3D Compositing with Action > Action: Basics > Action Module Overview >

# Animating with the Channel Editor

Use the Channel Editor to animate the media, axis, surface, light, camera, and other properties of every object in the scene.

To open the Channel Editor and display the Action channels:

1. In Action, click Animation.
2. In the Animation menu, select Channel from the View box.

   The top-level folder in the hierarchy is the Scene, which provides the overall view of the animation. The Scene folder contains the Result Camera and folders of objects in the Action scene. Initially these are the media, motion blur, camera, axis, and image folders.

   If you add an object to the scene, the Channel Editor adds a folder to the channel hierarchy for the new object. For example, if you add a light, a Light folder is added in the channel hierarchy. See Viewing Channels in a Table.

Some of the Action folders in the Channel Editor are described as follows. For complete information about using the Channel Editor and animating objects in the scene, see the Animation section.

Camera
  Animates the camera position and point of interest. It also contains channels for animating camera roll, field of view, and the near and far clipping planes.

When Free Camera is selected, the point of interest channels are replaced by rotation channels in the Channel Editor.

Media
  Animates media properties such as blur, crop, shadow softness. A Media folder is listed for each media in the scene.
DVE Layer Objects
  Animates the axes and surfaces of DVE Layer Objects (displayed as a folder DVE_Lx in the Channel Editor, where x is the layer number).
Axis
  Animates axis properties such as position, rotation, scaling, and shearing.
Image, Bilinear, Bicubic, or Extended bicubic
  Animates surface properties such as material, offset, and displacement. The Material folder contains a shininess channel and folders for the specular highlight, diffuse, and ambient lighting.
Shadow
  Animates the shadow colour and shadow transparency.
Light
  Animates light properties such as intensity, falloff, spread, position, rotation, and colour.

TipSelecting nodes in the schematic will automatically select the associated channels in the Channel Editor.

Most of the settings in the Animation menu are standard for all modules that support animation, but there are a few animation settings specific to Action, available from any Action menu (on the right side).

Auto Key button
  Enable to set a keyframe automatically each time you change a value at any frame.

Set Key button
  Click to set the current values for the selected channels in the current frame (when Auto Key is disabled).

Delete Key button
  Click to delete the selected keyframe.