The entire baking system revolves around one fundamental intention: replace the repetitive, mechanical, frame-by-frame manual adjustments in animation production with algorithms or physics simulation, so creators can focus on motion design and rhythm control instead of frame-level grunt work.
Time and energy are the scarcest resources for a creator. If a motion requires manually tweaking sixty keyframes just to achieve a natural follow-through effect, then the workflow itself is broken. The purpose of baking tools is to automate the steps that are necessary but not creative.
This is a modified plugin, extended from AcidBubbles Timeline v.291.
First and foremost, thanks to AcidBubbles — Timeline is the most mature animation engine in the VaM community, and its code quality and UI architecture made this modification possible. Every new feature in this version is built on top of the original work.
Additional thanks to Stopper (Attach to Vertex) and Skynet (Rigify) for their reference and inspiration in feature design.
The modifications fall into two areas: editing interaction upgrades and a procedural baking system.
### Editing Features
**Undo / Redo**
Before: Timeline had no undo mechanism. Delete a keyframe by mistake and it was permanent. Every action carried the risk of irreversible damage.
Now: A complete undo/redo system that saves full snapshots of curve keyframes and trigger states, supporting up to 30 steps. ↩/↪ buttons on the Dope Sheet show available states in real time, with keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y / Ctrl+Shift+Z as well. VR users can use the buttons.
What it means: You can experiment freely without the fear of breaking something permanently.
**Box Selection & Batch Operations**
Before: The Dope Sheet only allowed single-click keyframe selection. No multi-select, no box select, no copy-paste. To delete five scattered keyframes, you clicked five times. To copy a motion segment elsewhere, you rebuilt it manually frame by frame.
Now: Hold Shift and drag your mouse to draw a selection rectangle — every keyframe inside gets selected at once, across controllers and time positions. Works the same way in VR with controller drag. Once selected, Delete removes them all, Ctrl+C/X copies or cuts (with time positions and curve types intact), Ctrl+V pastes them all at the current scrubber position.
What it means: A repetitive five-click operation becomes a single drag.
**+1s / -1s Buttons**
Before: Changing clip length meant opening the settings panel, breaking your editing flow.
Now: Click +1s or -1s directly on the anima
tn selector row. +1s auto-extends the last frame to prevent validation errors, -1s trims and fills edge frames.
What it means: Adjust length on the fly without leaving the editing view.
**Split / Merge**
Before: Timeline had no way to cut or merge clips. After recording a motion capture take, the entire long animation was locked as one piece. You couldn't isolate a segment for refinement, and you couldn't stitch multiple pieces together.
Now: Supports range cut (extract a segment as a new clip), even split (2-10 parts), and multi-clip merge. A full snapshot is saved before each operation, so you can always undo.
What it means: Motion capture recordings can finally be dissected and reassembled — an essential step in post-processing.
**Morph & Controller Presets**
Before: A character's pose — controller positions, rotations, and morph parameters — only existed within the current clip. Reusing it across clips or on another character meant manually reconstructing everything from memory.
Now: The Pose screen saves the entire state as a snapshot, binds it to the current clip for automatic application on transition, and lets you paste it onto other characters.
What it means: Consistent poses across clips and characters without redoing the same work.
---
Mouse Box Selection & Undo Demo
Spatial offset stacking demo: rotation offset + position offset + arc offset + base offset.
Using the Stepper, through its pose-flipping mechanism, you can generate a walking animation from any custom pose.
Action mirroring — flips the animation of the entire body.
### Baking System
I created a large number of automatic baking tools, each designed to meet different needs in various animation scenarios. Originally there were only one or two, but as I worked on them, ideas kept flowing — one inspiration after another — and the number grew. If you think of Timeline as a program, then these baking features are like a dozen plugins. But don't worry — it won't take much effort to understand them. Because while each tool has a different purpose, they all produce the same result: automatically writing keyframes to the timeline using a specific calculation method. Yes, direct writing, not manual keyframing one by one.
This baking system categorizes automation into three paths:
Basic Operations — Mathematical transformations on existing animation (overlay, offset, mirror, scale);
Physics Simulation — Using physics engines or mathematical models to simulate real-world mechanical responses;
Procedural Generation — Algorithms that create or modify motion from scratch, replacing manual keyframing.
Music & Rhythm —
16 baking tools in total:
**Basic Operations**
Mathematical transformations on existing keyframes. Same input always produces the same output.
