Muting Animation Channels


The Mute Animation Channel function lets you temporarily turn off specified animation curves for an object, making it easier to focus on a particular aspect of the animation. For example, if a ball is bouncing from the left side of the screen to the right, it may be difficult to focus your attention on the up-and-down motion due to the left-to-right motion. If you mute the left-to-right motion, you can see the up-and-down motion more clearly. When you have adjusted the up-and-down motion as you want, you can unmute the left-to-right motion.

To mute an animation channel:

1.

Create a NURBS sphere.

2.

Change the playback start time to 1 and the playback end time to 50.

3.

At frame 1, select the sphere, and set a keyframe.

4.

Move to frame 40, and translate the sphere in the front view 20 units to the right.

Set another keyframe.

5.

Move to frame 20, and set another keyframe.

6.

Move to frame 10, and translate the sphere up 10 units.

Set a keyframe.

7.

Move to frame 30, and translate the sphere up 10 units.

Set a keyframe. You should now have a ball that moves across the screen and bounces up and down.

To see only the up-and-down motion, you need to mute the Translate X channel in the Channel Box.

8.

With the sphere selected, select Translate X in the Channel Box. Right-click the highlighted word, and choose Mute Selected (Figure 12.56).

Figure 12.56. Select a channel to mute, right-click, and choose Mute Selected to temporarily disable the animation.


The channel turns brown, and as you drag through the timeline, the ball moves only up and down.

9.

To unmute the channel, select Translate X in the Channel Box. Right-click the highlighted word, and choose Unmute Selected.




Maya 7 for Windows and Macintosh(c) Visual Quickstart Guide
Maya 7 for Windows & Macintosh
ISBN: 0321348990
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 185

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