- [Instructor] In traditional hand drawn
or stop motion animation the term dope sheet
refers to a document that records various types
of information for each frame.
It's also known as an exposure sheet
or X sheet because one type of information it records
is camera settings.
The dope sheet also records things like
lip synchronization information so that animators
can match the timing of prerecorded dialogue.
The dope sheet concept translates well
into the computer domain.
Here it's an editable spreadsheet that displays
key frames in rows and frame numbers in columns.
It allows us to manipulate key frames
both individually and hierarchically in groups.
I've got key frames on the camera
so I'll select that and open the dope sheet
from the main 3ds Max menu choose graph editors,
track viewed dope sheet, like the track bar
the dope sheet is a timeline running left to right.
We see frame numbers down here
but the dope sheet is two dimensional
where the track bar is one dimensional.
The physical camera is listed at the bottom
so we can scroll down there.
Once we get down there, we see Phyz camera 001
And we've got some key frame boxes.
The dope sheet displays each track
as a row in the spreadsheet.
And each frame of time as a column.
On the left is the track list with labels and controls
for all of the available tracks or channels of data.
This vertical double yellow line is the current time
and we can drag that to change our point in time
just like we can with the time slider down here.
Just as we saw on the track bar
there are two key frames on frame zero.
We see a key frame box that has two colors.
Red is positioned and green is rotation.
Let's get a closer look at that.
This camera 001 has a little plus sign next to it
and we can click on that
and that opens up the key frame hierarchy.
We see transform, click on that to open that up
and we could keep clicking and opening up all these tracks
but there is an easier way.
If we go into the dope sheet menus to the show menu,
go to auto expand and enable animated.
And now all the animated tracks will be automatically
expanded and I can scroll down and reveal all those
on my screen.
When we open up that animation hierarchy
and go to the levels of the position and rotation channels
what we see here are actual tracks and actual key frames.
We've got X, Y, and Z position, and Z X, and Z rotation.
Don't let that throw you off.
That's simply due to the camera's rotation access order
it doesn't matter that they're labeled that way,
for our purposes we can think of these as X, Y, and Z.
So these are actual key frames here
and they're color coded again, red for position
and green for rotation.
In the rows labeled Phyz camera 001
transform, position and rotation.
We see these light gray boxes
and those are amusingly known as so-called fake keys.
That is their official name in the documentation.
They're not actually key frames
because these rows here are not actually tracks or channels,
this camera 01 is not an animation channel.
Ex position is an actual animation channel or track.
You can always tell whether a track is real or not
because a real track is displayed in light gray.
And one of these fake tracks is displayed in a darker gray.
These fake keys are a tool
to select the key frames hierarchically.
If I click on the key frame or fake key
on the Phyz camera 001 track on frame zero,
then all of the keys at frame zero
for that object light up, they've all been selected.
All the subordinate keys are selected automatically.
And I can just click and drag on that key frame
for Phyz camera 001 and bring it to a different time
like, let's say frame 20, and now I've just caused
my animation to start later.
If I rewind and play back my animation,
we'll see it doesn't start until frame 20.
And I'll rewind that and I'll bring this fake key back
over to frame zero.
We can select specific categories of keys hierarchically.
For example, I can click on the position fake key
on frame zero and it looks like all of this stuff lit up.
Phyz camera 001 is lit up transform, position
and all of the position X, Y, and Z keys have lit up
but the rotation keys have not, they're not selected.
And so, we can see this a little bit more clearly.
Let's zoom in, we can use the standard keyboard shortcut
which is Control Alt middle mouse and drag left to right
to zoom in time and we can position
with the middle mouse button
with a larger key frame displayed.
We can see that there is a subtle color difference here.
The rotation fake key is not white it's a light gray
indicating that it's not selected.
So again, if I move the Phyz camera 001 fake key
I'll move all the key frames.
But if I click on the position fake key
then I'll only move the position key frames
and leave the rest of those rotation keys behind.
And now we see, we still have fake keys for Phyz camera 001
and transform because there are still some real keys
in the rotation tracks.
Okay, I'll move those position keys back where I found 'em
on frame zero.
Now, if you ask me the selection display here
is a little bit more complicated than it needs to be.
Fake keys will always light up
if any of their subordinates are selected.
In other words, if I click on position let's say I click on
X position, then X position lights up
but also position lights up, transform lights up
and Phyz camera 001 lights up.
So that's a little bit of a gotcha.
I didn't really expect Phyz camera 001
and the transform tracks to light up, but they do.
That's just a little bit of an idiosyncrasy
in the interface design.
If I click on rotation in here
then all the rotation keys light up
and we also see Phyz camera 001 lit up,
transform lit up, but position didn't.
So it can be really hard to tell
whether you've selected a subordinate track
or selected a fake key because the fake keys
light up either way.
My advice is really only pay attention to the real keys
and that'll help you determine what's currently selected.
Try to ignore the fake key selection highlighting
it's just confusing.
And those aren't real keys anyway,
it doesn't really matter what they look like
they're just a mean to an end
in order to easily select real keys.
Okay, we've barely scratch the surface with a dope sheet.
I'll just mention a few other features in passing.
We have a bunch of other fun tools up here
on the dope sheet toolbar.
For example, there's a slide keys tool and that allows you
to perform what's known as a ripple edit
where later keys will be shifted automatically.
There's also a tool to add or remove keys
and we can also go into edit ranges mode over here.
And we have the same selection ranges
that we saw in the track bar.
We can use that to manipulate entire ranges
of key frames in order to speed up or slow down time.
All right, I'll switch back to edit keys mode.
That is the basics of the dope sheet,
how to use it to select and manipulate key frames in time
either individually or hierarchically.