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I'm looking to see if there's a way or add on to save a set of keyframes to re use later in blender 3.0? In after effects, they have a feature called animation presets.

Basically, I'm doing a simple fade of invisibility. so an object will become visible after 30 frames or so. But I have like 15 objects/image planes that will do the same thing at different points of the video. Looking for a way to speed up the process like after effects so I don't have to manually keyframe each object. Not sure if copy paste will work.

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Ever tried the NLA Editor in Blender? It might solve your problem. If you've never tried it, I'd recommend watching a good intro video on YouTube, since it can seem a bit confusing at first, but it is a very powerful tool once you understand it.

But here's a quick run through for your assignment :

  • Create the required animation for any one object.
  • Open your Dope Sheet editor, switch it to an Action Editor and give you action a good, memorable name of your liking.

Open Action Editor and name your action clip

  • Switch to NLA Editor. Push the action clip down to create a new animation layer.

NLA Editor

Push the action clip down to a new layer

  • Now select all your other objects to which you want to assign the same animation, then select the previously animated object in the end, hit Ctrl + L and select Link Animation Data. This will assign the same animation clip to all the selected object. You can change the timing of the animation by simply dragging the layers in the NLA Editor.

Multiple objects with offset animation

  • To edit the original animation, select any one layer and hit Tab in the NLA Editor. This will turn your layer green and allow you to edit the animation like you would generally do. After editing, make sure the hit Tab again.

EDIT-01 :

It seems like offsetting animation layers in NLA does not work for animated Shader nodes... but here's a weird trick that might work :

  • Select one of the objects you need to fade out, go to Object Properties > Relations > Pass Index > animate the value from 1 to 1000 (1 where object should be invisible, and 1000 where it should be visible)

animating the Pass Index

  • Set up you shaders as follows : (the value for Divide node needs to be the same as as we used above for the pass index. You can try as low as 10 or as high as 10,000...lower values might give choppy result, while higher values will smoothen out the transition...)

Shader setup

  • Now you you can offset the animation layers in the NLA Editor as mentioned in the previous answer, and tweak the settings as you like.

NLA Animation Layers

Hope this helps !

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    $\begingroup$ When I follow your instructions/ follow a video. There's no action already made in the action editor. When I Create an action it doesn't use my keyframes. I'm animating a mix shader node only. I'm not sure how to post an image in my reply, so ill add it to my original post. $\endgroup$
    – captain flynn
    Commented Apr 22, 2022 at 5:53
  • $\begingroup$ You're right ! I didn't check if NLA worked with animated Shader Nodes... my bad... Anyways, I have updated my answer with a tricky workaround... see if this helps... $\endgroup$
    – Adisage
    Commented Apr 24, 2022 at 6:12

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