Extra Key frames added to bones I haven't used.

[djwaterman]

I'm wondering if this is normal, I've been animating a character and I'll do a first pass say for eye movements, next I'll key a specific bone, and then move on to do other bones. But I've found that a bone I have just made a key frame for already has a bunch of key frames already made from previous bones key frames.

Does that make sense? I mean it seems that every time you make a key frame that other key frames get created for all other bones at that same time, so now I spend a lot of time deleting these points.

Am I missing a switch somewhere that turns this behavior off. Apart from this I really love animating in ASP.

[djwaterman]

Confirmed. I just did a test with a three boned vector shape. I set up an animation and animated one bone. Then when I selected the other bones I found they also had key frames set at the same place along the time-line as the original bone I had animated.

Conclusion, this is how Anime Studio does key framing.

So is everyone comfortable working this way? Isn't it more desirable that other bones are set at frame zero and only have key frames set when the animator moves them or sets them?

Or have I missed something important?

[funksmaname]

selecting a bone with any tool other than the 'select bone' tool will add a keyframe to the related channel - this is i guess so that clicking a bone will define its attribute on the timeline even if you don't want it moved... unless we're crossing wires, if you use the select bone tool you'll notice the red animation channel dissapears. In practice, I've never really found this to be an issue, and it might be quicker to select the keys you dont want and deleting them than swapping tools around...

[sbtamu]

This is exactly how it is supposed to work. If you do not want other bones to leave key frames on the time line then use the rotate bone tool and not the manipulate bone

[funksmaname]

rotate tool also leaves keyframes when you select a bone... the only way not to add keys is use the select bone tool

However, there's no practical reason to select a bone you don't plan on keying afaict... if you don't want the bone keyed, don't click it!

[djwaterman]

This does work differently to other key framing systems I'm used to using, but as long as I know the rules I'm happy to adapt. How come when I select a bone and look at the time-line, there will be two bone icons, one greyed out and the other red? Both say they are bone angle. They don't have names so I never really know what is what down there, I end up making a lot of assumptions which is kind of dangerous if it means I end up deleting the wrong keys.

But thanks for answering, I'll try to get my head into it.

[slowtiger]

Red one: the actual bone or bones you have selected. Grey one: all bone keys at this frame. Deselect, and only the grey ones remain visible.

[heyvern]

It's the manipulate bone tool that's creating keys you don't think you want. Even if you are only moving one bone, the manipulate bone tool MUST key the other bones in the chain. There is no other way around it because that is how it works. The manipulate bone tool is very specific in it's use. It rotates all of the bones in the chain to calculate a final angle goal of the bone being manipulated. It's using FK or IK? I always forget, but it MUST key all the bones in the chain, or it would simple only rotate a single bone.

If you have a very simplistic chain of bones that doesn't require rotation of the higher bones in the chain then only use the bone tool on a specific bone.

For some reason I seem to go against convention and never ever ever ever learned to use the manipulate bones tool. It's not that I don't like it or that I did this on purpose. I just prefer rotating each bone individually and never got into the habit of using that tool. I can get the same results of the manipulate bone tool by rotating each bone individually. Also I can control where in the time line each bone is rotated. Instead of all the bones in a chain rotated on a single frame I can offset the rotations to create a more fluid natural movement.

Copying and pasting keys will also add key frames to ALL bones, not just those with keys. If you select the "gray" channel key frame icon and copy and paste it on a new frame ALL bones will now have keys. If you only want to copy/paste keyed bones, then copy the "red" channel icon for selected bones with keys.

[djwaterman]

Thanks again for the extra information. I look forward to the next opportunity to try out some of this workflow.