Im working on a project where Im animating a character using the trax editor. The scene starts with a character walking on a sidewalk toward a trashcan. The first thing that I did was create a walk cycle on frame one and made a clip of it. So I have a bunch of other animation clips that I created, and now Im up to a point where I want the character to step off the curb into the street. So I duplicate that first walking clip and place it where i need it at frame 568.
Now, obviously Im going to need to edit this clip because he has to step down from the sidewalk onto the street. when I click "activate keys" on the new duplicated clip, all the keys start at frame 1 where the original keys were set in the original walk cycle clip. When I select the new clip and look at it in the channel editor, The Source start and Source End attributes are set to 1 and 38, all the way at the beginning. Now, in the time between frame 1 and 568, the character has moved a great deal of distance and is standing in a different direction, which would make planning the animation exactly the way I wanted it more difficult then it needs to be.
Now, I have the characters master move , and body parts divided between different character subsets, so the actual movement is governed by the mastermove subset. Theoretically, I could go to frame 0 and click add in between 567 times, but that seems like an unnecessary step. In the end this would work, and I've tested it out and it works fine.
So what I am asking here, is : Is there a way for me to alter the clip so that when I activate its keys , it will make itself work generate the keys in the timeline in the same place where I set up the clip.
At this point I have to add that I am using Maya 8.5 (yes I know I need to update, but its a bit pricey for me right now) So if I am asking a question that is way to outdated then I am sorry, and I will make do with what I have.
I hope I made my situation clear enough and any advise would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks