How to trim an animation

[78finn]

Hi there,

I am using Keyshot 8. I have imported an animation into Keyshot from Solidworks, as well as animating other parts within Keyshot.

The animation works just fine, but i am wanting to trim some of the sequences within Keyshot

The animated parts and camera are shown as a bar in the timeline window. If I click and drag either end of the bars (parts/cameras) in the timeline, it either extends or shortens the entire animation sequence.

Is there a way of trimming the animation rather than extending or lengthening the duration

e.g. in some video editing programs you can simply holding down shift and drag the camera bar or animated part bar to 'trim' the animation sequence, as appose to extending or shortening the animation time.

Appreciate your help!

[designgestalt]

hello 78finn,
as to my knowledge there is no such thing in KS !
The sequence comes in as one file and I would not know of any way to trim it ...

cheers
designgestalt

[theAVator]

As far as I know, there's no way directly in Keyshot without editing directly the parameters of each animation. For instance, if you have a turntable animation set to rotate 360 degrees and you only want to capture up to 270 degrees, then just set your turntable to only rotate 270 degrees.

Now, you can render frame duration to only capture/render a certain amount of the animation. You would just need to stitch the sequences together later on. You could also set your work area for the duration you want and then just render the work area, then reset to render the next are you want and stitch the different renders together.

Subsequently, you could also just render the whole thing and then go into a video program like Premiere and clip down your sequence how you want it. The downside to this is you have to render everything, which maxes out your render time.

Unless there is a compelling reason to render everything in one complete go, breaking it up and rendering chunks at a time will be your best bet and most economical, and you can queue them up to render one right after the other.

[78finn]

Thanks for all of the replies and the workarounds...

They are just that thought aren't they (workarounds)? I know I can render out separate portions of the animation and sequence in post, but this takes time and importantly you don't get the opportunity to preview the entire sequence before committing to rendering out.

This type of feature would be really useful. I still feel the animation tools in Keyshot are very basic and unloved. Hopefully Keyshot will think about improving animation tools over time.

[INNEO_MWo]

If you want to cut of the animation in "half" and don't want to use the last sequence, then you can use the studio switch event. The studio can contain the un-animated parts.


I've never tried it, but it could work. Have to give it a check later in the office.


Hope you'll find a solution.


Cheers
Marco


PS: written on a mobile