Baking Animation will put a key on every frame of selected values in your timeline.
Personally, when I use the bake simulation tool, it is usually to “reset” my animation. If I had a ton of parent constraints in the hands or if there was a lot of IK/FK switching going on, it is pretty handy to bake everything down and start new.
For example, I was animating a shot where the main character was putting on a helmet. I had parent constraints in the helmet to the hand so that it would follow its movement and then it would switch again to parent constrain to the head when it was on.
After a while this got quite confusing so, what I did was check that the animation was working well and the arcs were right and BAKE the helmet. This put a key on every frame of the animation on the helmet giving me the option the delete the constrain from the hand. Then, parent constraining the hand to the helmet made it easier to navigate the scene.
Was this right? Who knows, but when it comes time to finish scenes quickly it is great to have these cheats at hand.
Also, when you are exporting animations for games, sometimes, not all the time, the whole rig must be baked.
OK, so where do I go to find this magic baking solution? You click on, Edit, Keys and then Bake simulation
When you click on the little box to the right of “bake simulation” you will be brought to the options menu for it. I will explain down below what each part does.
Below is not everything that is in the menu but it is the things that i as an animator would use most. the rest that I haven’t mentioned is worth knowing for reference but it gets a bit technical so i would like to only concentrate on baking for animation.
When you click on the little box to the right of “bake simulation” you will be brought to the options menu for it. I will explain down below what each part does.
PRO TIP: Use the bake simulation for baking down parent constraints and delete the constraints afterwards.
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HIERARCHY: Selected will bake the animation curves of only what you have selected. (Default)
Below will bake the animation curves of the object and everything in its hierarchy.
CHANNELS: All Keyable will key every keyable channel that you have selected.
From Channel Box will key the attributes that you have specifically selected in the channel box.
TIME RANGE: Time Slider will will bake what’s in your playback start and end times Start/End will bake what you put boxes below it.
BAKE TO: Base animation will bake everything down to that layer. This is my default.
To be honest, Baking for animators is a pretty simple method. you just have to get over the fact that it will put keys on every frame. But, if you are someone who likes to keep their curves simple you can use the smart baking option.
This will intelligently place the keys. For example, if the keys were all in a straight line with the same values, it will only key the first and last frames.
There are many ways you can use baking keys but for animators, the most common options i use daily are shown below.
