How to edit a duplicated animation?

Question

I've followed this question because I want to split an animation into run/walk/attack.

I've entered the dope sheet, duplicated the animation (and pressed the F) and renamed them appropriately. But since I'm very n00b, I don't know how to set the starting time position for each animation...

[EDIT] The original animation is run, then walk, then attack. I want it to turn into 3 different animations. Right now I have 3 duplicates of the run, walk, attack; I'd like, for example, to cut out the "run" and the "attack" from the "walk" animation.

Answer 1

I assume you're going to be using NLAs.

Since I've been unable to find a good explanation of blender's NLAs, I've decided to write a bad one and hope that feedback lets me improve it over time:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WrrdFpZ-VC7taxu4iD3hZIowYvyM953iZpBwkZ78PgA

I will include a (soon-to-be-outdated) copy of the "splitting actions" section here:

This is probably the most difficult of the workflows. When you are starting out with NLAs and haven't become comfortable creating small reusable chunks you will often realize "I wish I had split this up before now."

The essence of splitting is to create a copy and delete part from each. Let's refer to those two parts as A and B.

Imagine your action is currently the primary action. Use the Dope Sheet/Action Editor to give it a "good" name (maybe "AplusB"). Then use the double-down-chevron to move it into an action strip. Create a new track and create a new action strip in that new track that refers to the same action. You now have two action strips referring to the same action datablock. Go ahead and create a third action strip referring to the same action datablock as a sort of information bunker in case you make a mistake later on.

Make one of the strips active and hit the Tab key to start editing it. Use the Dope Sheet/Action Editor to make a single-user copy of the action (click the [3] button). Now give it a name that identifies which half of the action it will become (maybe "part B"). After that, you can delete all the keyframes that don't belong in the action (delete the A, leave the B). Memorize the name of the new action. Hit Tab to stop editing that action strip. Now change the Action of the action strip to refer to the new action.

Make the other strip active and hit the Tab key to start editing it. Use the Dope Sheet/Action Editor to make another single-user copy copy of the datablock (click the [2] button). You can rename it (maybe "part A"). You can now use the Graph Editor to remove all the B keyframes and leave the A keyframes. Don't forget to point the strip at the new action.

Before you test the animation you should discard the 3rd (information bunker) action strip but not before you click the [f] button to force blender to not garbage-collect the AplusB action. That way you can still recover it later if you find problems with the animation.

Answer 2

The action editor is the easiest place to re-time your animations. After you have duplicated the action and deleted the other parts, you can select all keyframes A and move them along the timeline by pressing G, like moving anything else, until the first keyframe of the new action is at frame one.

In the dopesheet header you will find a snapping options menu, having this on Nearest Frame helps to keep things aligned.

Using this answer I put together an addon to make it easier to use. If you save your startup file with the addon activated it will always be there.