the graph editor is the most advanced key frame manipulator
in blender.
To access the graph editor.
You have a few options
in any workspace.
You could go to the top left hand corner of
any panel and select graph editor from the drop down.
Alternatively,
you can go to the animation workspace and go to the dope sheet area
from there. You can hover over it and press control tab.
This will toggle between the dope sheet and the graph editor.
For non hockey users you can go to view
toggle graph editor or toggle graph dope sheet
to achieve the same thing
compared to the dope sheet.
The graph editor can do many of the same
things but also allows the user to view and edit
the motion curves directly.
Let me show you what I mean.
Let's go ahead and make some key frames for our
object so we can see what this looks like.
Just like our timeline video. Let's once again animate a simple bouncing ball
To do this simply subdivide your default cube by
holding control and pressing to on the number row,
then turn on auto key frame will set a key frame for a hypos on the first frame.
Go to frame 10. Set a low pose where it's touching the grid
set a much lower hypos on frame 15
And do the same thing as frame 10 for frame 20 for our final low pose.
You may have noticed by now that are key frames in the
graph editor are represented by orange handles along the curves we see displayed
Now we also want to change the handle type for our extreme low poses on frame 20 and 10.
This will once again give us that bouncing ball look.
However, let's figure out how to do that in the graph out of there real quick.
Unlike the dope sheet and timeline,
there is no summary of key frames where we can easily
select all of the key frames on a certain frame.
So to achieve the same effect,
let's simply find frame 10 and alt left click any of the key frames on frame 10.
This will select all key frames vertically on the
same frame as the key frame you selected.
Now we can simply change the handle type by going to key
handle type and selecting vector
hockey users can still press V.
Now as you can see the handles have visually changed this time.
Unlike the dope sheet and timeline,
the graph editor directly shows you what changing the handle type looks like.
In terms of the interpretation curves,
Let's repeat this process for frame 20. All left click,
Press v. Select vector.
We can then play our animation with space bar again
to confirm that we did it right
now let's observe our graph editor a little more closely
to see how similar and how different it is from the dope sheet.
Before we move on.
I want to say that in case your graph editor is
too zoomed in or you can't see all of your frames
simply hover over the graph editor and press home.
You can also go to view view all
the first thing we'll notice. That's the same is the left hand column,
just like the dope sheet.
The key frames have all been assigned to specific channels.
You can expand and collapse channels by clicking the arrow or using the
plus or minus keys on the number pad while hovering over the channels.
However, you might notice that while the channels are listed
there are no distinct rows of key frames to
see which key frames belong to which channels.
Now we already know that the key frames are indicated by the orange handles.
You see spread out along the curves
and each curve belongs to a channel
simply left click any of the channels on the
left to highlight the corresponding curve in the graph.
To isolate a curve. You can left click to select it
and go to the channel menu and click hide un selected curves
for hockey users. You can press shift H.
As in Hyde,
this will hide all other curves for you
to a new hide all other curves.
Simply go back into the same channel menu and select reveal curves
for hockey users. You can press ALTs. H.
Now let's go ahead and isolate only the location curves
and try to manipulate our key frames and curves.
Using the graph editor
as you can see
each of the key frames in each channel exists on their respective curves.
As these orange handles,
which we can select and transform using the same
selection and transformation options we typically have in blunder.
I'm going to simply shift left click a few of these key frames and start using G.
S and R. To transform them.
As you can see moving, rotating and scaling.
Key frames are all possible in the graph editor,
allowing for very versatile and intuitive transformation of the curves.
But what if we select a single handle?
Each handled by itself is technically made up of three selectable parts
the main body and the two handlebars
by default,
the end points of each handlebar can be transformed as a way to rotate the
entire handle and manipulate the length of the handles which affect how the curve.
Interpol. It's between key frames.
You can also select the body and use our
or S to rotate or scale both handlebars simultaneously.
However,
handle transformation differs depending on what handle type we use.
For example,
the vector handle types we have at the extreme low poses
of our ball can be edited individually on each side.
It also cannot be rotated as vector handle
types must point to the previous key frame.
Quick note when you break an individual handlebar off of its default orientation,
it will convert the key frame handle type two free
free is when both handles move independently from each
other and you can set it to free yourself manually
feel free to experiment with other handle types.
Another thing we talked about is the interpretation modes,
interpretation modes can also be very easily changed in the dope sheet and timeline
but we never talked about what they look like in the graph editor
since the graph editor is comprised specifically of interpolated curves.
The interpolation mode greatly affects how the interpolated curves look.
Let's try a few by isolating the Z.
Location curve and selecting all the key frames by pressing A.
We can then go into the key menu. Go to interpretation mode and select constant.
As you can see the constant
interpretation mode removes all curve interpolation and
simply repeats the previous key frames value
until it encounters another key frame.
If this looks like a familiar pattern to you,
it might be because you saw it in the interpretation mode menu for constant.
As you can see each of the interpretation modes has an icon
that represents what the curves look like when in that mode.
Feel free to test out these modes to better understand them
be easier however,
is the default and we'll be changing ours back to be easier for now.
Now that we've gotten basic curve manipulation out of the way,
let's talk about more advanced curve manipulation options.
Specifically curve modifiers,
curve modifiers are similar to mesh modifiers and that they are extremely
powerful nondestructive functions that can help you alter and adjust your curves.
There are a few curve modifiers but to demonstrate this,
I'm going to show you how to use the noise curve modifier
to add curve modifiers simply opened the right hand side menu in the graph editor.
You can do this by clicking the arrow icon on the right or pressing the n key
from this right hand side menu.
Go to the modifiers tab, make sure you have the curve you want to modify. Selected.
We'll go ahead and select rz location curve by clicking
on the Z location channel on the left hand side.
Then we can go into the add modifier. Drop down menu and select noise
for hockey users.
You can simply hover over the graph editor and press control, shift em
and select noise from that menu
immediately. You can see how the noise modifier affects our curve
as the curve now has a noise pattern added all throughout it.
If we play our animation back we can see that a slight
shaking effect has now been added on top of our original animation.
Even if we set new key frames or move them around
the shaking effect adjusts to the curve dynamically
just like mesh modifiers.
We can also adjust the modifier settings to
change how the modifier affects our curve.
Each modifier has different settings to play
around with so feel free to experiment.
But these two options at the bottom are available for every single curve modifier.
This is because they affect the on and off state of the modifier.
If we expand the restrict frame range option we can
see a start and end range that we can set.
This will allow us to restrict the effect of
the modifier to specific frames along our curve.
Additionally, the in and out frames will allow us to fade the modifier influence
in and out a certain number of frames.
For example, if I set the fade in value to 10,
the curve modify will slowly fade in the influence
of the effect over the course of 10 frames.
Furthermore,
you can also manually adjust or key frame
the influence slider just below that under used influence
collapsing either of these options will also disable them
Now some of you may remember that the icon for modifiers
for meshes is a wrench icon in the properties tab.
Similarly in the graph editor, wrench icons also represent curve modifiers
but the only time you see this icon is next to the channel names.
That's because this wrench icon next to the channels and the graph editor
is for toggling on and off curve modifiers for that specific curve,
for your convenience.
Likewise, the checkbox disables the curves values from affecting the object at all
and the lock icon prevents changes to be made on that curve.
As a final note several of the dope sheet and timeline features exist here as well.
For example,
you can still add markers in the graph editor and edit them
and you can also set your preview range in the same way,
I hope this video gives you a fundamental
understanding of the graph editor in blunder.