i have some models of a robot arm, different parts of this model needs to articulate in different ways based on what i am doing. so i was wondering if there was a way to create and store key frames for different objects that i could load prior to creating an animation.
for example:
the base of the arm needs to rotate to 180 degrees and back to 0 degrees on almost all instance of my animation:
however only in some instances does the gripper portion of the arm need to spin and open when the arm’s base reaches 180 degrees, then in another animation id like the gripper to rotate the other way and not open so much.
at the moment im creating two .blend files to do this, is there any easier way to accomplish this??
Go to you Dopesheet (Editor). Where it says “Dopesheet” change the mode to “Action Editor”. In that same line you actions will appear. If what you have selected (it has to have keyframes) is an Armature it will probably be called “ArmatureAction”. If you press the “F” button right beside it it saves the action. Now you can press the “X” and start over. if you want to open that animation again you press the button that has three dots on the left of the actions, and you have all the actions that you saved or that are being used for your animation. If you do not press the “F” button though, unless you’re using that action, Blender will delete it when you quit Blender, even if you saved the “.blend” file.
Look into the NLA Editor as well. There you can mix actions and place them in the right order.