Subtitles of the Movie

A little earlier in this Section, on the second movie, we took a look at Tweeners, which is a great way to create some different types of motion to objects you have animated by controlling what goes on between the Keyframes. Let me show you something now, the Timeline Graph Editor, that not only gives you that level of control but more over Tweeners and Keyframes all at the same time. Let's take a look at it. I'll create a basic scene here and we just happen to have a sphere. I'll go halfway through our Timeline, move the sphere and go to the end of our Timeline with the Slider control, and now we've got a basic animation. That was easy. But what if I wanted this sphere to go up halfway through? What if I wanted it to slow down as it approached the front of the Working Box here? All this can be done in the Graph Editor very easily. By default you're always open to the Sequencer if you've got Carrara Pro. Again, the Timeline Graph Editor is not available to you if you have Carrara 7 Standard. I'll click from Sequencer and change this to Graph Editor, and since we just finished the section on Non-Linear Animation Tracks you can isolate your view to strictly Tracks if you want to, just a little tidbit, but in the Graph Editor we're confronted with a bunch of colored lines. Let me tell you first what we're looking at and then how you can start working with these shapes. When you have the Top Level of an object selected, or if you happen to have the Top Level of a Master Object selected that you need to keyframe things for in the Master Object Level, like Fog, like Clouds, you'll have two places to work with the keyframes and items in the Graph Editor. We'll come back to the Top Level of the sphere. I'll Disclose the sphere and we've got the Motion Method right here and I'll Disclose that. Whenever you click one of these items all you'll be presented with is specifically that item so, for example, in the Position, when I click Position I have Ð if you look over here at our little widget in the corner, red equals X, so the red line here is our X parameter; blue is Z; and green is white. Very simple. If I only want to see one at a time I can simply select that, so in this case I have the X only. The Graph Editor dynamically updates to capture and present everything that you're working on so when I go back to Position we'll see everything shrink up a little bit so that it can show me a full presentation of all the motion. Now we can begin using some of these Tool Sets here that we've seen hiding in the Sequencer Tray. This is a real abrupt change in the X Motion. When I drag through that it's going one direction, bing, and then it goes the other direction, bouncing off the wall like a pinball. If I want a smoother motion I can select that point and then come up to the Flat Tangents Tool and click that, and we get our Bezier Handles that we can control with. Not only that, but partway through this, if I decide, well you know, that's too far to that one side, I want to adjust that, it's as easy as grabbing this node right here and sliding it closer to zero. You can see Distance zero, the center of the room, or Modeling Box area right here. So this gives you a real dynamic way to go ahead and change the object performance, presentation, and timing. I can grab handles and move them out if I want to change any of these. I can do that as well. It's just so easy to work with these controls. If I want an Ease In function then I can do it that way by clicking the items right here for Tangents, and then I can also Link Tangents together if I want to and Unlink Tangents. It's just such a nice way to work with these. If I wanted some really specific motion I could simply highlight two of the points, hold down the Shift key and use the Zoom to Selection Tool. So we'll zoom in there and maybe I only want to see X, so we can do that. I'll expand my view here and you'll notice the point goes off the graph a little bit. If I select that I can work on it. And then I can add points in here or do whatever I need to do to make it happen. If I move my Timeline to right here, since the X parameter's the one that's active I can come up to Keyframe, I've added a point, I can ahead and refine that motion, I can smooth that motion out, again, with the Z parameter, if I wanted the sphere to move up partway through the scene then I can simply grab this, change this position in time, no problem at all. Great way to control and add some sophistication to your animations in Carrara Pro with the Graph Editor.