Keys on the Timeline can be Manipulated…
February 21st, 2006 by Luc-Eric - Viewed 7462 times - Popularity: 22% [?]Something funny’’s come up since XSI 5.0. It seems a good part of users do not know that the key bars that apear on the timeline when you start animating can be manipulated. This could be for example users who are not familiar with Maya and therefore not expecting to be able to move these keys. Just in case this can help a few people, here’’s how it works:
- Shift+Click and drag to create a region around the keys on the timeline
- Shift+Double Click to select a single frame
- Hold Middle mouse button and drag that region to move keys
- Ctrl+Drag on that region to copy keys
- Middle Click on the extremities of the region to scale keys
- There are some more timeline options in the right mouse click menu
- You can view an audio wave in the timeline if you have an audio clip in the scene.
Popularity: 22% [?]
It’’s good to see the timeline going this way, certainly the right direction.
But I still have reservations about the number of key and mouse presses needed to move keys around on the timeline. to select then a middle click to move is just too many when you”re moving stuff around a lot, on a roll and trying to work fast. It can get very tired after a while.
I get the , I”d hate to not be able to click anywhere to move the timeline but All I really want to do is move a key without selecting ranges and stuff.
There’’s not, so far, a way to split out x/y/z for srts, is there?
thanks for posting, though
I agree with kim. altough this is nice and I have been using it since v5 I would like to see a way like in the old timeline-dopesheet: you just select a key and drag it, no need for selecting a range…
I totally agree with kim and Raffael. Select and Move is way to go. Must be quick and easy.
I think reason why softimage putted “multiple key editing style(CTRL+ and SHIFT+)” is because if you just click on timeslider, current time will change… Maybe “3ds max like” timesliderbar should be added then.
What about a sticky tool selection for moving/scaling keys. The ”M” key is a pretty universal tool for moving objects/components/keys. The ”B” key likewise is useful for scaling around a pivot point. These kinds of hotkey enabled tools would be useful for key manipulation in the timeline.
Yes we aimed very precisly at what we could deliver in a few weeks for V5 for the timeline dopesheet. We needed to dump the previous dopesheet attempt ASAP and get something a group of users could use right away. In the future we will continue to work on it because we believe it’’s critically important.
With regards to key bindings for it, we always have the same problem, which is that the mouse would have to be exactly on top of it before you hit the key, so it makes it very finicky. That’’s why we didn”t put CTRL+C/CTRL+V to copy paste keys. Probably in the future we”ll take more space and have more to work with, for example like the Max timeline-dopesheet does. Overlapping the dopesheet with the timeline cursor will probably be something we move away from now that we see its limitations
It’’s funny, it actually took me a while to figure out the whole SHIFT+ thing. In previous versions of XSI I always used the timeline dopesheet while animating and loved it, so this time around i kept trying to select keys using “q” like it used to be before. Just wondering, why the change to the shift key from q since the rest of the mechanics of manipulating the keys is pretty much the same?
Ha, so _you”re_ the guy who knew that if the mouse was exactly on top of the timelime region, and you hit Q, you could get a region? :-D Most people didn”t know there was a region in there. That did make a lot of sense however, since it’’s the same keys the standard dopesheet, so it’’s discoverable if you know the standard dopesheet.
The timelime-dopesheet in XSI 5.0 is even smaller, so the manipulation of time and keys does not work by activating tools with the keyboard, but by using the mouse in conjunction with a modifier like Shift or CTRL. This is instantly discoverable by people who have used the Maya timelime dopesheet, which was the main point of the thing, but indeed it’’s not an ideal solution since it’’s not obvious to others. The rest of the mechanics is actually fairly different, since the timelime combines various modes including audio scrubbing, so it doesn”t pretend to have the tools of the normal dopesheet.
Realy nice,
Since we are going crazy in idea.:
(arrrgg! my spacebar send my message. yep, its my first post here!)
Realy nice,
I just try it and I”ve got an idea. What avout a “X” salce “V” translate and “M” move tool in the time line with a Proportional influence on the other keys?!? with a nice Red to yellow falloff …
Easy enought to make a modelor animate and give a wow factor to the timeline interface…
I actually like the shift and middle click and i don”t think its that bad at all but I can see a point here… well maybe an option at the end of the timeline to switch to max like timeline or new xsi .. few buttons there for different way of working :)
It would be nice to see vertical scalable timeline..minor thing but a major habbit :-)
I would just like those keys in the timelin to be taller so I can see them better :-)
keep up the good work
I know that screen real-estate is critical to having a decent UI, but would having a separate, collapsable dopesheet solve some of these issues? For myself, I always have a floating dopesheet hanging around and shade it when it gets in the way. But I always have it available to me when I need to refer to my key-timing.
Basically, if we have another slim-sized dopesheet above the current timeline, then there would be no need for the Shift or Ctrl modifiers as it would be its own separate tool that doesn’t conflict with Timeline duties.