So I was starting to get the feeling that I was the only one who just grabs the limbs and moves them where I want them. I've never had trouble with gimbal lock, and it takes long enough to get these CG puppets into good poses as it is, but since everyone apparently thinks it's a good idea to rotate 1 axis at a time I was going to beat my head against for another try.
But aha! I come across a Cameron Fielding post and bing he says I can ignore it, yay. Just rotate in local mode (which I have been doing unknowingly anyway) and run Euler filter if there's a problem. Just do what you want and let Maya play math by itself. Thank you! I just want to animate, I can learn all that technical stuff, but I only learn as much as I need to get back to what I care about, the animation.
The elegant solution is the correct one. (a lesson I have to keep relearning) in other words: do what feels right for you.
(another example of that is that I finally got that "block a ton of poses" workflow to work for me, I had dutifully tried to apply it before (Animation Mentor is a big fan of it) but it just dragged, but finally watching some Jason Ryan webinar's it clicked and now it's easy and flows and is fun and not tedious)
You'll be more productive doing what feels right to you, then doing what is supposed to be the 'right' way. And if your being more productive you'll get yourself further along the path until maybe you can see the 'right way' from an angle that it makes sense to you. Do whatever helps you get the most keyframe miles under your belt fastest.
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4 comments:
Agreed! Whatever works for each individual is the way to go for them. I myself don't use gimbal mode (except for a few instances here and there). I found it helpful to map the euler filter to a hotkey (mine's ctrl + "o").
Hehe. Your right Alonso. What works for you is what work.
In my new job, hardly anyone uses weighted curves in the graph editor. But I love em. I like how you can flatten a whole bunch of tangents (even a whole rig), free the weight and pull them all out with shift held down to create an ease out, or push them all in with shift held down to create an ease in (or use both in combination).
I do use gimbal rotation and rotate on one axis a lot of the time though. When I find it best to use is one breakdowns. Lets say I'm doing a head turn and I want the head to look down a little as it turns so it moves in an arc. If I have the rotation tool set to gimbal and just rotate it forward on one axis then it only makes a key on that axis, if I was in local mode it would key all of em. Then when I come back later to polish things up I find it simpler because the curve that creates that arc is easily distinguishable from the others that create the side to side movement.
All that said, if I do end up in a spot where the isn't a gimbal axis in the direction I want to rotate (something that happens a lot with the wrists on the rigs I'm currently using) I often switch over to local, rotate and then use Euler to fix any problems.
Like you say, its about what clicks with your way of thinking. What matters is that you move forward :)
yeah man!
Do what ever you gota do...I move em any way I can to get them posed then - Use the Euler filter as well.
I dont have alot of issues with it to begin with anyways.
jriggity
i go back and forth between gimble and local, depending on the animation. sometimes once you've applied the euler filter, your rotations are now in a pretty rotated state...i tend to go in and rotate in euler mode, because if you do it with local, maya will place them between 0-360, causing you to constantly run the euler filter to take out the pops.
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