Bad initial key

[lt_ethe]

I'm assuming that when you dump stuff over from modeler to Layout it dumps it to key 0 and creates a keyframe. Or at least, it does if you have autokey on like I do.

My workflow for the past four days has been to do all my modifications (bone position, null position, rigging, etc. etc.) at keyframe 1.

All is good, until I jumped back to keyframe 0 and everything went completely haywire. Things got incredibly big, completely distorted, rotation was all over the place.

I thought I would get rid of this behavior by simply deleting all of the keys at keyframe zero using the graph editor. Things changed, but got no better. Now, my pose is hopelessly garbled/useless regardless of key.

What am I doing wrong, is it fixable? And if not, what do I do in the future to prevent this behavior?

[gjjackson]

I somehow accomplished the same thing. I still don't know how it happened but what I did was set the frames instead of 0- I made it 1-5000. This way all the initial settings stayed where I wanted them. I know you can lock the position and rotation with the buttons, maybe a feature for the keyframe would work. It's probably something that's not really worth the effort. I know somehow I kept making changes on key 1 instead of 0.

[hrgiger]

It doesn't matter if you have autokey on or not. Everything has a keyframe at frame 0.

Make sure any modifications you make to your model (such as parenting bones or changing bone heirarchy in general, setting bone rest positions, making bones active, setting up nulls, everything really before animating) are all taking place at frame 0. If you do any of those at frames other then 0, and then jump back to 0, it's going to be screwed up. At least that's been my experience.

[lt_ethe]

After much experimentation I have found the solution.

If you use motion mixer you know that if you use the "clear channel" option it will kill your keyframes, except for key 0 of course.

To get MM to work when your "good" keys are not on zero simply move your good keys onto zero, and your former key zero into the negative range. Then, while in MM, make sure that your timeline never goes below zero.

Do not delete your old zero keys for any reason, as bad things happen.

Alternatively, if your good keyframes are on key 1, like mine are, you could probably make sure that your timeline never goes below 2 while using MM... That way it never clears that which it does not see and you're safe.

[txbob]

Couldn't you just go to frame 1 and "create key for all items" at frame 0? you could then delete the keys at 1.