blender-keyframetools

Some handy tools for working with keyframes in Blender. Inspired by Alan Camilo's animBot.

Limitations

This software is in its very very very very early stages. It is offered here because people on Twitter were all like "wow this looks awesome i want to try it". And it's even a little bit useful!

Note: This tool doesn't work for all types of F-Curves yet. Bones and object-level animation are good to go as of 0.5.1 but shape keys as well as properties in materials, the scene and the world don't respond to these tools yet. It's an API thing. (Hopefully this weird state of affairs gets fixed in Blender 2.8's Python API.)

Only in development for 2.79b, does not work in 2.8 yet. 2.8 is wonderful though, isn't it?

Functions

All current functions are for the Graph Editor only.

Keyframe manipulating tools

All of these should work with multiple bone channels and object-level animation. Material values and scene-level

• Flatten Keyframes (hotkey Ctrl+A): Non-interactively flattens selected keyframes to a straight line between the first and last keyframe of the selection. Useful for tidying up. Works on multiple channels.
• Flatten/Exaggerate Keyframes (hotkey D): Interactively flattens or exaggerates selected keyframes along a straight line between the first and last keyframe of the selection. Useful for making a motion smaller or bigger. Also works on multiple channels.
• Ease Keyframes (hotkey Shift+A): Interactively create an ease in or ease out for a selection of keyframes. Useful for tidying up an ease pattern. Also works on multiple channels.

Shortcut tool

• Place Cursor and Pivot (hotkey Ctrl+Shift+G): Places the 2D Cursor at the selection and changes Pivot Center to 2D Cursor. Like Ctrl+G but better.

Pie menu

The pie menu is bound to Shift+Z. This gives you Ease Keys, Flatten Keys, Flatten/Exaggerate Keys and Place Cursor and Pivot.

Changing hotkeys

If you don't like the hotkeys, you can always change them in the keymap!

• Go to File -> User Preferences -> Input
• Change the Search mode to Key Binding, then type in the hotkey Z.
• Scroll down to "Graph Editor" and look for the hotkey in question by function. (Note: The pie menu is disguised as "Call Pie Menu", see the pie menu setup graphic for how it should look)
• To change the hotkey, hit the > to the left and change the key to whatever you like. To get rid of the shortcut, click the big X.

Don't forget to save your user preferences afterwards! (Hint: click Save User Settings at the bottom left.)

You can also access the functions from the Space Bar. (2.8 is not supported yet.)

Roadmap

These are the current priorities as of version 0.5.1 (28 October 2018)

Coming Keyframe-Related Additions

• Smooth Rough tool from animBot (will be called Dampen/Excite)
• More stuff depending on what Looch thinks is useful :)

Coming Other Changes and Fixes

• All: Make all F-Curve types manipulable, including properties belonging to materials, scenes and worlds.
• Ease: Do something more helpful with out-of-bounds keys
• Share Keys: Make it work again

Work on Blender 2.8 compatibility will begin after 2.8 API is declared stable by the Blender devs, maybe November?

Acknowledgements

Thanks to

• Luciano "Looch" Muñoz for guidance and encouragment
• Irmitya for contributing object-level animation and finally choosing some hotkeys! :)
• Alan Camilo for inspiring us with animBot