repeating parts of an animation?

# 1 10-11-2008 , 10:27 PM

Subscriber
Join Date: Nov 2008

Posts: 11

Hey guys,

In my animation I have something that moves over 60 frames. In those 60 frames i have quite a few key frames. So is there a way I can repeat that group of 60 frames again in another part of the animation without having to redo all those key frames.

thanks in advance,

Quote

# 2 10-11-2008 , 10:38 PM

Subscriber
Join Date: Dec 2007

Location: NZ

Posts: 3,125

https://forums.simplymaya.com/showthr...threadid=31321

first post by me in this thread may or may not sort you out if you were looking to repeat that animation infinately

that's a "Ch" pronounced as a "K"

Computer skills I should have:
Objective C, C#, Java, MEL. Python, C++, XML, JavaScript, XSLT, HTML, SQL, CSS, FXScript, Clips, SOAR, ActionScript, OpenGL, DirectX
Maya, XSI, Photoshop, AfterEffects, Motion, Illustrator, Flash, Swift3D

Quote

# 3 10-11-2008 , 10:50 PM

Subscriber
Join Date: Nov 2008

Posts: 11

Originally posted by Chirone
you want the animation to keep cycling?

in the graph editor select all the attributes in the left hand window thing and then all the keys in the graph (so all points on the curve are selected)
then go Curves > Post Infinity > Cycle

i just tried it out now with a ball on a curve and it worked.

if it doesn't work for you then i didn't explain well enough

Originally Posted by

I'm pretty new to Maya so most of that went straight over my head, so i'm not sure if that would fix my problem.
Maybe it would help if I was a bit more specific about what I am trying to do.

I'm making an animation of a digital clock. I put all the numbers on the outside of a cylinder which rotates, which shows the seconds changing.
So what I am doing at the moment is animating the seconds in the "ones" column. So the way I have it now is that the cylinder takes 50 frames to do a full rotation (showing 10 seconds), but it pauses briefly on each number, so I have had to set up quite a few keyframes to do this (21).
Now because the rotation of that cylinder just repeats over and over, I'm trying to find a way to just repeat those 50 frames without having to make 21 new keyframes each time.

I hope that made sense.

Again, thanks in advance.

Last edited by TehDuke; 10-11-2008 at 11:02 PM.

Quote

# 4 11-11-2008 , 04:00 AM

Subscriber
Join Date: Jul 2006

Location: London

Posts: 567

Select your animated object, go to 'character' > 'create character set', name it what ever, then in the Trax editor, got to 'create' > 'animation clip', name it what ever, then it will show in your trax editor, u might have to go to 'list' > 'load character set', then you can select the animation, and go to 'edit' > 'duplicate' in the trax editor as many times as u need.

Another way could be to grab the keyframes and select them all inthegraph editor and go to 'post infinity' > 'cycle'.

Or third n finally, if your after just a rotating piece for a clock you can wirte an expression like this...

pCylinder1.rotateZ = frame;

as long as u change the pivot point to be at the bottom of the object (in this case a cylinder), and it will spin round, just add a mulitplier like...

frame * 4;

to the end to speed up/slow down.

Hope one of em helps
Chris

Quote