EVERY ANIMBOT TOOL EXPLAINED - 3D Animation Tutorial

if you want to be able to animate faster without having to worry about all the tedious technical stuff then you've probably stumbled across a tool set called animbot if you haven't annabot is an animation toolset with over 150 useful features sounds great right but also pretty overwhelming when you start looking at them in your scene whether you took the plunge and bought the tool set or are just mildly interested in what it can do stick around because this video is chock full of information on how to utilize this massive plugin if you're new here hi i'm skitty today we're gonna go over the functionality of all of animbot's features and some practical uses to add them into your workflow this video is going to be pretty dense so use the time codes below if you're looking for a specific function i know that this has been said a few times in the past but i just want to iterate here that if you're still learning animation and i mean we're all technically always learning how to animate but if you're at the beginning of your animation journey i don't recommend jumping in and utilizing this tool set most of these features are things that you can do manually with a lot more time and patience and it's crucial that you understand how these things work before using a cheat sheet when you land a job at a studio more often than not you're not going to have access to animbot's toolset so you'll have to know how to get through your work without it or with the perspective studio's in-house tool set instead if you wait until you land a gig to learn these things you risk jeopardizing yourself since you'll have the newly added weight of studio deadlines without knowing the ins and outs of what these tools are doing for you you also won't know how to utilize them to their fullest potential just don't be lazy about it and make sure that you're comfortable eating vanilla ice cream without adding the fancy sprinkles then again i'm not your mom so get out there and make your own choices another thing i want to note before we dive in the rigs that i'm using throughout this video are the newly released mechamex family pack put out by frigging awesome studios this video is not sponsored in any way but josh from freaking awesome was just that and he gave us a code so that you guys can get three dollars off if you buy the family pack of mechamex i can already say just from the process of making this video that i highly recommend this rig pack they have a ton of features that i've yet to see on rigs outside of studio rigs so if you'd like to check out these rigs for yourself type code skitty at checkout and you'll get three dollars off the family pack so thanks again josh from friggin awesome and with that out of the way let's get into everything animbot can do when you install animbot it will create this toolbar right above your timeline it's a panel just like any other though so you could rip it off and put it under the timeline or up by your shelves leave it as a floating window or wherever else you want the first button on the shelf is animbot's plugin menu if we hit about we can see what version of animbot we're currently using i'm using the eco version which is currently stable at 1.0.1 next in our list is our preferences menu we've got lots of neat things in here if you aren't picky about your preferences and you just want to skip to the meat and potatoes of the tools then click the time code listed here under the animbot menu we can choose whether or not it launches the plugin when you first open maya multi-frame xform lightning mode is something you'll want to leave on by default we'll talk about xforms later but essentially this is going to let them calculate at 6 times the speed only uncheck this box if you're having issues with the xforms calculations show tool tips is self-explanatory leave this checked on if you want to be able to hover over each button and see what it does the neat thing about this though is that on the tooltips window we have options to set up hotkeys from the functions it's describing or create a shelf button from it once you're familiar with anabot's features you might want to turn tips off if they get in the way timeline color feedback another tool we'll talk about later on only turn it off if you're having issues use icons nodes in outliner gives animbot its logo as a node icon in the outliner in color keys we have an option to smart tint keys this is so when you use the various versions on tween machine built into animbot the keys it creates change color to easily distinguish between your key poses and your in-betweens on the timeline in selection tools we can give the pop-up menus activated by hotkeys some transparency and enable disable selection display anabot has a more powerful motion trail than maya's native trails in motion trail we have a lot of customization options with camera space the motion trail will stay in the same space of your camera view even when there's animation on the camera 12 24 3 48 and 6 reduces how many keys are visible on the trail at a time to keep your workspace cleaner all shows all of it you can turn off tracking of specific axes balanced faster interaction and faster update changes what parts of the trail you prefer to update the fastest dashed shows different segments of the trail in different colors and depth temperature is a really neat one the color of the trail gets warmer with a gradient from blue to red the closer the trail gets to the camera dots puts dots on the trail to visualize your spacing gimbal lock temperature works like depth temperature the difference being it measures how close your values are getting to gimbal lock noise temperature gets warmer when it detects jenks and pops in your animation spacing temperature gets warmer the more spacing that exists between keys this is great for making sure your spacing eases properly thick makes the motion trail thicker a-tools switches your motion trail to act as it did during the a-tools days in case you are already familiar with that setup lastly for motion trails we have transparency fall off which makes both ends of the trail gradient in transparency so you can have better focus on the chunk you're working on next is the time bookmarks tab affected by nudge tools is on by default allowing your bookmarks to be shifted around just like your keys with animbot's nudge tools more on that later showtime bookmarks toggles the visibility of your bookmarks on and off under timeline extra tools we have a checkbox for auto load timeline sound this makes sure that your sound will appear on the timeline when you open a scene older versions of maya had to be loaded separately display top waveform changes the view of the waveform on your timeline to show only the top half rather than the full track then we have extra tools in this category we have an option for auto clear channel box selection this is super handy when you select some transforms in the channel box to manipulate them if you have this option checked on they will automatically deselect when you click on another control or click on the manipulator autohide static anim curves automatically hides the curves in your graph editor that aren't doing anything even if they have keys on them auto load timeline sound is also in this menu channel box selection timeline highlight highlights the timeline anytime you have transform selected in the channel box then we have display top waveform again and a really useful one at the bottom here tumble around selection this feature automatically changes your camera to rotate around whatever object you have selected kind of like when you hit f on your keyboard but without zooming in on it the menus for channel box extra tools viewport extra tools and graph editor extra tools have options in them we covered in extra tools just broken down into more specific categories in global tools we have smart oiler filter this is a feature i recommend leaving on it automatically