Hi all! I've combined a blink with an emotional change.
I've figured out some techniques during this that I'd like to share at the bottom of this post. The first vid is the playblast. It is a polished work in progress; I haven't given the hands any icing yet. I'm actually going to add on to this. I have something special planned for you all. ^_^
Below is a stepped preview with the reference I used in the background.
Tips and Techniques
- See the reference? I found out you can put your reference video on a free image plane and it will play as you scroll though the maya timeline. It won't play in real time, but it is extremely helpful in trying to time out and pose your character. Notice though that after I used my reference to find time and pose, I adjusted them as needed. Reference is only a guide and not a set method (don't follow the reference to the "T".)
- Another thing is I never used stepped when animating this. I ended up doing double key holds and then smoothed it out from there. I only included the stepped version so you can see where my key/pose changes are. Stepped confuses me because I can't see the flow. The animation just "stops" in my mind. It's like when doing traditional animation. In TA, you have to keep flipping pages to see the flow of the movement. Same goes for maya in my opinion. if you don't see what happens between poses, then it only becomes images instead of animation. But I'm not saying stepped is bad. It's only a method. You need to find what works for you.
- I did key poses on full body set keys, but then from there (after the general timing and posing were good) I started keying certain groups separately. The groups were: Body (chest and arms), Head, Hands, and then the Face was separated into Eyes, Mouth, and Brows. I keyed all these separate after the full poses, because you don't want to key small nuances in the whole body because that will add too many keys and will disrupt the flow of the graph curves. It also makes it easier to adjust timing for groups if they are separated.
- Don't make more keys to make parts drag. Instead go to the breakdown key and make the pose drag. So in other words, instead of sliding keys around to adjust the spacing, change the breakdown pose so it is closer or farther to the next pose. If you keep your breakdown keys exactly in the middle of your key pose keys, it makes it easier to clean up later.
- Kill the floatyness. It's ok to make things pause. Things pause in real life, but the trick in maya is if something is going to pause, make it move just enough so that it has pixel movement.
- Also, ARCS. use the arc tool to fix them from the camera. No other view matters. We aren't making 3d animation. It's a 2d movie made with 3d models.
Hope this helps
-Isaac
www.blog.isaactraenk.com
