Animation palette standard
Animation palette advanced
Release 10 that came out in 2006 was focussed on animation. We saw in R10 that the Timeline and animation tools were essentially rewritten. In our R10 review you may recall that our comments was that R10 felt rushed and there were few new things not working correctly or incomplete. Some of those things were addressed in the 10.1 update and some weren't. MAXON has now had time to do some more work on the Timeline and animation tools so they feel a lot more polished and complete. In addition to tidying up things as you would expect there's some new stuff as well and I'll cover the significant enhancements here.
First up Ripple editing in the Timeline now works correctly. This was one that didn't get fixed in 10.1. Before if you were in Ripple editing mode and dragged on some keyframes to make copies a second set of keyframes were created at the end which was incorrect. Now all that happens is the keyframes to the right or left shuffle over to make way for the copied (or you can delete) keyframes.
By right clicking on the animation palette you can now choose an Advanced mode. The documentation says "The Advanced Mode was implemented in order to offer those switching from other applications a familiar environment." I should add that the new Advanced mode is in fact the XStacy Powerslider plugin for C4D 8.2 to 9.5 by Per Anders Edwards who just happens to be a MAXON developer / programmer now.
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Animation palette standard |
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Animation palette advanced |
The Advanced mode has some extra options once you're in that mode that allow you to split keys for position, scale and rotation or split into vector tracks i.e. X, Y & Z axes. These are accessed from the right click menu. Here's what they look like and I have shown the timeline and highlighted the keys so that you can see what the keys in the animation palette correspond to in the timeline. (Note that in producing the images I changed the position of keys and their sub tracks to best illustrate each mode)
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Split PSR keys mode |
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Split Vector keys mode |
I'm not sure I'll actually use advanced mode with the split options. I prefer to use the full blown timeline if I want to get down to position, scale and rotation level or to individual vector track level. But I do use the animation pallet on simple animations to do simple editing.
Some other useful things that you can do in advanced mode is double clicking on the palette will start and stop the animation playing. To edit keys you use the middle mouse button not the left mouse button as in the standard mode. What's quite clever is you don't need to precisely middle mouse button click on a key. The nearest key will be selected. Ctrl + middle mouse clicking will copy keys. Like in standard mode you can select ranges of keys but to do so requires the shift key to be held down. Just left clicking and dragging will scrub through the animation.
Those people using the Classic scheme and the advanced palette need to be aware that there's a slight bug where the colours for the scale and rotation tracks have been reversed. The colours of the keys won't match the track colours in the timeline. In fact you don't even need to be in advanced palette mode as the scale and rotation tarck colours are still reversed (as they are in 10.111). Track colours are correct in the new Light and Dark schemes.
The mini f-curves can now be scaled vertically. This is a good enhancement as I always found the mini f-curves so small vertcally that they were quite hard to work with. In the image here I've scaled the f-curve for the X axis. The Y axis is the default size
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Scaleable Mini F-Curves |
The clean tracks command is similar to the key reducer tool but with the clean track command only keys with the same value are deleted. For example if you have a cube animated moving along the X axis only over say 90 frames and there are 10 keyframes in total the keys recorded on the 8 intermediate Y and Z axis tracks aren't required as the value never changes. Only the first and last keys are required. The Clean track command takes out these surplus to requirement keys. Here's a before and after shot on an animated cube that I baked. The animation plays back exactly the same as before but the file size is smaller. Obviously this tool come into its own when working on much more complex animations like motion captured data with thousands of keyframes. The file size can be reduced significantly in some cases and viewport playback speed will be quicker.
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Before Clean Track Command |
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After Clean Track Command |
The documentation describes RM Curves as simplified (consist of fewer Keys) control curves with which you can control complex F-Curves. Typically you'll use RM curves on animation s where the F-Curve has a key on every frame like what you get with motion capture files or an object with a baked animation track. The idea is that you more easily edit these complex f-curves by working on a low resolution version of it. Let's have a look at how it works.
As the documentation suggests before you go into reduced modification mode it's best to take a snapshot of your F-Curves. You can then easily revert back to original curve should you mess up. You can work on one vector track at a time or several i.e. X, Y and Z axes. You can if you really want to, work on multiple tracks i.e. position, scale and rotation but there's so many tracks and curves this is a not practical option. Should you want to work on lots of tracks then I suggest creating addition timeline windows. Okay so let's get started. I'll use sphere that I've animated with the Dynamics module to roll off a table and bounce on to the floor. I've baked the solver which bakes the dynamics animation and generates position, scale and rotation keys for the sphere. For this mini example I'll just edit the position F-Curves as there's no scaling and I'm happy with the rotation. The first image here is baked postion keys on the their F-Curves. There's so many and I'm zoomed a bit that the keys form a solid line.
