Animate

Turns keyframing mode on or off.

Reference

All animatable transformations and modifications are keyframed while the Animate button is on. When it's off, modifications are applied to frame 0.

Keyboard shortcut to toggle the Animate button: n

How To

To begin animating an object

1. Turn on the Animate button.
2. Drag the time slider to a time other than 0.
3. Do one of the following:
• Transform an object.
• Change an animatable parameter.

For example, if you have a cylinder that has not been animated yet, it has no keys. If you turn on the Animate button, and on frame 20 you rotate the cylinder 90 degrees about its Y axis, Rotate keys are created at frames 0 and 20. The key at frame 0 stores the original orientation of the cylinder, while the key at frame 20 stores the animated rotation of 90 degrees. When you play the animation, the cylinder rotates 90 degrees about its Y axis over 20 frames.

To animate an object between three points

1. Turn on the Animate button.

The Animate button and the highlight border around the active viewport both turn red.

2. Drag the time slider to frame 25, for example.
3. Move the object from point A to point B.

A Move key is created at frames 0 and 25. The establishing key at frame 0 describes the object's position at point A. The key at frame 25 describes the object's position at frame 25.

4. Drag the time slider to frame 50, for example.
5. Move the object from point B to point C.

A Move key is created at frame 50 that describes the object's position at point C.

6. Click the playback button.
7. The object moves from point A to point B over frames 0 to 25, then proceeds to point C over frames 26 to 50.
8. The playback button has turned into a stop button. Click this to stop playback.

To animate a deformation curve

1. Turn on the Animate button.
2. Set a current frame with the Time Slider.
3. Select one or more control points.
4. Use the Move Control Point or Scale Control Point buttons to transform the control points.

To animate the ring array

1. Turn on the Animate button.
2. Move to a non-zero frame.
3. Adjust ring array parameters.

You can't animate the number of boxes in the ring.

4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 for other frames.

To animate an IK structure interactively

1. Click IK on the toolbar to activate IK transform mode.
2. Click Animate to activate animation.
3. Select and move objects in the IK structure on different frames.

The interactive method of IK animation is best suited for expressive character animation or animations where the exact placement of objects is restricted to a few keyframes.