Reference Bake
Select a driver controller. Its world-space motion offset is calculated and written as an increment into the follower's keyframes. The follower's original motion is preserved and superimposed. Supports delayed follow and amplitude scaling.
Rotate / Offset Bake
Applies a uniform spatial transform to all keyframes of selected controllers within a time range. Offset mode applies X/Y/Z displacement; Rotation mode applies angular rotation. Supports child inheritance toggle and periodic rotation increments.
Flip / Mirror Bake
Flip mode mirrors motion from one side of the body to the other along the centerline (right punch becomes left punch). Mirror mode copies the trajectory to the target side with optional time reversal and trajectory reversal.
Momentum Amplification
Calculates each controller's displacement from its starting position and scales it by the specified multiplier. 1.0 = unchanged, 2.0 = double, 0.5 = half, 0 = frozen, negative = reversed. Position only.
================
**Physics Simulation**
Uses physics engines or mathematical models to simulate real-world mechanical responses. Keyframes are sampled from the simulation results; no runtime physics engine needed afterward.
Physics Sim Bake
Temporarily hands control to VaM's Unity physics engine. The animation plays while the physics engine calculates collision, inertia, and damping in real time, then writes keyframes at the specified sample rate. Independent X/Y/Z gravity axis controls. Built-in presets: Default, Soft, Weightless, Heavy, Rigid, Custom.
Adhesion Bake
Reads the actual vertex positions after skin deformation via GPU, locking the controller to the nearest vertex. Offers bind mode (real-time snapping) and auto-bake mode. Ideal for jewelry, earrings, and accessories that need to follow skin without clipping.
Shockwave Bake
Select an impact point. The shockwave propagates outward at a set speed. Each controller's distance from the impact point determines its reaction time and vibration amplitude. Simulates chain reactions from hits and collisions.
================
**Procedural Generation**
Algorithms create motion from scratch or apply structural modifications to existing motion. No physics engine involved.
Stepper
Select a structure with left/right body parts as the anchor (e.g., pelvis + feet). The algorithm calculates foot placement and body posture for each step via pivot-flip math. Supports real-time footprint preview, custom lift pose, and intermediate frame recording.
Turn Bake
Captures the current pose, calculates the turn angle, and generates a five-frame turn sequence (neutral transition, lift inner foot, plant and begin turn, lift outer foot, complete rotation back to neutral). Auto-pairs left and right feet.
Curve Bake
Applies easing curves to control how motion is distributed over time. Presets: ease-in, ease-out, ease-in-out, linear. Custom speed curve with four adjustable parameters (strength, power, start offset, duration).
Arc Gen
Inserts procedural arc paths between two keyframes. Nine curve types: Sine, Multi Sine, S-Curve, Parabola, Circle, Figure-8, Petal, Ellipse. Auto-detects the nearest keyframes around the scrubber or accepts manual time range. Real-time 3D preview.
Clip Sequencer
Saves motion trajectories rather than absolute positions. The first frame of the time range is used as the reference; all subsequent motion is stored as offsets. On load, it rewrites the trajectory atop the current pose. Standard mode (pose-relative) and anchor mode (preserves spatial relationships between anchor and followers). Cross-character and cross-scene reusable.
Noise Bake
Adds natural irregular micro-motion to overly clean animations using Perlin noise. Adjustable frequency (jitter speed) and amplitude (jitter magnitude). Random seed changes the noise pattern.
================
**Music & Rhythm**
Generates animation based on BPM or preset rhythmic patterns, making motion follow the music.
Rhythm Flow
18 preset rhythmic motion patterns. The system auto-searches for controllers by name matching and generates motion. Includes chest breathing, hip sway, walking rhythm, Rave, Industrial Techno, Dubstep headbang, and more.
Beat Sync
Snaps existing keyframes to the nearest beat positions or generates rhythm from BPM. Supports 4/4, 3/4, 6/8 time signatures with adjustable swing and subdivision. Tap Tempo calculates BPM from manual taps.
Pose Transition
Records the current pose, then automatically writes the new pose at the current time, inserts hold frames after it, and inserts transition frames before it. No manual scrubber dragging or mental time calculation needed.
---
This release includes demo videos and two downloadable manuals:
- **Editing Features Manual** — Undo/Redo, Box Selection & Batch Operations, Morph & Controller Presets, Split & Merge, Timeline Length Shortcuts
- **Baking System Manual** — Core principles, step-by-step instructions, and parameter details for all baking tools
Support: https://www.patreon.com/c/yananyannuo/recommendations
Disclaimer: This plugin was modified with AI assistance. The author's English is limited; documentation was completed with the help of translation software. Please excuse any awkward phrasing.
