Working with Animated Actions
In addition to morph targets, the Actions palette can also be used to hold animation clips. The difference between morph targets and animated actions is that the latter has key set.
Caution
Animated actions will not appear in the Blend Morphs dialog box and cannot be blended.
At the top of the list of Actions is an entry labeled Mainline. This entry isn’t an action but represents the project’s main animation. A red arrow marks the current action that is open, and its keys are displayed in the Timeline palette. When the Mainline option is open, the project’s default animation keys are visible in the Timeline palette.
Creating Animation Clips
To create an animation clip, click the New Action button at the top of the Actions palette. This command opens a dialog box where you can give the new action a name. The clip is then added to the Actions palette list.
Caution
When a new action is created, the timeline automatically snaps to frame 0. If you drag the timeline to a frame other than 0 thinking on making a morph target, then you’ll be working with an animation and the morph blend option will not be available.
Editing an Existing Clip
If you double-click an animation clip in the Actions palette, the clip is loaded into the Timeline palette where you can edit it. The clip being edited is identified by a red arrow pointing to it in the Actions palette. Once it’s loaded, you can create animation keys for the loaded action using the various tools. The keys will appear on the Timeline as normal.
The background color of the Timeline palette also changes to white, as shown in Figure 21.7. This is to remind you that you are in clip editing mode. To switch back to the main timeline editing mode, double-click the Mainline option in the Actions palette.
Reusing Clips
Once a clip is defined and ready to use in the Actions palette, you can add it to the main animation by selecting the clip in the Actions palette, choosing a frame where you want to insert the clip in the Timeline palette, and clicking on either the Insert Reference or the Insert Copy buttons.
The Insert Reference option maintains a link to the clip that is inserted. If the clip ever gets changed, the referenced clip that is inserted into the main animation will also be updated with the clip changes. If a clip is inserted as a copy, then any changes to the clip in the future are not propagated to the inserted animation.
To add an action to an animation, follow these steps:
Open the Lip-Sync with blinking.anme file from the Chapter 21 folder on the CD. This file includes the woman lip-syncing to an audio file completed in an earlier tutorial.
Select the Window, Actions menu command (Ctrl/Cmd+K) to open the Actions palette. Then select the New Action from the top of the Actions palette to create a new action named Action 1.
With the Action 1 action selected in the Actions palette, select the face layer in the Layers palette. Then drag the Time Slider to frame 1 and edit the eyes so they pull together as if blinking. Three keys are added to the Timeline palette for the Point Motion channel.
Select the same three keys in frame 0 as the newly created keys and click the Copy button at the top of the Timeline palette. Then drag the Time slider to frame 3 and click the Paste button to copy the keys with the eyes wide open to frame 3.
Double-click the Mainline option in the Actions palette to return to the main animation. Then drag the Time slider to frame 10 and click only once on Action 1 and click the Insert Reference button at the top of the Actions palette. This adds the action keys to the main timeline.
Drag the Time slider to frame 30 and click the Insert Reference button again.
Click the Play button (Spacebar) to see the resulting animation with blinking, as shown in Figure 21.8.
