Original subtitles

- [Instructor] Before we start working with the NLA editor,

we need to clean up our character animations.

First get back to object mode,

get rid of the cylinder,

select our character rig in object mode

and press Alt+G Alt+R Alt+S.

On the current claiming action,

reactivate the roots motion.

And for all our animation

we need to get rid of any animation of the root boom.

So I will switch to show only selected

and then with my root boom selected

I will get rid of the last key frame.

I will press CTRLl+Tab

to switch back to the action editor,

open the temporary action I created for the idle animation,

hold shift and click on the cross icon to close the action.

Holding Shift will remove the action from the file.

Now the closed action as zero users.

And when I will rebuild the file

it will be removed from our action library.

I will also make sure that I have no root motion

on my idle animation

and Alt+G Alt+R and Alt+S

to reset the position of the roots.

Then I get rid of all the other key frames of the root.

I will do the same for the run cycle

making sure that my character is cycling on position

without any root motion

and remove all the temporary actions.

In the end I only kept the keying,

the run cycle,

the idle and the climbing cycle.

All the other action have no users.

Hence the zero in front of their name.

Now I can go to file, click revert,

it will reload the current file

and the zero users action have disappeared.

From there, I can double check each actions

and if you want to make it even cleaner,

you can duplicate the first key of the route

and move it onto the very last key of the animation.

This is not necessary.

So don't do it if you don't want.

So let's get started with the NLA editor.

So, I will push a bit my action eight window,

expand the timeline and switch to the NLA editor.

By default, you will find out an NLA track

for each of the object you have in your scene.

So we can see a track for our squirrel mesh object

that also include a track for the shape key used

to animate the eyes

and a track for our squirrel rig,

including a track called keying

because we have our keying action opened

in the keying editor.

Most of the shortcuts and filters are the same

as in the graph editor and the action editor,

so I won't go over them again.

Since I'm working only on the rig,

I will click the show selected only.

If I open the different actions in the action editor,

I will see them appearing onto the track of the NLA editor.

But I can't use them in the NLA editor this way.

To use them in the NLA editor track,

I need to convert them to strip

by clicking this icon

or click the same icon in the action editor

and push down the action into the track,

converting it to a strip.

Think now of your action as an audio or video strip

that you can move in time using the G key

as you will do in a DVD auditor.

In the action editor near the push down,

there is another button called stash.

This is something I never use

but I will show you what it's made for.

If I click it, it will create a new NLA track

with a new strip idle finished.

The NLA track is locked and disabled,

so it does no influence on our character rig.

It is basically here to replace the fake user we create

when we click on the shield icon in the action editor.

If I remove the fake user from my idle finish

and close the action

or open another one and save the file.

When they will revert or reload my document,

the idle action is still there

because the NLA track is considered being a user.

That's why we have two users

whenever we are opening the action in the action editor.

But I think it makes the NLA editor messy

having all those additional tracks.

So I prefer to protect my animation using the fake chooser

and getting rid of the track

by simply selecting it and pressing the X key.

If I select the run cycle strip and press the Tab key,

the trip will turn to green

meaning that the current action is in edit mode

and I can see the action loaded in the action editor.

I will close the idle action in the action editor

so that we only have our current NLA track available.

If I press shift+D, I can duplicate the strip.

And if I press Alt+D, I can make a link to duplicate

as we will do with any object in the 3D viewport.

So as for an object,

you can consider this strip as a container.

So if I press N or I click the arrow icon to expand

the properties panel,

going into the strip tab,

I can see where the current trip starts and ends

among a lot of different options that we will be covering

in a few minutes.

But also the action used,

the same way will add with a mesh object,

the object is a container and we have meshed data.

So we can see that the third strip

is using a new run cycle action

with the suffix tag 002.

The second one, another action

and the first one, our original action.

When I press Tab to enter edit mode

and modifying the current action,

we can see that the third strip

that we have created using the linked duplicate action

is colored in red.

I will make a quick modification to the action.

I will then go back into the NLA editor

and press the Tab key

and I can see that I am playing the modified animation.

But if I scrub over the second strip,

we can see that he's playing another animation

the ones that hasn't been modified.

But if I scrub over the third strip,

we can see that it's playing the same action.

as for the first one.

Since the action are linked,

modifying one will modify the other.

You can add a new strip to an NLA track

by pressing Shift+A and choosing the action.

But at least on this version of them

they are all at the time I'm recording this video,

you have to make sure that your NLA track is active

by simply clicking it to select it.

I guess it will be cool if blender automatically

add a new track if you don't have any tracks selected.

In the meantime, just remember this little tip.

Let's have a look to the different option

available in the NLA editor.

When I duplicate NLA strip,

by default blender will create another NLA track.

Double-clicking on the track will allow you

to rename the track.

You can reorder the track position by right clicking on it

and choosing whatever you want to do

or using Page up and Page down or Shift+Page up

and Shift Page down.

With the idle track selected,

I can press Shift+A and select the idle action,

it will create a new strip using the idle action.

The numerous strip will be created

where the play head is positioned.

To create a new track,

I have to create a new action in the properties panel.

By default, the action is empty.

So I need to create a key frame on the bone

to be able to push it down and add this new track.

Or I can simply browse through my action library,

choose one and push it down.

The huge power of the NLA editor

is to allow to combine different actions.

As I told you before,

I asked you to think of it as video clips.

So as my first run cycles comes to an end

I should be able to see my idols strip.

But nothing happened.

And this is because of the extrapolation mode

of our first run cycles strip.

As it is set to old forward

when this strip it's N,

it will keep our character in the latest pose

or in the latest read key frame

of the action containing the strip.

This extrapolation is displayed as

low Pacitti yellowish background or grayish background

when the strip is not selected.

Setting the extrapolation mode to nothing

will get rid of the old forward

and idle animation with play.

Sitting the extrapolation mode to hold

will work as the hold forward.

It will extrapolate the latest pose

and it won't allow us to read the idle animation.

The subtle difference is that

if I choose old forward

you can see that the influence of the strip

doesn't occur before it

but while it will override any strip that comes after

and is not on the same NLA track.

It wants to override any strip

that is available prior to heat.

So in the end, it is useful only

if you don't have any strip before.

You can see that my character is in the run cycle pose

while if I choose old forward,

it is in the rest pose

if it has nothing to read prior to this NLA trip.

By default, our blending mode is set to replace.

It means that any strip that has these landing mode

and is super in the NLA track stack,

will replace any other strip on other analytic tracks,

exactly as a video editor will work.

If I set the blending mode to add,

we will get a totally crazy results.

And this is because, in the NLA editor

the blending mode applies to the keyed value.

So in this case, all of our controller

that are all keyed in each action

are added one on top of the other.

So currently, the scaling of one from the first action,

is added by the scaling of one on the second action.

And it's the same for the location and rotation.

This is why we get this crazy Frankenstein transformation

of our squirrel character.

If I switched to substructure,

it will mostly set all the scale to zero.

So our characters will disappear.

And if I use the multiply blending mode,

we won't have any problem with the scaling

but the rotation and location is pretty hard to predict.

So those blending modes are generally used

in very specific cases,

but there is one mode that is super useful

is to combine mode.

If I try to combine the run and the idle

it will still look weird

but let me prepare something for you.

I will push the idle animation away

regroup my boyfriend cycle.

Then unselect the track,

click on the new action

and I will simply move my route boom.

So I will key its location on frame zero and unframed 24.

I will move it by 1.4 meters on the y-axis

as we did, when we were doing the run cycle.

I will then select those keys

make sure that they are into linear interpolation.

And now when I play the animation,

we can see that the motion of the root

is combined with our run cycle.

And if I now put the idle at the end of this strip,

since I will root locomotion strip is on hold,

our squirrel character will stay in place

and we will have a perfect blending

between the run cycle and the idle animation.

So now, just imagine what we could do

if I was to edit the locomotion,

add a bit of rotation,

switch left to right,

and then add also a bit of rotation

on the root of the body of our character.

This way, from a base run cycle,

I can input variation into my characters locomotion

into his behavior

and this can be perfect to rapidly prototype a shot

for example or to iterate on different variation

of the same animation.

You don't really know where your characters

are supposed to go,

you want to test different poses different animation.

That's a good way to do it without reanimating everything.

This is why NLA editor is often the compounded

to the layers tool in Maya.

And they was able to create these variation

of our animation in three minutes.

So it's not perfect but that's a good pace.

To make our life easier,

there are also blend in and out options.

I will create a new action for our character.

It will be a simple rotation of the ed controller

that will hold for the whole animation.

I will suggest extrapolation to nothing

and the blending mode to combine.

Now when my character is executing its run cycle

he has his head turn towards us.

