Muting specific animation parameters or the effect of particle emitters
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Summary
You want to mute the effect that certain animation parameters have on your objects. This could be any type of animation ranging from local kinematics to the often-requested (and logged) ability to mute specific particle emitters (which lets you isolate and fine-tune the effects of other emitters in a scene).
Steps
There are several ways in which you mute animation:
- If you have made action clips for the animation, the obvious solution is to use the mute buttons (the m button) on the left side of any mixer tracks. This mutes all action clips on that track. </P>
<P>- You can also mute just about any parameter that you can animate. If you set local transformation keyframes, there is an Options page in the Local Transform property editor where you can separately activate or deactivate the position, orientation, and scaling. This effectively mutes their effect.</P>
<P>- You can mute all local transformations and constraints by right-clicking on their icons in the explorer and deselecting Active. A little orange "M" appears on the icons to remind you that they are muted.</P>
<P>- If you just want to temporarily mute a single animation parameter without deleting its animation, the simplest way is to mark the parameter and choose Actions > Store > Marked Parameters - Current. This creates an action source that you load into the animation mixer as a clip. This clip holds the marked parameter at a single value over the duration of the clip, overriding any fcurve animation. You can remove this clip or mute its animation track to restore the fcurve animation. </P>
<P>You can use this last method as a workaround to create a mute effect on a particle emitter - follow these steps:</P>
<P>1. In the explore, expand the particle's Emission node so that you see its parameters.</P>
<P>2. Move to a frame where there is no key, then set the emitter's Rate to 0 and mark the Rate parameter (click on its name so that it turns yellow). </P>
<P>3. Choose Actions > Store - Marked Parameters Current from the Animate toolbar to create the action source.</P>
<P>4. Load the source onto an animation track to create a clip. This clip holds the emission rate at a single value of 0 over the duration of the clip, overriding any fcurve animation. </P>
<P>You can now fine-tune the other emissions and remove/mute the instanced clip when you are done.</P>
More Information
References
<P>See the following sections in the v1.5 Animating guide:
- Working with Tracks on page 329.
- Creating Action Sources on page 368.
- Setting Up Particle Emitters on page 479.
Applies To: XSI 1.5 on NT,Win2K,Irix
Posted: 6/26/2001
