Best way to split animations for programmers

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

Without knowing more details about your project I can think only of one way- create all individual parts of your animation in precomps that are the final size and bring them all in in one big comp to see the final animation simulation. This will enable you to just render each precomp separately once you are happy with the way things look together. As afr as working on the animations in the precomps and seeing the final result at the same time, you can lock the main comp (the animation simulation one) and open another comp window side by side with it where you can see all your precomps as you work on them individually.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[João Cunha]

The question is that, sometimes the main comp has, for example, a character moving on the screen. However, generally I need the character making the movement but standing in place. I know I can just deactivate the “position” animation and it should stop and maintain, for example the puppet animation.
I did the question having hope that there was a more automated way of doing this. Either way, thank you.

[Darby Edelen]

Ted’s suggestion to use pre-comps still applies in the case you described. You could do your animation with the character standing still in a pre-comp, then move that into the main comp and animate the position around. You’d always have the “standing still” animation in the pre-comp when you need it.

If you’ve already done your animation then you might try using the pre-compose function (ctrl-shift-c on pc, command-shift-c on mac). I’d use “Leave All Attributes” which will leave all effects and keyframes in the main comp. You could then cut the effects/attributes that you need from the main comp and paste them in the “standing still” pre-comp. Sometimes there are details that make this complicated, but it might be worth a shot.

Darby Edelen