How actions work...

[Barry Baker]

I've started playing with actions, which are a welcome addition to the workflow. But in the absence of a help file, I'm a little puzzled as to how they work.

1 Are actions specific to a particular layer?
2 If a group layer has a new action, do its member layers share that action, or does each one require a separately defined action as well?
3 How do actions become part of the main movie?
4 Can you mix actions? - eg. 1 character does "walk" action while a second character does a "jump" action. Or the legs "walk" while the head of the same character "laughs" and the arm "points"

[Lost Marble]

Actions are specific to a particular layer, but if you add an action to a group (or bone, or switch) layer, all sub-layers in that group get the action too.

To change which action you're editing, double-click it in the timeline.

To add an action to the main movie, first make sure the main movie ("Mainline") is the active action. Then, click once on the action you want to insert to highlight it. Finally, press either the "Insert Reference" or "Insert Copy" button in the Actions window.

When you insert an action by reference, then if you make changes to the action in the future, those changes will be reflected in the main timeline. If you insert an action by copy, it will copy the action's keyframes into the main timeline - if you delete or change the action, the mainline will not be affected.

Yes, you can mox actions. The best way to mix actions is if they are independent - in other words, the mixed actions affect different parts of the character.

Example: a walking action that moves the character's legs. A punching action that moves the character's arms. These two can be mixed (inserted at the same point in the timeline) without any problems. However, if you tried to mix a walking action with a kicking action, the results would probably come out a bit mixed up.

[Barry Baker]

Thanks, LM. That's very clear, and it works beautifully - at least for a simple scene. I wonder how easy it will be to keep track of all the actions and their levels in a scene with multiple characters. I will hopefully get to try that out...