If you've ever experienced confusion when you go further into blocking, due to the overwhelming amount of keys, then this Maya tip will really help you out!
Hi everyone! Today I have a quick and simple Maya tip for you that will help you stay organized during blocking: coloring your key ticks. The advantage of this is that you can change the color of your breakdown keys to contrast with the normal, red key tick color, which allows you to more easily see when the different actions in your animation start and end. There are two different ways to do this and I go over both below.
Breakdown Keys
Breakdown Keys are a special type of key within Maya and so will function differently than a typical keyframe. These keyframes maintain proportional time relationships to the surrounding keys, so if you make changes to the timing of a nearby key, the breakdown key will adjust to compensate for the differences. This image from the Autodesk Knowledge Network is a good example of how this works.
To change a key to a Breakdown Key, select the control curve and the frame on the time slider that you want to change. From here you can either go to the Animation Menu Set at the top of the Maya interface and choose Key > Set Breakdown Key. Or you can select the attributes in the channel box that you want to set a breakdown on and click the Channels drop down above that and click Breakdown Selected. However, the easiest method is to right click the key on the time slider and go to Keys > Convert to Breakdown. Your key should then change to a neon green color.
If you ever want to change your Breakdown Key back to a normal key, just right click the key on the time slider again and select Keys > Convert to Key.
Coloring Key Frames
The difference between this method and the Breakdown Keys method is that coloring your key ticks doesn't change the nature of that keyframe or how it reacts to anything else. It is simply a visual cue for you to stay more organized.
To color a key, or set of keys, select all of the control curves that you for which you want to change the key tick color. Then go into the graph editor and select all of the keys on the frame(s) that you want to color. With this still selected, type keyframe -tds on in the MEL command line and hit Enter. Now your selected key tick(s) will be colored. (You can also type this in the script editor and middle click drag it up to a shelf to save it as a custom button, to save time.)
keyframe -tds on
*Note: A colored key will change back to red if you either hit S while the control is selected on that frame or if you change and key all of the values in the channel box for that control on that frame.
Key Tick Color
Now you have the tools to color and organize your key ticks! But as an extra personalization hack, you'll also notice that the default color for the key ticks in both of these methods is a neon green. But you can change this as well if you prefer. (Personally, I use a bright, light blue color for my key ticks.)
To change this, go to the Window tab at the top of the Maya interface and choose Settings/Preference > Color Settings > Animation. The Time Slider Breakdown option will change the color of Breakdown Keys, and the Time Slider Tick Special option will change the color for the MEL script method.
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