Dont have much experience on Blender, I’ve read the help pages and experimented with the points in my question, but I’d like some experienced advice for this please.
I’d like some advice on the suitable use cases for the action editor, dope sheet and Non linear Editor.
I’ve found this forum post , and it details the functionality and use cases for the action editor vs the dope sheet, so I’m looking for how the NLA fits in.
It seems we can animate a group of game objects using the dope sheet, and create a single animation. Then we can create and assign multiple animations to a single object using the animation editor, but why have the NLA ? Reading up on it it uses clips that can be copied and inserted into any animations but how would we use these, and how to we interact with the dope sheet or the action editor with these clips ?
The Dope Sheet and Action editor are basically the same. The action editor’s plus is basically about being able to choose in which “action” you work on. But otherwise they basically are the same.
The NLA is kind of like a video editing software’s timzline. You add action strips, you can assemble them, duplicate, cut, stack over with different blend modes, …
If you don’t use multiple actions on your model, you don’t need the action editor nor the NLA
Usually the NLA is used when you have a model with an animation/action library you want to use to create a complex animation.
Or when you like to make animations using layers, so you can seperate different movements in different layers you can control over time or for a non destructive workflow.