I am working with 30-50 objects which have significant motion keyframing as well as even more significant color keyframing unique to each object. A lot is trial and error on the color keyframing so I am frequently undoing or removing a portion of the scripting I use to keyframe the colors. The problem I am having is that I cannot distinguish the motion from the material keyframing in the timeline or dopesheet. There must be a way to filter either of these pages so that you're only looking at the material keyframes yes? Help appreciated - Thanks!
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2$\begingroup$ Have you tried using the channels' searchbar? $\endgroup$– L0LockJun 12 at 20:35
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$\begingroup$ Admittedly I don't understand channels but I tried to see if the search filter would allow me to differentiate motion versus material keyframes on the same objects and I can seem to do that. When I search, the results aren't really what I would expect. Seems like I may be missing something obvious as I would think this is a necessary feature for complex projects. $\endgroup$– Brad SnellingJun 14 at 13:33
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1 Answer
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Here is an example of two objects, with each a different material with different keyed properties:
You have different ways to isolate keys or curves.
Selection
By default, the option "Only Show Selected" should be ON:
With this option, only the keyframes/curves from the selected object or element will be visible in the corresponding animation editor. You can find this option in the dopesheet and curve editors, but not in the timeline.
For material nodes, you need to first select the object containing the material, then select the specific node in the shader editor.
Keys and curves can be easily messy if you disable that option. And it is the primary way to filter your animation editors.
But, when working on multiple objects, or on objects and materials simultaneously, it might be interesting to disable that option.
Channel options
Each channel (and sometimes their groups/parents) have some options available:
Five icons, five effects:
- Pin: Toggle keeping the channel displayed regardless of header filters (like selection). You also need to toggle it on the parent channels, if applicable.
- Eye: Toggle the channel's keys/curves visibility in the editor
- Wrench: Toggle the channel's curve modifiers
- Checkbox: Toggle the channel's animation's effect (like a mute)
- Lock: Toggle the editability of the channel.
You can click each individual icon one by one, or use some operators that can toggle, activate or deactivate them, even when multiple are selected.
You can find these operators in the Channel menu, with their associated keyboard shortcuts:
Channel search
The channel search bar allows you to search for words contained in channels, but not channel groups, not objects.
Notice for example that all the channels from a shader property have the name of the property and of the node between parentheses. While objects' transform channels don't.
That means you can isolate a specific name of shader property, of shader node, or even all shader properties with just a parenthesis:
Custom channel groups
As mentioned above, some channel groups do have their own channel options, but some don't:
But you can make your own custom channel groups, which will have the same options. Select some channels, for example your shader properties neatly filtered with the search bar, and use the menu Channel > Group Channels or hit ⎈ CtrlG:
Channels will not change parents if not custom. But it still helps.
