Non-linear animation
Along with the more "traditional" way of animating characters, Blender offers the Non-linear Animation (NLA) Editor, where you can mix different actions to produce new movements. This editor allows a lot of flexibility, with the ability of stacking simple movements to create a more complex animation. Tasks such as repeating and reversing an animation, which demands time and care to do in the DopeSheet, are very simple to do on the NLA.
How to do it...
Open the file
006-NLA.blend. It has our character Otto with a basic animation of a jumping jack exercise. You'll notice that the arms movement is missing. Let's do them using the NLA Editor. The following screenshot shows our starting point, with the first pose in the 3D View and its keyframes set in a DopeSheet window:
Press Alt + A to playback the animation. You'll see that, along with the missing arm movements, there is only one jump. We need this action to be repeated for a number of times so we have a real jumping jack...
