repost...override animation layers

I've used this trick when I've had to deal with mocap, but find it's really useful for trying out a new take in an animation, especially one that's a bit overworked. Once there's a lot of keys down, it can be hard to be courageous and really make strong decisions regarding posing and timing for fear that you'll lose the work you have. This can be counter to doing good animation, since poses and timing can ALWAYS be strengthened and improved.

I'm not sure how widely known this technique is, since I just stumbled upon it myself, but in case it's of use to someone, I thought I'd post it.

I had this mocap lying around (clips below).
This sea of data is counter to any kind of keyframing, and reducing it manually is very slow, however Maya now has animation layers.

Let's start by grabbing all our control objects (selection sets are good for this sort of thing) and clicking the anim radio button.

Still with me? With your controls selected, click that blue sphere with a cryptic yellow star. This allows you to key these objects on a new layer.

Turn the weight to ZERO, and in the layers drop down, set the layer mode to be OVERRIDE. What this does is overrides all animation in the layer below with the animation you currently are keying. Since we're at zero on the weight, the layer doesn't actually do anything until the weight is on. (1=on, 0=off, that is)

Now I'm going to go through the animation and stamp down the keys I want. In a way, reverse engineering keyframing over our mocap. When we're done, turn the weight back to 1. This kills a lot of detail in the animation, but if recorded in an artful manner, saves the right keys.

That's it in a nutshell. Now if you play the animation, it's more clear, easier to see the main beats, and easier to retime and alter key poses.

This is also useful for revising sections of your animation. Do the above setup, but set a zero key 1 frame before you begin altering the animation, then weight to 1, then grab frames, set a weight to 1 key, then a zero key and you're good to go.

clips to come.

Wayne Gilbert on Posing

A small read but huge in inspiration is Wayne Gilbert's Simplified Drawing for Planning Animation, which, as advertised, does what it says. He provides a visual shorthand for conveying weight, attitude and expression. Below are a few scans from some of the pages. A few of you asked how you should draw for these pose drawings, and look no further...the blow drawings are sparse on detail, but convey exactly what one needs for animation.

This last one is fantastic...even with a stick figure, everything essential can be conveyed.