0
$\begingroup$

I am as fresh as can be to Blender, using it to make storyboards and despite my recent kerfuffle (details below) I am generally pleased with the inexpensive opportunity to previsualize my movie in the software. I am - however - as much in a learning curve as everyone else and to me as a beginner some inner workings of Blender don't come naturally. I may add here that I work with AFter Effects day in and out on motion design and compositing-heavy VFX-projects. I am more at home in the 2D and Layer based world for now.

NOW ON TO MY PROBLEM: Having animated two armature-rigged characters to a specific pose, I now want to get to the next pose by reseting both characters to the rest position, then applying the rest posisition to the pose position via the 'Apply Visual Transformation to Pose' (for this specific pose it's wise to go back to the Rest Pose as it is way closer to the new pose I want). The change does happen but there is no keysframe created and as soon as I move backwards in the timeline the reset is gone. Same happens when I switch to Object mode and move the playerhead or when I insert a keyframe manually. I reckon there is some logic of Blender that I don't get at the moment, so thanks for your patience in advance.

Greets, Matt

Improve this question
$\endgroup$
4
  • $\begingroup$ To set a keyframe manually, you generally press 'I' with the cursor in the 3D view and then select which operations you want to keyframe (Location, Rotation, and/or Scale). To set them automatically click the Auto Keying button to the left of the animation controls in the middle of the Timeline header. You should really look at a tutorial about animation in Blender to see how it all works. There are hundreds on YT. $\endgroup$
    – John Eason
    Commented Jun 18, 2022 at 15:51
  • $\begingroup$ I was really hoping for the blender forum to be different - as in the first answer to not be the standard of all graphics forums: that grumpy veteran half-heartedly reading the post, suggesting things explicitly already said I have tried and then assuming I haven't tried really hard to read up and watch up on the issue before posting here. I am reluctant to bother users in forums for two reasons. First: I wanna try find out myself first. Second: Replies like yours. You did not help me an inch further, John. Thank you. $\endgroup$
    – Anteeru
    Commented Jun 18, 2022 at 17:28
  • $\begingroup$ Sorry about that, but you did say in your first senetence that you were new to Blender! $\endgroup$
    – John Eason
    Commented Jun 18, 2022 at 18:10
  • $\begingroup$ Perhaps I should have started by saying that that keyframes aren't automatically added in Blender just by changing a pose. You either have to add them manually or turn on the Auto Keying option as I said in my answer. $\endgroup$
    – John Eason
    Commented Jun 18, 2022 at 18:26

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
0
$\begingroup$

The Blender animation workflow that probably best matches your need is this:

  • Go to frame 0 in pose mode, with your character in the rest pose.
  • Select all bones.
  • type I
  • In the Timeline, go to the Keying dropdown menu and change the Active Keying set to "Whole Character".
  • In the Timeline select the circular icon to enable auto-keying.

Now you can go to the frame of your choice, apply transforms, and autokeying combined with full character keying set will generate keyframes for all of the bones.

Simply applying visual transforms doesn't generate keyframes unless autokeying is on, and using the Whole Character keying set prevents controller dragging because of interpolation.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
2
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for the answers, Marty and John. Alright, it's still the same logic as in after effects, the name 'autokeying' was a bit misleading to me: I read it like 'from now on every transformation creates a keyframe' and not like: you need to generate a keyframe for every channel first for consecutive transformations to autogenerate keys. For today I limped on without that knowledge, but I will apply it tomorrow. Been bugging me the whole day. Thanks. $\endgroup$
    – Anteeru
    Commented Jun 18, 2022 at 20:25
  • $\begingroup$ There are nuances and I simplified the description to match your described workflow, but yes, autokeying only places keys in channels that have existing keys. There are other workflows where that's a significant win, especially when you are creating actions using a small subset of the bones in a rig. $\endgroup$
    – Marty Fouts
    Commented Jun 18, 2022 at 23:34

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .