Animating Multiple Points

When animating curve and envelope deformers, the position of each point is independent from one another. In situations where you need to animate several deformation points simultaneously, you can select several deformation points simultaneously. By default, this only allows you to move the selected points laterally. However, you can also rotate or scale a selection of deformation points by using the Show Manipulator option of the Deformation toolbar. This option will display a manipulator bounding box with scale and rotation handles, which works similarly to the one you can use to transform drawing strokes with the Select tool or drawing layers with the Transform tool.

NOTEYou can only use the deformation manipulator with Curve and Envelope deformers. Because the position of bone deformers is hierarchical, which means moving one articulation offsets all its children articulations, it is not possible to animate a selection of multiple bone deformation points.
  1. Do one of the following:
    • In the Camera, Timeline or Node view, select one of the drawing elements linked to the deformation chain you want to display.
    • In the Timeline or Node view, select the deformation group or any part of the deformation chain you want to display.
  1. In the Deformation toolbar, click the Show the Selected Deformation Chain and Hide All Others button.

The selected deformation controls appear in the Camera view and all the others are hidden.

  1. Click on one of the deformation points you want to animate to select it.

  1. While holding the Ctrl key, click on each other deformation point that you want to animate to add them to the selection.

  1. In the Deformation toolbar, click on the Show Manipulator button to enable the deformation manipulator bounding box.

A manipulator bounding box appears around your selection.

  1. If you want to rotate or scale your selection from a specific pivot point, drag and drop the pivot point of the manipulator to the preferred position.

  1. Do one of the following:
    • If you want to scale your selection, click and drag one of the square scale handles in the corner of the manipulator.

    • If you want to rotate your selection, position your mouse just outside of the manipulator, near a corner. When your mouse cursor displays a rotation wheel , click and drag to rotate the manipulator.