Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Tip
You can also lock attributes directly in the Channel Box if they are key-
able. Simply right-click on the attributes you wish to lock, and select Lock
Selected.
So the hand icons are locked, and only the attributes that control the fingers are available
to be animated. Let's now clean up the rest of the hand.
1.
Select both the palm icons again and press the Up Arrow key, which will select the
groups above these icons in the hierarchy. Although these are not visible, the anim-
ator could quite easily select them and probably animate them. We need to lock all
the attributes as well as make them all nonkeyable.
2.
In the Keyable tab of the Channel Control window, make sure all the attributes are
moved across to the Non-Keyable side.
3.
Switch to the Locked tab, and move the translate, rotate, and scale attributes across
so that they are locked.
You will notice that we omitted the visibility attribute in the preceding steps. This is be-
cause, unlike with the other finger icons, the visibility icon controls this attribute. Locking
the visibility attribute here would lock it in its current state, so the visibility icon would
have no effect.
Tip
You can quickly see if a visibility attribute is connected to the visibility
icon by looking in the Channel Box. If the attribute is colored yellow, it
has an incoming connection.
Now that we know how the Channel Control window operates, we can start to work on a
larger scale. Let's start with all the icons whose movement is based only on rotations.
1.
Select the control handles that allow you to animate shoulders, elbows, and wrists
on both the left and right sides.
2.
Make the translate, scale, and visibility attributes all nonkeyable, and lock them in
the Locked tab. (In this case, we can lock the visibility attribute because it isn't dir-
ectly controlled by the visibility icon.)
3.
Select the waist control icon, the neck rotation icon, and all three spine icons and
make them nonkeyable. Lock the translate, scale, and visibility attributes.
