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Editing the animation of clips

Lesson 4: Nonlinear animation with Trax

Soloing and muting tracks

 

Learning Resources > Tutorials > Getting Started with Maya > Animation > Lesson 4: Nonlinear animation with Trax > 

Reusing clips within Trax

You can save and reuse clips for future use. You can key specific types of motion or attribute effects, save them as clips, and reuse the clips for other characters.

When you reuse a clip created for one character and apply it to another, the clip attributes must be mapped to correspond between the two characters. For more information, see Mapping animation between characters in the Maya Help.

In this lesson, you work with clips created for this aircraft animation. The clips contain animation to make the aircraft shift to the left and right and bank left and right.

To load a clip from disk

1. From the Trax menu, select File > Import Animation Clip.

   The File Browser appears. When importing a clip, the File Browser defaults to the clip directory of your current project.

2. Find the clip file named Bank_Left.ma in the GettingStarted/Anim/clips directory.
3. Select the file named Bank_Left.ma and click the Import button.

   The clip is imported and appears in the Outliner named as Bank_LeftSource to indicate it is a source clip.

4. Repeat steps 1 and 2 to import the clips Bank_Right, Shift_Left and Shift_Right.

   When you have finished, four new clips appear in the Outliner as source clips. In the steps that follow, you place and position the clips on tracks in the Trax Editor.

   NoteWhen you import clips they also appear in, and can be accessed from, the Visor ( Window > General Editors > Visor). The Visor is a graphical interface that allows you to import items that reside on disk or in your current file (files, textures, clips poses, etc.). Clips that are assigned to a character in Trax will appear listed under the Character Clips tab in the Visor. Clips that have not yet been placed on a track will appear listed in the Visor under the Unused Clips tab.

To place clips into a track from the Outliner

1. In the Outliner, using the middle mouse button drag the clip named Bank_LeftSource into the same track as the Rise and Lower clips. Ensure you drag into an open area on the track that the clip will fit into.

   

2. Position the Bank_Left clip on the track so its Frame In number matches the Frame Out number on the Aircraft_Rise clip, as shown below.

   

3. Using the middle mouse button drag the clip named Bank_RightSource from the Outliner into the same track as the Rise and Lower clips. Ensure you drag into an open area on the track that the clip will fit into.
4. Position the Bank_Right clip on the track so its Frame In number matches the Frame Out number on the Bank_Left clip, as shown below.

   

You can also drag clips from the Outliner or Visor into the Trax Editor and create a new track for them to be placed in.

1. Drag the clip named Shift_Left1Source from the Outliner using the middle mouse button, but this time, drag to the narrow blue area above the tracks before releasing your middle mouse button.

   

   A new track appears in the Trax Editor and the clip is placed on the new track.

   The narrow blue box is the summary track for the character set (in this case the Aircraft) The summary track represents all of the clips under a character, subcharacter, or group. When you import a clip onto the summary area by dragging it from the Outliner or Visor, the Trax Editor creates a new track for the clip.

2. Click-drag the Shift_Left clip so it lies directly below the Bank_Left clip on the track above it.

   

   Because the Shift_Left clip is positioned directly below the Bank_Left clip, the actions will occur simultaneously when the animation is played back.

3. Using the middle mouse button drag the clip named Shift_Right1Source from the Outliner into the same track as the Shift_Left clip . Ensure you drag into an open area on the track.
4. Position the Shift_Right clip on the track so its Frame In number matches the Frame Out number on the Shift_Left clip, as shown below.

   

5. In the front view menu, select Panels > Perspective > persp.

   The view updates to display the aircraft from a perspective view.

6. Dolly and track the view so you can fully see the area the aircraft will travel within.
7. Click play on the Time Slider’s playback control to play back the animation.

   

   After the aircraft rises, it travels forwards as before but now it shifts sideways to the left while one wing tips downwards, and then shifts sideways to the right, while the opposite wing tips downwards.

8. Click stop on the Time Slider’s playback control.