Animating Operations

The effect of any Operation that has "Parameters" can be animated. A Parameter is an option that the Operation uses to determine how to affect the object. For example, the Material Fill operation has parameters of Color, Transparency etc. Virtually every Operation Parameter can be animated over time.

Each position on the animation slider is a key-frame time. You may change the parameters of the Operations for each object at each key-frame time on the slider. When the animation is played, 3D Canvas will interpolate between these key-frames.

Only Operations that have been applied in animation mode can be animated. There are two ways to change the parameters for a Operation.

1) The Update function of the Layers List will display the update function for operations.

2) The Adjust tool of the Edit Toolbar allows you to adjust the effect of operations using the edit control.

Note that simply applying another operation to an object at a second time in the animation will not produce an animated operation. It will simply apply another animatable operation. This allows for multiple operations of the same type to be applied to an object and animated independently.

will be in a "pushed" state whenever the object you are animating is at an interpolated position rather than a key-frame position. If not "pushed", you can click on this to cause the current animation time to use an interpolated position rather than a key-frame position.

will be in a "pushed" state whenever the object you are animating is at a key-frame position. If not "pushed", you can click on this to cause the current object's position to become a fixed non-interpolated position.

will be in a "pushed" state whenever the object you are animating is at a path origin, or sub-path origin key-frame position. If not "pushed", you can click on this to cause the current key-frame position to be the beginning of a sub-path.

copies the current key-frame to one key-frame later in the animation. This is useful for adding pauses to animations.

Alt-clicking on will move the current key-frame to one key-frame later in the animation.

copies the current key-frame to one key-frame earlier in the animation. This is useful for adding pauses to animations.

Alt-clicking on will move the current key-frame to one key-frame earlier in the animation.