Soft Selection in Graph Editor

[fabrizio.arzani]

It would be interesting to have soft selection for the graph editor in order to make smooth changes (even if limited) on baked animations (1 keyframe per frame).

[tj.galda]

Interesting, we've heard this from a few people.  Can you describe in more detail what you're trying to do?  Bonus points for screenshots.

[fabrizio.arzani]

Hi @tj.galda, yes.

I was using the time editor along with the graph editor to make some editing and tweaking on a baked animation (1 keyframe per frame) and I thought that it would have been great to select a key and smoothly change also the keyframes around it to keep the animation consistent.

Of course there are many ways, like exporting and reimporting fbx in time editor (which is really awesome), but I thought it would have been nice to avoid that step.

Plus the new time editor system is really great and it brings Maya really really close to motion builder in terms of operations about animation.

it would be amazing to see the MoBu animation filters in Maya and the soft selection could be a great start. 😊

[gilleybaba]

Maya actually has smooth selection in the graph editor.  It's a bit hidden though, and the setting doesn't show up if you are using the "new" graph editor in 2018.  You have to switch to classic graph editor for the setting to show up.  In the graph editor, go to Edit > Transformation Tools > Move Keys Tool > Options.  You will see a "Move Falloff" comboBox.  For test purposes, change this from "Constant" to  "Exponential".  Highlight a range of keys on an F-curve, then middle click drag the keys up/down.  Wherever your mouse is when you middle click, is where the falloff is at 100%, and the keys will gradually taper off from this point.

Autodesk should probably make the setting available for the new graph editor.

[fabrizio.arzani]

Thanks! I didn’t know that. 😃

[disensin]

[Revisiting this feature, realized I would love something like this]

Softimage had a similar feature (kinda like our current Lattice Deform Keys tool in the Graph Editor); the HLE (High-Level Editing mode) tool will create a new "offset" curve, with the difference that it'll create a new overlaid animCurve that "drives" the values on the visible curves. This new curve can be edited exactly like any other Curve in the Fcurve Editor (add keys, adjust tangents, etc.). It also has some more options that would be great to have:
https://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/softimage2014/en_us/userguide/files/fcurves_ShapingHighDen...

And here's a demo video from long ago (not mine):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut2qYKDOkrs