Layered Animation: Blender Tutorial for Beginners

it's scary up there it's scary up there it's scary up there I'm going back home I need to get in touch with my roots figure out who I am going back home I need to get in touch with my roots figure out who I am hi everyone welcome to Alex on story my name is Alex this video is all about the layered workflow if you have not seen the first two videos go check those out post a pose and straight ahead layered is the newest of the animation workflows it's a way of building up your scene one control at a time with each new control contributing to the overall detail layered focuses on movement how movement can be added together to achieve a performance layered is most common in feature films and visual facts because of its ability to achieve realism blocking is closely linked to Quality in that you're aiming for both at the same time layered workflow often starts with the broadest control that influences your animation a control is animated until it's achieving the look desired the process could take one or ten passes once happy you move on to the next control and do it again the layered workflow works in the graph editor earlier in the blocking stage then post to pose or straight ahead animation the information from a curve can be copied and pasted to another curve on a different control saving you time and adding detail I have three animation examples to help illustrate the layered workflow if you're new here make sure you subscribe to get more animation education content let's jump into it let's start by looking at this very simple example of the three different workflows postpose straight ahead and layered post to pose the way you do a bouncing ball as you identify the locations so I identified the end position brought it back to the beginning and then identified the contact positions and then build the jumps for straight ahead I just started at the beginning and worked my way to the end let's have a look at the layered Approach at this very simple example and see how we approach it using the layered workflow so I set up a very simple rig for these balls I've got an empty control another one if I need it and then the geometry itself the way I set it up is if I scale this ball for the squash and stretch pose then I can rotate the ball within here and the color rotates although the shape always remains how I left it so that's how I set up the hierarchy of these balls okay let's have a look at how we can approach the layered work method for this bouncing ball example so I'm going to reset some of the values and we'll do it together quickly so we have the ball in the position we want so like I mentioned before post to pose identified the different positions I started with the extremes where the ball is going to end and where does it start and then I start identifying poses in between that those two extreme areas Straight Ahead like I said starts at the beginning and Lily linearly goes to the end and layered for this bouncing ball is probably the fastest of the three work methods to get to a final result in the end all three look roughly the same for such a simple exercise but let's identify where it could stop and I'll just key just kind of even based off the other balls let me just maybe key 69 frame 69 I'm going to insert a key and then also insert a key here let's go back to the beginning and just pull the ball out of frame just like that okay let's go back here and what I'm going to do is just pull that ball a little bit and all I'm doing is creating an overshoot so then the ball rolls and it can come back and settle and that's all that is so let's play what we have actually let me make this vector and I'll just make these clamped so let's play what we have cool so all I'm looking at is the movement itself and being happy with that so I've added the overshoot and I've added the end pose and the beginning awesome so I'm happy with the way the ball is moving forward the way it's translating here's what we can do with that information so we're on the x-axis so I can select that hit shift h a to select all and period numpad to frame for it so here's that curve that movement sideways represented in a curve and you can see if I zoom in here you can see what that overshoot looks like it's coming in and then it just rolls back and settles okay so I'm going to select that paired numpad again frame for everything so this is information and I can use this information I can select this just that one curve select that Ctrl C I'm going to come over to this other control and insert a key and now I want to take that information I just copied and apply it to the rotation value and the rotation axis is rotate y so let's go back to frame one I'm going to select the Y rotation shift H just to isolate that curve with that key selected I'm going to hit Ctrl V a to select all period numpad just to frame frame so this curve is now the same as that X Translate value curve so let's see what this looks like and it's a perfect role this is one of the powers of layered animation I can copy the values of a piece of animation and use it somewhere else within the same animation or a different part of the body and once you paste it you can manipulate it scale it exaggerate it or Shrink it down so getting to this spot just with adding the rotation and identifying the spot using this method you get there a little quicker than the other two all we have to do now is add the up and down the bounce I'm going to go back to that top control and we're going to add our up and down on this Z location on the Z axis so I'm just going to select that shift H perfect and I'm going to work in the graph editor now cool so I'm going to say frame 15. is my contact post just like the other ones in here I'm going to say only selected channels perfect right here I'm just going to copy the timing of the other two keep it the same so what I'm doing is now identifying the contact poses just like the other through the other two perfect so these Keys contact contact and last contact okay so now I'm going to go back to the beginning and just pull that up and perfect and all we're doing now is working with in the graph to manipulate the timing cool awesome somewhere around here frame 2324 I'm going to insert another key I within the graph editor only selected curves and now we're going to pull this up just like that and now we're creating our bounces vector and we're just going to pull the handles a little bit just exaggerate um where it's sitting at the top of the jump here cool last little bounce here same idea I and I'm going to insert there and just pull it up just a little bit cool nice let's play what we have cool so very simple very quick and and copying the values from one piece of animation and using it somewhere else really does help save you time and that's part of that layered workflow the last thing to do for this bouncing ball is just to add the squash and stretch which I didn't but you could okay so let's move on to the next example it's scary it's scary it's scary up there starting with the fresh scene I like to just drag and drop my character into my scene by doing that all the scripts are loaded properly okay let's set up the scene together quickly let's come to animation I'm going to drag this over control Tab and here just to go to the graph editor and get rid of your options let's pull this up awesome period numpad to frame in I'm going to control Tab out of my rig shift a let's make a camera alt R alt G just to reset the values of that camera for now shift a one more time mesh plane and let's scale that down just something for our character to stand on so we have our camera let's hit zero on a numpad to go into the framing of the camera let's just zoom in here to make our framing window larger and let's select the camera here I'm just going to make this area around or outside the field of view darker so we're going to come over here viewport display passport out 0.99 awesome that allows us to focus on our view I'm going to hit n come into our view and go to camera to view I'm going to click that on and with this character selected even though you can't see it here I'm going to hit f and frame for that character awesome here in this window I like to do all my work so I want to keep it as clean as possible I'm going to turn these two things off already that helps me focus on the character and the performance and in this window I want to work I want it to be my work window so I'm going to turn everything on including this text info that just allows me to see the frame rate when I do play my animation okay I'm going to hit a in my scene select all and there's these two keys I'm not sure what they are so I'm just going to hit a again in the graph or in the timeline X delete cool for this one scene I'm not sure why but the aspect ratio is just a little off so 1920 by 1080. so I'm going to update that as well and last thing let's just take a quick look at our character rig here and and let's come on over to the cloud rig settings ikfk switch I'm just gonna put those to zero so I went from ik now to FK let's go to our layers and turn on the FK controls and I'm also going to turn on the finger controls one last thing I'm going to do as well we'll go back to settings and under face we have this I parent so right now when I go to the Cog that center of gravity control that middle one here the eyes stay locked into that position in world where that control is I don't like that so I'm going to go here and put it to head so now they're locked in with the head awesome so my rig is set up the way I like to work we're ready to bring in our audio I'm going to come in over here and right click and I'm going to do a horizontal split and just bring this down above here and we're going to change this to video sequencer I'm going to drag and drop my audio right into here perfect and now what I'm going to do is just move my audio down and to the left awesome I'm going to move it right until that number on the left side says one and then you can see the number on the right side it says 36. so this shot is only 36 frames perfect I'm going to pull this over to see my audio better and I'm going to zoom in here awesome I'm going to hit n and display waveform so now I have the timing because I can see the audio as well so it helps with the timing when you're performing so the shot length based off the audio is 36 frames I'm going to give myself just a little more time for the shot just to read the performance at the end so 40 frames that's how long our shot's going to be I'm going to leave a link to this audio file in the description so if you want to follow along you can do that as well the audio is called it's scary up there and I think the way the link works is it's going to present you a whole bunch of audios based off the Home Alone movie so just have a look for this one naming file if you do want to follow along so we have everything ready for us to start animating so let's listen to the audio together it's scary up there it's scary up there it's scary up there it's scary up there it's scary up there it's scary cool so it's scary up there and So based off the audio it's giving us some information on what the performance could be and to me he's a kid just like in the movie and just like this character looks to me and he's he's scared of something and it's up there so to me the performance is going to be just gesturing in that direction up somewhere so let's find a pose that we can start off with I'm going to hit this x mirror on and that's just going to save some time on both sides of the body so let's bring those hands down and the pose is important only to get us started with layered we're looking more at the movement of things and I think what could be cool is if we have the character maybe sitting down just like that something simple we'll take a minute just pose this character into an idea and help kick start us for this shot you can see at the beginning just using that X mirror helps to move a little quicker and once I get into it I turn it off and if you're wondering how I'm using my translate tools my move and rotate tools all I do is hit spacebar and then you get the GRS so all I do is space bars G spacebar R and I just roll um to get my my translate tools and physically move my characters that's kind of cool maybe he just holds his hands or maybe they'll be in the middle hoop let's leave it where it is for now so we have an idea that he's just sitting and performance wise I talked about that he's he's talking about it's scary up there and at the end I'm gonna have him look up I'm gonna come out of the post mooding just give him something to sit on as well shift a mesh Cube and let's really scale that down nice little something for him to sit on so last thing I want to do before I start my performance is now that I have the idea set up and the idea of the performance itself is setting up my camera that's very important so he's sitting and I know he's going to be gesturing up and I think what a cool framing is typically I I I typically like to frame a little up on my characters but in this case he seems vulnerable so we're actually gonna pull the camera up look at look down on him a little bit don't think the feet are that important I think sitting is is nice and I'm getting close to the line the line just is how close am I getting to the center of his body and face so the more I get closer to that line the more intimate we are with our character so I'm going to get pretty close just scoot off the line a little bit just like that okay I'm going to hit end now and go camera to view turn that off so now if I accidentally bump the framing here it doesn't move the camera so I can always go back to zero on my numpad and it takes me back into the framing awesome let's select the rig tab into pose mode and we're ready to start animating let's listen to the audio again it's and you know just move your body feel the performance and um and that'll give you an idea of the acting you want to do I just got a comment um earlier that asked about how do I know this was more of a post to post question how do I how do I know when I've gone too far with my posing and I think I gave two answers one was uh it's a personal preference so we all could be given the same audio and our acting might be different because the way we understand the world is different and then the other one also I think this one really is more tangible is I I mentioned golden poses and the idea of a golden pose this is a golden pose this character is going to be doing the performance all within this one idea I'm not crafting another larger pose I'm working within this idea so how do you know if you've added too many poses or if your acting is overdone I think if you're going from idea to idea and you're not allowing enough time for that idea to read so for a layered approach and especially your performance like this once you know what the overall pose is now you're working within that pose this layered method might work really well for you so um what I like to do especially in a pose like this is start with the head the head's going to drive my performance so I'm just thinking about the audio scary up there there so and I'm thinking about all the movements I'm adding it's scary up there and so what my head's doing is it's going down and then going up and it's also moving to the side a little and it's also tilting up so there's three axises going on so that's what I'm going to try to achieve just with the head control so I have that head control selected and let's go to the beginning and right click and this can go quickly as well you can iterate on this quite quickly and do the first pass do I like it no do it again and you'll see it only takes maybe 20 30 seconds for such a short performance once I once I have my pose so um here we go let's also enable our scrubbing so we can hear the audio while we play or while we scrub awesome so it's scary up there it's scary it's so somewhere around here he's gonna come down a little bit and maybe he knows the direction where he's going to be looking wherever whatever is scaring him is and it's maybe because I'm giving more screen space to this side he's going to be looking in that direction cool so insert a key so all he's doing is going down it's maybe a little more awesome it's and then he goes up and before he does I'm just gonna have a little more keep alive and so one of the nice things about this approach is we're not hitting any specific pose within our performance it's all about the movement and now this is the big move right here he looks up scary he's looking towards where whatever he's talking about is scary cool and I'm gonna keep this alive here still moving in that direction where we are just adding less movement but just keeping it alive his performance cool cool and let's see about adding a little bit more something on that last uh word up there and maybe what I'll do is I'll just key that same pose here and let it overshoot so I'm going to pull this G coming over here and make this automatic and you see the body naturally are the curves naturally overshoot and then it comes back down cool so let's see what we have it's scary up there it's scary up there it's scary awesome there it's scary up there it's scary so you can see the performance is crafted just with the head control it's scary up there cool at this point I would refine so I'd go through it and I think right here it could be a little more keep alive just in this direction just to keep that nose alive that face alive and then he goes up I'm going to keep that direction going a bit so what we're doing is we're finding as we're blocking we're adding detail just to the movement cool I like it and I think one last thing I'm going to do before moving on is add a little bit of a delay here a little breakdown up just like this up up down good up there and then so what I've done is gone sort of in the middle of the two keys and rotated that head down which then adds more delay and then it makes the up movement snappier cool awesome I'm just going to pull that set of three keys over one just so the the movement can start one frame earlier okay so I'm happy with the movement just on this one head control which to me sells the performance of the shot what I'm going to do now just like we did with the ball is we have information now built in to support the performance but built into the curves and I'm going to use that information on other parts of the body the biggest movement of the body is up and then it's the sideways and then it's the side to side or the the tilting so I'm going to select this rotate X curve so I'm going to open this up go to the X rotation shift H just to isolate that a to select all period numpad to frame for it and here's the value here's the curve of what that looks like of that movement so you can see if I just select one of the keys and move it it's rotating up and down so that's what's happening there I'm going to select the whole curve Ctrl C I'm going to come on over to the chest control now the chest control doesn't have any keys on it so I'm just gonna hit I to insert a key and then I'm going to go back to that same rotation x shift h and being on frame one I'm going to hit Ctrl V let's play what we have there it's scary up there scary up there so it's too much but what we're doing is now based off the head performance is adding it to different parts of the body and now we're all we're working in Reverse this is driving everything and it's going to influence everything down but we're going to minimize the movement so here's what I like to do once we have that and I know I like how it's moving it's just moving too much is I'm going to come on over here to view and I'm going to turn on show sliders and all that does is show me the value of the keys so if I go to frame one this key right there has a value of 12.45 so I'm going to hit n to bring up our options and under show cursor you can see this y value and this is our cursor right there is that blue line horizontal line so I'm going to type in right here 12.45 and it brings that line up to where that key is I'm going to select the whole key and I'm going to scale from now we can come over here and I'm going to say from the 2D cursor select that with the Curve selected I'm going to hit s and Y and you can see now I can scale that key from that point cool so let's play it up there it's rotating way too much I'm just going to scroll somewhere to the end and go ask for scale and Y to lock it to the axis and really tone down that movement scary up there it's scary up there it's scary up there it's scary up there I think I like it s y I'm just going to add a little bit more movement I'm going to go back to our head and now I'm going to add my rotate y so select over here shift H here's that curve a period numpad just to frame for it Ctrl C copies the curve let's go back to our chest and go to that same axes go back to frame 1 Ctrl V and now we just pasted that exact same curve from the head to the chest let's play what we have excuse me same idea it's just too much and it's 0.4 so that's coming over here 0.4 awesome a to select all and we're gonna move over a little bit in the performance s y and we're scaling that rotation down somewhere there let's play it's scary cool I'm liking it maybe in this case it's a bit much as y scale that down awesome let's select the Zed rotation control C shift age perfect and go back to frame one Ctrl V cool hit a to select all and I'm just going to move this so it starts back at zero roughly nice scare just going to tone that down a little bit but overall I think that's working Sy so very quickly we can start crafting that performance based off that one control in this case it was the head I'm going to select the head one more time and go to my rotate y shift h and I'm going to add this Ctrl C to this Main control which is our Cog our center of gravity insert a key same idea let's go to this rotation just isolate that that to one curve and Ctrl V perfect let's see what we have it's scary it's scary okay just too much that's okay s y and we're going to really tone that down it's scary up there it's scary up there it's scary up there it's scary up there yeah this is working well and the reason I add a little bit of movement on that CLG even if he's sitting is now the CLG is moving which is going to move the knees a little bit it moves the whole body so that's why I like to add a little bit of movement on the knees but this is the layered approach it's starting it's it's picking one control one aspect of the movement that's dominant working on that movement and then letting that control drive the rest of the performance the rest of the body so in this case it was the head and then I worked down sometimes it'll be the Cog and then we'll work upwards okay I could work on the pose at this point but what I'm going to do is leave the pose because um that's going to take a few minutes so I'm going to leave that for now and I'll just craft a little bit of a blink for you so you can see the performance really start to come alive so let's do that together let's go to n and one of the nice things I like about this rig is it comes with some some default faces already so I'm just going to click this happy even though to me it kind of looks a little sad so I'm going to click that pose which is great let's worry about the blanks here just going to bring these eyes down a bit cool I'm going to select the bottom ones quickly I to insert it's I think I'm going to have a little bit of a squint at the beginning it's and just as he's gonna move up he'll start blinking scary I'm gonna skip over the blink for now just move over reset the values of everything I had to insert a key and just pull those eyelids down a little bit not much just like that cool so just as he's about to go into that last little uh head movement I'll really Open the Eyes more awesome let's worry about the blank now together it's so he's starting to move and as he's moving he'll blink so I'm going to select these two and really bring them down cool something like that and then I'll pull the bottom eyelids up just a little bit make sure they're closing somewhat nice it's a quick blink so you're not going to notice insert a key Ctrl C on this closed pose Ctrl V just to hold that down a little more and I can always clean this pose up a little bit so we'll have two frames down I'm fully closed I'm holding for two frames one two and then I'm going to come up one two three I'm gonna make this flat tangent and over here I'm going to make this vector I'm going to come one frame over from the end I to insert a key and then I'm going to pull this over and auto clamped and so now the eyelids just take longer to open so let's see what that looks like cool let's select um the the eyes themselves and add add some emotion with the eyes there so he can start just looking down a little bit cool I had to insert and as he's about to just in here maybe we'll add a eye Dart I'm going to insert a key on seven go to eight and maybe he's just gonna look up a little it's cool I'm going to insert a key here move forward quite a bit so I know where I'm ending and I'm going to now have them look up I'm going to select all three controls insert a key insert a key and I'm just going to just this one I oops let's turn off xmir this one I a little bit off to the side okay and now now I've so I moved over to the end where the eyes are where the performance is going to end just so I can see where the eyes look better now I'm going to bring that back scary and even over here I'm going to insert a key and he can just as he's about to Blink maybe I add a little bit of a movement just like that cool so we're going to add an eye Dart as well into the key thank you and all I'm doing is just adding some little eye dots nice and subtle so let's see what this looks like it's cool scary up there so very quickly we can influence the performance just based off one control or one body part and that drives the rest of the body with a bit of blink I just have to add the eyebrows a mouth and just fix his his hand pose a little bit so that it's not crashing and and then this shot's done that's how quick the layered approach can be in the right Circumstance the layered approach is the fastest workflow and um so for a shot like this I think it's perfect I'll go ahead and finish this shot since there's not much left to do like I mentioned I'm just going to work on the pose the rest is not that hard we're going to jump over to the next demonstration now which is a full body performance and that one is a harder shot to do but again based off one control that drives the rest of the performance so let's jump over to that one after I show you the final result of this one it's all right so here we are in this last example for this layered workflow tutorial this is a bigger shot I'm going to go ahead and play the audio I'm going back home I need to get in touch with my roots figure out who I am I'm going back home I need to get in touch with my roots figure out who I am cool so this is five second shot and so I'm going back home I need to get in touch with my roots I need to figure out who I am so some good some good performance there and you can see based off the audio it's like a chunk chunk and a chunk it's all divided up nicely and so just like before we have the rig set