I know you talked about it earlier, and probably even in the fundamentals course, but i really wonder why the setting "only insert needed" is actually useful or not depending on the context.
In this one course i could not insert new keyframes based on whether or not the object moved, i understand what that means, because no transformation was applied to the object, so from the software point of view there is theoritically no need for new keyframe.
But isn't there a more user friendly way to set that?
Going in the user preferences all the time to change this setting based on the context is a bit stupid, why isn't there a setting directly in the dopesheet, or graph editor, or timeline?
Nobody ever developed an addon to fix this?
It's a bit like going in the user pref of photoshop all the time to change a vital setting to your workflow.
Or maybe i'll later discover that with experince, animators choose one setting and stick to it forever?
I know Chris McFall suggested that this setting should be checked, but I disagree with this preference. (by default it is off - the way I have it)
You will see that I like to "Key Whole Character (selected only)", then delete any unused channels and switch to "Available". There is method to this madness which hopefully you will learn with more experience.
But why do I think it is important to key all the channels rather that "only needed"?
Well image this...
Key 1: you key the loc and rot.
Key 2: you rotate the ball (no translation)
Key 3:you rotate the ball (no translation)
Key 4: you rotate and translate the ball.
If you enable "key only needed" the ball will slide from Key 1 all the way to Key 4 but you only wanted it to translate from that position between Key 3-4. So this setting can make a right mess of things as it works per channel.
Hopefully that makes sense. If it doesn’t now, it will later ;)
Happy animating.