How to add a bone to a dope sheet in Blender's NLA editor?

[agentronin]

 

In Blender's NLA editor I need to add a bone to a dope sheet for an action strip I am tweaking. I attempted to do this by selecting this bone in the 3D View and using the I key. This did not do anything, regardless of whether I selected “All Channels”, “Only Selected Channels”, or “In Active Group”.

How are bones added to a dope sheet? It seems I can delete them from it using the X key, but I have not found a way to add one.

 

[OptimoMaximo]

Dopesheet shows ALL animated objects' keyframes in the whole scene, so your best bet is to enter into the object's Action editor first, so to be sure you're working on the correct one.

The options you're using aren't intended for bones animations in this context. After hitting the "i" key, you should choose one of the options about location or rotation. If the channel is missing, using this method ensures that it is going to be added.

The COG bone needs LocRot so to add both channels to the only bone that really needs those, all of the others (except a few face joints) need only Rotation.

More on this latter, if you're blending between IK and FK animation keyframes, sometimes you may want to keyframe a pose achieved with the help of an IK controller onto the affected FK bone(s). In this case, keyframing the regular Rotation won't work to keep that pose, for this reason you should use Visual Rotation option. If this is the case, make sure you do choose this option right from the very beginning or it won't work correctly in every circumstance.

[agentronin]

There is only one animated object, and this is the Avastar created avatar with SL Bento bones. Originally I had all bones in the actions. I used the X key in the Dope Sheet to eliminate bones I thought at the time I did not need. When the need to add a bone I had deleted from the Dope Sheet became apparent, I did not see a way to add a channel for the needed bone.

The COG bone does have the Location fields active (not grayed out) in the 3D View's Property Panel's Transform tab.

Up until now, when attempting add a bone channel to the Dope Sheet, I had the mouse cursor in the dope sheet. Since starting this thread I found this does do something, it adds a key frame only for bones already in the dope sheet, and that are also selected in the 3D view.

After reading your response I tried the I key while the cursor was in the 3D view. I got a menu by which I was able to add the selected bone to the dope sheet, and I saw its pop up menu the location and rotation options you referred to.

Thanks for your help. It did lead me to the answer, which was to use the I key in the 3D View instead of the Dope Sheet.