applies an euler filter when making adjustments with animbot's tools then we have smart tint keys again the last preferences category is anim recovery anim recovery is one of the biggest reasons to use animbot so it's highly recommended that you leave it checked on it creates checkpoints to be used as backups in case of a maya crash incremental saves can't always save you so more backup opportunities is always a plus the cleanup checkpoints option is checked by default which removes any backups that are over 7 days old if you aren't a frequent maya user you might want to turn this off just in case save anchor checkpoints is an option just in case you notice maya crashes more often when you have anim recovery running without getting too technical you won't be able to roll back animation versions as consistently but you'll still be able to load from a crash just the same that's it for the preferences menu but not quite it for preferences back in the animbot menu under preferences we have a menu for hotkeys once you know which tools you keep coming back to this is the menu to really streamline them into your workflow we open the hotkey editor to a really handy recommended hotkeys list type whatever hotkeys you want in the boxes and hit apply when you're done of course you can turn any anibot tool into a hotkey using the list of categories on the left but it's nice to see the frequently used tools in a recommended list if you aren't sure if a command is already used for a vanilla maya hotkey you can always go up to windows settings preferences hotkey editor to see what commands are free anything in this aqua color on the graphic has at least one hotkey bound to it but you can hover your mouse over each key to figure out what it is for example we can see that l has a hotkey but hovering over it we see that there's no command for shift plus l or control plus l so those are still available for use and if you're like me and afraid of ruining maya's default settings go up to the cog next to the hotkey set and hit duplicate this creates a duplicate of maya's default hotkeys accessible from the drop down menu so you have no risk of breaking anything anyway back to animbot next in the animbot menu under hotkeys is the help menu this is actually a really useful help screen there's videos gifs and explanations on every tool back in the animbot menu we can check for updates activate our license connect with the anabot community and send bug reports in the system menu we can create a toggle button to turn anabot on and off restart the tool unload it uninstall it and open the debug console now that we got all the customization out of the way let's talk about the tools themselves i'm going to go in order from left to right for the most part just to keep it simple but there's a couple of tools that should be used when setting up your scene that i want to get into first the first thing you should do when bringing a character into your scene is create a unique default pose not a t-pose but an idle pose that tells us who your character is maybe a slight smirk or a slight furrow depending on how extreme your character is but typically just a relaxed pose with no emotion once you have your character posed out right click on this reset button and click snapshot preferred default pose this is going to help us with some calculations on a few tools later it's also useful if you want to reset your pose to default without starting over from scratch with a t-pose a simple click on the reset button will bring whatever controls you have selected back to default another neat thing about this is that default poses work across rigs so long as they use the same naming conventions by right clicking we can also reset individual transforms anabot actually has more tools than can fit on one shelf so if you left click anywhere on the shelf we can slide the buttons left and right to reveal more over on the right there's an icon of a person with a camera right click on that with all of your character's controls selected to get some more snapshot options this is another place we can create our default pose snapshot anabot creates a base of reference for opposite controls and mirroring by default but in the case your rig doesn't follow traditional naming conventions we have the option to create these tables manually these are things you'll want to set up before diving into animating now that we're all set up let's get back to the next tool on the list increase and decrease precise transform this tool is for making precise adjustments to your controls the number in this box here is the value the control will be affected by with the controls you want to adjust selected we can add negative values with the minus button here and positive values with the plus button on the other side if you only want to affect certain transforms just highlight what you want in the channel box before hitting the plus and minus buttons and it will only affect the highlighted areas 0.5 is the default adjustment number but you can type whatever number you want in this box hovering over the box we can use the arrows to increase and decrease the value and also click on this little arrow at the top to get a menu full of quick access values could save you from having to type common numbers every time the next tool is these two arrows here called nudge left and nudge right these are buttons for shifting the timing of your keys in the graph editor with the current time hovering on a key you want to move hit nudge left or nudge right not only will your key shift one frame to the left or right your current time will shift with it if you move to an empty frame past where your key is and hit the nudge right button the key to the left of the current time that is closest to where you are will snap to that frame the same can be done in the opposite way to move your key earlier using nudge left if we right click on the nudge tools we can choose to nudge all the keys on the selected control or nudge all the keys in the scene the box beside the nudge tool is where you set how many keys to shift by just like with increase and decrease precise transform we can use the arrows to add and subtract from the value or use the arrow above the box to select a value from the list unlike the last tool we also have an arrow underneath the value box to expand the tool the arrows we were using before are still here on the very left followed by some other tools the next two arrows on the left are nudge left and nudge right off center for this one you'll want to select the section of your curve in the graph editor you're looking to manipulate then by clicking on the nudge time left and nudge time right buttons your curves will be nudged to the left and right while keeping your keys intact the next two arrows are for nudging all the keys on the selected controls like we did previously by right-clicking on the arrows and the following two are the same but for nudging all the keys in the scene on the other side of the value box we have insert and remove in between clicking these will add or remove empty frames in between your keys quickly adjusting your spacing these always work to the right so if your keys are on ones and you hit insert in between you'll get a new empty frame to the right of your current time if you select only one transform in the graph editor or channel box the in between will only add to that one transform the last two arrows in the nudge category inserts and removes in-betweens on all of the curves in your scene if any of these tools sound like something you'll use on a regular basis and you want easier access to them and this goes for all the expandable tools you can click these circles above the tools you like the ones with the white circles will stay visible when you click the arrow again to collapse the tool if you change your mind on any of them you can always click the circle again to remove them the next tool is reset pose which we've already used to create our character specific default pose so let's click the arrow underneath the button beside reset pose called shared keys to expand its tool menu now alongside resetting our character to our saved default pose we have buttons to reset translations rotations and scales separately in the case where your character has other attributes in the channel box we can click this button here to reset translations rotations and scales combined without touching the extra stuff beside that we have our button to snapshot preferred default pose this one has a little arrow above it for a menu that allows us to restore the rig's default pose back to its default for the controls that we have selected and an option to delete the pose we had stored previously last in this category is the share keys tool this one is very useful if you've been setting keys on controls without selecting everything and want to control that you haven't been using to have keys on the same frames as everything else it can be a pain to go through and set them yourself with the control you're transferring from and the control you're transferring to selected click the share keys button and blank keys will be shared between the controllers by default it will share all of the keys but you can specify sections to transfer by highlighting the area on your timeline or selecting the key range in the graph editor this also works if both controls already have keys it will just set additional keys on frames that one control has them but the other doesn't the next tool is our first section of sliders let's start with the green slider called ease in and out or as i like to call it ease machine patent pending these green sliders work similar to the classic maya plugin called tween machine if you don't know what tween machine is i've made a tutorial on that in the past so i'll leave a link in the description but to keep it brief tween machine recalculates your keys using simple math it uses a percentage slider from negative 100 to positive 100 negative 100 being pose a and positive 100 being pose b to create a new or recalculated in between it's essentially a quick and dirty way to creating eases and overshoots ease machine patent pending works similar but with the sole purpose of softening your eases it completely ignores the values of the keys you have selected and rolls them off in a smooth transition into the next key use the slider for negative values to create an ease out using your selected keys and positive values to use your keys for an ease in if we click the arrow below the slider to expand the tool we get so many extra sliders available to us that it creates an additional row on animbot on the very left we have our ease machine and next to that we have a slider called noise wave this is useful if you need to do something like a shaky cam it adds noise to your keys taking the key's initial position into account the next slider is time off center this slider keeps all of your keys on the same frames but moves the values to shift an action to happen earlier or later it would be the same as moving all of your keys left or right on the timeline but without the keys physically moving the next slider is called pull push this slider is used to exaggerate or tone down a pose or section of animation if you're toning a pose down setting the slider to negative 100 will create a straight line in the graph editor from one pose to the next plus 100 will exaggerate the pose to double what the values were initially if you select a chunk of keys in the graph editor and set the value to negative 100 all of those keys will become a straight line from one pose to the next next is the slider for simplify and bake keys this slider requires keys to be selected in the graph editor or on the timeline for it to work with your keys selected move the slider to the left and an algorithm will start removing keys from the highlighted area while making sure your curves are kept intact if you move the slider to the right it will start baking them the more you push the slider to the right the more keys it will add the more you pull the slider to the left the more keys it will try to get rid of keep in mind that some of these keys may be added as breakdown keys you'll know you have breakdown keys if any of your keys on the timeline turn green maya treats breakdown keys differently than regular keys and tries to maintain a relative distance between the adjacent keys when moving things around you can either right click on a breakdown key go up to keys and select convert to key to turn it into a regular red key or just be mindful that maya will shift that green key around if you start moving the key surrounding it the next slider is called smooth rough just as it sounds it can soften your curves or make it more harsh if you have too much noise in your curve the smooth side of the slider can soften that out if you need to make it harsher without adding actual noise you can use the rough side of the slider if you have dead keys and need to make a moving hold the smooth side of the slider can help with that as well our next slider is called scale from average this tool scales your keys up and down based on the average key's value pushing the slider all the way to the right doubles the curve and pulling the slider all the way to the left inverts the curve that's a pretty convenient way to reverse your animation next we have a slider called scale from default this is one of the tools we needed to create our default pose snapshot for using the slider will scale your current pose based on the values in our saved default pose this is really useful for toning down our poses or exaggerating them in a more natural way the next slider is a very context-specific tool called scale from frame this slider scales your keys based on specific frame values you set yourself hovering over the slider we can see the left side of the slider is using the pose on frame 1 and the right side of the slider is using the pose from frame 120 we can change these frames to whatever we want by clicking on the number moving the mouse to the frame we want to set it to and left clicking again now the slider will blend in between those two selected frames the last two sliders in the ease machine category are called scale from neighbor left and scale from neighbor right these sliders are designed to scale the selected keys based on the value of the key to the left or to the right of the selection depending on which slider you are using the main purpose of this is to intensify your eases and overshoots to or from adjacent keys let's collapse the ease category now and take a look at the yellow sliders the one on our shelf by default is the classic tween machine plug-in it functions as you would expect it to but i find animbot's tweener to be more user-friendly than classic tween machine because you can watch your keys adjust in real time while moving the slider instead of regular tween machine where you have to keep clicking on the slider to see the results the main purpose of tween machine is to create precise in-between keys or to very quickly rough in the first pass of your breakdowns this saves a ton of time and helps you get a feel for the overall piece much earlier now let's expand the tweener category to reveal the rest of our yellow sliders our regular tweener will appear on the left of the list and beside it we have a slider for tweener world space remember this one if you have issues with foot sliding during a walk or run cycle it works like tween machine but it ignores the rig's hierarchy and blends the poses in world space so if you need a foot to stay locked in a cycle you can pull the slider all the way to one side to snap it to the previous position in world space you can also try this method if you're chasing out gimbal lock the third slider is called blend to buffer buffer curves are a feature in the graph editor that take a snapshot of your curve so you can see the difference when you make changes so if we select a curve we can go up and click buffer curve snapshot up at the top and start tweaking the curve now we have visual feedback in the graph editor of the changes we made now we can click the swap buffer curve button to toggle between the changes in our viewport the blend to buffer slider is exactly how it sounds it's a way to blend closer to or further away from the pose on our buffer curves the next slider is called blend to default this is a useful slider for toning down or exaggerating your pose based on the default pose we saved with the snapshot preferred default pose button next is the slider for blend to ease similar to the ease machine slider it takes your selected keys and blends them to an ease in or an ease out depending what side of the slider you push it to the big difference between ease machine and blend to ease is that ease machine ignores the keys that are already on that frame and forces them into an ease with blend to ease it creates an ease blending from your keys current value maintaining some of its curve unless you pull it all the way to 100 of course next we have blend to frame similar to scale from frame in the green slider category we can pick two frames and move the slider to blend between them the most useful instance for this is when blending lip sync shapes having lip sync extremes on either side of the slider we can blend our current frame shapes into either side of the extreme just like with the other yellow sliders current frames values are kept intact as a starting point whereas the green sliders disregard that value entirely next is blend to frame world space another great slider when dealing with foot locking on a cycle it ignores the rig's hierarchy and blends to the specific frames in world space next up is blend to neighbors this tool blends your current key to the keys on the left and right of it similar to the tweener but for a more fine-tuned result beside that we have blend to neighbors world space the same function but again ignoring the hierarchy to pose in world space next we have blend to infinity this is useful if you need your curves to just keep going in either direction blend to infinity world space is the same deal but again ignoring the hierarchy and calculating in world space the last yellow slider we have is blend to undo this one still messes with my brain when you move a control to a new position anabot remembers where it used to be so that i can blend between the two positions that was a lot of sliders did it all make sense it's okay if you don't remember all of them you'll get the hang of it with experimenting over time if you forget what each one does you can always hover over them to get the brief description or just re-watch this video because it's not going anywhere let's move away from sliders for a bit and talk about some tangents these eight orange buttons here are for our tangents let's click the expand arrow though to bring up a few more that are hidden by default our first option here is called cycle match tangent this helps us line up our tangents so we don't get any weird eases or pops when looping a cycle by default highlighting an entire curve and clicking this button will shift the end key to match the starting key but if we right click on the tool we have options for adjusting both the tangents on the first and last keys next we have best guess tangent this button is similar to hitting maya's native auto tangent button but takes your keys relationships into a count making it a more reliable option it can target your whole curve or by using the right click menu we can target specific areas our third tangent is polished tangent polished tangent's job is to apply the tangents it determines will give you the smoothest transitions between keys bounce tangents turns your selected tangents into the perfect snappy down position for a bouncing ball it eliminates all easing on either side of the key all the rest of the tangent keys here being auto spline clamped linear flat stepped and plateaued tangents are all shortcuts for maya's native tangent buttons they act exactly as you're used to don't forget you can right-click on any of these tangent buttons to bring up a menu to target specific parts of your curves beside our tangents we have three colored icons here called tint keys red tint keys yellow and tint keys green by clicking on these tools we can change the colors of our keys on the timeline to better keep track of what things are doing keeping your key poses a different color from your breakdowns can help you quickly identify what each key is doing we can also delete keys based on their color so it may be useful to do experimental changes in a different color just in case it doesn't pan out you can remove it from your scene in a single click each color has the remove feature when bringing up the right-click menu but the tintkey's red button has an extra function in its menu to change all keys in the scene to red this is handy if you ended up with a bunch of breakdown keys in your scene and you want them converted to regular keys which you will end up with if you tint any of your keys green maya is unfortunately limited to the three colors red yellow and green we already know that maya treats green keys as breakdown keys which react differently when shifting keys around on the timeline or in the graph editor because of this we can't actually tint a key green without maya turning it into a breakdown so unless you're okay with breakdown keys it's better to stick to just red and yellow tinting keys has one more button if we expand its tool group called smart tint keys by clicking on this tool so that it stays highlighted your keys will automatically be tinted different colors when using annabot's tools baked keys are automatically tinted green and smart set key will set a color based on the color of the surrounding keys after tint keys our next tool group is for selections so let's click the arrow to expand the category our first selection button is called selection display it has a number on the icon that tells us how many objects or controls we currently have selected which is a great way to quickly tell if maybe you forgot to select a control you needed by clicking or right clicking on selection display we get this neat little pop-out window similar to the outliner but it shows a list only of the controls that are currently selected this is really useful if you need to go in and only select a couple of the controls to tweak something but still want to be able to go back to the full selection afterwards next is selection sets selection sets are similar to the anim school picker tool if there's a bunch of controls that you find yourself selecting in a group frequently you can save yourself some time by selecting them and hitting the selection sets button if you don't have any sets saved when you click it you'll be greeted with this pop out to save your current selection as a set type a name in the big green box describing what your group is like for instance face controls pick a color to associate with it and click ok now if you deselect everything and click your set name from the floating window it'll select all the controls that are saved to it you can move the window around wherever you want or close it if it gets in the way when you click the selection sets button again your sets will still be saved to it if we right click on our set in the floating window we have a bunch of options here we can isolate our view to only see the controls of the selected set in our viewport add selected objects to the set or remove them we can replace the contents in the set with what's selected we can change the associated color rename it delete it or delete all of the sets with the same color grouping we also have some more selection sets tool in this floating window the first one here creates a new selection set the next one is smart select sets tab this one is really useful if you have multiple characters in your scene clicking this button will duplicate your selection sets for any additional characters in your scene so you only need to set up the buttons once each character will have its own tab at the top of the floating window next is select set color toggle if you plan on creating a ton of different selection sets then your window is eventually going to become unmanageably large but if you color code your sets into groups clicking select set's color toggle will let you turn the visibility of your set's buttons on and off based on their color groups the last button on the floating shelf is select sets more which has the same tools in it that can be found by right clicking on select sets from the animbot shelf from here we can toggle whether or not the floating window has transparency import and export our selection sets to and from other maya scenes or use the quick import export buttons if you're jumping directly from one maya scene to the next we can delete all of our selection sets at once and restore our selection set floating windows ui back to default the next tool on our shelf besides select sets is select opposite this button swaps out what you have selected between the left and right sides of the rig based on the mirror snapshot we set up near the beginning of this video if we click on select opposite we have this checkbox up here called auto select opposite so any time you select a left or right control anabot also selects the other side for you when auto select opposite is turned on animbot has a flashing icon above select opposite on the shelf just in case you forget you turned it on back in the right-click menu we have an option called add select opposite which is a single use button to select the opposite of what you already have selected we can also deselect controls based on the left and right sides or even the center controls meaning controls that aren't labeled as left or right lastly for this tool we have an option for snapshot opposite controls in case anabot can't pick up on your rig's name and conventions automatically next in line is all of our copy and pasting tools i doubt i need to say this at this point but animbot is smart like really smart if we click this button here we can copy the animation for whatever controls we have selected animbot will store that information for you then we have the options to paste insert or paste replace back into the scene paste insert will paste a chunk of animation in the middle of the existing keys starting on the currently selected frame but while maintaining what's already there and paste replace will replace all of the animation for these controls animation layers included the most notable part of these tools though is that you're not limited by your selected character or even staying within the same scene you can store the animation to paste in a new maya scene or even on an entirely different rig if you're looking to copy a curve from a translate y and want to paste it onto a translate x and you can do that too by right clicking on either copy or paste insert animation we can import and export our animations as dot a and b or animbot files meaning you can even transfer animation between computers of course animation isn't the only thing that animbot can copy and paste our next two buttons in this tool set is copy pose and paste pose just like with copying animation your poses can be pasted on the same character the same scene a different character or an entirely different scene just keep in mind that if you have a couple of controls selected when you hit paste andabot will treat that as you telling it to only paste on those selected controls just like with the copy and pasting animation tools if we right click on the copy post and paste pose icons we have the option to import and export our poses the further we get down this list the more excited i get because these tools are getting more and more useful next up is the mirror pose function as you'd expect if i bring this arm up here and tap the mirror button the other arm pops up into the mirrored position if i right click and hit this auto mirror check box every control i move will be mimicked on the other side automatically back in the right-click menu we have the option to mirror to specific sides which is much more useful than other mirroring tools since it retains the pose on the original side instead of acting as a full mirror the right-click menu also has a button called mirror all keys which mirrors for the entire animation beside mirror pose we have a button called align objects this tool is the answer when you don't want to add a ton of constraints to your scene you can select as many controls or objects as you want and hit the align objects button everything you selected will snap itself to the last thing that was selected you can even highlight a section of the timeline before hitting a line so it will stay aligned on every frame in that range the right-click menu on this tool has a bunch of options as well we can choose to only align the object's position orientation or scale and under that we have a section for all keys this will align the object selected for the entire duration of the timeline rather than a selected portion which can also be applied to just the position orientation or scale at the bottom of the list we have a check box called multi-frame x form lightning mode this should be left checked on because it allows align objects and a few other tools to calculate at roughly six times the speed only uncheck this box if it isn't working properly this next tool is one of the biggest reasons to consider installing animbot in the first place it's that powerful this is the parent constraint but without the constraint the tool is called copy xform relationship and instead of maya creating a node to join two objects together this tool is told what the relationship between two objects is so it can be pasted down the line or to a chunk of time let's expand the group so we can see the hidden tools as well let's say we wanted our character to hold an object while moving like we typically use a constraint for we can go ahead and pose out our character holding the object select the child first followed by the parent just like you would with a constraint and hit the copy x form button now these objects aren't joined so we can still move them around freely from each other but we can paste this relationship anywhere down the line and the child will snap into position with the parent if we paste the relationship to a stretch of time the visual feedback will appear to be constrained but without the restraints we don't even have to paste the relationship to the same objects we can use the copy xform button as a way to copy to other objects or even to other maya scenes if we right click on copy xform relationship to bring up its submenu we can check the box at the top of the list called auto x form relationship what this does is give you temporary visual feedback for making pose adjustments the same way a constraint would if we're just copying and pasting the relationship the objects still move freely from each other but with this checkbox they'll stay connected until you turn it back off just like with the other animbot tools if this option is on we get a little flashing icon above copy x form just in case we forgot to turn it back off back in the menu we have an option called copy x form relationship playback range what this does is stores the relationship between controls or objects for the entire timeline or a highlighted section of it so for instance if you're working with ik arms and need to make pose adjustments to the spine we can store that relationship along the timeline before making our pose adjustments then click paste x form relationship and the arm will snap back to its relative position to the torso we also have the option to paste x form relationships on the next key all keys or to bake while pasting beside copy and paste x form we have tools for copy and paste x form world space these are the same tools as before but instead storing