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View Full Version : How useful are non-linear animation tools?

Morganism
10-28-2003, 05:16 PM
Hey, animators! How useful do you find non-linear animation to be?
I'm learning about Maya's Trax editor, I've never really used it before. It's neat and all, but is it practical in a production environment? For film, most shots seem like they are better off constructed uniquely without any repetition or reused animation. Maybe it's better for games, or lower budget productions?
I think most softwares have a similar function, I don't know what they would be called, though. Do you guys use these tools?
JA-forreal
10-30-2003, 11:38 PM
Well I'm new to this 3d character animation stuff. But I find that with a good rig setup and Ik chain, setting up poses and coping poses works like editing video frame sequences. You can mix and match entire sequences, copy poses, flip poses. It's amazing what you can do with very little 3d animation knowledge. It's almost too easy to make the basic standard animation stuff like dancing cans and whatnot that we love to animate. And mix this with non-linear lip syncing.........sweet. I would have hated character animation without non-linear animation tools.

You have to get your hands on good 3d animation books that cover the subject for your software, online docs, etc. And you have to study a good rig that is made for this process.

I hope this helps you to jump into it. It's like edgeloop modeling. It seems silly to model meshes any other way than edgeloops once you get the process down.
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