Getting Started Guide

Welcome to Animation Editor Pro! If you find Blender's native animation tools a bit complex or tedious to manage, you're in the right place. This addon is designed to make layering, looping, mirroring, and combining animations as easy as editing video.

This quick-start guide will teach you the absolute basics to get you up and running in minutes. (For a deep dive into every single setting, please refer to our Detailed Documentation).

1. Installation

Getting set up is incredibly fast. (Note: Requires Blender 4.0 or later).

1. Download the addon ZIP file.
2. In Blender, go to Edit > Preferences > Add-ons.
3. Click Install... and select your ZIP file.
4. Check the box next to Animation Editor Pro to enable it. You're ready to go!

2. The Basics: Tracks and Strips

Think of Animation Editor Pro like a video editor, but for character movement.

• Tracks are layers. If you put an animation on Track 2, it will play "over" the animation on Track 1.
• Strips are the blocks of animation that live on those tracks.

There are two main types of strips you need to know about. You can easily tell them apart by their colors:

• Editable Strips (White Text / Green Bar): This is a blank canvas. You can pose your character and press Insert Keyframe to build a custom animation.
• Non-Editable Strips (Red Text / Red Bar): These are pre-existing animations (like a downloaded walk cycle). You can't add keyframes to these, but you can speed them up, loop them, or trim them.

3. Quick Workflows

Workflow A: Creating an Animation from Scratch

1. Click Add Strip to create a new Editable Strip.
2. Move your timeline cursor to the frame you want (e.g., Frame 1).
3. Pose your character in the 3D viewport.
4. Select the bones you moved, and click the Insert Keyframe button in the addon panel.
5. Move to a new frame, change the pose, and keyframe again!

Workflow B: Combining Existing Animations

Let's say you want to blend an "Idle" animation into a "Run" animation smoothly.

1. Click Add Editor Strip with Existing Action and choose your Idle animation.
2. Click the same button again, choose your Run animation, and make sure the Add Local Transition option is checked.
3. The addon will automatically place the Run animation after the Idle animation and create a smooth blue Transition Strip between them!

Workflow C: Splitting Body Parts into Separate Layers

Ever had a great full-body animation, but you only wanted to keep the leg movement and change the arms? You can split it!

1. Select the strip containing your animation in the list.
2. In the 3D viewport, select only the bones you want to separate (e.g., the arm bones).
3. Click Copy Animation from Selected Bones and make sure to check Extract Animation from Original.
4. Magic! The arms are now on their own completely separate strip. You can now slow down just the arms, mute them, or delete them without affecting the legs.

Workflow D: Adding Procedural Forward Movement

If you have an in-place walk cycle and you actually want the character to move across the room, you don't need to manually keyframe the root bone.

1. Add your in-place walking animation strip.
2. Click Add Strip to make a new editable strip on a new track above it.
3. In the options (or by clicking the strip's settings icon later), check Add Displacement Modifier.
4. Choose the Linear type, pick the axis you want to move along (like Y), and adjust the Speed slider. Your character will now continuously move forward seamlessly!

4. More "Magic" Features

Once your strips are on the board, click the Open Strip Settings icon next to any strip to unlock some serious animation superpowers:

• In Place: Have a run cycle that has forward root motion baked into it, but you want it to stay in one spot? Just check In Place in the settings. The forward movement vanishes instantly.
• Isolate Bones: Want to add a subtle head-nod over top of a complex combat animation? Add an Editable Strip on a top track, enable Only Selected Bones (select the head), and animate the nod. The rest of the body will continue fighting underneath unaffected!

We also have one-click solution buttons in the main panel to automate the hardest parts of animating:

• Mirror Animation - Instantly turns a right-handed action into a left-handed action across your whole animation stack.
• Make Cyclic Animation - Automatically blends the end of your animation perfectly back into the start so it loops seamlessly.

5. Finishing Up (Baking)

When you have perfectly layered your walks, waves, and idle animations, you likely need to export them to a game engine or apply them permanently.

Simply click the Bake button at the bottom of the panel. The addon will crunch all your visible tracks, strips, transitions, and modifiers into a single, clean Blender Action ready for export.