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.

Lesson 13 - Scaling keys in graph editor



Select the Scale Tool ('R' on the Keyboard).





Hold the 'Middle mouse' button and drag to the left or right, notice thats going to change our timing of the animation.



Hold the 'Middle mouse' button and drag up and down, and notice whats happen, it controls our value of the animation.



It really matter where you place the mouse and middle click and drag. Wherever you click it takes that a main point, Notice that.



Zoom the first frame on the graph editor, Keep the cursor on the start frame.



Keep the cursor in the Starting point.



Keep the mouse cursor in the starting point and drag right and left to scale our time and keep it at the same place and drag up and down to change our value.

Lets 'UNDO' the whole thing and another method is..



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



The 'Scale Keys Options'



So if we are focusing only on that '2nd' part then..


Go to 'Edit' in the graph editor and select 'scale' (Option box)



Its the similar window but it got only the options of scale keys.



Method:

• Scale: its going to adjust scale in out time and our value and also adjust the pivot at which our scale occurs.
  
  
• Time Scale: 1st Box
  
• Value Scale: 2nd Box
  Whatever value is in the first box is going to multiply by whatever we currently selected.
  
  
  
• Pivot: This is basically the pivot in our graph editor.
  

The Default '0' is the Center of the Horizontal and Vertical lines.

The 'time pivot' is the Horizontal lines and
The 'value pivot' is the Vertical lines.



Select the ship (1)
and select one attribute (2) (Lets focus on Transtale Z)

Lets Mirror this in time.



Our start key is actually mirrored and going to be our end key.

to mirror this..



Remember, Whatever we put in the text field its going to multiply, so we are going to put the value of -1 so we can flip it.

so in Pivot, we have to know on what frame we flip this to get a mirror.



Lets select the end frame of the 'F' curve Translate Z and on the stats box you can see the frame no., so here its 38, so we have to flip this.

Deselect the Curve.



Enter the value 38, make sure you deselected the curve.

whats very important is the value Scale, since the no is 1 so we are going to keep the same, but if the no. is different even this value scale will shift.

And APPLY, notice the F curve flips.



Lets Reset everything to Default.



Method:

• Star/End: It basically does is Scales our keys whatever we have indicated in our option box.

So lets say we are going to Scale our keys from 20 to 38, and scale it down to frame 19 to 30.