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Default F-Curves |
I now want to edit these curves and since there's keys at every frame this is a bit hard to do. By invoking the Reduced Modification Mode command 3 simplified curves called RM Curves are created. This uses the default reduction amount which I've got at 90% in the preferences. The result is below. The thin blue lines are the original F-Curves. The sphere still follows these curves but I'm able to alter it by tweaking the simplified RM Curve.
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With Default Reduced Modification Mode reduction applied |
As you can see the RM Curves aren't that accurate and don't match the original curves that well except for the Z axis which has almost no movement. What I'll do now is use the interactive Reset RM Curve tool to get a RM Curve that happier with. I'll do one curve at a time as I may need to use different amounts of key reduction. To reset one RM Curve you have to select the curve itself by clicking on it. Here's the result after resetting each curve.
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After Using the Reset RM Curve Tool |
You can see that the green Y axis RM curve now matches the original / full F-Curve pretty well except for one key at the start. The red X axis RM curve has a few problems and this is the best that I can do using the Reset RM Curve tool. No problem as we're able to edit the RM curve without the changes being applied to the full curve. To do this I'll enable the No Curve Edit option. In this mode you move keys up and down, adjust tangent handles, change interpolation type, delete RM keys or even add in RM keys by copying them. Here's the result after a little adjusting of the X and Y RM curves. I'm not going to bother with the Z RM curve so I've now hidden the Z axis. I'm also saving my scene using the incremental option although I did use the snapshot option. (RM curves are saved with the scene file but Snapshots aren't). I've selected all keys so that you can see the tangent handles.
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Adjusted RM Curves |
As you can see the RM Curves now match the original / full F-Curve pretty well. The effect is pretty much like tracing a 2D shape with a bezier spline. To continue I now need to disable the No Curve Edit option. Now any adjustments to the keys on the RM Curve will be reflected on to the corresponding full curve. There's 3 editing modes or Modification Types as they're called: The default curve type, move type and scale type. The curve type is pretty straight forward and it's just like editing a F-Curve normally by adjusting the key tangent handles and move the key up and down. (RM keys can't be move left or right). The move and scale types are a little different and when you go in these types your RM curve will display initially with only 2 keys. You're able to move these keys around, copy and paste keys to create additional keys and then move and scale your RM Curves and thus your full f-Curves. A little hard to describe I'm afraid but pretty straight forward to use in practice. Say I want the bounce to all be bigger all I need to do is go into scale mode and create a couple of extra keys. (I don't want the starting Y position to change). Here's the result and you can see that I've dragged the key at frame 85 upwards. I've left the key at frame 300 as is so that the ball still comes to a rest. To help you see what's going on I've hidden the X Axis curves.
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RM Curve Scale Modification Type - Bounces Now Higher |
The result is that the bounces are now all bigger. The ball the entire time I'm working with RM Curves follows the path defined by the full F-Curve but I've been able to easily edit it without having to reduce the number of keys. I can see this mode being used quite often to fine tune character animation and baked dynamics simulations where the F-Curve isn't quite right. After being in the scale modification type when I go back into curve modification type to adjust the tangent handles the RM Curve no longer matches the F-Curve. It's just a matter to enable No Curve Edit and line things up again. I've covered this above so I'm not going to go over it again. So that's pretty much it. A really great new tool but it just needs a little fine tuning to make it work better. Here's the final Y axis curves showing the RM Curve, the now tweaked F-Curve and a snapshot of the original F-Curve.
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Final Y Axis RM Curve and Before & After F-Curves |
Here's a nifty little trick. When you're in RM Curve mode and after you've done all of the editing you can take a snapshot of the RM Curve, go out of RM Curve mode so that your full F-Curve is displayed again. Now use the Swap Snapshot command to swap saved RM Curve with the full F-Curve. This then makes the scene file much smaller because of fewer keys and playback speed will also be faster. This trick essentially allows you much better control of key reducing as the key reducer tool doesn't always give you very good results. (The Key Reducer Tool and Reset RM Curve Tool are essentially one and the same)
Show Summary Track is an option in the Timeline preferences. Now with 10.5 a Summary Track is visible by default will stay at the top of the timeline. The summary track if selected will allow you to edit all visible objects and or parameters in the left hand timeline window. If you only have a few objects or parameters in the timeline then it is easy enough just to select them in the left hand window but if you have a big complex scene then working with a summary track will save having to select multiple tracks. The summary track should not be confused with the document track. The document track is the entire scene whereas the summary track is only those objects or parameters currently visible in the timeline.
