How to bake animation of non-transformation properties with curve-modifiers applied?

Question

I have a point light source whose power has been animated with a noise curve-modifier to have a flickering effect. I want to cycle its animation over 12 frames. For transformation properties like location, rotation and scale, I can convert the modifier to keyframes by baking the animation via Object>Animation>Bake Action, and then cleaning up the remaining frames and adding a cycle modifier. How do I approach cycling the animation for the Power property of the light? Thank you!

Answer 1

The way to get a keyframe animation from the Noise modifier is a bit confusing in Blender. It goes over baking and un-baking the curve. Usually, baking a curve removes keyframes to make the curve permanent, i.e. unalterable by keyframes. So baking the modifier curve gnerates no keyframes either. But now you can un-bake the curve to get keyframes. Here I'll show it step by step, these instructions work for other curve modifiers as well:

1. In the Graph Editor, select the curve with the Noise modifier and choose Key > Bake Curve from the menu or use the shortcut Alt+C. The result will be the curve in the frame range which is set as start and end for the animation, so e.g. frames 1-250.

2. At first this might look incorrect, since the curve probably changes its appearance - that's because you now have the modifier on top of the baked curve. You can now delete the modifier.

3. After you removed the modifier, the noise will look just like before the baking, but notice that it's only between the first and last frame. If you just want a smaller part of the curve, just set start and end frame accordingly before baking.

4. Since a baked curve has no keyframes, you now have to choose Key > Un-Bake Curve from the menu and already you have converted the Noise modifier into keyframes which you can edit like any other keyframe animation.

5. The resulting keyframed noise animation, now you can use a Cycles modifier or other things like tweaking the keyframes for smooth transition etc. to make it looping: