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one of my students in my class asked me
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a question
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that i didn't expect which was all about
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when
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do i go into spline and it's funny
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though because i've been animating for a
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while
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and i think after a while you kind of
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forget
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that this is a problem i had this
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problem
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and i think that today i'm going to do
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my best to kind of showcase to you guys
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on when you can go into spline
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and why so let's get started with this
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episode 4
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of animation power tips
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[Music]
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welcome to episode number four this
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series is sponsored
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by autodesk thank you so much for
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watching for sponsoring this series
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and um yeah um shout out to my student
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jiang um he's a very talented animator a
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lots of potential
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i'm pretty sure he's going to go to
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places great places very soon
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but yeah we spent quite a few weeks
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working together
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and then at some point he did ask me how
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do i know
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when to go into spline that was
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specifically his question
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and he kind of caught me off guard
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because
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to me he's just a given that i know
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if i follow all the steps that i
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normally do to animate
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i know i have a sense of when i need to
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go into spline
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and what the next step is after that in
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order to clean up my animation
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from a brand new student and a brand new
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person coming into animation
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everybody tells you that you have to go
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into stepped or you have to take your
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reference
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and then after that you go into stepped
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and you block out your poses
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and then you do your in-betweens and
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then eventually you go into spline
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so it's that uncertainty of going from
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blocking to spline that
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is always daunting or new animators he
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actually dunked me for years
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and i tried to find that answer and
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funny enough the answer is simpler than
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i thought
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and hopefully if i share that answer
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with you guys and i share some of the
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things that go through my mind
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as i animate hopefully it will highlight
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to you guys when you guys can go
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into spline when you work on your
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animations without further ado
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let's jump on the computer and let me
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show you guys how i go about this
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[Music]
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this scene you guys have seen before if
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you've been following the channel for a
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little bit
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is an uncompleted scene that i've been
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trying to work on for a while
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and um i haven't worked on this
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for how long has it been now six years
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i i did this way back in the day and
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then i left at b
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and i think this is a great example
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because some bits and this animation
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are going to be getting close to going
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into that spline step and some bits
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are still very far away from that and
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need more information
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either way on this animation there's
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quite a lot of things that need to be
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improved on
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but hopefully it will give you an idea
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on how you actually can think
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about your shots and how you can
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actually kind of make that step
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to go into spline right so this shot
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basically
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i just grabbed the piece of the shot so
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i'm just going to grab
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from around there so let me just go into
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perspective so you guys can see the
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whole scene
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and i'm just going to grab a piece of
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the shot
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so around there
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and then he turns and like kicks the
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ball
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maybe like let's give the turn in as
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well and jump
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so i've talked about this piece before
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because i have
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i actually spent quite a lot of time
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taking the reference of this
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and the process is actually quite
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interesting because it kind of showcases
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how much time you need to spend
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kind of like getting your reference down
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before you go into animation especially
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if you have different types of
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references
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as you go through so if you haven't
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checked that video make sure you check
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it out
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so this piece right now in the state
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that it is at the moment
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rough and ready it's basically like this
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this guy is kind of like doing a kpip on
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the ball and then
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kicks and turns right now
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as you can see if you look at my
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timeline here on the bottom
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you see that i have lots of space
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between keys
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right there right so i have a keel at 30
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another one at 33 another one at 37.
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so it's roughly in threes or twos
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as you actually go through now because
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this is a fast motion
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and he needs to get the ball and there's
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a lot of detail all
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over his body in this shot specifically
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i decided to actually go as as deep
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as going into ones and this is just for
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one controller this is just for the hips
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now the main key here and this is the
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stuff that you guys should remember
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is that animation it's all about data
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right the more data you feed to maya the
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better
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animations you will get because as i
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mentioned in a previous video
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maya is the worst inbetweener in the
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world
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if you use plugins you can get something
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better but normally you're going to get
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the half
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you don't want to get the half you want
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to get something interestingly happening
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between
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all your keys so this is why you need to
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add as many
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many keys as possible in order for you
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to feed information to maya so maya can
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then interpolate your keys
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and give you interesting animation now
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in order for you to do that and let's
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jump back in
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you need to basically do what i did here
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which is like kind of add keys
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as you go through and just start kind of
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like setting up your timing correctly
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now here for example there's bits in the
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hips
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that you really don't need one key every
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time this is just making everything
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so when you get to a certain point let's
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say like i am happy
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with the animation that is happening
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here because all my body
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is kind of like working correctly so
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let's say my animation
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is just this bit here right
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right in the beginning so if this is a
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whole timeline the whole animation
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i know for sure that i need to add more
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information
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so if you look at the animation you can
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see that this arm is all broken and
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weird
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um and this is just me going through the
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motions um
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this pose looks very tweened like it's
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very much like
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semi-semi as as you go through
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the character is not really looking the
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nicest in terms of posing
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not great um and as you go through it's
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the same thing
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all throughout here like this leg is not
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really doesn't have a silhouette
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especially if i go going to the camera
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um going to the camera that i'm going to
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shoot and all that stuff this is a
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little bit better
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but i know that i need to add more
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information here doesn't matter if he's
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actually within the keys that i already
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set
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or if he's in between so i need to make
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sure that i go through this piece
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and i start adding more information as i
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go through because if i actually
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were to change this into spline right
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now what i will get
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is basically a mush of information
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of this specific area so let me just
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showcase this to you now if i select
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everything
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and within this boundary here
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of time if i select everything
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and add it and set it to spline
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this is what i would get
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see what i mean not enough information
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so the character looks
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super bad didn't look so bad when it was
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tapped but like the whole thing is like
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super weird like the whole thing is
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weird so
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you need to basically revert back and
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sort out your animation here
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because this is what's basically what's
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missing on the information at least that
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i had when i was
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learning how to animate like you're not
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giving enough information to maya
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therefore when you hit that spline
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button
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everything becomes horrible and because
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everything becomes horrible and you
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already committed to going to spline now
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you have to
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clean up your mess in spline which is
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more difficult
