Animation - Autokey, colours, contextual pop up menu, tools and tips!
Posted: Oct 15, 2009
Category: Autodesk Flame, Autodesk Smoke, Tips and Tricks
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Hi Everyone,
Most of the time when we animate, we spend all of our time in the channel curves editor simply using the Add, Move and Delete controls.
However there is so much more you can use to speed up the way you work.
The video will cover the following:
- Tips on Autokey
- Colour coded sliders
- Contextual Pop up menu
- Quick Curve access without navigating the channel editor
- Break, Auto, Select, Translate, X-scale and Y-scale tools for the Channel editor
- Insert keyframes
- Selecting keyframes on a curve with a special hot-key combo
I also decided to make a quick opening animation for the videos. Call it a branding exercise with a few hours messing about on flame. Hope you enjoy it!
For Optimium viewing, switch viewer to 1:1 and full screen mode
All features mentioned are current with Smoke and Flame 2010 ext1 software release.
I hope this has been useful to use. A future installment of Animation tools will examine the math operations and their benefits for you.
This is the IFFFS-Kay signing off until the next time!!!
Grant
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great tutorial grant !!!!!!!!
this tutorial is an invaluable treasure to all those who are seeking to xplore those channel editors n animation controls ......
many beginner smoke operators work without them or use them bare minimum.... as there is no proper guidance n understanding from the manual would b a bit difficult.......
thanks a lot grant for this invaluable stuff........
:)
adolf
Posted by marc.hamaker on Oct 16, 2009 at 09:21 AM
I love the animated open. LOL.
Posted by Frederic Warren on Oct 16, 2009 at 09:13 AM
Great job Grant!
Here are some other quick tips in this area that I think could be useful...
1) The top Wacom pen button can also be used to open the Context Menu
2) When the Large Animation window is opened, you can Shift-Click in a field to frame it in the Channels View. You can also Ctrl+Shift-Click and this will frame all the selected channels.
3) When you move keyframes (in Move and Translate), you can hold down the Shift key while you move the keyframes to constraint the movement on the X or Y axis.
4) Yon can see what expression is present on a numeric field (yellow dotted line) in its tooltip window. Hold down Ctrl-Alt-Spacebar and move the cursor over the field. The expression used in this field will be displayed at the bottom of the tooltip window.
fred
Posted by Rudy - learn2 on Oct 16, 2009 at 02:06 AM
As always Grant, very nice tutorial, keep 'em coming!!
Thank you for the invaluable "stuff"
Rudy - learn2
