Are you usually working with:
- Auto Key always Off
- Auto Key always On
- I toggle between the two during a session
0 voters
I even have a custom keyboard shortcut for it.
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ALWAYS ON
I can see why people might not like it and it can definitely get annoying in areas where an alt-tap can’t kill the keyframes (layer crops/slips, motion blur on/off toggle) but I’ve lost hours of work due to not noticing it was off.
It’s always my first stop when setting up a new user.
I hate redoing work and the alt-tap is a fine way to kill keyframes I don’t want or need.
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Off until I really need it. I hate it when there are keyframes on every parameter that was touched at some point, but may not even have any useful animation. Or even worse there is an unintended animation.
I rather do one frame again where I forgot to set it on than having no clue (on first sight) which animation is important or having to clean up a lot of parameters while I just wanted to animate a single one.
I’ve assigned a shortcut (shift-a) so I can very quickly toggle it on and off as needed. 
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Always off and set TAB as my shortcut to toggle
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I used to believe in always off then got burned with particularly difficult bicubic animation - shortly after I found the alt click to keep only the current keyframe - now always on and using the alt click all the time.
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The keyboard shortcut for this is indispensable and such a welcome addition.
Always on. I use the hotkeys extensively to reset params, keep keyframes, delete keyframes, jump to keyframes, etc…
I’ve just gotten used to working this way over the years…
Curious about the intent behind the poll…?
Fred’s gonna code up a Clippy character who pops on screen when you start animating, “you appear to be animating with Auto Key off,”
Instead of a paperclip, it will be a flame (similar to the 4th boss of Super Mario Bros 2, “Fryguy”) named “Flamey” or “Flamist”
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The reason I asked the question is that the Animation menu has been targeted as a possible area of improvement for future versions and one of the thing I was wondering about is if users would prefer a workflow like in other applications (Nuke, Resolve, and Maya to some extent) where a keyframe is automatically created on a channel even if Auto Key is Off the moment a keyframe was already set on it. That would make much more sense if the majority of users were working with Auto Key Off all the time but do not hesitate to give us your opinion on this no matter what.
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If it’s an hour’s work Fred and you can still keep autokey switched on all the time, I’d say go for it.
I see good points for both options:
On the one hand I like the behaviour in other apps who set a keyframe if the parameter already has animation, as chances are high that I want to enhance my animation and may not forget to set a keyframe this way.
On the other hand there are situations where it’s handy if the key isn’t set automatically. Like when you just quickly want to try something but don’t want to change your existing animation.
What do you think about making this a toggle option in the preferences?
Perhaps it should change to something like the link key in action where if you hold it down it makes a keyframe, or if you have autokey on, holding down the key doesn’t make a keyframe.
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If it’s an hour’s work Fred and you can still keep autokey switched on all the time, I’d say go for it.
I’m afraid this is far from being that trivial. This is why we are checking out before we decide what we will do.
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One thing that I appreciate in Nuke is the way the Roto node is by default set to autokey while every other node has to manually be told to animate. Nuke doesn’t have a global autokey button so they have a lot more flexibility to decide which tools can automatically save keyframes but It would be nice if, say, you could have the autokey button could be off by default unless you are inside the Tracer and then it starts recording keyframes automatically.
I also would love to have the functionality from Combustion where turning Autokey off and then adjusting a key would effect all the relevant keys - I think this is what you’re talking about when you said Uberkey but just making sure.
Both the GMask and GMask Tracer have independent Spline Keyframing options. The one in GMasker Tracer was introduced in the 2022 version.
Ah, nowhere I’ve been working has been on 2022 yet. Good to know!
Having parameters like scale default to being linked together (unless intentionally broken) would be helpful. I find I spend a good deal of time linking x & y scale & other similar parameters that you want curves to be identical by default.
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Can I suggest a subtle clolour change/que to the cursor when Autokey is active. This something that you would not miss when adjusting G-mask shapes or extended bicubics and the like.
I like to work with Autokey off for most of the time but I have experienced that horrific sinking feeling when you realize that all your key-framing for the last hour was not being recorded.
Yeah I’d love to be able to have more options on the Autokey button. There was a trippy one a while ago that I used a lot 