Question help with looping in Timeline

[Vamtucket]

Are there any easy or 'built in' ways to help an animation loop more smoothly? Like is there a way to control how fast or aggressive the animation goes from the end key frame back to the starting one? I often alter longer animations into smaller loops, and try to trim to get roughly matching starting/ ending key frames. Depending on how close I get the match, this works really well or is quite frustrating.

 

[DTB247]

One thing i do is copy the starting controller positions and then pasting them at the end. sometimes i do this and then move my animation subject to a "mid" position halfway from last animation done and your copied ending. then I fill in the gaps before and after that mid point. If you are getting towards the end of an animation and have more animating than time left to get back to the starting position you can allways add a little time to your timeline too.

 

[Jocks3D]

A trick I discovered when making idle or dance animations is to make a second animation that includes the first animation but on the second I reverse all the keyframes. So now when I play both animations they keep looping without any jumps in between. But as I said, this only works with general animations where the movement is already somewhat repetitive and if playing in reverse it still looks natural.

 

[hazmhox]

Are there any easy or 'built in' ways to help an animation loop more smoothly? Like is there a way to control how fast or aggressive the animation goes from the end key frame back to the starting one? I often alter longer animations into smaller loops, and try to trim to get roughly matching starting/ ending key frames. Depending on how close I get the match, this works really well or is quite frustrating.

Because Timeline works based on blending the last keyframe and the first one.

With a standard looping Timeline animation, let's say you have a two second animation with first frame (0sec) being hips down, middle frame (1sec) being hips up, the last frame is not "hips down". It's the first frame.
You don't have three frames, you have 2 frames.

So the idea to have a proper loop, is to know what frame should be last, and Timeline will interpolate this frame and the first frame of the animation. As simple as that : )

 

[hazmhox]

Side note: between two animations, the idea is to setup the blending time properly, and have a somewhat longest blend if needed if the transition feels to abrupt.

 

[Vamtucket]

Side note: between two animations, the idea is to setup the blending time properly, and have a somewhat longest blend if needed if the transition feels to abrupt.

thanks for your replies, will work to understand blending times