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View Full Version : Easy way to create a character "hold" key?

bugzilla
10-13-2004, 08:26 PM
Character animation question here. An important part of character animation is creating a "hold", where the character maintans a strong pose for a few frames so the audience can easily pick up on what the action is.

I have been creating "holds" by hitting Enter to bring up Make Key requester and selecting make key for "selected items and descendants" (I have the root of the object heirarchy selected0, then make key again with the same settings for a few frames later.

The problem is that the keys made default to TCB spline mode so instead of the character holding it's pose, it bobs up and down during the hold. I have to go into the Graph editor and hunt down every problem key and manually set it to Linear.

Is there a simpler way to do this?

Thank you.
SplineGod
10-13-2004, 10:02 PM
select all the items youre keying and make a channel set in the graph editor. You can pull up those sets whenever you want and adjust the keys at the same time.
Remi
10-13-2004, 10:09 PM
Moving holds can be accomplished in many different ways...overshoot is a common method....also putting your chars cog on a small figure eight motion path works as well and is also used alot....act things out...see how you hold things...see what keeps moving see what doesn't....study, research, learn from watching things from different studios...pixar, don bluth, dreamworks, blue sky...you'll learn alot if you just pay attention...good luck man.
Remi
10-13-2004, 10:11 PM
Also....animating with your keys stepped is far more intuitive and makes it real easy to reduce the amount of keys and also work out timing....with very little needed to make major changes...block your animations first...everything....anticipation, overshoot, breakdowns, inbetweens, ect. Then when you're happy with the way it looks then go in and change the to TCB....hope that helps as well. Animation isn't easy....it takes alot of hard work and dedication...and it isn't something you can't just do willy nilly and expect good results.
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