THE DOPE SHEET

(not just for dopes)

I will do various demos of the usefulness of the Dope Sheet in Class

Why should I use it?

the Dope Sheet is great for moving/scaling entire, complex blocks of animated-content all at once. You can make a portion of animation (or all of it) shorter or faster by selecting and scaling the blocks. Or, you can offset blocks of animation to a different point in time.

Also, when blocks are scaled in the Dopesheet, the input/output tangents of the animation curves will also be proporationally scaled, so the slopes bewtween keys will not be screwed-up. Like when you try to scale whole section of keys in the timeliner.

Description of the Dope Sheet

You can manage time in the Dope Sheet by select, move and scale, as well as copy, cut and paste blank regions of time and regions of time that contain keys in the Dope Sheet. This is useful when you want to move, scale, mute, add or delete regions of time and keyframes and have the rest of your animation shift to accommodate the addition or removal of time and keyframes. For example, when a region of time and keys are cut, the rest of the time and keys in the animation will shift to fill in the gap created by the cut. When the time and keys are then pasted, the animation will shift to make room for the pasted time and keys.

You can manage time in the Dope Sheet using the Select Keyframe Tool. With the Select Keyframe Tool, you can place and create the Dope Sheet Manipulator. The Dope Sheet Manipulator lets you select, move and scale, as well as copy, cut and paste blank regions of time and regions of time that contain keys in the Dope Sheet. This is useful when you want to move, scale, mute, add or delete regions of time and keyframes and have the rest of your animation shift to accommodate the addition or removal of time and keyframes. For example, when a region of time and keys are cut, the rest of the time and keys in the animation will shift to fill in the gap created by the cut. When the time and keys are then pasted, the animation will shift to make room for the pasted time and keys.
Move Nearest Picked Key Tool