Lesson 17 - Working with Buffer curves



Select the object and go to Graph Editor and select one attribute.



Select the Key from the F - curve and Frame it. (Press F on the Keyboard), and see how we can apply Buffer curve.

Buffer Curve: What the Buffer curve does is, it basically takes the snapshots of our F-Curve.



Go to View > Show Buffer Curves



Notice the grey line, that allows to see the snapshot of the F-Curve. We can use this as Reference to tell that Ok, Was that a wise decision to get rid of that key? Did i lose the motion? With this buffer curve we are able to check twice before we finalize the movement.

You can use it to help us cleanup our F-Curve.




Lets say for whatever reason we have to get the curve back to its original position. In order to do that, rather than positioning the key manually .. We can go to Curves > Swap Buffer Curves.

Notice it goes to the original position. and it shows the next result (in Grey color), so anytime we need to shift we can use this Swap Buffer Curves.

Note: You can only Swap between TWO, and it doesn't come along with the scene, if you save the file and reopen you won't find it.

YOU ARE NOT GOING TO SEE THE BUFFER CURVE WHEN YOU REOPEN THE SCENE.

You can't Refresh your buffer curve.

lets say..



If we want to take a snapshot of the this(b) curve, and not the other(a) curve for reference anymore, Notice it refreshes our snapshot curve.

Lesson 16 - Adjusting how our function Curves (F-curves) interpolate



The animation.



The Graph Editor.



Go to Tangents in Graph Editor and we will discuss

Spline, Linear, Clapped, Stepped, Flat, Fixed.

• Spline: It will give you a smother Interpolation through out our whole entire 'F' Curve.

You can Use Spline to animating more Organic Biped and Quadrupeds types of characters.

• Linear: Its good for working Mechanical type animation, you can get more mechanical type of movement, and it also great for animating eye movement.

• Clamped: If you see Clamped almost looks like Spline, What clamp does is it basically gives us the spline result. But the keys are nearer to each other it gives the more of a linear type of result for tanents.
  

Clamp is the Default in and out tangent's of Maya, you can start of your animation with it, but you can adjust it later.

• Stepped: It gives more of a Step type of interpolation, the animation will be more Blocky.

Its gives the Pose to Pose method in animation.

• Flat: It gives Pauses wherever there are inbetweens keys, Its very useful in working on Ease In and Ease out and moving hold.

• Fixed: It Allows us to Keep the Tangent handle Fixed into its position.

Lets say we focus on 'Rotate X' and increase the frame to 150 and notice our value has changed, but our tangent handle is NOT. Because of our selection (FIXED) that we have made so thats essentially what it does, it locks the tangent handle.

• In Tangents/Out Tangents: First part of the tangent handle is 'Linear', and the second part of the tangent hand 'Spline'.

Lesson 15 - Pasting Key frame data to other objects



What we going to do here was taking the information from the animated Disc and paste it on to the Duplicate Disc, that will have the same movement.



The original animation of the Disc.



Select the original disc and select the Graph Editor (the full control of the ship is already selected) and Press 'Ctl+C' to copy the controls, and the paste option we don't want any Offset values for our keys so..



Lets lets go to next disc (duplicate disc), Go to Edit > Paste (Option Box)



Change the Value of 'Time and Value Offset' to '0'.



Notice the same exact keys pasted on our Duplicate Disc.

EXAMPLE: You can use this option to do walk cycles.

Lesson 14 - Using Maya's Copy and Paste keys tool



There are two disc on our stage and..
one is animated (Original Disc) and another one is non-animated (Duplicate Disc),
we basically going to copy and paste the same animation to the another disc.



You can see the Graph of the Original Disc and the Duplicate Disc.



Movement of the Disc.



Go to Edit > Keys > Copy Keys (Option Box)



The 'Copy Keys Options' window

or



Go to 'Edit' in the Graph Editor and 'Copy' (Option Box)



'Copy Keys Options' window, Which shows only the copy option.



Time range:

1. All: It will select all of the keys copyed, or whatever we have selected.
2. Start/End: This will indicate which frames we would like to copy and paste.
   
   

Time Slider: Whatever our range slider set to.

1. Help image: It basically tells us what our method do for us.

Help Image:

• Methods:

1. Keys: Copy and paste the keys.
2. Segments: Its not only copy and paste keys, but it also set keys on our range whatever indicated from either 'Time Slider' or 'Start/End' time.

we are going to work on 'All'. So lets select that.


Select our Disc, and we will focus on one attribute and here, lets take 'Rotate X'.



Select the key, and 'Copy Keys' from the 'Copy Keys Options' window, or 'Ctl' + 'C' to copy the key.

Once we copy the keys it will stored into our Clipboard.

or



Go to 'Edit' in the Graph editor and select 'Paste' (option box)



'Paste Keys Option' Window, which shows only the 'paste options'.



Time range:

1. Start: Based on our timerange we can paste from our start time.
2. Start/End: Start and end time
3. Current: Our Current frame.
4. Clipboard: From the Clipboard

From the Start/End time notice below from the clipboard two catogeries are visible.

• Clipboard Adjustment:

1. Scale: It indicates that if we were to set the Start and End time the keys that we copy will fit with a scale within the range.
2. Fit: It allows to have the keys fit within the range without any scale.

Current: Whatever current frame that we have marked.

• Copies: We can copy and paste keys on the timeline, whatever value we have indicated in the 'Value Offset' box and 'Time Offset' box, when we increase the numbers of Copies within our paste option.

Clipboard:

• Clipboard Adjustments:

1. Preserve: So this allows us to preserve whatever we have within out clipboard. Its going to take the vaule and paste it right where we indicated.
   
   
   

Paste Method:

• Insert: Insert our keys before, whatever we have specified in our value.

• Replace: It takes all of those keys, lets say we had a range and any keys within that range is going to be replaced.
  
  
  
  

• Merge: Its going to merge the keys.
  
  
  

We are going to use 'Replace' here, and turn off the 'Connect'.

We do need to indicate 'Time offset', 'Value offset', so we can get the swing is what we are looking for.

VERY IMPORTANT

• Time offset: We want the time offset to be offset from whatever key we have selected to copy, so here is 'Frame 11'. so '0' would indicate the position of our selected key.

now if we wanted to paste it....Lets say Frame 18, so what time we have to put on our 'Time offset' to move the key to frame 34..?



The original frame 'Frame 11'
The place we are going to paste is 'Frame 18'
The distance between 11 and 18 is 7
Time Offset is 7



Whatever value we would like the Key to be act.

so in this case we want the Mirror Effect, right now our value is set to 36, If we want the key to have a mirror of Negative 36(-36), we would need to not only put in -36 into our window, but also we would need to put one more time to get the mirror effect.

So its basically saying if we do negative 36 once thats gonna brings us to '0', negative 36 (-36) again thats gonna bring us to the number of 36 (which is in the value box)



On the value offset.