up I have the camera and a very simple set in this performance I feel like he you know people are judging him and there's people watching him and he's kind of stepping back so we have a pose just like we did with the sitting pose that just gets us going and we're going to start at the beginning and we're going to start with that center of gravity control that Cog this one right here which moves pretty much everything so let's go ahead and craft a performance based off the audio only using this one control awesome so we have a pose and we're at the start perfect and let's go to the end let's just pull our character back perfect insert a key so let's just play what we have I'm going back home I need to get in touch with my roots figure out who I am I'm going back home I need to get in touch with my roots figure out who I am cool I'm going back home so just like the bouncing ball we did at the beginning you can imagine that his Cog area his hips here this red diaper part it's just like the ball and all we were doing with the ball is moving it across time and thinking about if the movement is the way we want same idea all we're doing is adding detail to this one control okay so I've identified the length of the performance of the shot now we're going to add some detail just like we do with the ball we added the overshoot and we didn't go past that until we were happy here it's more complicated because he's going to take um he's taken some steps and we want to also think about the weight and the timing so it'll take a number of iterations to get somewhere where we're happy with just the performance of that Cog once we're happy with that it drives everything else once we know that it'll tell us the timing of the feet once we have that everything else falls into place quite easily so the hardest part in this shot using the layered method is is just finding that timing of that um of his body of that Cog center of gravity moving back to its Mark so that's all we're going to do now oh somewhere near I'm going back home I'm going to keep this very simple and just pull it to one side going back home perfect insert a key at the beginning in animation if we want to go in One Direction we have an anticipation anticipation lets the audio audience know we want to go that way so we're actually going the other way to go that way we're going to do the same thing here so he's taking a step in this direction so somewhere around here we're actually going to just pull them in that direction perfect oh and maybe I keep it more simple perfect cool and maybe that was too large but the idea is right so I'm going back very subtle awesome cool let's increase that oh okay let's move over and pull them to the other side he's taking a step perfect and then he lands there and maybe around here he's going to take that last step Bang and then settles into that spot so let's play what we have here I'm going back home I need to get in touch with my roots figure out who I am I'm going back home cool to get in touch with my roots figure out who I am I'm trying to keep it I'm trying to keep it very very very simple at the beginning before I add too much detail and by adding detail I mean adding too many keys here let's see how many keys I have got one two three so I have six Keys trying to describe this movement I'll do as much as I can with these six and then add two three four more and then I should start to craft a performance even with 10 keys so I'm going to refine the timing at this stage so who I am he needs to he needs to hit that timing sooner who I am cool I'm going back home even this can happen probably sooner cool so all I'm doing now is refining the movement you can see with this method yes I'm blocking but I'm adding detail I'm just refining and refining this one control and like I said it might take me 10 iterations until I get to something that I think works I'm going to really now delay that performance here he's still hanging out in that space so you can see all I'm doing I have seven keys at this point still trying to keep it very simple worry about the timing and where the character is and even rotations I haven't added anything yet because once I add too much information it becomes harder to control so I'm just looking at the character moving away from camera and side to side soon I'll start adding some rotation and then up and down and been still just working on this one curve on this one control and I think what's happening is this movement this side to side just a bit too much actually so I'm refining that I'm going back home I need to get in touch with my roots figure out who I am so the acting is already starting to come it may look very simple or bad at this stage but it's very important that I don't rush this blocking stage I'm just looking at the movement and already I can see the steps being being taken I'm going to add a few more frames now of up and down and of rotation this this tilt so I'm going to add a tilting as he's walking away tilting forward and going up I'm cool cool I'm going to delay him rotate him in this direction now some going and so here to me he took a step down but before I do I'm going to add a little breakdown going back and I'm going to delay him so delay I'm going to favor his position to from where he came from I'm going back up perfect and he's still leaning from that direction cool I'm going back home awesome back home so here I'm gonna have him go down going back home he just finished taking that step in he's taking the weight on his feet there I'm going back home I need to get in touch with my roots figure out who I am and then here just like before here in this middle he's gonna start transitioning his weight taking that that step over to the next foot and then here he takes the weight bang and then he goes up so right in here I'm going to delay him favoring this foot pull him up and lean him in that direction so this becomes quite complicated this is not an easy shot to do but I'm showing you another method of the layered approach so um the that other acting performance that we just did that one is a much better case of the layered approach because it really is faster once you have that pose then you can craft that performance very quickly once you're happy with that the way that that head in that case was moving you just copy it to the rest of the body um and it really does move quick this one is is a lot harder because it's now physical movement and you got to analyze it but if I were to do this straight ahead or in post to pose it would be difficult as well it's a hard move so um there's advantages to this layered method and all I'm doing is trying to find that that that that movement of him going back but just know that this is not an easy um easy bit of Animation to do cool and so even even right here that down is is quite sharp and when I'm blocking I do over exaggerate some movements that's like okay I'm going down and then up and to the right and then as I refine I I refine I I ease up on those extremes so the Downs don't go as low but for now it's like it helps to see going back home bang bang so um yeah so let's see what we have so far I'm going back home I need to get in touch with my roots figure out who I am I'm going back home cool so the performance touch with my roots figure out who I am the performance is starting to come just based off that one Cog control I'm going back home I need to get in touch with my roots figure out who I am I'm happy with the movement and now we can start adding some more detail so just moving that Cog took a little while but now that we have the timing everything is going to fall into place uh let's do the feet very quickly and then we'll refine the feet after just to get them under him so here we go I'll start with his left foot so he's going that way and then that foot's gonna have to start moving so I'm just going to key it at frame nine and just before the weight fully goes to that side to screen right the foot the foot has to be under him so what I'm going to do is just scrub a little bit and see what position looks good just somewhere this can always be adjusted I'm not too precious about it I think here's a nice spot we'll add some rotation as well just to change things up insert a key awesome so I think this pose for the foot looks good over there and I can always adjust it after perfect so I'm going to make sure that foot lands in that spot a little sooner maybe frame 19. cool and the knees bending backwards so all I have to do is take these two controls and just pull them forward there we go I think the timing of the Foot Works and again the timing the foot is a lot easier once you know what the Cog is doing the timing the Cog is starting to work that now tells me what the timing the feet need to be and just before you fully take your weight to either side the foot has to be under the under the body to take the weight so before we start to go in that direction the foot's gonna start moving so maybe even frame seven here and it can probably even land at frame 17. a little sooner cool and I'm going to keep it that simple for now and so here again for this step we're starting to lift our weight and then we're going to start moving over the other to the other side and just before we start moving that's when I start moving this leg I'm going to insert a key frame 41. and now I'm going to go right kind of in the middle of that action just to see what position for that leg looks good and then I'll affect the timing after cool insert a key I'm also going to move this knee position just for now over here just so we get a better shape go back to our foot control and now move the timing so it's so it lands sooner and takes the weight maybe even 51. cool now same thing very simple now we go back to this foot so just before we start moving over maybe 73 insert a key [Music] and let's find a nice position for that foot to be cool insert a key and move it over and then this foot at the end is gonna take that half step back as well somewhere here insert a key and then we'll craft that last leg position cool insert a key and awesome so it just so happened that in this case based off the timing of the feet roughly 10 frames is each step so let's play what we have I'm going back home I need to get in touch with my roots figure out who I am I'm going back home already now it's taking on a new life before it was a bit abstract moving the Cog um almost having faith that it will work out and that's depending on the shot that's the method of layered is you're you're you're worried about one idea one control selling that idea and if that control can sell the idea everything else falls into place so next thing I'm going to do is add is go to the head I'm going to add performance in the head and then the head will start to drive just like we did in that other shot let's go to the Head insert a key going back home so as he's walking back he's addressing I feel like he's addressing multiple people so