What's New for Animators

5

Animation

In This Section:

• Improved Performance 47
• Mirroring Animation 48
• Defining a Constraint Target 49
• Editing UV Constraints 49
• Counting Animation-Related Attributes 49
• Counting Attributes in a Scene 50
• Action Window Enhancements 50
• Animating While in the Camera Editor 51
• Improvements for Your Particle Workflow 51
• Naming Selection Handles 52

Improved Performance

Animation > Playback Options

For Playblast

For more information, see Viewing Running Animation in Animating in Alias.

• You may be able to improve the playblast performance rate by up to 200% by turning off time slider updates during playback (in the Optimization Options section of the Playback Options window).

• Playback/playblast start-up for heavily clustered models (the time it takes before everything highlights and starts moving) has been improved by a rate of 300% or more for some heavily clustered models.

• The playblast window now has two icons on its titlebar, a standard close icon (to close the playblast window and stop playback), and an Output to Pix icon (to turn .pix file output on and off).

Edit > Cut/Copy/Paste Keyframes

For Editing

For more information, see Keyframe Animation in Animating in Alias.

The performance rate of Cut keyframes, Copy keyframes, and Paste keyframes is up to 600% faster than in Version 8.5.

Animation > Action Window

In the Action window, expression editing has improved performance for error checking.

For more information, see Working in the Action Window in Animating in Alias.

Particles

For Particles

For more information, see Dynamics and Particle Systems in Animating in Alias.

Improvements have been made for particle collisions with deforming surfaces, displacement mapped/warped surfaces, and splitting.

For more on particles, see Improvements for Your Particle Workflow on page 51.

Edit > Mirror

Mirroring Animation

For more information, see Making a Mirror Copy in Basic Tools.

Mirror lets you create symmetrical duplicates of hierarchies, which include skeletons, IK handles, constraints, rest poses, limits, animation, and selection handles.

Constrain > Constrain to

Defining a Constraint Target

For more information, see Constraining An Object to Another Object in Animating in Alias.

In addition to the existing object constraint, there is a new UV constraint.

Where the object constraint constrains to the pivot of an object, the UV constraint constrains to either a UV coordinate, or the orientation of a surface normal at a UV coordinate on a surface. The U and V coordinate values can be animated.

Object Edit > Constrain > Edit uv constraint

Editing UV Constraints

For more information, see Editing UV Constraints in Animating in Alias.

You can pick and modify any UV constraint assigned to a constraint target object using Object Edit > Constrain > Edit uv constraint.

Alternatively, you can edit a UV constraint by using the Information window and opening Constraint Info.

Windows > Information > Anim Stats

Counting Animation-Related Attributes

For more information, see Using the Anim Stats Window in Animating in Alias.

The Anim Stats window displays a number of animation-related attributes for the specified DAG nodes. These attribute names are arranged along the top of the window over their respective columns.

Menus let you sort nodes by type or by name, and filter nodes to constrained, clustered, animated, active, or hierarchies.

Counting Attributes in a Scene

Windows > Information > Scene Info

The Scene Info window has five sections, each of which displays a number of attributes for the specified file.

For more information, see Using the Scene Info Window in Animating in Alias.

Animation > Action Window

Action Window Enhancements

For more information, see Working in the Action Window in Animating in Alias.

• The following features have been added to the Action window to make your animation workflow easier:

Model-Pick button

Takes the objects currently selected in the Action Window lister and makes them active in the modeling windows.

pin object button

If an object is pinned, it will remain visible in the Action Window lister even if it becomes unpicked in the modeling window or its parent object in the lister is closed.

padlock

If a channel is padlocked, it will remain visible in the Action Window lister, even if the channel filters or parameter controls are changed such that the channel would otherwise be removed from the lister.

• Hold the Ctrl and arrow keys to "pick-walk" through keyframes and tangents. Pick-walking lets you pick a keyframe or tangent and then, with the use of the keyboard arrows, go on to pick the next one, while unpicking its predecessor.

Windows > Camera Editor

Animating While in the Camera Editor

For more information, see Camera Editor in Rendering in Alias.

• In version 9.0, you can animate camera attributes while in the Camera Editor.

• A Model-Pick button has been added to the Camera Editor. It takes the camera currently selected in the Camera Editor and makes it active in the modeling windows.

File > Export > Particles

Improvements for Your Particle Workflow

Saving Particles in a File

• If you run Playback and there are particles present when it is finished, you can now save the particles in a file using File > Export > Particles.

If there are no particles present, nothing will be saved and a message will be displayed in the prompt line. The shaders and lights themselves are NOT modified.

For more information, see Viewing Running Animation in Animating in Alias.

• In Animation > Playback options, you can now set the particles starting playback ON. You are asked for the psys directory. The particles are saved out for one cycle of playback. You can also turn this option on during playback.

Windows > Multi-lister

Improved Workflow

For more information, see Multi-lister in Rendering in Alias.

Workflow with particle files has been improved in the following areas:

• saving the current particles (allowing the "initial particle file" to replace the run-up).

• file emitters now read a particle file at each frame while retaining existing particles.

Naming Selection Handles

For more information, see Viewing Selection Handles in Basic Tools.

When an object has a selection handle, you can show the node name next to the selection handle using the Annotation option in Display Tgls > Selection handles-.

The name is in the same color of the selection handle, so that the name's color will be changed according to whether the object is active or not. You can pick this name to pick a selection handle-a feature that is useful if you are working with a complex model.

Motion Blur

Motion Blur Compensation in Bake Plug-in

The renderer evaluates animations at a motion blur sample point, interpolating between these values. Constraint animation is limited to a -180/+180 degree range.

If the constraint jumps from -180 to +180, the object doesn't actually move. However, the motion blur sampling reads a value between these degree ranges and the object appears to flip, even though it doesn't. Extra keyframes are created with the motion blur bake compensation at the motion blur sample times whenever this flipping problem is detected.