Switch to key one bone or entire hierachy?

[Gurbo]

I used to use Animation:Master which had three buttons that I really miss. One where you can set keys only on the selected bones, another where setting a key on a bone would also key all that bones' child bones. And finally a third bone - which I never used - where you could key the whole rig.

I never figured out how to do this in Maya. I would set my first pose. Scrub the time slider set another pose only to find the first pose is all mushed. Could anyone please tell me how to make these controls in Houdini? Don't know where to start..

Thanks

Gurb

[edward]

In H7.0, if you hit k then it will key all your scoped channels which come from your selected objects. So to key all the descendent objects, you just need to pick them using the "Select Child Objects" selection mode. It's the icon in the viewer's left toolbar right above the "star" icon. You can also do "Select Parent Objects" as well. Note that they're assigned by default to the hotkey 9 and 0. So to do what you want, hit 9, select an object which causes all its child object to be selected too, hit k to key them, hit 9 to turn it back off.

For keying the entire rig, I recommend creating a channel group and then keying that. For blocking out your animation, it's probably easiest to create all your channel groups (note that you can nest them!) and then just use them for keying. Just create a channe list pane along side a viewer pane.

[Gurbo]

For keying the entire rig, I recommend creating a channel group and then keying that. For blocking out your animation, it's probably easiest to create all your channel groups (note that you can nest them!) and then just use them for keying. Just create a channe list pane along side a viewer pane.

16296[/snapback]

Hey, Thanks very much Edward! Too easy. I'm so glad.

Do I create the Channel group with a Group SOP (OP)? Unfortunately I find the graph editor a little unclear with groups and key and pins. These appear to be updates with version 7 and I haven't found learning materials regarding this interface. Nested Channel groups sound really powerful. It seems that version 8 will have an extensive help for Newbs like me.

[edward]

You can create channel groups in the channel list in the channel editor. If you open the channel editor, it's that area where it says "All Channel Groups". The easiest way to create a channel group is to first scope the channels you want and then drag and drop them into the channel groups area. Most reorganization in that list is done by drag and dropping.

By nested channel groups, I just mean that you can create groups of your channels for displaying/keying and that you can nest them like directories so that displaying/keying the parent group will also do the same to all its child groups.