Questions about the animation timeline

crashworshipcrashworship Posts: 218

I've just started exploring animating in Studio and am finding the timeline a bit frustrating and limiting. This may be because I don't know it well and there may be ways to do what I want that I'm unfamiliar with.

For example, I find that I can zoom vertically but not horizontally. When I work with video in say Premier, I can zoom both vertically and horizontally which is useful in more finite editing. Is there a way to expand the timeline's view horizontally as well?

I've created a bunch of sequential poses to apply to my animations. There are about 45 of them as of now. When I create test animations by sequentially adding these poses, I want to experiment with various gaps to find the ideal speed at which these poses transition. I'm finding that when I'm not happy with the transitions time and attempt to delete those keyframes by dragging over them or using the timeline menu delete keyframes option, not all of the animation is deleted. There seems to be some artifact affecting the pose and even when I've expanded the entire hierarchy of the figure and can find no more keyframes showing. That pose artifact remains. These artifacts seem to affect the neck and head primarily as of now. Are there some hidden keyframes that I'm not finding? I expand everything and can find none. This, I'm finding is incredibly frustrating.

Regarding aniblocks I've created using AniMate 2, I've found that once I've committed an animation to an aniblock, I can no longer add more keyframes to the entire animation. I understand that I can't change the aniblock. That's now fixed. I move the slider to the next point in the timeline that I'd like the pose to be, apply the pose but nothing is added. The animation is limited to only the point where the aniblock's range is. Is there something that I need to enable to add more poses and time to the timeline?

I'd attach images to illustrate all this but that would require video and, uh, yeah. Not ideal for this format.

 

Post edited by crashworship on

Comments

  • Catherine3678abCatherine3678ab Posts: 8,346
    edited August 2022

    crashworship said:

    I've just started exploring animating in Studio and am finding the timeline a bit frustrating and limiting. This may be because I don't know it well and there may be ways to do what I want that I'm unfamiliar with.

    For example, I find that I can zoom vertically but not horizontally. When I work with video in say Premier, I can zoom both vertically and horizontally which is useful in more finite editing. Is there a way to expand the timeline's view horizontally as well?

    I've created a bunch of sequential poses to apply to my animations. There are about 45 of them as of now. When I create test animations by sequentially adding these poses, I want to experiment with various gaps to find the ideal speed at which these poses transition. I'm finding that when I'm not happy with the transitions time and attempt to delete those keyframes by dragging over them or using the timeline menu delete keyframes option, not all of the animation is deleted. There seems to be some artifact affecting the pose and even when I've expanded the entire hierarchy of the figure and can find no more keyframes showing. That pose artifact remains. These artifacts seem to affect the neck and head primarily as of now. Are there some hidden keyframes that I'm not finding? I expand everything and can find none. This, I'm finding is incredibly frustrating.

    Regarding aniblocks I've created using AniMate 2, I've found that once I've committed an animation to an aniblock, I can no longer add more keyframes to the entire animation. I understand that I can't change the aniblock. That's now fixed. I move the slider to the next point in the timeline that I'd like the pose to be, apply the pose but nothing is added. The animation is limited to only the point where the aniblock's range is. Is there something that I need to enable to add more poses and time to the timeline?

    I'd attach images to illustrate all this but that would require video and, uh, yeah. Not ideal for this format.

     

    One cannot add anything to what appears to be the aniblock on the Timeline UNLESS one has, from the AniMate Tab, "baked to Studio keyframes." Then you are working solely from the Timeline. If you know where you want there to be a space for another pose, while still on the  AniMate Tab one can split the aniblock. 

     

    Bake to Timeline.png
    710 x 353 - 40K
    Post edited by Catherine3678ab on
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