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View Full Version : When to move a rig's 'root' during animation

Wibbs
07-21-2008, 10:49 AM
Hi all,

I've been playing around with a few free rigs in Maya, and I have a question. Say for example I'm animating a character walking across a room. Now, I could do this without touching the characters root position, just moving the pelvis/spine and keying these in for each frame. However, I'm not sure if this is the easiest/simplest way of doing it. Should I be keying the root and moving this as the character moves? This seems clunky, because each time you reposition the root, it messes up the X,Y,Z displacements of limbs as these are relative to the root position.

Can anyone offer some advice?

Thanks in advance,

Wibbs
smuzzler
07-21-2008, 08:37 PM
Never move the Root. Only move the root to set up the position of your character in the scene.
thebeesneeze
07-22-2008, 01:09 PM
Agreed! the root can be your best friend. Or your worst enemy! For every problem it solves it can create two more.

Having said that there is a time and place for both. If your character were to walk across the room, there's nothing wrong with looping the cycle and animating the root. If he has to stop, then your going to get into some trouble. Making the root stop and the body stop in sync, and keeping it natural, is some tricky business. But not impossible.

Different techniques for different situations unfortunately. But in my day to day work, I use both.
DevIII
07-22-2008, 06:08 PM
I for one try to never animate my pivots. When I feel the desire I just use linked dummy objects instead. But after a similar thread in the character rigging section I’m starting to feel alone in that practice so perhaps it’s getting out dated or something.
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