Keith Lango pointers

This week, we were given a lecture consisting of some top tips top tips to student animators on spline polish and workflow. Some great advice was given, which I found extremely useful. Cleanup 1) When cleaning up curves, start from the root of a bone chain out. The action of the chain root is amplified along the chain. 2) Delete if necessary. "Take away the noise", curves can be simplifed by removing any unneeded keys that have little or no bearing on the curves trajectory. This greatly reduces any stray wobbles, or "noise". 3) Watch out for "Mushy Motion", when converting curves from linear to spline, it's very easy for overshoots and undershoots to appear, instead of nice, crisp peaks and bends in your curves. These overshoots can make your animation seem drifty, and sloppy. Remove and fix as necessary. 4) Define curves in linear. Never jump straight from stepped to spline. Workflow 1) Stop taking captures or previews after every tweak! Take on capture, then study. Study hard, take notes on what needs fixing and changing. Only take another capture, once you've worked through said fix list. 2) Work like a sculptor, details come last, start rough, and build up your animation in layers. "Detail is just icing, and icing needs good cake". 3) Stop and think! These pointers may seem obvious, but I really did need to hear them. It's easy to get bogged down by the sheer complexity of animation, and sometimes, the simple things need bringing into view again.