Animate any property, shape it as curves, and mix clips

The timeline moves the camera and whole groups and components. The Animate workspace keys more than that, and the timeline gets two more views to shape and reuse what you keyed.

Open it

Choose Animate in the workspace list on the toolbar. The timeline opens under the view, the toolbar shows the Animate groups (Keys, Play, Timeline) and the panel on the right lists what you can key at the playhead.

Key a property

The panel lists, at the playhead:

• Chosen object: its Place, Turn (°) and Size, three numbers each. Type a number and press ReturnEnter: it is keyed at the playhead and the object moves there. The diamond beside a row keys the value as it is now; a filled diamond means there is a key at the playhead already.
• Lamps: each lamp's Brightness (lm), Spread (°) (spot lamps) and Colour.
• Camera: the Lens angle (°), for a zoom while the camera moves.

Key transform (or II) keys the place, turn and size of every chosen group or component at once; Key camera (or KK) keys the camera. With Auto key on, a group whose place, turn and size are keyed this way gets a new key whenever you move it.

Turns are three angles, about X, then Y, then Z. A turn keyed past 180° keeps going the same way round (190° stays 190°, not −170°), so a wheel can spin several times.

Shape keys (morphs)

A shape key is another shape of the same mesh: a smile on a face, a door's bulge, a bent leaf. Its slider blends from the mesh as it is (0) to that shape (1); several keys add up.

1. Choose a mesh in the Animate workspace: the panel shows its Shape keys.
2. Click Add shape key. ModelCraft goes to the Mesh workspace with the new key being edited: move points, extrude, sculpt — change the mesh into the shape you want.
3. Come back to Animate and click Done. The mesh goes back as it was, and the key holds your change.

Then drag the key's slider (or type a value) to blend it in. The diamond keys the value at the playhead, so a key can grow and fade over time; once it has a track, a new value is keyed at the playhead. The pencil edits the key's shape again (the mesh shows it fully until Done; Cancel leaves the key as it was), the eye turns the key off, the bin removes it.

A vertex you add while editing a key belongs to the mesh itself: it stays where you made it, in every shape.

Armatures: bones that bend a mesh

An armature is a set of bones inside a mesh. Pose the bones and the mesh follows, each point as much as its weights say.

1. Choose the mesh in the Animate workspace and click Add an armature in the panel (or Add bone in the Rig group): the first bone runs up the middle of the mesh from its foot.
2. With a bone chosen, Add a child bone adds the next one from its tip. Set any bone's Head, Tip, Roll (°) and what it Hangs from in the panel; a bone that hangs from another moves with it. Untick Moves the mesh for a bone that only steers others.
3. Click Automatic weights: each bone takes hold of the points nearest to it, and the hold spreads smoothly over the mesh, so the points between two bones share them. Nearest bones only is a quicker, harder split.

Pose the bones with Pose (PP): click a bone to choose it, drag to turn it about the view's axis, ⇧Shift-drag to move it. Or type its Place, Turn (°) and Size under Pose; turns are in the bone's own axes, from where it rests. The diamonds and Key the whole pose key the pose at the playhead; once a bone has keys, posing it keys it there. Reset this bone and Reset the pose put the bones back at rest.

Paint weights (WW) for the chosen bone: the mesh shows at rest, each face coloured by how much that bone holds it — red all, blue none. Paint to add hold (⌘Ctrl takes it away, ⇧Shift smooths); Size (px) and Strength set the brush. With Keep each point's weights adding up to 1, giving one bone more takes the same from the others. Each stroke is one step of the model's undo.

Skin chooses how a point between bones moves: Linear (fast) blends the bones' moves, and pinches a bent joint a little; Dual quaternion (keeps volume at joints) turns the point round the joint instead, so an elbow or a knee keeps its thickness (a bone's Size then doesn't stretch the skin).

IK and constraints

A constraint moves a bone or an object after its keys, by a rule. Choose the object (or, in an armature, the bone) and add one under Constraints of …; several run in the order listed (the arrows change it), and each has How much (0 to 1, keyed with its diamond like any property) and an on/off switch.

A target is another object in the open group, a bone of the same armature, or A point you type (an object's point is in the model's coordinates, a bone's in its mesh's). For an IK leg, put the target where the foot should be and key the target, or key How much to hand the leg between the keys and the IK.

Physics: drop, stack and collide

Let objects fall and knock into each other, then keep the result as keys.

