Animation baking depends on the state of "Action Blending" before the bake starts. In the attached file it's set to "Add". If you change it to "Replace", the baking will work as expected. The functionality is still there, but this feels more like a usability issue.

I've done quite some motion capture cleanup in the past months and always baked new clips using "Replace" mode. All other modes (mainly "Combine") were used to manually create clips and adjust the underlaying animations. Of course afterwards the mode needed to be set back to "Replace" anytime I wanted to bake the composition into a new clip. So it still works, but the usability is not great.

Thanks for providing this workaround! This is indeed a nice fix.

Just to provide exact steps for others waiting for this:

• Convert the additive action to strip (push down button)
• Set the mode to "Replace" on the right in "Animation Data" (the additive action below remains additive so it's not an issue)
• Bake it and enjoy

Maybe the baking operation should force the mode to replace while it's running.

In T69105#845527, @lucas veber (lucky3) wrote:

Thanks for providing this workaround! This is indeed a nice fix.

Sure thing!

In T69105#845687, @Alexander Gavrilov (angavrilov) wrote:

Maybe the baking operation should force the mode to replace while it's running.

When baking, I exclusively needed the bake to be in "Replace" mode. Any other modes wouldn't give me the results I wanted. Not sure whether there are any other use cases where they would be needed, but I personally didn't encounter them yet.

When using another popular 3d app for mocap cleanup, clips to adjust underlaying animations were always added manually and bake was done always to Blender's equivalent of "Replace". The program didn't offer any other option and it didn't feel it was missing anything. So it's an indication bake in other blending modes is probably not widely used or needed?

Limiting bake operation to "Replace" sounds like the simplest solution. Do you think this would need to be exposed in the ui and communicated to the user somehow? Perhaps through a tooltip or similar.

In T69105#845687, @Alexander Gavrilov (angavrilov) wrote:

Maybe the baking operation should force the mode to replace while it's running.

That sounds like a good approach to me 👍

@Alexander Gavrilov (angavrilov) do you think this is related to T57159 as well?

@Alexander Gavrilov (angavrilov) wrote in Blender Chat:

Should it switch to Replace permanently or for the duration of the operator?

I think for the duration of the duration of the operator is best. That way the user doesn't have anything changed in the settings after the operator is done, and the operator functions properly.

The downside of that is that the action would not evaluate properly after the operator completes. One compromise could be to switch permanently if creating a new action, and restoring the old value if reusing an existing one? (it's an option of the operator)

In that case, let's set it permanently. This behaviour should be mentioned in the manual as well, then.

Having this always bake to replace based on one persons view of they didn't use it is kind of frustrating.
I need the choice to bake to replace or additive or combine etc.. If I set the action mode to the setting that I want it to be (additive) when I bake, I want and NEED it to be additive.

I am not the only one that uses additive layers and also needs to bake. This is used all the time in other motion editing software and should be properly fixed, not just locked down to always bake to replace mode. Thank you

https://developer.blender.org/D8867 having this and the new NLA improvements are very much needed.

I'm with Brad, i just came across this issue myself when tinkering in Python with some old actions and this is very silly.

Layering animations in Blender is fiddly enough as it is without not being able to bake the final animation correctly for every situation.

In order to workaround the issue of not having other blend types i'm having to either export to FBX then re-import just to get the final action or in some cases i have to write my own baking operator!

What issue you two exactly encounter? The initial bug is resolved. Can you share a blend file showing it's not working as it should? I'm an animator too and edit motion capture file using the Combine mode as additive keyframes. Baking works fine in this case for me.
Please don't go into the "I need it I need that..." This sounds kind of disrespectful, you're talking to human developers that are not required to work for your desires.

The problem is no matter what the Action is set to, Bake changes it to be replace. If I want to do an edit in Additive or Combine, and then bake to that action, it is no longer additive.

The fix isn't so much a fix as it is a hard coded limitation in that Bake doesn't respect the blend mode of what it is baking to. - Fix T69105: reset the action blend mode to Replace in Bake Action.

How could it be still additive after baking? Baking is supposed to convert the additive transforms to non-additive (the final bone matrix)

Baking should only convert to non-additive final mix if the track is set to replace. If the animation is additive, the bake should be creating keys into the action it is replacing still with additive values. or combine etc.

Baking isn't always because I want a final combined stack of animation. it could be I want to combine 3 additive tracks to one additive track over the base action for one example. OR I want to create an additive animation layer that could play as a layer in a game engine etc.

In T69105#1030183, @lucas veber (lucky3) wrote:

What issue you two exactly encounter? The initial bug is resolved. Can you share a blend file showing it's not working as it should? I'm an animator too and edit motion capture file using the Combine more as additive keyframes. Baking works fine in this case for me.
Please don't go into the "I need it I need that..." This sounds kind of disrespectful, you're talking to human developers that are not required to work for your desires.

I don't have a .blend file worth uploading, my interest is purely technical because it's something i've been working on for a while for my own purposes, i just stumbled across it when running some tests. My only real frustration is the lack of options for baking actions, why isn't the blend type an enum option kind of thing.

You see i find myself needing to be able to "smart bake" to subframes in order to cover things like bounce interpolation and high speed animation anyway... (eg: humming bird wings, guitar strings etc etc) so i may as well have a chat with Mr Clark and see about sorting out the blend type for him at the same time. I have most of the subframe baking tested already too, it's nowhere near as fast the latest improvements but it's much more accurate and compensating for a blend type should be pretty easy over the top of what i already have.

For the record, i really appreciate that people are not required to do this and at the end of the day i don't really mind, if it stays this way i can live with it, i'll finish writing a different baking operator next week and share it with Brad and anyone else that wants it : )

Discussion on NLA track merging support would probably be better in T80235: NLA: Support for Merge Strips. I only mentioned this task in D8867: Feature: NLA Merge Strips since the patch generalizes the solution to any blend type instead of only full Replace.

"Please don't go into the "I need it I need that..." This sounds kind of disrespectful, you're talking to human developers that are not required to work for your desires"
Also, I agree, that wasn't my intention to sound that way, sorry if it did, the first pose was out of a bit of frustration after having it switch on me and I didn't realize it.

Thanks Wayde for the cross link. We can move it there if that is the better thread.