Saving an action

[maskew6]

A simple question from a simpleton. How do I save a walk cycle as an action for re use? I have recently aquired Anime Studio 5 Pro.

[myles]

Hello maskew6,

open the Actions window, click on the New Action button, give the action a name.

This changes the timeline to an action-specific timeline rather than the main timeline. Animate (create keyframes) in this timeline as normal.

Double-click on the Mainline or an action name in the Actions window to jump between timelines. Tutorial 5.6 details using the actions you create.

Unless all your character is going to do is walk across the screen, I would recommend just keyframing a single step cycle - not setting the keyframes to repeating "cycle" interpolation - and inserting multiple step actions as in Tutorial 5.6. This makes it easier for your character to start walking from an onscreen stance or to stop walking when onscreen.

Regards, Myles.

[maskew6]

Thanks Myles.

I did the Tut 5.6 and got the hang of that OK. So as I understand it I cannot save as an action a walk cycle that I have created, after I have created it. But must first open the Actions panel and create a file there and then create the action.
Simple when you know how, innit?

[7feet]

Right click (or mac equiv.) on "Mainline" in the actions window, and choose "Insert Copy" while the Action you want to copy to is active. Or from one action to another. It'll copy the keyframes to the active action transposed to start at the current frame. Pretty neat.

[Rhoel]

I did the Tut 5.6 and got the hang of that OK. So as I understand it I cannot save as an action a walk cycle that I have created,

If you have already created the walk cycle and you want to re-use it, you can. Save the layer out as a scene then reimport it as a new element in another scene.

So if the original scene is just a looped run cycle, you can bring the running character into another scene (eg, which only has a background) you can then "run" the imported scene though shot. It behaves just like a normal group layer, with all the flip and transparency elements.

Here's the low-down:
To do this, just save out the scene as normal.
To bring it back in, select file/import/anime studio object ...

easy.


Now you can flip the "scene" to have the same animation run left or right. In theory (and I haven't done it) you could animate a number of different interlinking cycles - stand pose into walk, walk into run etc - then import them onto a bigger scene. Would be useful on series work.

If you use the "styles" colour option, you can also create multiple colour options for the same character - ie hat_daylcolour, hat_nightcolour etc.: THis way you can have Little Red Riding Hood skiping through the woods in daytime, the re-use the animation with the night colours when she skips home again later.

We used this technique on Animo 1.8 and 3, and though it require significant planning at the storyboard stage, it works very well, saving a heap of time and money.

Hope this helps.

Rhoel

[maskew6]

Thankyou Rhoel. This gives me plenty to get my teeth into.