Working with Clips in the Mixer

Once you have created tracks and imported clips to the Motion Mixer, you can adjust your animation mix by moving, cloning, and replacing clips.

Within the Motion Mixer, you can:

To move a clip in time within a track:

  1. On the Motion Mixer toolbar, click (Move Clips).
  2. Drag the clip and move it to another location on the track.

    A clip cannot be moved in such a way that it overlaps another clip. If you move a clip on top of another clip, it will return to its original location when you release the mouse.

Procedures

To move all clips horizontally on one track:

  1. Select one or more clips. You can select multiple clips on different tracks for this operation.
  2. On the Motion Mixer toolbar, click (Slide Clips).
  3. Move the selected clips to slide clips to the left or right.

    When you slide a selected clip to the right, all unselected clips to the right of the clip move to the right. When you slide a clip to the left, all unselected clips to the left move to the left.

To move a clip to another track:

  1. On the Motion Mixer toolbar, click (Slide Clips).
  2. Move one clip on a track to slide all clips on the track.

To replace one clip with another:

    After a clip is placed on a track, you can replace the clip with another clip. The new clip is scaled to fit the time of the original clip.

  1. Select the clips you want to replace.
  2. Right-click a selected clip and choose Load Source From Files from the pop-up menu. Select a BIP file to replace selected clips.
  3. On the Mixer Clip Source Options dialog, choose whether to replace only the selected clips, or to also replace instances (versions of the clip on same-sized bipeds) or adaptations (versions of the clip on all bipeds).

To clone a clip:

    Clips can be cloned within the same track, across tracks, and even across bipeds in the Mixer. A cloned clip retains the Z=0 status of the original clip (if this option was selected for the original clip), and any changes made to the original clip's timing. Cloning a clip to a different-sized biped creates an adaptation of the original clip.

  1. Make sure there's enough space on the track where you want to place the cloned clips. Move clips as necessary to make room.
  2. Select the clips you want to clone.
  3. Hold down the Shift key on your keyboard, and drag the selected clips to the new location.

    If there isn't enough room where you attempted to placed the cloned clips, the operations is cancelled and clips are not cloned.

To replace a clip with motion from a biped in the scene:

    All motions used in the Motion Mixer must be saved as BIP files. When you copy animation from a biped in the scene, you must save this motion as a BIP file.

  1. Place a clip in the track using any method.
  2. Select the clips you want to replace with biped motion from the scene.
  3. From the Motion Mixer menu, choose Clips Load Source From Biped. The Copy Biped Animation to Clip dialog appears.
  4. Highlight the biped from which you want to copy the animation.
  5. Enter a filename for the new clip.
  6. Click Copy to replace clips with the biped motion.

    The name of the clip in the track is replaced with the new filename.

Parent topic: Using the Motion Mixer