MUTING ANIMATION

You can mute animation channels. Muting temporarily disables the animation on the selected channel without disconnecting its curve from the animated object. Mute will enitirely disable the channel(s)of animation (x, y, z animation) happening on whatever you set it to ignore (mute). You are not setting not a mute key, rather, mute puts the channel entirely on, or entirely off, without detroying the orignal animation curve.

It 's like a temporary paralysis of any animated channel. Muting lets you isolate and focus on a specific motion, by muting other motiongs.

WHY WOULD I USE MUTE? ie: When working with a model whose arms and legs are animated, you can use muting to turn off the animation of either the arms or legs.

mute can only be put on an object (not a skeleton, joint, or IK handle)

there must already be animation keys on the object to create a mute

HOW TO MUTE:

Muted channels appear brownish in the Channel Box, in contrast to the orangish color of Keyed Channels (see above)

In the Channel Box, you can right-click selected channels and select the following options from the menu that appears.

Mute Selected

Mute the selected animation channels.

Unmute Selected

Removes muting from the selected animation channels.

Mute All

Mutes all channels for the current object(s).

Unmute All

Removes muting from all the channels of the current object(s).

Mute node in the Channel Box

node-based description of "mute":

When you mute the animation channels of an object, a mute node is automatically created in the dependency graph (hypergraph) for each muted channel.

Again, these NEW NODES are created when you mute an animated channel, and can be seen when you open the Hypergraph/Input/Output display.....(like below)

The mute node in the Channel Box has the following format: mute_objectn_channel. Example mute node names include: mute_pCube1_translateX, mute_joint1_rotateZ and so on.

When the mute is set to on, all animation nodes that connect to the mute node are muted. When the mute is set to off, all animation nodes that connect to the mute node are not muted. Setting the mute node to off in the Channel Box does not remove it from the dependency graph. (hypergraph)

Mute in the Graph Editor and Dope Sheet

When you mute an animated object's keys or channels, a Mute channel is generated for each animation channel. You can view, manipulate, and add keys to this Mute channel or curve in the Dope Sheet or Graph Editor. This is useful when you want to isolate and review specific parts of your animation.

When you edit a Mute channel or curve, its corresponding animation curve automatically updates in the Dope Sheet and Graph Editor view areas.

A red icon appears beside a channel's name when it is muted.

A green icon appears beside a channel's name when it is not muted, but is still connected to a mute node. When the mute node is set to off in the Channel Box, the green icon still appears beside the channel's name in the Graph Editor.