Animation Editors

There are two editors that can be used for animation that can be very powerful tools. These editors are called the 'Graph Edtior' and the 'Dope Sheet'.

Dope Sheet

The dope sheet can be used in a number of ways, for something as simply as moving a set key forward or back in frames. However it becomes quite powerful when you use it for 'overlapping' and 'follow through' in animation.

Overlapping is when a model has something like long clothing or long hair, and when the model moves the clothing or hair follows its movements, but at only a frame or so behind. This is extremely useful for making animations realistic, as in real life objects such as clothing or hair are bound by the laws of physics as is everything, and so forces such as inertia have to be taken into account to produce something believable. The dope sheet allows us to do this because you can select the keys on the bone that controls the hair, and then move them back a frame or two. Therefore the hair (hair-bone in the rig) will move as it would do in real life.

Follow through is different to overlapping, and an example of this is the idea of a moving object/model suddenly stopping. What I mean by that is if you take, for example, a person running at their fastest and then tell them to suddenly stop as quick as possible, the first thing to stop will be their feet and then their legs and then their upper body will probably lunge forward a little, until eventually they are stood still. So when i say follow through, i mean the domino effect of physics on a body; what happens after a force is applied (be it a stopping force, etc.)

Graph Editor

The graph editor is good for tweaking things such as the path of a ball between set key frames. In the image you can see the line descending and then suddenly ascending after the second key frame (2nd black dot). This would show the ball in the 3D environment falling, hitting a floor, and then suddenly bouncing back up. This type of behaviour can be difficult to produce without using the graph editor because in the graph editor you can choose the key frame's tangents and rotate them into an acute angle which produce a sharp point for the path to follow. Whereas in key framing without using the editor, you would have to constantly tweak the speed of the ball on the impact and bounce in order for it to be accurate and life like. It can be done, but is far more time consuming and less practical than the graph editor.