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10.5 Summary track |
One suggestion that would have is that the summary track needs to stay visible as you scroll the timeline window just like how you can freeze the the first row on a spreadsheet so that it is always visible. Currently if you scroll when you have lots of objects or parameters in the left hand window the summary track disappears.
Keys can moved one frame at a time left or right with the left and right cursor keys. This works in both the key and F-Curve view.
A new Relative key mode allows you select keys in either track view or f-curve view and make them relative. Keys have a new property "Make Relative" in the attributes manager. Then if you move keys to the left or right the relative keys will move relative to the key or keys that you're moving. Strangely this mode doesn't work when using the cursor keys. A bug perhaps? There also seems to be a bug when you have the first key on a F-Curve set to relative, things don't work anymore when trying to move any frames to the right.
The "Move Curve" tool has been enhanced to become the "Move Sequence / Curve" tool. This tool allows you click anywhere on a track and move the entire track left or right
If your animated scene has timeline markers these markers are retained if you merge the scene with another scene.
And one that many people had complained about being removed in Release 10. Selecting objects simultaneously in the Object Manager and the Timeline has been reinstated. This means that if you select object(s) in either the Object Manager or the Timeline the same object(s) are selected in the other manager. This comes into play when you lots of objects and often with the same name.
The Key Reducer tool has been overhauled and has a new algorithm which is the same algorithm used by RM Curve tool. I have to say that I get mixed results with this tool and its reduction seems far too aggressive. Often there was virtually no difference when using values from 5% to 90% reduction. The idea is that you can reduce the number of keyframes in imported motion captured files where the object has keys every frame or where you've baked an object (in the timeline) or used the Mocca Cappuccino tool to generate animation where there are keys for every frame. By reducing the number of keys not only does it make the file size much smaller it allows for editing in the timeline. The tool certainly works better than it did 10.0 but I think it's one where you need to experiment a lot. The documentation says the tool works in both key and F-Curve mode. I couldn't get it to work into F-Curve mode when selecting frames with the Ctrl+A keys. The only way to make it work was to select keys by rectangle selecting or using the menu option to select all keys.
There's now Insert Frames and Delete Frames tools. These remind me of working with spreadsheets. The insert frames tool gives you a dialog box and you enter the number of frames that you want inserted. This inserts the frames at the current frame number (or the frame number that you enter ) and any keyframes to the right are moved over accordingly. The delete frames command removes frames that you define. The effect is you get a gap in your animation with no keyframes so there's also a "Ripple mode" that deletes the empty space by moving keyframes to the left. There seems to be a bug with the delete frame tool where you specify that say 2 frames are deleted but in fact 3 are deleted. This also means that ripple mode may not work correctly as you can end with a blank frame if your animation has keys on every frame like what motion captured files have.
Track Before and Track After menu options have been added to the timeline menus. This allows you define what happens to a track without having to go into the parameter manager. You may recall that in Release 10 the Track Before / After options took the place of sequence looping although we still can't define a specific number of loops / repetitions.
The Key Mute and Key Unmute commands have been combined into the Key Unmute command. The command or toolbar icon now toggle the state of the muting. Just a pity that MAXON forgot to remove the obsolete Key Unmute command as it now doesn't work but you can easily do this yourself.
There's a new Move / Scale Tool. Selecting this tool from the menu makes a dialog window pop up. In the dialog you can numerically input the number of frames to move the selected keys by e.g. enter 5 frames and the selected keys will be moved 5 frames to the right. Negative values can be input to move back in time. If you're working in one of the other time formats like seconds or SMPTE then you input those units instead. In addition to moving keys in time you can also scale them numerically. A value of 1 is the default and has no effect but a value of -1 reverses the keys. This means that we now have a more elegant way to reverse animation in the timeline. A value of 2 scales the selected keys 2x and 0.5 by half. Unfortunately I came across yet another bug. This time when you reverse selected keyframes by using negative numbers and extra frame is added.
You can now have up to 5 F-Curve snapshots. Release 10.0 saw the introduction of snapshots. Having up to 5 provides for a lot more flexibility and experimentation. Bug time again. You can only create 4 snapshots as the Create Snapshot 5 command doesn't work.
Missing from the timeline is the ability to blend motion captured tracks that was present in Mocca 2. I get the feeling that MAXON may be working on a full blown Non Linear Animation system for Release 11 with sequence blending like what a few other high end programs have, but who knows?
So Release 10.5 further enhances the timeline that was completely rewritten in Release 10. The bugs from Release 10 look to be fixed but it's disappointing that some of the new 10.5 timeline enhancements look to have a few bugs that testers missed or picked up too late to be fixed before 10.5 was released. Hopefully MAXON will do a bug fix update within a few months that addresses these bugs. As is, the timeline is better than it was in 10.0 / 10.1 but it still has that "Work in progress" feel to it.