Working with Keyframes

Keyframes are how you note a change in LightWave. Want a light to turn on at a specific frame? Keyframe its intensity. Want to move your camera? Keyframe its motion. Want to set up a color change in a surface? Keyframe the color change. Keyframes are the essential way to tell LightWave how you want to work.Keyframes are everywhere in LightWave and you'll see them on your timeline that runs under the main viewport. You only see keyframes marked for the active element, be it Objects, Bones, Lights or Camera, otherwise the timeline would be very crowded. All elements have at least one keyframe at frame 0 that determines their initial position, rotation and scale.

Keyframes can be created in several ways:

  • Positioning, rotating or scaling something in Layout
  • Hitting Return
  • Adding keys in the Graph Editor in an Envelope

Keyframes can be moved in time with:

and lastly keys can be deleted using the:

  • Del key on a keyframe
  • RMB click on a key in the Dopetrack
  • and to remove a complete Envelope of keys, by Shift-clicking on an E icon.

To see the various ways you can add keyframes in Layout, read Animating - Creating Keyframes.

If you have imported a motion capture file or brought in baked keyframe animation from another source, sometimes you can get an axis flip when items are close to positive and negative 180°. The image below shows a null rotating about the Heading axis. Just looking at it in Layout seems okay, but the Graph Editor reveals the jump:

The fix is to use a script added in 2019.1.3 called "Rotofix". You will need to select the item to be modified, then find the plugin. It's in the Utilities > Additional list but you can find it quickly by hitting Ctrl-Space and starting to type "Rotofix".

Here's the result: