Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
2.
Drop your selection. Then select only
the keys on frames 6 and 36 (still work-
ing with the Position Z channel). Press
< A > to Zoom Selected, and tweak the
handles until you have a nice, smooth
slope between the two keys. Minimize
the Graph Editor window, and play your
animation to see the difference.
Animation controls are available in the
lower-right corner of the interface. (See
Figure 2-82.) If the playback seems too fast
or too slow, make sure you have Play at
Exact Rate active under the General
Options.
Adjusting Timing
The animation we've just created looks
good, but you may notice that the logo
“pops” onto the screen a little too abruptly.
Let's take a look at a few different ways in
which we can tinker with timing to refine
our animation.
The two primary tools for adjusting tim-
ing are the Dope Track and Dope Sheet.
The Dope Track can be accessed from the
main interface. Its cousin, the Dope Sheet,
can be found in the Scene Editor. Both offer
a similar, yet slightly different set of tools
for adjusting the timing of your animations.
Let's do some fine-tuning using the
Dope Track. Click on the textured portion
of the gray bar just above the main timeline.
This will open the Dope Track.
You'll notice that a second timeline
appears, complete with a duplicate set of
keyframes. The difference between these
keys and the ones found in the main
timeline, however, is that they can be
dragged to different locations, cut, copied,
pasted, and “baked” to create keys for the
inbetween frames.
Looking at our timeline we can see that
the logo takes six frames to appear
onscreen. At 24 frames per second, that's
only ¼ of a second for the logo to appear.
Let's give the “on” motion a little more
time.
1.
Click on the key at frame 6 in the Dope
Track. A white rectangle will appear
around the top of this keyframe, indi-
cating it has been selected.
2.
Click and drag left and right to move
the keyframe. As you can see, the
keyframe can be moved to any location
on the timeline, even past existing
keys. For now, drag the key to frame 10
and let go.
3.
Using the playback controls, take a look
at the adjustments you've made. Those
four extra frames make quite a bit of
Figure 15-10: Opening the Dope Track.
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