Choose Show > Parameter Values to display the values beside each parameter which you can then edit using virtual sliders. See Entering Values Using Virtual Sliders [ Interface and Tools ].
The typical viewing tools in Softimage can be optimized to view animation elements and information about them: the explorer, the schematic view, and the spreadsheet.
The explorer is a useful tool for viewing all elements in a scene. It presents the elements and their properties in a tree-like structure that you can expand or collapse to display as much detail as you like.
As with all multi-purpose tools, there are a few tricks for filtering out specific information. The explorer has a number of commands in the Show menu for filtering out animation information, such as Animated parameters and Animatable parameters. You need to select these filters if you want to see any animated parameters for an object.
You can tell if a parameter is animatable if it has an animation icon beside it, and if the parameter is animated, the animation icon has some animation symbol in it (see The Animation Icon).
|
Choose Show > Parameter Values to display the values beside each parameter which you can then edit using virtual sliders. See Entering Values Using Virtual Sliders [ Interface and Tools ]. |
In the filter menu beside Show, you can also select All+Animatable Parameters to further filter for animation elements. If you’re using the animation mixer, choose Mixers Only in this menu to have only the mixer node for each model appear.
There are many ways in which an object and its animation properties are displayed in the explorer, depending on the type of animation that you are doing. The most common way of animating is transforming. When you transform an object (scale, rotate, or translate), you will find the information in the object’s Kinematics node (kinematics meaning “movement” in general, not “inverse or forward kinematics”).
For information on other nodes that are specific to animation, see these pages:
• Under the Kinematics node, you will find the Local and Global Transform nodes, which contain the scaling (Scl), rotation (Ori > Euler), and translation (Pos) parameters (see Animating Transformations).
• Under the Kinematics node, you can also find Constraints, which displays any constraints set for the object (see Animating with Constraints).
• For information on skeleton/envelope nodes, see Character Animation.
• For information on action nodes, see Actions [ Nonlinear Animation ].
• For information on shape key nodes, see Animating Shapes
[ Shape Animation ].
For more information in general about using the explorer, see The Explorer [ Interface and Tools ].
The schematic view shows the relations between the objects in your scene, such as the hierarchy of objects and how objects constrain one another.
Links between nodes appear by default. To toggle links on and off, choose Show > Constraint Links. Double-clicking a link displays its property editor.
You can see which objects are animated because they have the letter A on their nodes for animated (with keys), C for constraints, E for expression, S for shape animation, and so on.
Constraint links appear in green and display an abbreviated label indicating the type of constraint in effect, such as Dir for a direction constraint.
Expression links appear in green and are identified by the label EXPR. Expression information is only displayed for local and global transformations.
For more information on the Schematic view, see The Schematic View [ Interface and Tools ].
The spreadsheet shows information about the objects in your scene. For animation information, you can use the predefined queries available for fcurves, expressions, constraints, and chains/skeletons. The following shows the kind of information you can get for the skeletons in a scene.
For more information on the spreadsheet, see The Spreadsheet
[ Interface and Tools ].
If your scene has any type of animation in it, you can find out about it by choosing Edit > Info Scene from the main command panel (or press Ctrl+Enter).
• On the Objects page, you can find the number of Chain Elements in the scene. The total number includes chain roots, bones, and effectors.
• On the Animation page, information about the following elements will show up, only if they are present in the scene:
- Constraints
- Mixers
- Action (animation) sources, items, and keys
- Shape sources
- Audio sources
Autodesk Softimage v.7.5