Stay In Place Animation

Sometimes, you might need to turn an animation of a moving character into an animation of a character going through the motions while staying in place (to use it in a game engine, for example).

To do this:

1. Select an interval on the Timeline.

2. Select the character’s Center of Mass.

3. Go to the Scene Settings panel.

4. There, in the Copier section, set the parameters::

• Copier should be set to Global.
• Pivot should be set to Fixed.
• For Position, X and Z should be enabled while Y should be disabled.

5. Move the Current Frame Indicator to the first frame of the animation.

6. Copy (Ctrl + V) the character’s Center of Mass.

7. Select Edit → Paste Into Interval:

This will paste the Center of Mass’ position from the first frame to every secreted frame - which in turn would result in the character moving in place.

This method, however, would only work when it is the Center of Mass that defines the character’s overall position.
There might also be cases where this is not so, and the character’s Point Controllers move in global space. Then, the algorithm would be slightly different:

1. Again, select an interval on the Timeline.

2. Set the Current Frame Pointer to the first frame.

3. Go to the Scene Settings panel.

4. Under the Copier section, set Mode to Relative and Pivot to Moving.

5. Select every Point associated with the character.

6. Copy (Ctrl + C) them.

7. On the Scene Settings panel, set Pivot to Fixed.

8. Paste (Ctrl + V) the Points’ positions.