The Timeline and Playback
The Timeline controls time in your groom. It sets the current frame and lets you play the scene back, which matters whenever your groom changes over time - for example when a base mesh is animated, when you run dynamics, or when you read an animated cache.
Layout
The Timeline has three rows:
- The ruler at the top shows the part of the frame range you are zoomed into, with the frame numbers, the keys and the playhead. The playhead carries a tag with the current frame.
- The navigator is the thin strip under the ruler. It always spans the whole frame range, and the lighter bar on it marks the part the ruler shows.
- The transport row at the bottom holds the Timeline settings on the left, the playback controls in the middle and the Record and Animate buttons on the right.
The current frame
Click or drag on the ruler to move to a frame; operators that depend on time re-evaluate at the frame you set, so you can scrub through an animation and watch the hair respond. You can also type a frame number into the field next to the playback controls and press Enter.
Zooming and panning
Drag either end of the bar on the navigator to zoom the ruler in or out, and drag the middle of the bar to pan. Clicking the navigator beside the bar moves the view there, and double-clicking it shows the whole frame range again. The mouse wheel over the ruler or the navigator zooms around the pointer, and dragging on the ruler with the middle mouse button pans it. The navigator also marks the keys and the current frame, so you can find keys outside the zoomed part.
Playback
The playback controls go to the start, step one frame back, play or pause, step one frame forward, and go to the end. Space plays and pauses from anywhere in the application. Playback runs the scene forward through the frame range so you can review motion - hair following an animated character, a simulation settling, or a cached performance playing back. When the Timeline is narrow, the step buttons are hidden and the Animate button shows only its key icon.
Animating with keys
The Animate button at the right end of the timeline turns the Animate mode on and off, and N does the same. The button is red while the mode is on, and changing a parameter or moving an object then sets a key at the current frame. See Keyframe Animation.
The timeline marks every key of the groom with a red line. Click a line to go to that frame and select the controller holding the key; hover it to see which controller that is.
Live simulation
To watch a simulation react while you change its inputs by hand, for example turning a character's head with the Human operator's Head Rotation, set the operator to Live: right-click it in the operator stack and choose Simulation > Live, or pick Live in the Simulation box of its properties. A Live simulation runs on a clock of its own, in real time, while the Timeline stays on its frame, and it carries on from where it is whatever you change instead of starting over from the first frame. While a Live simulation is in the groom, two buttons appear at the left of the transport row: the first pauses and resumes the live clock, the second restarts the simulation from the inputs it has now. Playing or scrubbing the Timeline changes the animated inputs but does not restart a Live simulation. Live is for trying things out: recording and rendering simulate the operator over the frame range as usual, so switch it back to Cache to play the simulation back with the Timeline.
Working with dynamics and caches
The Timeline is central to the animation and dynamics operators:
- Moov physics simulates hair motion over the frame range. See Moov Physics Operator.
- The Animation Cache operator plays back pre-recorded hair animation. See Animation Cache Operator.
- Other time-based effects, such as the Oscillator Operator and Parameter Controllers, evaluate against the current frame.
Set the frame range to cover the motion you want to review or simulate, then play it back to see the result in the viewport.