Keyframes - Is there a way of printing or saving that information?

[Jentham2000]

Hi Everyone,

 

The other night I was working on a scene and the software crashed for some reason.

 

Fortunately, I wrote down all of the Key Frame information, prior to the crash.

 

It was then that I thought, what would of happened if I didn't write it down.

 

Is there a way to save or print this information, for future use or in case of a crash?

 

Thanks, Bob

[Fuchur]

Hi Everyone,

 

The other night I was working on a scene and the software crashed for some reason.

 

Fortunately, I wrote down all of the Key Frame information, prior to the crash.

 

It was then that I thought, what would of happened if I didn't write it down.

 

Is there a way to save or print this information, for future use or in case of a crash?

 

Thanks, Bob

 

What do you mean with "write them down"?

Do you mean save them or do you mean "write them on a sheet of paper"?

That would be quite complex because A:M makes many keyframes on even a simple character. You can see that if you click on the "Make Keyframe"-BUtton with the Shift-button pressed.

There you will see a number (something like "Make for Filtered channels (2000)" or whatever.

 

A way to fight against crashes is however the Autosave-Plugin from Mister Gross. (LINK TO HIS WEBSITE).

It can be setted for a project and it will than save the project in a defined timeframe.

 

Of course it is never a mistake to save in several files and save it after every bigger change.

 

*Fuchur*

[Jentham2000]

Thanks, I have it....

 

For me, I was just moving the camera around so I had a bunch of Translate and Rotation data that I was writing down on a piece of paper. The software crashed when I was tweaking the numbers...

 

Yes, I learned a long time ago about saving multple copies.

 

I didn't know if that kind of information was saved in a text file or something like that.

 

Regards, Bob

[robcat2075]

A:M files are XML formatted text files, so presuming you made keyframes of your camera positions, you could look at a saved chor file and discern some numbers if there was a reason to do so. Much easier to just reload the chor, however.

[Rodney]

Is there a way to save or print this information, for future use or in case of a crash?

 

The primary way A:M saves keyframes is through Actions.

There are two types of Actions. You have the standard Actions and Choreography Actions.

 

Writing them down sure seems like a lot of work but... if you already do something similar to traditional animation by writing out a Dope Sheet/XSheet it might work.

 

The question I would ask though would be why write them down at all when, as others have stated, you can save them out for later use.

 

Save often and incrementally (and on another medium/computer from what you normally work on). Then when you lose the data you just have to open it again from that back up.

Recreating it again from scratch (from what you've written down) would be a whole lot of work!

 

Not good enough you say!?

Get a decent screen capture program (try Wink at www.debugmode.com... its free!) and get in the habit of capturing your work as you go. Then back THAT up too!

 

As an added bonus the captures later will be a historical... educational... and valuable record of your work in A:M as well.