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The NonLinear Animation editor, or NLA editor for short, lets you animate on a higher level. Instead of working with individual keyframes, it works with actions, which are named, reusable animation segments.

The NLA editor.

Main Region

The editor displays a stack of tracks which work like layers in an image editing program. Higher tracks take precedence over lower ones, although you can also choose to blend them.

Each track can contain any number of strips – typically Action Strips, which are instances of actions.

The top track highlighted in orange is special: this is the Action Track. Unlike the other tracks, it doesn’t contain strips – instead, it contains the object’s active action, which is where new keyframes are added to by default.

Editors like the Timeline and the Dope Sheet Editor normally only show the keyframes of this active action. If you want to edit another action, you can select it in the NLA editor and press Tab to enter Tweak Mode.

Tweaking an action. Notice that it’s shown in both its original track and the Action Track. The active action is temporarily hidden.

Header

View Menu

Sidebar N

Shows or hides the Sidebar Region.

Adjust Last Operation

Displays a pop-up panel to alter properties of the last completed operation. See Adjust Last Operation.

Channels

Shows or hides the Track Region.

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Frame Selected NumpadPeriod

Pans and zooms the view to focus on the selected strips.

Frame All Home

Pans and zooms the view to show all strips.

Frame Scene/Preview Range

Reset the horizontal view to the current scene frame range, taking the preview range into account if it is active.

Go to Current Frame Numpad0

Centers the view on the Playhead.

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Realtime Updates

Whether to update other views (such as the 3D Viewport) while you’re moving strips around. If disabled, the other views only get updated once you finish the move.

Show Control F-Curves

Shows a graph on top of each strip that uses Animated Influence.

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Show Markers

Shows the marker region (provided any markers have been defined). When disabled, the Marker Menu is also hidden and marker operators are not available in this editor.

Show Local Markers

Shows action-local markers (which you can create in the Action Editor). This can be useful to align strips to each other.

Local markers shown in the NLA Editor (top) and the Action Editor (bottom).

Show Seconds Ctrl-T

Shows timing in seconds instead of frames.

Sync Visible Range

Synchronizes the horizontal panning and scale of the editor with other time-based editors that also have this option enabled. That way, they always show the same section of time.

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Set Preview Range P

Lets you drag a box to define a time range for previewing. As long as this range is active, playback will be limited to it, letting you repeatedly view a segment of the animation without having to manually rewind each time.

You can change the start or end frame using the corresponding button in the Timeline editor’s Playback popover. Alternatively, you can simply run Set Preview Range again.

Clear Preview Range Alt-P

Clears the preview range.

Set Preview Range to Selected Ctrl-Alt-P

Applies a preview range that encompasses the selected strips.

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Area

Area controls. See the user interface documentation for more information.

Select Menu

All A

Selects all strips.

None Alt-A

Deselects all strips.

Invert Ctrl-I

Inverts the current selection.

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Box Select B

Lets you drag a box and selects the strips that are partially or completely inside it.

Box Select (Axis Range) Alt-B

Lets you drag a box and selects the strips that overlap the corresponding time range, even if they’re above or below the box.

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Before Current Frame [

Selects all the strips that start before (or on) the current frame.

After Current Frame ]

Selects all the strips that end after (or on) the current frame.

Marker Menu

Markers are used to denote frames with key points or significant events within an animation. Like with most animation editors, they’re shown at the bottom.

Markers in animation editor.

For descriptions of the different marker tools, see Editing Markers.

Add Menu

Action Shift-A

Adds a strip referencing an action to the active track.

Transition Shift-T

Adds a transition strip between the two selected action strips.

Sound Shift-K

Adds a strip that controls when the Speaker object plays its sound clip.

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Selected Objects

Makes the selected objects appear in the NLA Editor without adding an action or track to them.

See Strips for details on the various strip types.

Track Menu

Contains tools for working with NLA tracks. See Editing Tracks for details.

Strip Menu

Contains tools for working with NLA strips. See Editing Strips for details.

Filters

Only Show Selected

Only shows tracks belonging to objects that are selected.

Show Hidden

Shows tracks from objects that are hidden.

Include Missing NLA

Shows the Action Track even if there is no action in it.

Search

Filters the track list by a search term.

Filtering Collection

Select a collection to only show tracks from objects in that collection.

Filter by Type

Filter tracks by target type.

Sort Data-Blocks

Sorts data-blocks alphabetically to make them easier to find.

If your playback speed suffers because of this (should only really be an issue when working with lots of objects), you can turn it off.

Snap

The toggle button enables/disables automatic strip snapping. The dropdown button shows a popover with the following options:

Snap To

Type of element to snap to.

Frame:

Snap to full frames.

Second:

Snap to seconds.

Nearest Marker:

Snap to the nearest Marker.

Absolute Time Snap

When disabled, strips will move in increments of Snap To. For example, if you selected Second and have a strip that currently starts on 0:06+5, dragging it to the right will snap it to 0:07+5. Its time increases by a second, and its subsecond offset of 5 frames remains the same.

When enabled, strips will snap to multiples of Snap To. Taking the above example, the strip would snap to 0:07+0, removing the subsecond offset.