negative timeline

[jakerupert]

Sometimes when I try to readopt the timelineview to the keyframes that exist,

I find that a negative timeline shows up also.

 

What is the use of that negative timeline?

[Rodney]

What is the use of that negative timeline?

 

There are several uses.

Several that spring to mind include:

 

If you have an action that launches out on an Arc it can be helpful to have those start their trajectories before the first frame (frame 0 in most cases). This can be useful when you have motions easing in or easing out of their positions on the very first frame.

 

In simulation it is useful to start the simulation before the first frame or else you would end up with only the beginning of the simulations. Luckily for most simulations (like Particles) the Preroll setting will adequately handle this too.

 

In some cases without the negative frames we might have to start our animation at a later frame and then discard or at least not render the frames before it.

[John Bigboote]

It would be cool if A:M allowed rendering the neg frames...though I can't remember why I wanted this... I also thought it would be cool if A:M allowed a -1 frame value on renders, so you could render a sequence backwards- because I would like to be able to get 2 instances of A:M going and have one start at the beginning and one at the end...anyways---

 

As Rodney stated, the neg frames are where your 'pre-roll' will happen for particles. Fer'instance-I have been working with my 'long haired' characters, and found that if I want the hair to fall to the front of the body- I can place my character forward a stride or 2, and have her 'back-up' as the 2 second pre-roll calculates...

[HomeSlice]

I also thought it would be cool if A:M allowed a -1 frame value on renders, so you could render a sequence backwards- because I would like to be able to get 2 instances of A:M going and have one start at the beginning and one at the end

 

While you can't do that, what you can do is:

render the first instance 0-500 with a step of "2".

render the second instance 1-500 with a step of "2".

 

The first instance will render frames 0,2,4,6 etc...

The second instance will render frames 1,3,7,9 etc...

 

It isn't really the same as what you described though.

I understand what you are saying.

I have an older computer and a newer computer.

I want to minimize my rendering time, soooo

I load the project on my older computer and render from 0-500.

I load the project on my new computer and render from 500-0.

Since the new computer is faster, it will render more frames than the older computer. The newer computer will end up rendering maybe 350 frames, while the older computer only renders 150.

This could possibly decrease the overall render time.