Workaround for moving/deleting actions

synthsin75 · Post by **synthsin75** » Tue Dec 09, 2008 12:56 am

Some may already know this, but I was thinking about scripting today and thought of this. And it works.

One of the biggest problems with actions (as I think someone pointed out recently) is that if you want to move or delete them you have to hunt up all of the keys on many separate layers.

Both can be done easily using the 'rescale keyframes' command. To move a single-frame pose action, check the 'entire document' box and enter the actions current frame as the 'start' and the next frame as the 'end'. Then enter the frame you want it moved to as 'new start' and and the frame after as the 'new' end.

As long as there are no keyframes on the destination frame, there doesn't seem to be any trouble. It will 'jump' them past any intermediate keys.

To delete an action altogether, move the single-frame action to frame zero 'new start' and frame 1 'new end'.

Hopefully this isn't a new idea to only me.

mkelley · Post by **mkelley** » Tue Dec 09, 2008 4:34 am

Wes,

Well, that will work as long as you aren't doing anything else on that frame. IOW, if you have an action AND other keys for other things (which I always seem to have) trying to copy the entire document won't only copy the action, but those keys as well. Unless I'm misunderstanding (which is possible as I am pretty sick right now -- luckily my stuff is all rendering out in Premiere and thus I made my Thursday deadline with a few days to spare).

synthsin75 · Post by **synthsin75** » Tue Dec 09, 2008 5:34 am

Hey Mike,

Yeah, I mentioned 'if there are no keys on the destination frame', but I wasn't thinking about source frame. You're right. Luckily I don't animate with the schedule you do.

Hope you get to feeling better, glad to heard your done with your latest round of animation.

mkelley · Post by **mkelley** » Tue Dec 09, 2008 2:24 pm

Thanks, Wes -- it was quite enlightening to try and make this schedule (three half hour shows from studio recording to finished DVD in two months by essentially a 1 1/2 man shop -- my wife does some Papagayo work for the series :>).

I learned SOOOO much -- having to work to a schedule like this taught me some things I never knew about AS, and reinforced some things I've long known about production (one main thing -- spend the time upfront on your pipeline because it pays off in spades on the backend. For all the work I did in rigging and organizing my backgrounds/characters/sound effects in the beginning it enabled me to proceed at lightspeed through the actually animation).

I will never work to this kind of schedule again -- but it was important to get the Christmas show out before the holiday actually passed <bg>. Still, I don't know that I would give up all the experience and knowledge I gained in fast animation in AS (I feel pretty confident now that I could handle most anything I need to in this show).