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so you want to make sure that you sort
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out the problems that you have
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in your animation instead because spline
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should be
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just about making your animation better
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instead of
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sorting out the issues the animation
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have right now
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i'll show you what i mean if we actually
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go to this more detailed area here
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so if you go to here let me just change
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my my
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timeline here to make sure that we have
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this
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and he's doing the kpip so right now
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everything is at is on once pretty much
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and the animation looks a little bit
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more alive right when he's doing the
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kpip right there
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so if i actually select everything and
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do exactly the same exercise
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so i select everything and i go to here
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and
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i highlight my timeline and then i go
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out to tangent
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and now everything is in a spline
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and if i press play look at that
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right it looks like the animation is
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pretty much getting there right it's not
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perfect
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but you can see that he is moving with
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intent
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and the all information is there because
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you gave enough information to maya
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in order to for maya to actually
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interpolate those keys correctly
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now here's a bonus tip when you actually
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get to here your animation is not done
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whatsoever but you can be happy at least
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that you know that when you press the
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spline button because you gave
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my enough information things are not
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turning into mush
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or everything is there right you can see
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it right when you press play
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everything is kind of like working right
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but there's bits that are floating
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there's bits that are off
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that has bits that is missing that
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animation magic
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so this is when you actually go in and
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you start always with the hips
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and then start dissecting what's wrong
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and what's making it
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uh floaty and feeling weird right so you
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start with your translates and then you
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go into your rotates
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so i normally got like to start with
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translate zed
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just a course of habit i guess i've been
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doing a lot of walk cycles and stuff
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but like you go into something like this
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and then you start kind of like
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analyzing
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exactly what's going on as you can see
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there's lots of unevenness on this bit
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and there's bits here that i have to
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kind of like have to
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add all the tangent and making sure that
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things are not
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like this is boring time that actually
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is very weird so you need to make sure
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that
00:10:42
whatever is happening here that is not
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taking away from your animation
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so i would actually go to here and most
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likely
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do something like this
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and you don't want to actually be flat
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so you want to add a little something
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to your tangent to make sure that
00:11:00
there's a little bit of movement but
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it's not a hundred percent flat you can
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see this there's a
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feel here that there's a snap as you go
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as you go through by the way you can
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change the camera side the
00:11:13
you can change your camera angle to like
00:11:15
face the
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axis that you need to see in this case
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would probably be like
00:11:21
uh front no uh
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left
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yeah so from the front what's going on
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so now you can see
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there's a little snap right there so you
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would
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make sure that you go into that
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animation enter that key correctly
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and then there's a little bit of noise
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as you go through here
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make sure that that's clean going in
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and shazam that's much better as you go
00:11:51
through
00:11:51
you don't want to change your keys too
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much because you already did the work
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previously
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animation is not great but you already
00:11:57
did the the work previously
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and the animation is pretty much there
00:12:01
right
00:12:03
so i can already see that whenever my
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character goes to the left here
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way too much so i need to change the
00:12:10
timing of this
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to be much more closer to
00:12:15
the end goal that i need which is around
00:12:18
there
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so i will play around with my keys as
00:12:20
i'm doing right now even though this is
00:12:22
not clean whatsoever
00:12:24
but it will give you a better feel of
00:12:26
where you're going with this
00:12:27
so i need to favor this key right there
00:12:32
as i go through
00:12:38
i need to kind of like go into that left
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a little bit smoother
00:12:48
bam and then go down that's a little bit
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better it doesn't feel so robotic
00:12:52
so i really don't need that key i need
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to go into
00:12:56
this other key
00:13:00
and then fall
00:13:08
yeah so that's starting to actually look
00:13:09
better so that's one axis
00:13:12
same thing with the translate y you're
00:13:13
actually going three through here and as
00:13:15
you can see this is
00:13:16
up going up here this is kind of boring
00:13:20
so we can see if you can do something a
00:13:22
little bit more pushed a little bit
00:13:24
better
00:13:25
as you go through your keys
00:13:28
like maybe like more hang time
00:13:32
as you go through the keys and then when
00:13:34
you fall down there's a little bit of a
00:13:36
burp
00:13:36
right there you're gonna make sure that
00:13:38
you either exaggerate it so you kind of
00:13:40
like leave it hanging for longer
00:13:42
and then it falls or you make it make it
00:13:46
like a smooth fall down
00:13:47
right as you go through animation
00:13:54
and then when he falls down most likely
00:13:56
he needs to bounce
00:13:57
down we need to have like a
00:14:02
maybe you can bring it to break your
00:14:03
tangents here
00:14:05
make sure that you can actually kind of
00:14:06
like have a little bit of a
00:14:09
hard fall and then you can go into this
00:14:13
this key a little bit harder
00:14:17
so you feel it but you don't really like
00:14:20
kind of like
00:14:20
see it in your animation as you kind of
00:14:22
come down you kind of go pam
00:14:24
and then go down same thing here you
00:14:26
kind of bounce back
00:14:28
do you want that bounce to keep up a
00:14:29
little bit and then go down
00:14:34
yeah you want that as you can see
00:14:37
there's a little bit of something
00:14:40
going down as he as he kind of like
00:14:42
comes through
00:14:43
and then after i actually go through
00:14:45
every single channel
00:14:47
on that one and that controller and i
00:14:49
clean everything
00:14:50
i would go into the next one now there's
00:14:52
going to be times that you're going to
00:14:54
have a controller that depends on others
00:14:56
so for example the spine
00:14:57
and i'll show you guys here quickly uh
00:15:00
the spine
00:15:02
here in this case this this character
00:15:03
only has two
00:15:05
but this oh no actually has three so
00:15:08
these three controllers here
00:15:10
they are normally related right because
00:15:13
when you
00:15:13
like bend your spine you always do it
00:15:16
this way wait let me just i think is
00:15:20
this
00:15:21
this one and that one yeah
00:15:26
yeah so when you bend your spine you
00:15:27
always do it that way right you
00:15:29
kept the three controllers and you
00:15:30
connect them so
00:15:32
they are going to be correlated so you
00:15:34
can actually go
00:15:36
through every single controller here for
00:15:39
example rotate
00:15:40
rotate and
00:15:50
there you go so when you go rotate
00:15:54
and then rotate and then
00:15:57
rotate you want to pick up those three
00:15:59
controllers at all times and see what
00:16:01
happens
00:16:02
together and see what happens together
00:16:05
as
00:16:05
they go through so i can see that
00:16:07
there's some dirt right there
00:16:09
that are happening between the three and
00:16:12
what is this uh i forgot to actually
00:16:15
kind of like set auto tangent on this
00:16:16
one but
00:16:17
there's a little something going on
00:16:20
right there and like if i delete it
00:16:22
that better yeah there's a little bit of
00:16:25
rotation
00:16:26
over there so you can actually delete
00:16:29
that see how that feels
00:16:30
make sure that everything is kind of
00:16:32
nice
00:16:33
same thing when you actually start kind
00:16:34
of like going through and
00:16:36
exaggerating things make sure you select
00:16:40
the keys that you have keyed and
00:16:41
actually making the difference make sure
00:16:43
you kind of like select them and
00:16:44
move them at the same time as you are
00:16:48
moving your keys same thing here as you
00:16:50
go through
00:16:51
make sure that when you exaggerate
00:16:53
anything
00:16:55
that you do it in tandem that you do it
00:16:57
together
00:16:58
it's gonna get to a point you're gonna
00:16:59
have to offset those keys to make sure
00:17:02
that you have the overlap of the spine
00:17:04
but as a first pass you need to make
00:17:06
sure that they're all together because
00:17:07
you key them all together when you're
00:17:09
doing the blocking
00:17:10
at least you do it like i do so that's
00:17:12
about it
00:17:13
that is kind of how you know that you
00:17:15
can go into spline
00:17:17
make sure that you add enough
00:17:19
information
00:17:20
into your shots before you hit that
00:17:23
spline button
00:17:24
because if you don't and if you actually
00:17:26
go into spline when you have very little
00:17:28
keys and you're trying to sort out your
00:17:29
animation
00:17:31
when you are in your graph editor that
00:17:33
is basically
00:17:34
the most complicated way to go about it
00:17:37
and the reason why i know this
00:17:38
is because i did it that way and i
00:17:42
would swear the 20 year old me
00:17:46
i would swear that if i could actually
00:17:48
figure out the graph editor
00:17:50
i could animate completely in the graph
00:17:53
editor
00:17:54
and that didn't turn out to be true
00:17:56
because you need years and years with a
00:17:58
graph editor in order to find out
00:17:59
exactly what
00:18:00
each channel is doing and for you to
00:18:03
almost know that
00:18:04
by deleting some keys or adding some
00:18:06
keys or moving things around
00:18:07
you can start getting manipulating your
00:18:09
animation a little bit more
00:18:11
but when you get started for you to
00:18:13
actually get your keys and see your keys
00:18:15
in your
00:18:15
viewport and your timeline at all times
00:18:18
is the best way for you to get the most
00:18:20
out of your animation
00:18:21
because what's going to happen is that
00:18:22
over time in years
00:18:24
you will know what the graph editor is
00:18:26
doing behind the scenes
00:18:28
while your animation is playing in your
00:18:29
viewport
00:18:31
and when you get to that point that's
00:18:33
when you can actually play around with
00:18:34
the graph editor but to get started
00:18:36
as somebody that hasn't really animated
00:18:38
or has done anything
00:18:40
animating the more traditional way of
00:18:41
actually setting poses
00:18:43
everywhere in order to get your
00:18:44
animations as smooth as possible
00:18:46
is the best way that you can get the
00:18:47
most bang for the buck so
00:18:49
the best way for you to think about it
00:18:51
is almost like traditional animation
00:18:53
how 2d animators used to animate before
00:18:57
sheet of paper like a little pencil and
00:19:00
then
00:19:00
do one drawing at a time eventually
00:19:03
between the main animator
00:19:04
and the in-betweener they would have one
00:19:07
frame in every single key
00:19:10
to make sure that they could actually
00:19:12
get the smooth motion
00:19:13
of the animation so if you think about
00:19:15
it that way
00:19:17
you will find out that your animations
00:19:19
will need a lot of work and a lot of
00:19:21
poses and a lot of keys
00:19:22
in order for you to give enough
00:19:24
information to maya which is your
00:19:26
in-betweener that doesn't know how to do
00:19:27
it properly
00:19:29
uh for maya to actually um get you in
00:19:32
between to look amazing
00:19:33
right because if you work with maya and
00:19:35
give as much as much information to maya
00:19:37
as possible
00:19:38
maya will help you with your animations
00:19:41
because then you can go to your graph
00:19:42
editor and then start actually
00:19:44
manipulating your tangents
00:19:45
and making sure that it adds to
00:19:47
animation and doesn't detract from your
00:19:49
animation
00:19:49
and that's where you want to be at all
00:19:51
times and that's all i have for you guys
00:19:54
i hope it helps i hope it was useful as
00:19:56
always major thanks to my patreons to my
00:19:58
the people that helped me every single
00:20:00
month and kind of support me for
00:20:02
me to keep going with this channel and
00:20:04
thanks for autodesk to actually support
00:20:06
this series as always make sure that you
00:20:10
keep on animating
00:20:11
keep focused and stay well till next
00:20:13
time
00:20:18
peace
00:20:22
you
