Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Before geing on with the task, let's take a couple of minutes to know the bare minimum
about the Graph Editor. First, let's look at a screenshot:
The Graph Editor is composed of two regions: On the let-hand side there's the animaion
channels' list (hierarchically organized, grouped by the object they belong to) and on the
right-hand side we have the region where the curves are shown and edited. The idea is this:
Each property of an object (X Locaion, Z Scale) that is animated will have a separate channel
assigned, and each channel has a curve that controls the changes on its corresponding
property, over ime. The Y axis (verical) in the right-hand side region represents the value of
a given property and the X axis represents ime (in frames).
There is a special kind of cursor in this editor, represented by the crossing lines with the
atached label showing the frame number. To know the value of a property at a certain
frame, we just put the center of this cursor on the point of the curve that we want to inspect,
and the horizontal line will let us easily read the value on the Y axis of the region. The curves
themselves are composed of special points, called control points, which represent
keyframes
of the animaion. Each control point has two handlers atached to it, and we can select and
edit either the enire control point or just one of its handlers.
Of course, this editor has some special commands to work with, but for the sake of our
project, we're only going to perform some basic ediing, which is as intuiive as using the
same methods to edit objects in the 3D View (right-click for selecing handlers,
G
key for
moving control points or handlers, and so on). As for the creaion of the animaion channels
(and their curves), it will be done easily from the widgets on the
Transform
panel of the
Properties
Sidebar.
Noice that the selecion of the animaion channels must be done by let-clicking
on the channel name, and not by right-clicking. If you've defined a different set
of keyboard shortcuts, this can be different.