1. Choose a group, component or mesh and set its Rigid body under Physics: Falls and collides (it moves) or Stays put, gets in the way (a table, a wall, a ramp). Give a falling one its Shape — Box (its bounds) or Ball (round its bounds) — its Mass (kg), Friction and Bounce (0 thuds, 1 bounces back as high).
2. Under The whole model, set From (s) and To (s), the Gravity (m/s², down) and whether there is A ground to land on (and its height).
3. Click Bake physics (in the panel or the Physics group). Each falling object gets a place, turn and size key on every frame between the two times; play it like any animation.

Baking again replaces those keys; Remove baked keys takes them off. The objects start at rest, where their keys, curves and constraints put them at From (s) (a keyed movement before it doesn't carry on into the fall). More Steps a frame keeps tall stacks steadier; the status bar says when something is still moving at the end.

Drivers

A driver sets a shape key from other things instead of by hand: open a key's driver (the calculator button), write an expression, and give each name in it what it reads (Reads): the time in seconds, the frame, a placement's place, turn or size along X, Y or Z, a lamp's brightness, or another shape key. For example, with v reading a door's turn about Z, clamp(v / 90, 0, 1) opens a shape as the door opens.

Expressions use numbers, the names, + - * / % ^ and brackets, and the functions sin cos tan asin acos atan atan2 abs sqrt exp log floor ceil round sign pow min max clamp lerp smoothstep rad deg with pi and e. A mistake is pointed out and changes nothing. A driven key's slider shows the driver's value; the driver wins over the key's track until you remove it.

Choose and change keys (Keys view)

Keys shows a row per track: the camera, each moving group, and each property ("Lamp 2 · Brightness (lm)"; property keys are round).

• Click a key to choose it; ⇧Shift-click or ⌘Ctrl-click adds or removes keys from the choice. ⇧Shift-drag over the rows draws a box that adds every key in it.
• Drag a chosen key to move them all; ←← / →→ move them a frame (⇧Shift: ten).
• ⌘CCtrl+C copies the chosen keys, ⌘VCtrl+V pastes them from the playhead onto the same tracks (another ModelCraft tab can paste them too).
• Stretch spreads the chosen keys out from the playhead by the number beside it (2 = twice as far apart; 0.5 pulls them in).
• The ease list sets how every chosen key moves on.

Shape the curves (Curves view)

Curves is a graph of each number over time: time along, value up. Tick the curves to show in the list on the left (X, Y and Z are red, green and blue).

• Click a key (a square) to choose it, ⇧Shift-click for more, or drag a box. Drag a chosen key to change its time and value; with several chosen, drag moves them along in time.
• A chosen key shows its two handles. Drag one to shape the curve on that side. Handles says how they behave: Automatic (a smooth curve through the keys around it), Pointing at the next key, Aligned (the two stay in a straight line, so the curve has no corner) or Free.
• From the chosen keys sets how each chosen key moves on to the next: Curve (handles), Smooth, Steady, Slow in and out or Hold.
• Before and After set what a curve does outside its keys: Hold (stays at the first or last value), Repeat, Back and forth, or Repeat and carry on (each repeat starts where the last one ended: a wheel keeps rolling, a walker keeps walking).
• The wheel zooms (⌘Ctrl: values only, ⇧Shift: time only); drag with the middle button or with ⌥Alt to pan; Show all or fn ←Home fits every shown curve. Click on empty space to move the playhead there. fn DeleteDelete deletes the chosen keys.

Handles are kept from crossing each other in time, so a curve never runs backwards.

Reuse animations (Clips view)

A clip plays a saved animation (an action) on the timeline. Clips are mixed in order, the lower rows over the upper ones; the timeline's own tracks go on top of every clip.

1. Key the groups and lamps as usual, then click Make a clip in Clips and give the action a name. The tracks become the action and a clip plays it where they were (the camera stays on the timeline).
2. To use it again, choose the action and click Add clip: a new clip starts at the playhead.
3. Drag a clip along its row to move it; click it to set Start (s), Speed (2 = twice as fast), Repeats, How much (0 to 1), Mix (Replace, or Add on top of the clips before it), Outside the clip (nothing, hold its end, or hold both ends) and Mute. The arrows change the order; the bin removes it (an action no clip uses any more goes with it).

A clip at less than full How much blends from what is under it: the clip before it, or the lamp or placement as it is without the animation.

What plays where

Everything is saved in the .modelcraft file with the rest of the animation, and the timeline's Undo and Redo take back any of it.