Now once you have stored the eye blinks (open and closed) at the desired position you can go to the main window (just close the 'eyelids' canvas work area).

Be sure that the exported canvas is as long as the animation. This allows to independently animate of a portion of the model separated from the rest. It will produce a keyframe in the 'eyelids' canvas, but will not produce any keyframe on the other layers (for example the eyeball). Once done go to the proper frame and insert a copy of the pose keyframe. You'll obtain a copy of the selected keyframe at the current time cursor position.Ĭreate all the keyframes you need to store your 'poses'. Once done then go to another frame with the time cursor, select the keyframe you want to introduce and press the 'Duplicate keyframe' button.Let's say you have created a keyframe at frames number 2 (eye open) and 4 (eye closed) Repeat the above steps as many times you need to make a new 'pose'.Give a name to the keyframe just by clicking on its corresponding Description cell.Modify your objects in the way you want (for example make an eye close just by moving the points of the eyelid).We only want to record a 'pose' not a transition) Create a Keyframe at a frame (all of our keyframes should be created close to each other to use a small portion of time.If you create some keyframes at the beginning of your animation you can reuse these 'poses' at a later point in time just by duplicating the keyframes at another time position. Our goal is to record some sort of animation and reuse it later. This can be done easily just using a combination of keyframes and exported canvases. This is especially useful for making characters speak because you have to move your character's mouth to repeated positions depending on the phonemes it describes while speaking. It allows you to save a lot of time if you can insert some portions of animations already recorded into any other position in time. One of the goals of all animators (especially the lazy ones like me) is to have the opportunity to reuse pieces of animation.

Synfig animation examples