Houdini 20.5 Animation

Animation toolbar

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Overview

The animation toolbar is a customizable toolbar consisting of simple slider tools that help improve the animation workflow by quickly creating breakdown poses or easily applying modifications to animation controls or curves.

Animation toolbar sliders

The animation toolbar can be displayed on the playbar and in the animation editor graph view. To open the animation toolbar:

Playbar

Click the animation toolbar toggle on the playbar.

or

Click the Global Animation Options button on the playbar and turn on Show Animation Toolbar.

Graph view

Select Tools ▸ Animation Toolbar.

Tools

The slider tools work with channel selections in either the playbar or the animation editor graph view. If no channels are selected, the tools insert a new key at the current time and blend/tween that key.

To apply the effects of a tool beyond the slider range, hold ⇧ Shift while dragging past the ends of the slider. This allows you to overshoot beyond the -100% and 100% slider range.

The slider tools give preference to the key selections in the graph view over those on the playbar.

Tool

Functionality

Tween

Tweens a key between the neighboring keys, ignoring the existing key values at the current frame. The slider middle position is the midpoint between the neighboring keys.

Original animation
Tween

Blend to Neighbor

Blends from the current key value to that of the neighboring keys. The slider middle position is the key value at the current frame.

Blend to Frame

Blends the current position to the values at the specified frames.

Ease

Blends the selected keys into a perfect ease in/ease out curve. Drag left for ease in. Drag right for ease out. The slider middle position gives a linear curve.

Blend to Ease

Similar to the Ease slider, except blends from the current key values to an ease in or ease out curve. The slider middle position is the current key values.

Pull Push

Dragging left pulls the selected keys toward a linear curve. Dragging right pushes the keys away from a linear curve. This essentially softens or intensifies the animation motion.

Noise Wave

Dragging left adds noise to the selected keys. Dragging right waves out alternating keys in the opposite direction from the last key.

Blend to Snapshot

Dragging left blends the selected keys toward the channel snapshot. Dragging right pushes the keys away from the snapshot.

Time Offsetter

“Offsets” the selected keys in time by adjusting the key values instead of actually shifting the key times.

Time Offsetter Stagger

Similar to the Time Offsetter slider, except applies a slight stagger to each selected channel. Meant to be used with multiple channels.

Reduce Resample

Dragging left reduces the number of keys from the selected segments. Dragging right resamples to add more keys.

Smooth Rough

Dragging left smooths out unwanted jitter from keys. Dragging right intensifies existing jitter.

Reverse

Reverses the animation in the selected frame range. If multiple ranges are selected, the animation in each range is reversed.

How-to

To...Do this

Apply the effect of the tool beyond the slider range

Hold ⇧ Shift while dragging the slider beyond the ends of the slider range.

Snap to slider tick marks

Holding ⌃ Ctrl while adjusting the slider snaps to 12.5% increments.

Make finer adjustments to the slider values

Use the value ladder.

Scroll through the sliders

or Space drag.

Add a new tool

the toolbar at the location you want to add the new tool, select Add Tool, and choose the tool from the list.

Remove a tool from the toolbar

click the tool and select Remove.

Switch the placement of a tool

click the tool, select Switch, and choose the tool you want the current tool to switch places with.

Change the slider size

click the toolbar and select Slider Size for the different size options.

Use abbreviated slider name labels

click the toolbar and turn off Show Labels.

Restore the default toolbar state

click the toolbar and select Reset Tools.

Animation

Getting started

Next steps

Guru-level