Layering actions
In the previous exercises for Chapters 8 and 9, we animated two things: Rain walking, and Rain talking. Working on these two exercises created two actions, one of which we’ve appended already. Our objective is to append the second action and combine it with the first one so that Rain walks and talks in one shot. This scenario is not uncommon in larger productions; for instance, two animators on a team might work separately on different actions for one character before a third animator combines them. Or, in the case of video game production, a character needs a whole library of pre-made actions (running, jumping, shooting, and so on) that must be tested in combination or tight sequence.
How do we combine two actions? The obvious solution is to copy/paste the keyframes from one action to the other, creating one big mega action. Often, this is unavoidable, but it’s also destructive and inflexible. What if we expect to change or offset one of the actions...
