3ds Max 2012 Bible - Kelly L. Murdock [396]
Displaying keyable icons
If you're not careful, you could animate a track that you didn't mean to (especially with the Auto Key mode enabled). By marking a track as non-keyable or keyable, you can control which tracks can be animated. To do this, choose the Display⇒Keyable Icons menu. This places a small red key icon to the left of each track that can be animated. You can then click the icon to change it to a non-keyable track. Figure 37.8 shows the Curve Editor with this feature enabled.
FIGURE 37.8
The Keyable Icons feature displays an icon next to all tracks that can be keyed.
Editing Time
In some cases, directly working with keys isn't what you want to do. For example, if you need to change the animation length from six seconds to five seconds, you want to work in the Dope Sheet's Edit Ranges mode. To switch to this mode, click the Edit Ranges button on the Key Tangents toolbar. In this mode, the key ranges are displayed as black lines with square markers on either end, as shown in Figure 37.9.
FIGURE 37.9
Click the Edit Ranges button to display the key ranges in the Key pane.
Selecting time and the Select Keys by Time utility
Before you can scale, cut, copy, or paste time, you need to select a track and then select a time block. To select a section of time, click the Select Time button and drag the mouse over the time block.
The Select Keys by Time utility lets you select all the keys within a given time block by entering the frame or time values. To use this utility, click the Track View Utilities button or select the Utilities⇒Track View Utilities menu command to open the Track View Utilities dialog box, and choose the Select Keys by Time utility from the list. Then in the Select Keys by Time dialog box, enter the Start and End values to complete the selection.
Deleting, cutting, copying, and pasting time
After you select a block of time, you can delete it by clicking the Delete Time button. Another way to delete a block of time is to use the Cut Time button, which removes the selected time block but places a copy of it on the clipboard for pasting. The Copy Time button also adds the time block to the clipboard for pasting, but it leaves the selected time in the track.
After you copy a time block to the clipboard, you can paste it to a different location within the Track View. The track where you paste it must be of the same type as the one from which you copied it.
All keys within the time block are also pasted, and you can select whether they are pasted relatively or absolutely. Absolute pasting adds keys with the exact values as the ones on the clipboard. Relative pasting adds the key value to the current initial value at the place where the key is pasted.
You can enable the Exclude Left End Point and Exclude Right End Point buttons on the Extras toolbar when pasting multiple sections next to each other. By excluding either end point, the time block loops seamlessly.
Reversing, inserting, and scaling time
The Reverse Time button flips the keys within the selected time block.
The Insert Time button lets you insert a section of time anywhere within the current track. To insert time, click and drag to specify the amount of time to insert; all keys beyond the current insertion point slide to accommodate the inserted time.
The Scale Time button scales the selected time block. This feature causes all keys to be pushed closer together or farther apart. The scaling takes place around the current frame.
Setting ranges
The Position Ranges button on the Ranges toolbar enables you to move ranges without moving keys. In this mode, you can move and scale a range bar independently of its keys, ignoring any keys that are out of range. For example, this button, when enabled, lets