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I had a need to make an animation with two different endings. Does Blender have a tool or functionality to quickly switch between two different animation keyframes? You can of course create two different files from when the animation will be different, but if you need to change something at the beginning of the animation, you will need to make changes in both files, so it is preferable to have one file.

UPD. It will be a game-based learning program where you will have to give answers. In my case, it's a "boss fight" animation, depending on whether the correct answer was given, the character will either lose or win, but only the last frames will differ, that is, the beginning and middle will be the same. Is it possible not to split the scene into different files, but to fit two endings in one file?

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  • $\begingroup$ maybe you wanna tell us a bit more about your animation? how do these "endings" look like? driving a car left or right? or what? of course you could do such things e.g. with geometry nodes, but we have no idea how you made your animation. $\endgroup$
    – Chris
    Commented Sep 7, 2023 at 13:17
  • $\begingroup$ @Chris I added an explanation. $\endgroup$
    – arachnoden
    Commented Sep 7, 2023 at 13:33
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    $\begingroup$ Blender files can have multiple scenes. Why don't you separate the divergent parts into different ones? You can also link objects and collections across files, sharing common parts of the project where they are equal so you don't have to update them manually $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos ♦
    Commented Sep 7, 2023 at 14:05
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    $\begingroup$ @DuarteFarrajotaRamos -- I give a complete workflow below. It can be a bit tricky if the single-scene file size is already large (character mesh, clothing and other parented meshes) $\endgroup$
    – james_t
    Commented Sep 7, 2023 at 17:10

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Certainly using scenes is the solution you need. It can get tricky if you have large amounts of data for your characters, and want to keep files manageably smaller.

There is some subtleties in creating these scenes, in that:

  1. linked copies will not allow you to change animation of one scene without it appearing in both scenes, and
  2. a Full Copy (new scene) that can greatly increase file size (mesh copies, etc), but it is the one to use if you don't mind a much larger file.

So if you're dealing with a large file as I do with several characters, clothing, other parented meshes.... Here is a workflow that I use.

First have a base file that contains the objects and their definitions (meshes) -- With related, parented meshes in collections. You'd want to remove all animations from objects in this definition file. (save a copy of your original file with the animations.

Then, File::link these character/object Collections into your animation file. For each Collection instance linked, do a Library Override so that you can edit actions (you'll also have to do similar for any child objects of the armature (body, clothing):

enter image description here

enter image description here

You can then recover the animation by File::Append (Action), and in the Action Editor, assign these to your Armatures (or other animated objects).

Test out your animation.

Then, you can make Fill Copies of a Scene, because that copies of the linked objects still has a much smaller file size.

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