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In this video, if you take a look at the timeline at 2:48 there are white "custom start and end" arrows in the timeline, called shot-6a and end, It looks like that it is making the day and night background animate repeatedly:

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I would like to know how exactly I can set these custom start and end keyframes (or whatever those are) in the timeline in order to save time and I don't have to manually repeat key frames all over the timeline for a repeating animation, like for a wheel. Can you please tell me what those are and how to use them?

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The two white triangles you see in the screenshot are called markers. They are used to «denote frames with key points or significant events within an animation». You can read more about them in the manual.

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However, they are not responsible for the limited playback loop you see in the video. That is controlled by the Start and End frame numbers you see towards the top-right side of the Timeline editor window. In the screenshot above they are pointed out with green arrows, and set to frames $10$ and $120$ respectively (current frame being $20$). You'll notice that those numbers also correspond to the light-gray area in the timeline, indicating the frame range it's gonna repeat when you press play. These numbers also determine which frames are going to be produced when you render your animation, and are repeated in the Frame Range options panel inside the Properties > Output window.

You might wanna have the render output frame range set to something, but limit your loop's start and end frames to something different in the viewport while working. The button with the clockwatch icon in the screenshot, called Use Preview Range (blue arrow), lets you do that. You can see it in action, along with other features of the Timeline in Blender's official tutorial video about it here: Timeline - Blender 2.80 Fundamentals.

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  • $\begingroup$ I see, thank you for the clarification and the answer! The clockwatch button will do my bidding nicely. $\endgroup$
    – user140193
    Jan 7 at 17:30
  • $\begingroup$ I have come to an additional question. The Preview range button sets the preview range of the whole timeline for all objects, is there a way to tell different objects to have different preview ranges? Like a windmill in the background using preview range, while the main character is not using preview range at all. $\endgroup$
    – user140193
    Jan 8 at 16:48
  • $\begingroup$ @user140193 I'm no animation expert so you might wanna ask that as a separate question, but I'm skeptical. How would that work exactly? If you have two objects with preview ranges of 20-50 and 80-120 respectively, when the timeline gets to 50, what happens? it plays for another 30 frames while nothing happens and then the second objects animates until 120? $\endgroup$
    – Kuboå
    Jan 8 at 17:02
  • $\begingroup$ @user140193 no, it's like the other way around, the first object just jumps to the start at second 50, while the other objects keeps on in the timeline normally. The windmill uses preview range, and the main character just does not. It's deactivated for them, but activated for the endless rotating background object. $\endgroup$
    – user140193
    Jan 9 at 14:36

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