the information in world space this is really useful when snapping new objects to a certain location or even transferring data between controls if you've ever accidentally animated a main control when you meant to animate a secondary one then this tool will fix that for you this also stores the information from all visible animation layers at once so it can be used as a method of pasting to a single clean layer the great thing about this using world space is that it makes it easy to switch from fk to ik just select your fk hand and store its fk position switch to ik and paste the world space position and the line up perfectly all the same sub menu options for the basic copy and paste xform relationship tools are also available for the world space tools let's expand the tool group for the next tool selection attribute space switcher by clicking on the selection attribute space switcher button with some control selected we get this pop out window with a list of our selected controls on it from here we can choose a new rotation order for our controls while keeping your poses intact this is great if you find yourself encountering gimbal lock frequently animbot even tells you which rotation order it recommends and hovering over each order even tells you how likely you are to experience gimbal lock with that rotation order we can also tell it whether to change the order for our current key or for all keys besides selection attribute space switcher we have asset attribute space switcher this is the same tool but it shows a list for everything that can be manipulated in the scene right clicking on either of these tools has an option for the other in the menu so you shouldn't need to have both on the shelf at once the next tool is animbot's final slider blend to mirror this is the same as using the mirror pose button but with the ability to apply it gradually because you might not always want 100 of the pose moving the slider to the right mirrors the pose and moving the slider left pushes your controls away from the mirrored pose if we select only the left side the left side will shift into the right side's position and selecting both will mirror both sides this next tool is a fun one it's called temp pivot and it will save you from needing to create so many locators as the name suggests it creates a temporary pivot point for your object it doesn't change a pivot point for your object or even create a scene node you just tell it where to rotate from and it does magic just select the object you're working with click the temp pivot button and move the manipulator to where and what angle you want to pivot from then just hit your normal wer keys to start pivoting if you deselect the object and select it again you'll be back to your regular manipulator but temp pivot still remembers that pivot point you set just select temp pivot and hit the manipulator hotkey and you'll have it again you can do this for multiple controls and objects at once too bringing up the sub menu has some really cool functions as well if we select more than one control right click the tool and select temp pivot to last object the object that was selected last will become the pivot point for everything else if we select multiple objects and use temp pivot centered the temporary pivot will be put in the center of the object so they rotate around the center temp pivot world space is great if you need to have something hanging from another object it keeps the temp pivot in place in world space even when you switch to new frames toggle edit temp pivot brings up the manipulator we used to make the initial pivot in case you need to adjust it and lastly we can reset temp pivot to its default position this is a very powerful tool that can save you some inconsistencies in your work i highly recommend playing around with them to see what all you can use them for this next tool is simple but it's one of my favorites it's called micro manipulator it turns the sensitivity of your manipulator way down so you can make tiny adjustments without breaking anything next we have global offset this tool is a very easy way to adjust a pose after animation was already done on it normally you would have to create an animation layer shift the pose with the changes you want then merge the layer down with this tool all we have to do is click the icon so the timeline becomes highlighted make your adjustments in the viewport and watch the entire curve in the graph editor shift to match these changes we can even highlight a section of our timeline before opening the tool if we only want to adjust a small section of our animation another personal favorite of mine the next function is motion trail anabot's motion trail is leagues better than maya's native motion trails if you aren't familiar with maya's native motion trails you probably should be it essentially creates a visual arc so you can see how your animation is moving it's useful for finding any jenks and pops in your movements clicking the motion trail icon on the animbot shelf will create a motion trail for the selected object or objects yes you can create multiple motion trails with one click these motion trails are much more responsive when updating an arc in the viewport bringing up the motion trail submenu we have a ton more options to play with we can create trails remove trails we can highlight a selection of the timeline we want the trail to be active for and hit set range if we hit offset we can select the trail we want to offset and move it away from the body to view it better if we turn on orientation tracking the motion trail will get these extra lines in it to show the rotation of the control really useful for fixing sliding on something rolling across the screen or cleaning up an arc on something flipping through the air we have a bunch of style options too we can choose between dashed lines or dots we can make the trail line thicker make it look like the atools version of the trail or change to one of the four types of temperature we talked about back in the preferences section for spacing gimbal lock noise and depth we can change the trail to only show in our viewport a specific number of frames before and after our current frame and toggle the transparency fall off this makes the trail become transparent on its edges or leave it as a blocky line we can lock the camera in space when being viewed on an animated camera and toggling object space will let us track an object's movement isolated from anything it may be constrained to if we expand the motion trail tool group we have some buttons for some of these sub-menu features and also an extra icon at the end of the group called motion trail more in here we can force the trail to refresh and switch between our preferred performance options play around with the three options here and find what feels right for you no matter what the trail will have to make its calculations so it's up to personal preference if you'd rather have the object with no leg with extra leg on the trail let the object leg to make the trail faster or a healthy mix of the two next up is this little stop sign icon here called suspend viewport if your scene is a bit chuggy and you need to make some adjustments in your graph editor you can click this button and the viewport will stop updating with any changes you make you can change as much as you want in the graph editor without maya having to update the viewport for every single tweak which is one of the most time consuming parts of maya then just click the button again when you're done making changes and your viewport will update everything at once if we right click we also have the option to turn on auto suspend viewport which will suspend the viewport anytime it detects it needs more interaction speed our next red tool is called time bookmarks it has an expandable tool group so let's go ahead and click the arrow here to open that up time bookmarks are a way to put tabs in your timeline to break it up into colored and named chunks since we plan on using the tool let's click the second button here with the tiny eyeball on it to turn on bookmark visibility if you find hotkeys easier you can also toggle it by alt plus left clicking the main time bookmarks icon we create bookmarks by highlighting the section of the timeline you want to bookmark and clicking the main bookmarks icon this gives us our creation menu where we can give the bookmark a name and a color labeling your sections this way is handy when you have a large scene to keep track of i'm going to create a few different bookmarks for the sake of example in the sub menu of the main time bookmarks tool there's a checkbox called affected by nudge tools i like to leave this turned on it allows us to nudge the bookmarks themselves on the timeline and even insert remove frames from the bookmarked groups wherever you are in the timeline we can hit this button go to time bookmark to expand the bookmark to the range of your time slider just keep in mind that there's no exit button so you'll have to manually expand your range slider to get back to the full view not a big annoyance but one to be aware of while we're expanded on a bookmark we have two buttons here to switch us to the previous and next bookmarks setting up your bookmarks early can really save you time while navigating through your scene later the icon with the pencil on it is our edit bookmark tool this brings up the creation tab again for whatever bookmark is currently hovered on the timeline so we can rename it or change its color next is the remove time bookmark button just click on the bookmark you want to remove and hit the trash can icon be aware that maya's undo does not place your time bookmarks back you would have to recreate it so just make sure that you want to delete it before you do so next is the time bookmarks panel this is our menu for quick edits on each individual bookmark we can change their colors rename them click go to bookmark for each of them adjust the start and end frames of the bookmark nudge the bookmarks left and right set the bookmarks range based on your highlighted selection on the timeline and remove the bookmark all of these tools are listed for each individual bookmark in the scene lastly if we bring up the sub menu on the main bookmarks tool we can import and export and quick import export our bookmarks our last red icon is called play keys let's go ahead and expand its tool group none of these have a sub menu so we're just going to talk about these six buttons here the first one play keys place the timeline skipping any frames that don't have a key play color keys only place the keys of your selected color then we have play on ones play on twos play on threes and play on fours play on ones is our regular play button where every frame holds for one frame play on fours plays every fourth frame and holds that pose for four frames as you would expect twos and threes do the same things but every second frame would hold for two frames and every third frame would hold for three frames that's it for the play keys group but we somehow still have a bunch of more useful tools to go some are arguably the best tools of the bunch so let's get into it this button here with the three blue dots is extra tools it feels like a bit of a miscellaneous category and it kind of is but anabot's creator alan camillo listed these tools as things that are intended to be used as hotkeys so he put them all in this list to not clutter up the shelf more than it already is so if any of these seem useful go back to hotkeys in the animbot menu and start setting some up from the recommended hotkeys tab alright back to extra tools some of these are also in other tool groups and may sound familiar so i'll try to keep it brief we have seven categories here the top one being anim curve extra tools from here we can apply animbot's version of the euler filter which can apply to selected keys instead of maya applying to all keys we can clear animation which removes all of our keys we have crop animation which deletes all keys outside of the highlighted selection it will even be nice to you and set anchor keys where it deems them necessary remove redundant keys delete keys that don't do anything remove static anim curves deletes the curves that are flat lines of nothing keys reverse animation place your keys backwards it reverses all of them by default but you can even reverse a small section of keys by highlighting them first set smart key puts a key on your curves without the tangents changing shape like hitting maya's native s function it even recognizes if you're in stepped or splined tangents i recommend overwriting maya's s hotkey with this one so you never get those weird shifts when setting keys set smart key all channels sets a smart key on all of the animatable curves smart go to next and previous frame and keyframe act like you're less than greater than hotkeys natively in maya but runs much more efficiently maya calculates every frame when clicking these which means you have to wait for it to load these tools don't because they're smart if you have a key selected in the graph editor when you use these functions it will automatically select the next key for you it's recommended to overwrite these hotkeys as well if you like saving time smart go to next and previous color key does the same but skips to the next or previous key of the same color none of these smart key jumps store data to maya's undo smart snap keys is like maya's native snap keys but more reliable as is most animbot tools it snaps your keys to whole frames if you scaled your keys and ended up with fractals without changing your animation curves the next extra tools section is channel box extra tools the first thing we can do in here is turn on channel box multi selection helper normally when we select more than one control in maya if the rig has extra functions in the channel box they disappear from view the moment we add select another control that doesn't have identical features with this checked on we will be able to see all of the extra features for all the selected controls in the channel box next we have auto clear channel box selection normally when we select specific transforms and edit them we will have to manually deselect them or we risk only editing those transforms when we move to other controls with auto clear turned on the channel box selection will clear anytime we click on a new control or click on the manipulator clear channel box selection does this as a one-time use feature might be a handy hotkey if you don't want to use auto clear then we have channel box selection timeline highlight this lights up the timeline anytime you select individual transforms in the channel box as a friendly reminder the next category is graph editor extra tools in here we have auto hide static anim curves which automatically hides the useless curves muddying up our view frame current second makes your graph editor zoom in or out to view one second starting from your current frame frame next second frames one second after your current frame hide static anim curves hides the useless curves as a one-time function button our fourth category is manipulator extra tools in here we can switch our orientation mode on the fly with axis orientation toggle axis oriented camera will change our manipulator to line up with our camera view and axis orient to last selected will orient the manipulator to the local axis of the last object or control that you select in a group next up is selection extra tools in here we can deselect non-keyed objects which deselects anything that doesn't belong to the selected keys we can deselect static objects select all animation curves in the scene which is useful for retiming entire actions we can select hierarchy which selects all of the animatable controls in the hierarchy and select rig controls which selects all animatable controls for the current selected rig or even multiple rigs then we have timeline extra tools in here we