• Introduction
• Interface
• Bodypaint 3
• Animation Controls
• Timeline
• Enhanced OpenGL
• Interactive Render Region (IRR)
• Character Animation / Mocca 3
• Layers / Layer Manager
• Object Manager
• Documentation
• Tutorials & Goodies
• Miscellaneous
• Conclusion

ANIMATION CONTROLS

When you fire up Release 10 for the first time apart from the new scheme, one of the other things that grabs your attention is the reworked animation controls.

Above is the new animation controls. Many of the controls will be self explanatory but there’s a few things worth going through in a bit of detail as there’s a lot more power in these basic controls than what we had before.

A - First up we can set the animation duration directly in the interface by defining the project start and end frames (or Second or SMPTE time if you have either of these set up in the preferences). You no longer have to go to the project settings to do this now except to alter the frame rate. In the screen grab you can see that the animation starts at frame 0 and ends at frame 300.

B - The power slider is just superb. Not only does this now quickly and easily define the preview range but it also moves from side to side to quickly change the preview range or focus on another range of frames. To adjust the range of the power slider you either drag on the small triangle or double click and type a number in. When you're working with the Timeline a very handy option is to enable the "Link view to preview range" option. This then allows you to define the view range in the Timeline.

C - The current time field is the current time of frame. To go a specific frame just type the number in here. Previously we had to double click the frame scrubber.

D - The new animation controls / palette can perform some simple timeline functions. When you record keyframes on the current object they become visible just below the frame numbers (Orange rectangles). These keyframes can be moved around by clicking and dragging them.

E - What's more you can drag along the timescale to select multiple keyframes (long gray rectangle within the red highlighted box). What this does is create a virtual sequence. You can then move the sequence or scale it by dragging on either end of the selection. To deselect the sequence / remove the gray rectangle selection just click in an empty area of the timescale. Talking of sequences. They are no more, gone. Generally you can perform the same functions without the need for sequences by selecting groups of keyframes just as I've done here. The only downside is that looping of sequences has gone and hasn’t been totally replaced. More on all of this in the timeline section.

F - The large green rectangle is the active time. You can scrub through the frames by dragging on this. Also by clicking on the upper part of the scale you can go to specific frames. Release 9 had this but it wasn't very precise.

You can record keyframes by CTRL clicking anywhere beneath the frames. This records a keyframe with the same value as what the current setting and mode is. e.g. You have an object in the scene and position recording enabled. The current frame is 0. By CTRL clicking at frame 90 you can create an identical keyframe for the object. This saves having to change the active time. If you do change the active time and move the object forexamplee then CTRL clicking performs just like clicking on the record button Naturally you can copy and paste keyframes. Just select the orange rectangles and CTRL drag to make a copy. Deleting keyframes can be done as well but be careful doing this as all keyframe types e.g. move, scale and rotation will be deleted. If you want to delete the scale keyframes only you'll have to venture into the Timeline.

There’s some nifty things that you can do like holding down the ALT key while dragging the slider. This prevents the viewport from updating while you scrub through frames. Handy in complex scenes.

The animations controls have a right click menu with a number of options. One option is to reverse the sequence that you defined. Very handy!! Some of the right click commands are for working in the new Timeline. The other controls are pretty much the same as before except for updated icons in the new light or dark schemes.

MAXON has done a superb job with the animation controls and they are now significantly superior to the corresponding controls on any of the other major 3D applications.