Animation and Rigging

Drawing Implicit Bone Chains

You can now draw implicit bone chains using the Create Skeleton Draw Bones command from either the Model or Animate toolbar.

In previous versions, you could only get the implicit bone primitive from the Get Primitive Implicit Bone command.

Many of the usual IK skeleton chain features apply to implicit bone chains, such as applying an envelope, using the Move Joint tool, duplicating the chain in symmetry, icon and shadow icon display, snapping, and using the bone selection filters.

See Drawing Implicit Bone Chains for more information.

Retime Keys Tool for Fcurves

The new Retime Keys tool in the fcurve editor lets you easily retime animation directly on the fcurves. You create retime markers to mark any segment of the fcurves you want to retime, then drag the retime markers to squash, stretch, or shift the animation as you like.

Choose Edit Transformation Tools Retime Keys Tool or click the Retime Keys icon on the fcurve editor toolbar to activate the Retime Keys tool.

See Retiming Animation on Function Curves.

Fcurve Editor Classic Mode

Classic mode is now the default mode for the fcurve editor.

To switch between Class and Suite modes, do any of the following:

• Toggle the View Classic Mode command from the fcurve editor toolbar.
• Right-click in the fcurve graph area and toggle the View Classic Mode option (if you're in Classic mode).
• Open the Fcurve Editor Preferences property editor and toggle the Classic Mode option on the Editor tab.

Fcurve Editor Menu Command Changes

The fcurve editor has experienced some menu command name changes to make it more compatible with the fcurve editors in the other Autodesk 3D applications. Here's a brief summary:

• The new Edit Transformation menu now contains these commands:
  • Move Keys Tool (previously named Move Key Tool)
  • Region Keys Tool (previously named Region Tool)
  • Scale Keys Tool (previously named Stretch with Pivot Tool)
• The Edit Save Buffer command is now Curves Buffer Curve Snapshot
• The Edit Swap Buffer command is now Curves Swap Buffer Curve Snapshot
• The Edit Interactive Update command is now View Interactive Update
• The new Select menu contains all the Select and Deselect commands that were in the Edit menu.
• The new Select Navigate menu contains all navigation commands that were in the Edit menu.
• The View Auto Frame Curves command is now View Frame Auto Frame
• The View Frame All Curves command is now named Frame All
• The View Frame Selection command is now named Frame Selection
• The View Frame Timeline command is now named Frame Playback Range
• The View Frame Selected Keys command is now named Frame Selected Keys
• The View Frame Selected Curves command is now named Frame Selected Curves
• The View Frame Region command is now named Frame Region
• The Curves Resample command is now named Resample Curve
• The Curves Fit command is now named Simplify Curve
• The Curves Make Rotations Continuous command is now named Euler Filter
• The Curves Relative Cycle command is now Curves Pre/Post Extrapolation Cycle with Offset
• The Curves Gradient Extrapolation command is now Curves Pre/Post Extrapolation Linear
• The Curves Cycle, Curves Freeze Cycle, and Curves Constant commands are now in the Curves Pre/Post Extrapolation menu.

Animation Editor Preference

The new Disable Auto Switch option in the Animation Editor Preferences prevents the animation editor from automatically switching to the expression, scripted operator, or fcurve editor based on the type of animation that's on the selected element.

Animation Mixer Updates

• You can now drag and rectangle-select multiple clips using the default Select tool (press the space bar). Previously, you could do this only with the Rectangle Select tool. See Working with Clips

• You can now change the order of the tracks by dragging and dropping them where you want - see Working with Tracks.

• You can now drag multiple .preset, .xsi, or .eani action files at once from a file browser and drop them onto animation tracks in the mixer. The clips are created in the order that you selected the files, and follow each other consecutively on the track:

  • To load .preset action files, see Loading Action Source Presets.

  • To load or .xsi or .eani action files, see Importing Action Sources Files.

• You can now change the color of any type of clip in the mixer - see Working with Clips.