can change the audio waveform to only show the top half of the timeline which is very useful for visualizing the dialog we can toggle timeline height between 1 2 or 7 to really see those audio shifts and lastly we can auto load timeline sound so we don't have to change audio tracks every time we open maya the last category for extra tools is viewport extra tools don't worry most of these are self-explanatory so i'm not going to bore you with each individual visibility toggle you'll get the picture yourself but let's talk about the rest of them first we have sync isolate select when this box is checked on it isolates your selection in all of your viewports not just the currently selected one tumble around selection is a bit of a personal preference but i find most animators adopted into their workflow the camera will automatically pivot around the object you have selected so you don't have to hit f 20 times a minute next is play blast visibility mode which will isolate our selection to what we typically want visible in a playblast this includes nurbs surfaces polygons subdiv surfaces plug-in shapes and gpu cache everything else including the grid and manipulator will be turned off under that we have animation visibility mode this will hide anything that isn't geometry or rig controls giving us a nice clean viewport to animate in now all these toggles we don't need to talk about if there's something you want to hide you'll probably find it in this list it's just your normal visibility toggle for individual components of the scene now that's all we have for extra tools so we're on the home stretch now this fancy looking e here is a toggle for smart oiler filter when this icon is highlighted it will apply animbot's version of the euler filter as you work it doesn't automatically apply it for everything though it only works when using anabot's tweener ease in and out mirror pose paste pose paste insert animation align objects paste x form attribute space switcher and temp pivot when doing anything else you would have to apply it manually by right-clicking the button and selecting apply smart euler filter just remember to turn this function off if you're working on a shot where a character does a flip or anything else where they need to rotate more than 90 degrees next to smart euler filter we have sliders overshoot mode when this is turned on all the tweener sliders will be able to move past 100 percent the value be wary of the baked keys slider when this is on though it will create half frames when over 100 this little man here with the camera is our bundle snapshot function this creates a snapshot for all the animbot functions at once this includes select opposite mirror and reset pose make sure to select your entire rig while in a t-pose before clicking this button so it can calculate properly by right-clicking on bundle snapshot we can snapshot these individually including snapshot preferred default pose this overrides your t-pose for the blend to default tools so you'll want your character pose in a relaxed idle before you use that one we can also restore bundle snapshot back to default and clear our bundle snapshot data now let's talk about one of animbot's best features anim recovery anim recovery acts like autosave but trust me it's not autosave anim recovery is the next level of autosave instead of saving backup files it's remembering the values of each control on every frame this sounds like it would bog the system down but this isn't native maya so it doesn't as much as you think i'm sorry maya i swear i still like you anim recovery runs a session in the background to store all of this information in real time that way if you experience a crash the next time you open maya anabot will open a window called time machine allowing you to recover anything that hasn't yet been saved you don't have to stay locked to the most current version either if you don't like what you animated in the last 20 minutes or so you can instead open a version of your scene from 20 minutes prior you don't even have to wait until you experience a crash you can at any time hit the anim recovery button to open the anim recovery time machine to roll your scene back to an earlier state and that's not all i sound like such a car salesman right now i swear this video is not sponsored if we go up to the drop down menu here that says all checkpoints we can change this to selected objects or by character name to roll back specific things in time rather than the whole scene this feature still blows my mind if you're one of the unlucky ones who notices that maya crashes more often once you start using animbot or more specifically anim recovery since it's the function that's running in the background right click on anim recovery go to more and uncheck save anchor checkpoints you'll still get to recover in the case of a crash but you won't be able to roll back in time on the fly as consistently the next category is autobots don't worry we've gone over everything in this category already because they're in other tool groups so i won't explain them again here essentially this category gathered up all of the functions that run in the background and put them all in one place so you can choose which ones you want running or not just click on the icon to bring up the list restore them to default or turn them all off we can also open the debug console to see what all they are doing animbot has a ton of tools right and i doubt you know where each individual one is just from this long-winded explanation video but so long as you remember roughly what a tool is called you can search through them with the search button here as soon as you start typing you'll be greeted by a list of tools and an explanation on the right side to tell you what it does and that's all of the tools that anabot currently has to offer easy peasy right in all seriousness no one expects you to use every single tool on this list there are a ton of tools here for very specific purposes that you may not find yourself doing on a daily basis and that's okay there's enough here and enough customization that you're bound to find at least a few tools to adopt into your workflow or at the very bare minimum never have to worry about a maya crash again try not to get overwhelmed make sure you go through your preferences and turn on anything that you think looks neat absolutely set up your hotkeys and replace some of maya's native hot keys like the s key for example and just go hog wild in a meaningless scene to test out your new weapons the worst that can happen is you find something new don't forget to check out the mecha mex rigs by freaking awesome studios if you like highly optimized rigs for body mechanics and if you're eyeing that family pack use code skitty at checkout to get three dollars off i'm giving them my skitty seal of approval which is a thing that totally exists leave a comment below if there's something you didn't understand like and subscribe if you learned something links to socials are in the description and remember to always use a reference without select selecting everything the main purpose between machine is to create precise in between keys the big different wow i can type okay bye don't you huff at me then your window is eventually but with the ability ray what are you eating no eating fur that's what makes your poops weird [Applause] you

Channel: Skitty Animates

Views: 6,350

Rating: 4.977716 out of 5

Keywords: animbot help, skitty animates, animbot plugin, how to use animbot, animbot animation, animbot tutorial, animbot, tweenmachine, maya animbot, maya animation, Maya plugin, maya animation tools, graph editor maya, graph editor tools, maya animation workflow, character animation tools, maya animation tutorial, best animation tool, animation tools, how to animate in maya, maya scripts, animate faster in maya, fast animation workflow, tips for animators, copy animation, anim

Id: YLHUS-yvMTs

Length: 58min 25sec (3505 seconds)

Published: Mon May 17 2021