How do I tell what bone is being animated from the timeline?

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Tristan
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Joined: Fri Apr 21, 2017 3:03 pm

How do I tell what bone is being animated from the timeline?

Post by Tristan »

I've got a layer/keyframe management question. Coming from After Effects, it's pretty easy to tell what "items" have keyframes on them by just glancing at the timeline. Not to mention everything in the timeline of AE is clearly labeled.


When animating bones, how do i keep track of which bones have been animated in the timeline and is there a way to have the bone labels show up in the timeline?


Right now I just have to memorize which bone i manipulated or click on a bone to see there's a keyframe on it. Even after I do so the bone's name isn't labeled in the timeline. That can get pretty confusing.

I'd appreciate your workflow suggestions and solutions.

Cheers!
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Greenlaw
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Re: How do I tell what bone is being animated from the timel

Post by Greenlaw »

There really isn't a way except by using color codes, and event that has limits since there are only so many colors and you can use the colors on multiple bones. Personally, I leave the color channels disabled because it causes too much clutter in the timeline for me and I suspect having all those keyframes visible at once can slow down performance.

The only way I can tell is by selecting bones and checking the 'red' currently selected bones channel. I know that's not as helpful but it's how I check if I've accidentally keyed some bones I didn't mean to.

In general, I just don't think about it too much. After a while, I just know which bones are supposed to have keys and which ones don't. I also use AE at work, so I understand why you wish to keep track what keyframes every item has all at one, but in practice, I found it's really not that important. It's really more important to make sure you're not keyframing a bunch of stuff that doesn't need keyframes.

In short, I mostly just pay attention to the currently selected bone or bone chain in the red channel.
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