Introduction¶

The NLA editor, short for NonLinear Animation, can manipulate and repurpose Actions, without the tedium of handling keyframes. It is often used to make broad, significant changes to a scene’s animation, with relative ease. It can also repurpose, chain together a sequence of motions, and 《layered》 actions, which make it easier to organize, and version-control your animation.

Header¶

View Menu¶

Realtime Updates: When transforming NLA-strips, the changes to the animation are propagated to other views.
Show Control F-Curves: Overlays a graph of the NLA-strip’s influence on top of the strip.
Show Markers: Shows the markers region. When disabled, the Markers Menu is also hidden and markers operators are not available in this editor.
Show Local Markers: Shows action-local markers on the strip, this is useful when synchronizing time across strips.
Set Preview Range P: Selecting a preview range by dragging in the NLA Editor.
Clear Preview Range Alt-P: Unset the preview range
Auto Select Preview Range Ctrl-Alt-P: Automatically select the preview range based on the range of keyframes.

See Timeline’s View Menu.

Select Menu¶

All A: Select all NLA-strips.
None Alt-A: Deselect all NLA-strips.
Invert Ctrl-I: Invert the current selection of NLA-strips.
Box Select B: Select NLA-strips by drawing a box. All NLA-strips that intersects the box will be added to the current selection.
Border Axis Range Alt-B: Select NLA-strips by drawing a box. All NLA-strips that intersects the frames of the drawn box will be added to the current selection.
Before Current Frame [: Select all NLA-strips before the current frame.
After Current Frame ]: Select all NLA-strips after the current frame.

Edit Menu¶

Transform

Move: Move the selected NLA-strips in time or to different NLA-track.
Extend E: Extend the selected NLA-strips.
Scale S: Scale the selected NLA-strips.

Snap

Selection to Current Frame: Move the start of selected NLA-strips to the current frame.
Selection to Nearest Frame: Move the start of the selected NLA-strips to the nearest frame.
Selection to Nearest Second: Move the start of the selected NLA-strips to the nearest second.
Selection to Nearest Marker: Move the start of the selected NLA-strips to the nearest marker.

Duplicate Shift-D

Make a copy of the selected NLA-strips.

Linked Duplicate Alt-D

Make a shallow copy of the selected NLA-strips.

Split Strips Y

NLA-Split the selected strips into two NLA-strips. The split happens at the current frame.

Delete Strips X

Delete selected NLA-Strips.

Delete Tracks

Delete the selected NLA track and all strips that it contains.

Toggle Muting H

Mute or unmute the selected NLA-strips. Muted NLA-strips will not influence the animation.

Apply Scale Ctrl-A

Apply the scale of the selected NLA-strips to their referenced Actions.

Clear Scale Alt-S

Reset the scaling of the selected NLA-strips.

Sync Action Length

Synchronize the length of the action to the length used in the NLA-strip.

Make Single User U

This tool ensures that none of the selected strips use an action which is also used by any other strips.

Swap Strips Alt-F

Swap the order of the selected NLA-strips in their NLA-track.

Move Strips Up PageUp

Move selected NLA-strips a track up if there is room.

Move Strips Down PageDown

Move selected NLA-strips a track down if there is room.

Track Ordering

To Top: Move selected track to the top of the tracks.
Up: Move selected track one track up.
Down: Move selected track one track down.
To Bottom: Move selected tracks to the bottom of the tracks.

Remove Empty Animation Data

Remove Animation Data from selected objects when they don’t contain any animation.

Start Editing Stashed Action Shift-Tab

It will enter and exit Tweak Mode as usual, but will also make sure that the action can be edited in isolation (by flagging the NLA track that the action strip comes from as being 《solo》). This is useful for editing stashed actions, without the rest of the NLA Stack interfering.

Start Tweaking Strips Actions Tab

The contents of Action strips can be edited, but you must be in Tweak Mode to do so. The keyframes of the action can then be edited in the Dope Sheet.

Add¶

Add Action Strip Shift-A: Add an NLA-strip referencing an Action to the active track.
Add Transition Shift-T: Add an NLA-strip to create a transition between a selection of two adjacent NLA-strips.
Add Sound Strip Shift-K: Add an NLA-strip controlling when the speaker object plays its sound clip.
Add Meta-Strip Ctrl-G: Group selected NLA-strips into a meta strip. A meta strip will group the selected NLA-strips of the same NLA-track.
Remove Meta-Strip Ctrl-Alt-G: Ungroup selected Meta strips.
Add Tracks: Add a new NLA-Track on top of the selected object.
Add Track Above Selected: Add a new NLA-Track just above the selected NLA-track.
Include Selected Objects: Let the selected objects appear in the NLA Editor. This is done by adding an empty animation data object to the selected object.

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