Blender Action Editor Basics

How to use the Action Editor in Blender 2.48. If you notice I'm talking quite fast in this vid it's because I had so much content to get through.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Blender
• tutorial
• action editor
• character animation
• 3D

[makeitchemical]

so it's necessary to have beginning and end keyframes for every bone, whether or not they move for the duration of the animation?

[bugzilla2001]

@makeitchemical Not necessarily, but it's good practice. For example, if you want to take these actions into the NLA editor, you will probably get unpredictable results if you don't have any keyframes at the start and end of your animation.

[TheWaynelds]

ok does this only work for armatures? I modeled a robot in blender, but since I'm a beginner, i composed him with many different objects and used spheres to create his joints ( basically just link his arms and legs to sphere joints with parent function so when i rotate the shoulder sphere, the whole arm rotates with it. same with fore arms and legs.

So is there any way I can use the action editor to animate him like that, or do i need to create an armature?

[bugzilla2001]

@TheWaynelds You can add the Armature modifier to several different objects, or join several objects into one and add the Armature modifier to it. For a robot you maybe better off just creating parent-child relationships for each part. Basically each piece would act as it's own bone. You can add the IK constraint to any object so you can animate the robot using the IK technique.

[XAutomatedOwnerX]

When i have the stuff selected it dosnt show on the side i dotn see anything

[bugzilla2001]

You really have to explain things better than this. Really. Take some time and think about what you are writing.

[AnsonAdams]

God damn I had no idea you could organize your different animation channels. Thank you for sharing!

[TheCooper37]

Can you tell me how to loop a certain part of the actions, because you know that the frames moves on forever and ever and ever, so is there a way to limit the frame space to lets say 25 frames to use?

[MikeslyMontague]

@MikeslyMontague Oh, I found out! I have to mouse-over where all my bones are beside the keyframes, press "A" to select all of them, and then mouse-over all my keyframes beside the bones and then "A" to select all of them, Ctrl + "C" to copy all of them, and then Ctrl + "V" to paste the start of that chain of keyframes wherever my current frame is. I also noticed that the current frame acts as a "pivot point" for when you scale keyframes. (This is about to get a whole lot easier...)

[MikeslyMontague]

The curves happening in the graph would always get on my nerves! I would always have to go to them, click on their line, and then press "S" + 0 to make it sharp, but now I know I can just press "A" + Shift + "T" > "Linear" to do it for me!

But can actual animations be looped from from the action editor, or is it just for adding to the Blender Game Engine? I have a lot of walking cycles in the animated shows that I'm making, and I can't just edit them in real-time, over and over again.

[KAZZARTT]

Maybe you can help me, it's an easy one. 1. How do I delete an action on the action editor list? 2. How do swtich to see on the timeline and keyframes of one action if I have more than one. on Blender 2.5.something.

[XxArkhamxAsylumxX]

Can you save these animations and export them? Lets say for purposes of making a videogame for character movement and stuff like that?

[makeitchemical]

thanks a ton, man. i've been losin my mind trying to figure out why new animations were messing up my old ones. i think this is the answer.

[TheWaynelds]

@bugzilla2001 Yeah, I was going to write back and say that I found the NLE very usefull and it's helping me do more complex animation with the robot with half the effort. I can copy and paste keyframes and work with them like i do with sony vegas pro. I tried joining the meshes into one object and setting up an armature, but it was deforming the object too much. I would say that I'm in the advanced noob stage at blender since i've only been 'really' using it for 5 months