[Help requested] Moving from stepped into spline.
polycounter lvl 8
Hi everybody! I come to you today because I'm having a bit of a dilemma. I've always animated in spline without blocking animations out first. I realised this can be a bit of a problem as I'm always trying to tweak the inbetweens as I go and it can be a lengthy process.
I decided that it'd be worth my while to try to learn how to properly block out my animations before I start polishing them, and I found that getting a finished block out, to get a feel for timing and such, was significantly faster than animating straight ahead with splined curves.
However I of course run into the problem I'm having right now. Once I've finished a block out and I like how it looks and feels, I'll switch the tangents from stepped to flat, and find that the animation becomes an almost unrecognisable mess. The inbetweens don't come out as I intended/expected. Is this normal?
So my question is this: What do I do from this point? Do I go back into stepped and add more inbetweens (My block out consists of 2's and 4's) or do I polish while I've splined/flattened the curves? I'm worried that if I start adding keys all over the place, the animation is going to look incredibly jittery and even more inconsistent then it is right now, and what if I DO start adding keys and feel like the timing is off later down the line?
I would really like to get some new animations finished so I can work on my demo reel, but I always seem to fall at this hurdle, give up, and move onto something else without ever really learning anything. So I'm hoping somebody with more experience might be willing to help me out with this.
This is the animation in question
https://syncsketch.com/sketch/150635#182363
Thank you for your time, and apologies if this issue has been addressed before.
I decided that it'd be worth my while to try to learn how to properly block out my animations before I start polishing them, and I found that getting a finished block out, to get a feel for timing and such, was significantly faster than animating straight ahead with splined curves.
However I of course run into the problem I'm having right now. Once I've finished a block out and I like how it looks and feels, I'll switch the tangents from stepped to flat, and find that the animation becomes an almost unrecognisable mess. The inbetweens don't come out as I intended/expected. Is this normal?
So my question is this: What do I do from this point? Do I go back into stepped and add more inbetweens (My block out consists of 2's and 4's) or do I polish while I've splined/flattened the curves? I'm worried that if I start adding keys all over the place, the animation is going to look incredibly jittery and even more inconsistent then it is right now, and what if I DO start adding keys and feel like the timing is off later down the line?
I would really like to get some new animations finished so I can work on my demo reel, but I always seem to fall at this hurdle, give up, and move onto something else without ever really learning anything. So I'm hoping somebody with more experience might be willing to help me out with this.
This is the animation in question
https://syncsketch.com/sketch/150635#182363
Thank you for your time, and apologies if this issue has been addressed before.
Replies
In the places that it's freaking out, it just looks like you just dont have enough poses, to me. Especially around your contacts. When he lands on one foot, you have no contact post there. just the impact pose. You want a blockout to look like your final animation with a bad frame rate. While you're on track to that, you could go a bit further with it.
His little flip, id have to see the curves, that could just be a quick curve polish, or maybe even gimbal? Kinda hard to tell.
Its looking good though! Keep at it, for sure!
by "Flat" you mean "Auto Tangent"? or really "Flat Tangent"? or "Linear Tangent"? Some of it look like gimbals... some of it look like overshoots from "Smooth Tangent". Sometimes jittery look may be due to too many keys.
If you haven't tried it haven't tried it already, Euler filter everything, and then set everything to Auto Tangent and see if it looks any different. Otherwise I'd just continue adding break downs in Linear Tangent or Auto. there's no need to switch back to Stepped unless you prefer it that way.
We are in stepped for quite a long time and our eyes get very use to this snappy timing that results from having it in stepped - then we go to spline and it looks all mushy & boring. Your poses your still there & they're fine, but everything else looks like garbage (I'm not specifically referring to your shot...but most all shots going from stepped to spline)
This is an important time - DON'T START FIDDLING WITH KEYS/OFFSETTING CONTROLLERS!!
First grab all your controllers (everything should be keyed together during blocking) and do a pass sliding the keys around to adjust your timing. Experiment with different parts being faster/slower - play around with the timing - try and get it back to that "feeling" you had when it was in stepped - ignore all the pops, obvious issues you will fix later, just focus on the overall timing. If there are certain parts you just can't get feeling right its most likely cause you didn't have enough poses/are letting Maya do to much of the work - go backed to stepped, add the poses and repeat the process.
I think people often go from stepped to spline and instantly start fixing all the obvious major problems (I use to do this too) pops/weird rotations/interpenetrations/etc/etc - but this is the best time to adjust timing as all your keys are very organized and it becomes more & more difficult/tedious to fix timing issues as you continue to clean up & polish your shot.
@HitoI watched a video tutorial where somebody explained that when you first move to this stage, it's good to go with Flat Tangents so thats what I used in my example. However, as per your suggestion, I've gone back, used the Euler Filter (I've been told it's a great tool to use, but I've never had the chance to try it and HOOO BOY is it useful!) and switched to Auto Tangents. I feel like this has given me a better kind of "starting position" when it comes to cleaning up this shot splined. In my updated animation, I've yet to touch frames 10 - 40, the biggest offenders, but the Euler Filter has already cleaned them up slightly, making them easier to work with!
@KyleG I think that's likely the biggest advantage to using stepped keys, and my biggest draw to it. I can focus on nailing down poses and timing. I limited myself to working in 2's and 4's as a sort of limit, I'd adjust timing where necessary later, and you're right, I had a quick skim through the animation splined and found that the flip the smaller character does after the hand spring of the larger characters head felt very floaty and slow, so I went back into stepped and adjusted where necessary. I've so far left most of the particularly obvious problems alone for now.
@AGoodFella Thank you for the advice! I'll try and incorporate that as I continue working on this & future work.
https://syncsketch.com/sketch/150635#182901
Here's a quick update. As I said, I've left the earlier part alone for now since it's causing me the most problems, and I felt like I should practice ironing out some of the less noticeable creases in the shot first.
With this I'm sure you'll notice the quite poor camera work, the shot is zoomed out considerably to encompass the whole animation. With something like this would it be worth messing around with the camera, panning left and right where needed? After I've completed the actual animation of course.
Thank you all for your help so far!!
KyleG's advice is great, key all your blockout and early breakdown passes on the entire body, that keeps your keyframe neat and makes it very easy to retime by inserting/deleting frames, even quicker when you bind those to shortcuts.
Of course if you spot anything else that needs improving, please let me know!
https://syncsketch.com/sketch/150635#184043
Also left a few notes. You have sections where the characters momentum just sort of stops, then speeds up again. Try and find that balance of ease in/out while still keeping with your stylistic approach. It's close, but it needs some tweaking. Check the curves and all that.
Thanks for the notes!
I played around with the camera, I had no idea how to zoom in with Orthographic Camera's so I guess I learned a little about that! Haven't managed to change much else at the moment, but I think with this new camera, the animation is a little difficult to follow, I'm not sure.
The cam move during f250 isn't too bad. Though, I do lose some of the animation. It could work, though. Kind of like a handheld cam that is following the action rather than leading it.