Lasso/Box selecting a curve

At 6:16 you explain how to select keyframes. One thing I noticed is that there seems to be a difference between lasso/box selecting keyframes and clicking on a keyframe directly.

The former will select just the manipulators/handles while the latter will also select the curve and make the curve appear in the N-menu.

Box selecting a keyframe doesn't select the curve:

Clicking on a keyframe directly or one of its handles selects the curve (notice the selection is white in this case):

Box selecting the entire curve doesn't select it if keyframes are part of the selection, I have to explicitly box select just the curve to get to its options:

There also seems to be a difference between the two selections in selected curve's thickness.

Idk, not really a question, just something I noticed and it confused me for a moment.

1 love
Reply
  • Wayne Dixon replied

    Hi Arek,
    Great observations.  There have been some subtle changes to the way Blender behaves over the past few versions, however, I think what you are seeing is the difference between a keyframe being active and being selected.

    This is a weird concept at first, but somethings can be selected even though there is no active keyframe/object/or whatever
    There are even weird cases that you can have something still active AND it isn't selected - what the what?
    But don't worry too much about that at this stage.

    The important thing to understand is that something needs to be active in order to see the information pop up in the n panel.
    Box selecting doesn't change the active element because it can't (and shouldn't) decide which thing it selected should be the 1 active element.


    I hope that helps your understanding - and hasn't just deepened your confusion haha

    3 loves
  • Arek Nowakowski(arekn) replied

    Hey Wayne, thank you for the reply.

    Yes that makes sense, I am aware of the active object concept and the "nothing's selected but something's active" concept too. :) It was explained in the Blender Basics course. I guess I shouldn't be surprised these concepts carry over to the graph editor, but I guess I forgot how uniform Blender is. :)