The blend in and out option are pretty straightforward.

If I add the 10 frame on the blend in,

it will take 10 frames before our character

as his head turned.

And the blend out will work the same

whatever the value I will put in the blend out

it will these number of frame to reset to his initial posts.

It's like playing with the influence

of the head rotation track.

And since the influence is a value,

we can animate this influence.

So I will set it to zero on the first frame

and to zero on frame 24.

Open the graph editor

and now I can access to curve of the influence of this layer

and create the blending by myself.

Within the values that goes from zero to one,

I can tell blender how much influence

I want this NLA track to have on top of my run cycle.

So here it doesn't look like something really beautiful,

but that's very handy.

Enabling the auto blending will automatically create

the blend in and blend out based on the position

of the strips on the top track and the bottom track.

We can see the influence curve appearing

on the blending strip.

Here it's blending in,

but if I move the ed terms strip before the other strips,

it will blend out.

Another fantastic feature of the NLA editor

is to be able to manipulate time.

If I select my run cycles strip and press S to scale,

the strip will be currently scaled from the play head

and it will basically affect the frame start and frame end.

Doubling the size of this strip

will play the action twice slower.

If I increase it to 44 frames for example,

I will almost be playing it in a slow motion

four times slower than the original animation.

So that's a fantastic tool

if you want to create slow motion effects.

If I make this three plank shorter

then the animation will be accelerated.

The reversed option will simply play the current animation

in reverse.

I've made some research

and some experience with the cyclic strips time

and I absolutely don't know what it's made for.

If I change the length of the action clip,

it will automatically change the length of the active strip.

And since we have a cycle modifier on our curve,

our animation is repeating even beyond the frame 12

but we can make the animation repeating

by simply increasing the repeat value.

Even if I go into the graffiti task

select all my key and clear the cyclic modifier,

the animation will be repeating,

so it will be cycling.

If I shorten the action clip not the strip the action clip,

then the action won't be played entirely.

Pressing the Y key will split the active strip

where the play ed is positioned.

The thing cyclic option will automatically

reset the wrench of the action clip

based on the first and last key frame within the action.

If you modify the action length within the action

and edit all through the tweaking,

then clicking this button or enabling cyclic,

will automatically reset the wrench of the action clip.

One of the super cool feature of the NLA editor

is to be able to animate the strip time.

I have made my actions clip longer,

I will enable the animated strips time

and insert a key frame.

Now in my graffiti tall, I have a new curve available.

I will duplicate the created key frame

and move it on frame 12

and it's value I will input 12

and switch everything to vector.

It basically means that I have created a curve

that treated 12 frame over 12 frame in a linear fashion.

So my animation is playing at real time.

Now, if I offset value,

it will play at a slower time.

I think a curve that allow us to modify the speed

at which we are reading an action into a strip,

will allow us to create incredible slow motion.

So instead of scaling the whole strip,

I can choose whenever I want my action

to be played at real time

or to dance slow down.

And if I reduce the value of the curve,

I can even play the action in reverse.

You can create tracer overwatch effects,

super easily with this kind of thing.

This is why the NLA editor should we not be overlooked.

Because even if you want to use those everyday,

it can owe you to do tons of thing with a lot of ease

and with incredible results.

There's a last couple of things I'd like to show you

in this video.

Pressing Shift+T will all you to add a transition strip,

but you need to have two active strip selected.

It will create a strip that will automatically

blend one action to the other

creating a linear interpolation.

You can add those strip through the ad menu.

If you are using speakers in your 3D scene to play sound,

then you can add sound strip, pressing the Shift+K shortcut,

or going to the ad menu.

You can group multiple actions strip pressing CTRL+G

allowing you to manipulate them all at ons

and you can ungroup them pressing Ctrl+Alt+G.

To summarize, we have seen that the NLA editors

allows us to combine multiple strips

as if we where working on the video editor.

We need to push an action to make it an NLA strip.

The stash option can be used to replace the fake user.

We can duplicate, clone

or add an action as a strip into the track.

We can use extrapolation and blending options

to combine different strip on different tracks.

Action in the NLA tracks affect only the keyed channels.

You can blend multiples strips

from different tracks together.

Scaling this trip will accelerate

or slow down the bound action.

You can split a strip pressing the Y key.

You can edit the timing of an animation using the curve.

You can create transition strips with shift+T

and finally you can group or ungroup strips

with Ctrl+G and Ctrl+Alt+G.