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I'm working on a cyclic animation. I applied the F-Curve modifier Make Cyclic for better seeing what I'm doing. In the image you can see the f-curve for an specific bone. My question is, is there a way of interpolate the beginning and end of a cyclic f-curve?

original curve

I mean. Blender interpolates automatically the f-curve between 'START' and 'P', and between 'P' and 'END'. In the image, the interpolation in the interval 'i1' between 'START' and 'P' is made taking into account 'START', 'P' and 'END'. Nevertheless, the interpolation does not take into account the virtual 'P' that lies before 'START'.

I myself have tuned dozens of times the START and END points of every cyclic animation I have done because I haven't find any obvious way to do this. But this tuning is made on the fly, manually, by tweaking the handlers for the extreme keys of the animation. Is there a way to force Blender into interpolate the f-curve between P, START, and END treating 'START' and 'END' like if there were the same keyframe?

I have only found this post about the very same topic 4 years ago, but there were no solution and I don't know if any plugin, addon or functionality has been added since then (2012): http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?257538-Looping-an-animation-smoothly

Thanks in advance.

Edit:

I know one feasible workaround for this issue, as stated in the link above. I could make two copies of P and place them in the exact position the "Make Cyclic" transform calculates. It then would interpolate correctly. But I don't want this. It is a workaround that, applied to all the curves for all the bones for all my cyclic animations, is a real PITA. As also stated in the link above, I tweak here and there almost every keyframe in my animations, but I want to have the basis of a well done interpolation and not to lose hours tweaking start and end keyframes of every looping animation to make them look finely interpolated. I have read that 3DS has this feature. Is not an automagically feature like they say in the link. I just want the interpolation Blender does in every frame in every animation, but taking into account the cyclic nature of it.

Edit 2: This is the page that describes the function 3DS that I talked about. Just for reference. https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2015/ENU/3DSMax/files/GUID-8D3FF404-082E-44D5-99B1-68F960A45D0D-htm.html

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  • $\begingroup$ You have to set the end of the loop 1 keyframe before the very end of your animation, if the first and last Keys are the same then there will be a loop. $\endgroup$
    – Yvain
    Commented Feb 17, 2016 at 19:44
  • $\begingroup$ No, sorry, that's not the problem. The animation runs just fine, but the solution you posted doesn't affect the curves at all. I repeat, yes, START and END are the same keyframe, but the problem is that for 'i1', Blender interpolates taking START, P and END and for 'i2' it takes again START, P, and END. I want it to take -P, START, P, END for 'i1' and START, P, END and 2P for 'i2'. I know that START and END are the same keyframe, but Blender doesn't. And so it doesn't interpolate the whole animation as a cycle. $\endgroup$
    – Tanatarca
    Commented Feb 18, 2016 at 8:33

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I created a script that solves this situation by copying the second and next-to-last keyframes before and after the first and last keyframes, forcing the curve to interpolate and removing those keyframes leaving the interpolation untouched.

Here it is: https://github.com/aravergar/cyclic-animation-interpolation

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    $\begingroup$ Thanks for the posts. This is not a regular forum, according to site rules links to answers are not answers if the link goes missing your answer becomes an empty shell without content. Answers should be substantial and stand on their own without relying on external data like links, videos or images. Instead of having users go through external links, either transcribe essential parts of the process here, linking the source, or posts these in the comments section instead. $\endgroup$
    – Harry McKenzie ♦
    Commented Dec 10 at 5:57

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