Optimal way to organize multiple animations on one object in one scene

[Anonymous]

Hello! I am currently making animations for a character that needs dozens of animations for a game. I'm using legacy bones with controllers and have all the animations on one timeline. It's getting very tedious because I'm writing down the keyframe ranges for all the animations, but if I have to go back and make changes and lengthen/shorten sequences, it pushes or squishes everything else on the timeline. And there's not really been a good order to my animations either and walk/run animations are sprinkled in with attack animations, so its very unorganized.

My question is what is a good way to keep animations organized in one scene like this? Is there even an acceptable way to do it? My perfect scenario that I'm envisioning is having all animations in one scene so I can go back and forth between them via a layer system or modifier if they need tweaking. I'd like to avoid any scripting as well.

I'm aware of some solutions that exist that I'm opting not to do because I've been trying to see if there are any that abide by what I'm trying to do. I know that Biped and CAT have their own animation layers that you can toggle on and off. I also am aware of the inherent animation layers, but it seems like that's only good for combining animations together. Can you separate animations and turn layers on and off and fill the timeline with those respective animations and I'm just not doing it properly? 

I am also aware that you can save and load in animations, but again I'd like to keep them all in one scene at all times for convenience. I spoke to a friend who said they do this method, so is this actually a viable and standard method? I just feel like its easier if you could somehow have them all in the same scene and access them isolated and easily.

Again, and despite my perfect scenario situation, I just want to know what the standard is for organizing many different and separate animations like this and plugging them into a game engine like Unity. Sorry this is so long but I wanted to be specific about what my thought process has been and what I've tried. Thank you!

[fla3d]

You can use animation layers, just go to the menu animation and choose animation layers to show the toolbar. There you can create layers and enable and disable each one, if you let more than one layer enable they will add the animations.

Then you can use state sets to set different time ranges and switch between them. The problem is that the state sets doesn't record the enable/disable in the animation layer, so you'll have to change it by hand or by script.

There are some scripts with multiple timeline configuration like this one: http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/timeline-control

Another option is to try Motion Builder, it has a great take control built in that does exactly like you want.