Is character set the best way to set keyframes?

[f2k]

It doesn't always seem economical to keyframe all attributes collected in a character set,
when, for example, I only need to move the arm w/o changing hand gesture...

Is there a better way to manage/animate the collection of keyable attributes?
either within the character set, or other entirely different method(s)?

many thanks in advance,
f.

[pen-pen]

you could use sub character sets . .

for example your character set may be made up of a few sub character sets: arms, legs, body, face etc
then when you set a frame using the character set it keyframes all the sub character sets, if you want to just keyframe an arm you can use the arms subcharacter set.

of course it may be better to just turn off the character set and set a key for the arm in isolated situations. i find that character sets are ideal for pose to pose, once you have all the poses you can select individual objects and start refining the animation from there.

[nonquad]

Unfortunately subcharacter sets can cause problems of their own. I distinctly remember having problems like subcharacter keys not showing up in the timeline (or maybe it was the graph editor or dopesheet). In any case I remember trying exactly what you propose (subcharacters for arm, leg, etc) and not being happy with it.

For now, I generally use only 2 subcharacters; face (blendshapes) and pose.

I usually animate in the pose set, with autokey enabled. That gives me two fairly intuitive ways to set keys; I can set efficient keys just by moving the model, and use the keyframe button to set poses. If I really want to mess with the timing of one particular item or group of items, I toggle in and out of the character set as necessary.

So I guess that's my take on it. Character sets are not the 'best' way to set keys and probably aren't intended to be (keep in mind that they are ultimately a rigging device); from an animation perspective they are one tool among many, and in that context they work fine.

Of course, I'm just a student, so what do I know =)

On a side note, character sets can really screw up items with quaternion rotation interpolation. It always bugs me that two of my favorite features don't work together.