Overview of Using Actions

This overview shows the basic steps to getting started with using actions in the animation mixer.

Once you have added action clips to the mixer, you can use any of the mixer's features to move, copy, extrapolate (create cycles or bounces), scale, trim, transition, time-warp, and blend them.

For more information about using the mixer in general, see The Animation Mixer.

1	Create a model for the object you want to animate. This is important for a number of reasons, including being able to easily copy animation between models. See Models and the Mixer for information.
2	Animate the object in a model. You can use any type of animation you like. Each animation sequence here will be stored in a source. See Choosing What to Store in an Action for information.
3	Select the animated object and store its animation in an action source using an appropriate command from the Actions Store menu on the Animate toolbar. See Storing Animation in Action Sources for information.
4	To add the source to a track in the mixer, right-click on a track and choose Insert Source, then pick the source you've stored. An action clip is created. You can also drag a source from the model's Sources folder in the explorer and drop it on a track in the mixer. See Creating Action Clips in the Mixer for information.
5	Once the clip is in the mixer, you can manipulate it in many ways. Here are some ideas ...
A	You can composite actions by adding clips for different parameters on the same frames of different tracks. Here, there are two clips currently driving the character's movements: the top clip drives the legs of the character while the bottom clip drives the arms.
B	Mix the weights of multiple clips by having them cover the same frames of the timeline. Here, the top clip that drives the legs is at a lower weight at this frame so it contributes less animation than the bottom clip that controls the arms. Red weight curves on the clips show the weight. See Mixing and Weighting Clips for information.
C	Use the mixer as a simple sequencing tool that lets you position and scale multiple clips on a single track. You can create sequences of actions by adding clips one after another on tracks, and using transitions to help smooth the change between clips. You may find the technique of pose-to-pose animation using the mixer easy to do by saving static poses of a character, loading the actions onto the tracks in sequence, and then creating transitions between the poses. See Creating Transitions between Clips for information.
6	If you removed the original animation, such as fcurves, from the object when you stored it into an action source, you can easily reapply that animation back onto your object at any point. See Restoring (Applying) the Animation in Action Sources to an Object for information.

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