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Overview of the Fcurve Editor

When you open the animation editor, the fcurve editor is displayed by default, The fcurve editor is where you control the animation of the currently selected element by editing its function curves.

For information about the animation editor in general, including the animation explorer on the left, see The Animation Editor.

Commands and Tools for Editing Fcurves

The fcurve editor command bar contains the menu commands and tools you need for editing fcurve animation.

Context Menus

You can access many of the commands in the command bar in context menus, depending on what’s currently selected.

• To open context menus for fcurves, select an fcurve and either right-click or press Alt+right-click.

• To open context menus for keys, regions, and fcurve slopes, select the appropriate element and press Alt+right-click.

Panels on the Command Bar

You can hide certain parts of the command bar that are optional. For example, the Navigation panel containing the zoom, pan, and frame icons is hidden by default.

To hide or display areas of the command bar

• Right-click anywhere in an empty area at the top of the window and toggle the appropriate panel on or off (a check mark means that it’s displayed).

The following image shows the name of each panel on the command bar.

Using the Fcurve Editor’s Timeline

By default, the red playback cursor is displayed in the animation editor’s timeline and over the view area. This lets you easily scrub through the animation and go to the exact frame you want.

As well, you can see and move loop markers in the animation editor’s timeline when you click the Loop button in the playback panel.

To hide the playback cursor

• Deselect View > Time Cursors Visible.

To set a preference for displaying the playback cursor

1. Open the Fcurve Editor Preferences editor (see Setting Fcurve Editor Preferences).

2. On the View page, toggle the Time Cursor Visible option. This setting controls all time-related cursors in the animation editor (current frame, key time, etc.).

Toggling the command in either the View menu or the Fcurve Editor Preferences editor changes its state in the other.

By default, you can drag the cursor in the timeline area but not in the fcurve graph area. However, you can change the behavior so that you can also select and drag the playback cursor in the graph area.

Note that the playback cursor is always available in the timeline area, as long as it’s visible.

To make the playback cursor available in the graph

• Choose View > Time Cursor Selectable.

To set a preference for making the playback cursor available

1. Open the Fcurve Editor Preferences editor.

2. On the View page, toggle the Time Cursor Selectable option.

Toggling the command in either the View menu or the Fcurve Editor Preferences editor changes its state in the other.

To copy key values to another frame

• Middle-click+drag the cursor in the animation editor’s timeline to copy key values from one frame to another, just like you do in the main timeline (see Keying the Current Values at a Different Frame).

The playback cursor stays green until you set a key.

Seeing the Effects of Fcurve Edits in the Viewports

To see the effect of the changes in the viewports as you edit the fcurves

• Choose the View > Interactive Update option from the fcurve editor command bar.

To set the interactive update settings

1. Open the Fcurve Editor Preferences editor (see Setting Fcurve Editor Preferences).

2. On the View page, select Active in the Interactive Update section. You can adjust the Speed of the update by entering a value.

At the top of the View page, you can also determine the level of control when moving keys by setting the Interaction Lag value. The default is the mouse moving 1 pixel before interaction starts.

Undoing and Redoing Fcurve Modifications

Like any other operation in Softimage, you can use the standard shortcut keys to undo or redo fcurve modifications:

• To undo any modifications to an fcurve, press Ctrl+Z.

• To redo the modification you just undid, press Ctrl+Y.

You can also use the Snapshot and Swap icons in the fcurve editor command bar to keep track of the changes you’ve made to an fcurve as you’re working. Snapshot keeps a copy of the “original” curve before you made modifications, allowing you to revert to this curve.

For more information on these, see Editing Safely with Snapshots of Function Curves.

Selecting Only Objects with Fcurves

When you have a crowded scene, it’s sometimes difficult to select only the objects you want. To make it easier to select only objects that are animated with function curves, you can use a special fcurve filter from the Filters menu on the Select panel.

To use the selection filters

1. In the Select panel of the main command panel, click the little arrow button to open the Filters menu.

2. Select the Obj w Fcrv Anim filter.

Getting Fcurve Information

You can use a special query in the spreadsheet to show the fcurves for an object. This query makes it easy to get an overview of all the information about each fcurve for the selected objects.

To select the spreadsheet query

1. Select one or more animated objects.

2. Open a spreadsheet (press Alt+3) and choose Query > Fcurves.

For more information, see The Spreadsheet [ Interface and Tools ].

Tips for Working with High-Density (Raw) Fcurves

High-density fcurves are curves that have many keys, usually one per frame. These curves are usually the result of importing motion-capture animation or from plotting an animation.

Because editing high-density curves is not always an easy task, there are a number of tools in the fcurve editor that can help you work with them:

• Use the HLE (high-level editing) tool for editing a high-density curve’s shape via a “sculpting” curve—see Shaping High-Density Fcurves (HLE) for more information.

• Resample, smooth, or fit curves to reduce the number of points on a curve while keeping its shape—see Cleaning Up Function Curves for more information.

• Convert a raw fcurve to a standard fcurve —see Converting Between Raw and Standard Fcurves.

• Use the animation explorer on the left of the fcurve editor to select a specific parameter instead of trying to select the curve directly in the graph, then choose the View > Selected Parameters filter to display only that parameter’s fcurve in the graph—see Using the Animation Explorer for more information.

Setting Fcurve Editor Preferences

The fcurve editor preferences let you set up options for different tasks you do in the fcurve editor, such as setting keys, setting the slopes of the fcurves, or displaying audio waveforms and markers.

There are also preference property editors for the dopesheet (see Setting Preferences for the Dopesheet) and the animation explorer in the animation editor (see Setting Preferences for the Animation Editor and Its Explorer).

To set the fcurve editor preferences

1. Do either of the following:

- Click the Preferences icon in the fcurve editor command bar.

or

- Choose File > Preferences from the fcurve editor’s command bar.

or

- Choose File > Preferences from the Softimage main menu. In the explorer that appears, select Editors > Fcurve Editor or click its icon.

2. In the Fcurve Editor Preferences property editor, you can set the default preferences.

Each option is discussed in its appropriate section in this chapter (for options on the Audio page, see Viewing Audio Waveforms
[ Nonlinear Animation ]).

For information on each option, see Fcurve Editor Preferences or click the help icon (?) in the property editor.

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