Learning awesome animation stuff...

So I always wondered why folks locked attributes for animated objects. The rule of "you don't want to fuck something up by accident" seemed justified enough, but I couldn't find a way to make it so that attributes that I did not want animated to be excluded when I set a key. When hitting set key, all attributes would get a curve and key when I did not necessarily want that.

And thus, learning to struggle through curves, super long clean up of unused curves made it all made sense. Locking and unlocking attributes on the fly prevented new curves from being created, and therefore allowed you the flexibility to change an attribute's lock state while you animated.

I like learning the practical way, but it also taught me I shouldn't be afraid to question my teachers and fellow colleagues. I learned, by making this mistake, that having too many curves also causes performance issues in game, but also clogs up your file quite a bit.

So lesson learned: Lock and unlock your attribute as needed!