The timeline and poses

The screen

After Start posing, the Animation Builder fills the page with four parts:

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1. 11. Toolbar: playback, undo, Add pose, name and Export
2. 22. Viewport: the ped; drag to turn the camera, scroll to zoom
3. 33. Panel: poses, length and loop, or the posing tools
4. 44. Timeline: the playhead and one diamond per pose

• Toolbar: back to your animations, playback, undo and redo, Add pose or Done posing, the name and Export.
• Viewport: the ped you pose, on a grid.
• Panel: while you pose, the posing tools; otherwise the length, the loop and the list of poses.
• Timeline: the animation from start to end, with one diamond per pose and the red playhead.

How poses become motion

A pose stores the body at one moment. You do not pose every frame: between two poses, the builder moves every body part smoothly from one to the next. The wave in the quick start is four poses in three seconds; the builder makes every frame in between.

• Before the first pose, the ped holds the first pose.
• After the last pose, it holds the last pose, or with Loop on, glides back into the first.
• A body part you never touch stays in its rest position in every pose.

Two to six poses are enough for most gestures. More poses give more control, but also more to keep in line.

Add a pose

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1. 11. Play / pause: or the space bar
2. 22. Frame: the playhead in frames, 30 per second
3. 33. Undo / Redo: Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z
4. 44. Add pose: a new pose at the playhead

Click the timeline where the pose should be, or type a frame into the frame field (30 frames are one second). Then press Add pose. The editor switches into posing, and the panel says Posing at with the time.

• A new pose starts as the body looks at that moment, so you only change what should be different.
• Add pose is greyed out when the playhead is on a pose or less than 2 frames from one. Move the playhead a little further.
• Press Done posing when the pose is right. Play and the timeline only work outside posing.

Move, edit and delete poses

The timeline shows each pose as a diamond under the bar:

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1. 11. friendly_wave · 3.0s: the animation from start to end
2. 22. Pose diamond: drag it to move the pose in time
3. 33. Playhead: click or drag anywhere to scrub

• Move a pose in time: drag its diamond left or right. Closer poses make a faster movement.
• Jump to a pose: click its diamond or its line in the Poses list.

Outside posing, the panel lists every pose with its time and how many parts it changes:

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1. 11. Length: the play time in seconds
2. 22. Loop: the end glides back into pose 1
3. 33. Poses: click a pose to jump to it; pencil edits, bin deletes
4. 44. Smooth / Linear: how the selected pose moves into the next one

• The pencil opens that pose for posing again.
• The bin deletes it. The last remaining pose cannot be deleted.
• Add above the list does the same as Add pose in the toolbar.

Length and loop

The start card offers 3s, 5s, 10s, 20s. You can change it at any time in Length, from 1 to 60 seconds in steps of 0.5. The length cannot end before the last pose; move that pose first.

Loop is on for every new animation. The time after the last pose is then used to glide back into the first pose, so the animation repeats without a jump. Leave room for it: in the wave, the last pose sits at 2.25 seconds and the glide back takes the remaining 0.75.

Smooth or Linear

Select a pose in the list, and Transition to next pose sets how it moves into the next one. Smooth, the default, starts slowly, speeds up and slows down again, like a person. Linear moves at one speed from start to end, which looks mechanical but suits a robot or a steady turn.

Undo and autosave

• Undo and redo: the arrows in the toolbar, or Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z (Ctrl+Y works too). One drag is one step.
• Autosave: every change is saved in this browser within a second. After a reload or a closed tab, the start card shows Continue where you left off.

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1. 11. Resume building: opens the saved poses again

Resume building opens the saved poses. The cross discards them. There is one saved draft per browser: starting a new animation replaces it with the first change. A finished export clears it.