fcurve madness

When fixing animation always remember to double check fcurves. Two things have recently driven me mad!

(a) on curves using spline interpolation if 2 keyframes are of the same value make sure that you use plateau slopes so that the value between the 2 keyframes does not exceed the 2 keyframes;

(b) if you retime animation make sure that there are no keyframes that are not on frames -- this can be achieved by selecting the keyframes and choosing "move keys to nearest frames". However, this may not work IF there is already a keyframe on the nearest frame and you may end up with a keyframe immediately before or after... if you're working in the dopesheet you won't see this stray keyframe

So the lesson of the day is, if you have movement where you don't expect there to be movement, double check the fcurves for the slope between frames and for extra keys between frames.

re-applying fcurve action tip

I had stored the tiger's animation for the first sequence into an action. I needed to tweak it a bit (see that the tiger's right foot is going through the floor), so I reapplied it using Actions > Apply > Action. But doing so, overwrote the following animation (sequence 2 and 3).

Today I was happy to discover that Actions > Apply > Paste Action ... allows me to paste the action from sequence 1 back onto the tiger and the animation from sequence 2 and 3 remain in tact (setting the target to the same model as the source).

The only caveat will be to be careful when storing the tweaked animation for sequence 1, not to remove the animation via the store command, since doing so will remove all the animation (not just between the start and end frames of the store action command).