Extracting key frames from long animation I've bought a number of animated 'game-ready' models. I need to modify these in Blender and export them in a different format.


The Blender versions (at least) of the files have all of their animations in one long sequence. A text file is available with the start frame for each animation. I cut these up manually into actions based on start frame and length. 
The animations also have their transforms set each frame. This creates very large files, so I try to extract a number of key frames, say every 10th, and interpolate. (It's not perfect and may require some tweaking afterwards, like adding more key frames)


My problem is that doing this manually is very time-consuming. The process requires a lot of steps and is error-prone. Working with a model with 3000-5000 animation frames can also be slow.

My question:

Is there an existing way I can automate any or all of the process (step 1 and 2) (barring writing my own script)? Tools? Built-in functionality?

Thanks
Bake your animations


Make a backup copy
Select all the bones involved, then in Pose mode go to Pose > Animation > Bake Animation.
In the pop-up window:

Set Start Frame, End Frame, and Frame Step (in your example set it to 10).

Check "Only selected" (only selected bones will be baked); "Visual keying" (the position after all modifiers and constraints will be baked); "Overwrite current action" (you've made a backup copy, right??)

The "Clear constraints" option will remove all constraints from the armature after baking, making it perfectly animatable by the new baked action.

"Clear parents" involves object mode only, so it doesn't apply here.

Set "Bake data" to "pose"
Bake!