|
|
| Here's
where things get a little less formulaic
for me and I start to rely on experience
and a good eye for animation. The
deleting of keys. |
| Many
a young animator struggles with having
too many keys. Especially if they're
just going straight ahead. After awhile
they don't know what they're looking
at anymore (at least I didn't back
then). The solution for me was to
key smartly. But in the pose to pose
world, the problem is it can be TOO
organized, things can be too structured.
What's needed is some good old fashioned
editing. |
 |
I
try and look at the spine mostly.
I found that alot of the rigidness
in my work comes from the spine
being too tight.
So I'll go in there and shuffle
things around, deleting keys
and some breakdowns here and
there. I'll also try having
a lower spine control not settle
into the pose until almost near
the end of the hold. |
|
| Sometimes
I'll have the head take longer, or
somesuch. This is the massaging part
of animation that is very difficult
to define as a step or a process.
So here's a look at a close up of
the dope sheet and the corresponding
animation change that goes with the
edit. |
| It's
a very subtle effect, but when
you do this for the whole shot,
it really starts to loosen things
up and defeating that robotic
feel. And remember, this is
still all with linear keyframes.
There's no ease in or ease out
from key to key. The plus side
of this is that when the time
comes to start adding ease in
and out by switching the fCurves
over to spline interpolation
and then filtering the tangencies,
you're not in for any surprises.
Oh, one last thing here: I took
the time to really tweak the
whole hip/weight transfer flow
in the part where he kicks the
fallen tablet out of the way.
This again is something that
you just need to use your animator's
eye to spot and fix. |
 |
|
| This
is the place where I try to address
anything that really needs fixing,
before going into spline curves. |
|
|
 |
Now
I'm ready to switch the fCurves
from straight linear interpolation
to a spline interpolation with
edited/filtered curve tangencies
at the keyframes. Here's a quickie
peek at the curves for one control
object... |
| What
this is going to do is really
smooth out alot of the remaining
jerkiness of the animation.
Pose hits have ease to them,
transition breakdowns have some
flavor besides straight through.
There's no surprises here, I'm
not really adding anything new,
but I'm taking what I already
have and applying this neat
smoothing to it all. |
|
| It's
like icing on an already pretty tasty
cake. The trick is to not violate
the extremes as they have been defined
already. Spline interpolation by default
tends to overshoot the holds, really
making things sloppy. So I try and
keep the holds pretty tight with a
minimum of overshoot, while the keys
in the middle transition areas are
pretty smooth. Now if I wanted, I
could go through each control object
and delete select keys in the middle
of curve transitions to make things
smoother, and I may yet do that for
this piece. Generally if I want to
loosen things up even more I'll do
it in the fCurve editor by deleting
some frames along the curve that are
hitching the motion a little bit.
Still, if you want the absolute
best animation you can get, then that's
a step worth taking in my opinion.
Like I said, I didn't do that for
this piece as it is seen here. |
| Update:
The statement directly above is especially
true when you want to get even finer,
more natural motion. In taking your
work from serviceable to excellent
in quality, you're going to spend
at least half your time in the finessing
of the keys and curves. Yes you can
produce OK animation by doing everything
up to this point, but you'll be leaving
the work short of all it can be by
not going the final mile. You can
expect to spend 50% of your time on
the last 15% of the animation to bring
it to a level of excellence. Now if
your producer/employer states that
the budget doesn't support that level
of quality, then you'll have to leave
that undone and live with what the
preceding efforts give you as far
as results. But for your own work
at home or for your portfolio and
personal growth I highly recommend
spending the time it takes to generate
the absolute best animation you're
capable of. Employing that level of
discipline will best serve you in
the end. |
| Here's
the motion with the spline ease
curve interpolation... |
 |
| The
animation of the body is pretty
much done here. Like I said,
I could go in and tweak it more.
Since this is a personal clip
and not for work, I may. That's
the nice thing about personal
pieces, no deadlines and no
quotas. Well, sometimes no deadlines.
I did 3.25 minutes of animation
in 7 weeks for my short film
"Lunch". As you can
see, THAT had a deadline and
this method helped me meet it.
:o) |
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| For
the ultra curious, I have made a side
by side comparison of the preview
animations as they progressed. The
way it works is this: |
|
pop1 vs. pop2 |
| pop2
vs. Linear |
| Linear
vs. Cleaned Up Linear |
| Cleaned
Up Linear vs. Linear Offset |
| Linear
Offset vs. Splined Curves |
Splined
Curves vs. Final Animation
|
