might not be able to recognize the different channels and the respective curves.
they could click on the little box next to the channel name to select and highlight it… and on the channel name itself to only view the channel.

  1. When I want to add keyframe to just a channel, for instance, the local X channel (i.e. I want to add a keyframe for a cube moving along the X axis), I tried selecting the local X channel and pressing the " I " key but no keyframe appeared on my graph.
    the only - albeit a bit clumsy - way to do this right now is selecting a channel and ctrl-clicking in the IPO editor.

i believe this is documented in the manual :slight_smile:
.andy

7

Hey thanks guys, the NLA editor works. I can move keyframes now.

(Now I know why I don’t know how to move keyframes - because I was lazy and didn’t read that section of the manual in the past :p)

8

Well, yes I could move the keyframes in the Ipo curve editor @ndy but I want to move the keyframes in the time slider.

^.^! You got me on that one.

9

So at the end of all that, we have a thread that really should have been in the support forum and titled “How do I move keyframes” :rolleyes:

I’m not starting a “mine’s bigger than yours” thread, buth rather, I’m just wondering why they didn’t improve the animation system so it’s easier to control.

“They” (the volunteer coders) did - and as far as I know, they haven’t stopped improving it either.

10

If you are animating with armatures, it would be to your benefit to always have the action editor open.

For non-armature animation, action editor can be used, but it is not nearly as useful.

11

I think it would be nice to be able to move keys in the timeslider. It’s a very quick and intuitive way to make timing adjustments, and I’m pretty sure that’s why ALL other programs let you do it. I think XSI had the nicest timeslider editing capabilities I’ve seen.