Time and energy are the scarcest resources for a creator. If a motion requires manually tweaking sixty keyframes just to achieve a natural follow-through effect, then the workflow itself is broken. The purpose of baking tools is to automate the steps that are necessary but not creative.
This is a modified plugin, extended from AcidBubbles Timeline v.291.
First and foremost, thanks to AcidBubbles — Timeline is the most mature animation engine in the VaM community, and its code quality and UI architecture made this modification possible. Every new feature in this version is built on top of the original work.
Additional thanks to Stopper (Attach to Vertex) and Skynet (Rigify) for their reference and inspiration in feature design.
The modifications fall into two areas: editing interaction upgrades and a procedural baking system.
### Editing Features
**Undo / Redo**
Before: Timeline had no undo mechanism. Delete a keyframe by mistake and it was permanent. Every action carried the risk of irreversible damage.
Now: A complete undo/redo system that saves full snapshots of curve keyframes and trigger states, supporting up to 30 steps. ↩/↪ buttons on the Dope Sheet show available states in real time, with keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y / Ctrl+Shift+Z as well. VR users can use the buttons.
What it means: You can experiment freely without the fear of breaking something permanently.
**Box Selection & Batch Operations**
Before: The Dope Sheet only allowed single-click keyframe selection. No multi-select, no box select, no copy-paste. To delete five scattered keyframes, you clicked five times. To copy a motion segment elsewhere, you rebuilt it manually frame by frame.
Now: Hold Shift and drag your mouse to draw a selection rectangle — every keyframe inside gets selected at once, across controllers and time positions. Works the same way in VR with controller drag. Once selected, Delete removes them all, Ctrl+C/X copies or cuts (with time positions and curve types intact), Ctrl+V pastes them all at the current scrubber position.
What it means: A repetitive five-click operation becomes a single drag.
**+1s / -1s Buttons**
Before: Changing clip length meant opening the settings panel, breaking your editing flow.
Now: Click +1s or -1s directly on the anima
tn selector row. +1s auto-extends the last frame to prevent validation errors, -1s trims and fills edge frames.
What it means: Adjust length on the fly without leaving the editing view.
**Split / Merge**
Before: Timeline had no way to cut or merge clips. After recording a motion capture take, the entire long animation was locked as one piece. You couldn't isolate a segment for refinement, and you couldn't stitch multiple pieces together.
Now: Supports range cut (extract a segment as a new clip), even split (2-10 parts), and multi-clip merge. A full snapshot is saved before each operation, so you can always undo.
What it means: Motion capture recordings can finally be dissected and reassembled — an essential step in post-processing.
**Morph & Controller Presets**
Before: A character's pose — controller positions, rotations, and morph parameters — only existed within the current clip. Reusing it across clips or on another character meant manually reconstructing everything from memory.
Now: The Pose screen saves the entire state as a snapshot, binds it to the current clip for automatic application on transition, and lets you paste it onto other characters.
What it means: Consistent poses across clips and characters without redoing the same work.
---
Mouse Box Selection & Undo Demo
Spatial offset stacking demo: rotation offset + position offset + arc offset + base offset.
Using the Stepper, through its pose-flipping mechanism, you can generate a walking animation from any custom pose.
Action mirroring — flips the animation of the entire body.
### Baking System
I created a large number of automatic baking tools, each designed to meet different needs in various animation scenarios. Originally there were only one or two, but as I worked on them, ideas kept flowing — one inspiration after another — and the number grew. If you think of Timeline as a program, then these baking features are like a dozen plugins. But don't worry — it won't take much effort to understand them. Because while each tool has a different purpose, they all produce the same result: automatically writing keyframes to the timeline using a specific calculation method. Yes, direct writing, not manual keyframing one by one.
This baking system categorizes automation into three paths:
Basic Operations — Mathematical transformations on existing animation (overlay, offset, mirror, scale);
Physics Simulation — Using physics engines or mathematical models to simulate real-world mechanical responses;
Procedural Generation — Algorithms that create or modify motion from scratch, replacing manual keyframing.
Music & Rhythm —
16 baking tools in total:
**Basic Operations**
Mathematical transformations on existing keyframes. Same input always produces the same output.
Reference Bake
Select a driver controller. Its world-space motion offset is calculated and written as an increment into the follower's keyframes. The follower's original motion is preserved and superimposed. Supports delayed follow and amplitude scaling.
Rotate / Offset Bake
Applies a uniform spatial transform to all keyframes of selected controllers within a time range. Offset mode applies X/Y/Z displacement; Rotation mode applies angular rotation. Supports child inheritance toggle and periodic rotation increments.
Flip / Mirror Bake
Flip mode mirrors motion from one side of the body to the other along the centerline (right punch becomes left punch). Mirror mode copies the trajectory to the target side with optional time reversal and trajectory reversal.
Momentum Amplification
Calculates each controller's displacement from its starting position and scales it by the specified multiplier. 1.0 = unchanged, 2.0 = double, 0.5 = half, 0 = frozen, negative = reversed. Position only.
================
**Physics Simulation**
Uses physics engines or mathematical models to simulate real-world mechanical responses. Keyframes are sampled from the simulation results; no runtime physics engine needed afterward.
Physics Sim Bake
Temporarily hands control to VaM's Unity physics engine. The animation plays while the physics engine calculates collision, inertia, and damping in real time, then writes keyframes at the specified sample rate. Independent X/Y/Z gravity axis controls. Built-in presets: Default, Soft, Weightless, Heavy, Rigid, Custom.
Adhesion Bake
Reads the actual vertex positions after skin deformation via GPU, locking the controller to the nearest vertex. Offers bind mode (real-time snapping) and auto-bake mode. Ideal for jewelry, earrings, and accessories that need to follow skin without clipping.
Shockwave Bake
Select an impact point. The shockwave propagates outward at a set speed. Each controller's distance from the impact point determines its reaction time and vibration amplitude. Simulates chain reactions from hits and collisions.
================
**Procedural Generation**
Algorithms create motion from scratch or apply structural modifications to existing motion. No physics engine involved.
Stepper
Select a structure with left/right body parts as the anchor (e.g., pelvis + feet). The algorithm calculates foot placement and body posture for each step via pivot-flip math. Supports real-time footprint preview, custom lift pose, and intermediate frame recording.
Turn Bake
Captures the current pose, calculates the turn angle, and generates a five-frame turn sequence (neutral transition, lift inner foot, plant and begin turn, lift outer foot, complete rotation back to neutral). Auto-pairs left and right feet.
Curve Bake
Applies easing curves to control how motion is distributed over time. Presets: ease-in, ease-out, ease-in-out, linear. Custom speed curve with four adjustable parameters (strength, power, start offset, duration).
Arc Gen
Inserts procedural arc paths between two keyframes. Nine curve types: Sine, Multi Sine, S-Curve, Parabola, Circle, Figure-8, Petal, Ellipse. Auto-detects the nearest keyframes around the scrubber or accepts manual time range. Real-time 3D preview.
Clip Sequencer
Saves motion trajectories rather than absolute positions. The first frame of the time range is used as the reference; all subsequent motion is stored as offsets. On load, it rewrites the trajectory atop the current pose. Standard mode (pose-relative) and anchor mode (preserves spatial relationships between anchor and followers). Cross-character and cross-scene reusable.
Noise Bake
Adds natural irregular micro-motion to overly clean animations using Perlin noise. Adjustable frequency (jitter speed) and amplitude (jitter magnitude). Random seed changes the noise pattern.
================
**Music & Rhythm**
Generates animation based on BPM or preset rhythmic patterns, making motion follow the music.
Rhythm Flow
18 preset rhythmic motion patterns. The system auto-searches for controllers by name matching and generates motion. Includes chest breathing, hip sway, walking rhythm, Rave, Industrial Techno, Dubstep headbang, and more.
Beat Sync
Snaps existing keyframes to the nearest beat positions or generates rhythm from BPM. Supports 4/4, 3/4, 6/8 time signatures with adjustable swing and subdivision. Tap Tempo calculates BPM from manual taps.
Pose Transition
Records the current pose, then automatically writes the new pose at the current time, inserts hold frames after it, and inserts transition frames before it. No manual scrubber dragging or mental time calculation needed.
---
This release includes demo videos and two downloadable manuals:
- **Editing Features Manual** — Undo/Redo, Box Selection & Batch Operations, Morph & Controller Presets, Split & Merge, Timeline Length Shortcuts
- **Baking System Manual** — Core principles, step-by-step instructions, and parameter details for all baking tools
Support: https://www.patreon.com/c/yananyannuo/recommendations
Disclaimer: This plugin was modified with AI assistance. The author's English is limited; documentation was completed with the help of translation software. Please excuse any awkward phrasing.