that's what I'm going to try to do with this head performance I'm going back home I need to figure out so he's just looking side to side so here we go I'm going back and he's looking cool just like we did before just keeping this head alive and just now doing a pass on the head control and if I don't like it I can redo it this part goes pretty quick he kind of holds there for a bit and then just as he starts to say the other portion of his dialogue I'll have him look in the other direction so just keeping that head alive he's looking at someone insert a key cool so we're gonna have them start looking in the other direction touch in touch I'm just gonna have them start looking over and touch yes and touch he's just looking over at someone else saying the dialogue in touch cool in touch and I'm gonna have him keep alive that head and then on Roots just have them look up with my still looking in that direction just keeping that head alive with my roots I know he's gonna look up at someone else with my roots cool cool [Music] look at my roots and now on um he can start to look back where he did at the beginning just going to reset the values insert a key let's see what that looks like I'm going back home I need to get in touch with my roots figure out who I am I'm going back home I need to get in touch with my roots figure out who I am so all it needs now is refinement the beginning can be pushed in that direction it's a little stiff so I can start loosening things up but I'm liking the screen directions he's looking I'm going back home I need to get in touch with my roots he's just looking at different people as he's walking back awesome um let's add a little bit of performance in the hands so as you step back he's saying I'm going back home and that's all he's doing so let's do the arms together insert a key go back home awesome insert a key and for this one it'll be roughly the same timing except except the pose itself will be smaller cool and then both arms can come in home and I'll just have them come back to the same position go back home I'm going back home so I'm keeping things very rough there I'm going back home I need to get in touch with my roots with my roots so slowly the details starting to come going back home I need to get in touch with my roots figure out who I am and you can see based off that one CLG control it really does dictate everything else it dictated the timing of the feet it helps with the performance of the head because now I know where the weight is and then the hands fall into place as well um so things are starting to fall into place based off that Cog now we're starting to just add detail and start refining different movements um so I'll go a little more and then I'll pause the video finish the performance shot but this is this is what I would do for a layered approach on a full body shot start very Broad and don't go past that point until that action is moving the way you want then you can add more more movement on different parts of the body based off the movement you've initially done cool I've gone ahead and just added a bit of facial performance just like we did with the last shot adding some blinks and so we can see what that looks like add it in I'm going back home I need to get in touch with my roots figure out who I am I'm going back home so the performance is slowly taking shape let's add a small camera move together mainly so that by the time he finishes his shot or the acting at the end of the shot we're not cutting his toes off um it looks a little strange so at the beginning I like the framing so what I'm going to do is insert a key and just before the end of the shot somewhere around here I'm just going to pull that camera back just like that just enough that there's some negative space between the bottom of the frame and his feet insert a key vector and I'm going to play that I'm going back home I need to get in touch with my roots figure out who I am awesome and what I'm going to do with this last little bit is just add a bit of a saddle it's not going to finish the camera move it's not going to finish by the end of the shot but it is going to start to slow down somewhere around here insert a key pull this and I'm going to pull it just out of frame a bit yeah so the pixels are still going to be moving I'm going back home I need to get in touch with my roots figure out who I am so I'm going to finish the shot um and then show you the final result I'm going back home I need to get in touch with my roots figure out who I am I'm going back home I need to get in touch with my roots figure out who I am it's scary hurry up there it's scary all right here's the final result I hope you enjoyed both animation examples if you did like the video and make sure you subscribe so you get more animation education content like this if you have any questions let me know make sure you subscribe to my mailing list to get more animation content alright everyone take care bye bye

Channel: Alex on Story

Views: 26,859

Keywords: animation, 3d animation, blender, blender tutorial, blender animation, blender animation tutorial, maya, maya animation, 3d character animation, 3d character, character animation, feature film, character performance animation, character performance, blink animation, tutorial, animation tutorial, animation tutorial blender, how to animate, how to animate in blender, layered animation, layered animation workflow, layered animation approach

Id: cdj0YytsHSI

Length: 62min 41sec (3761 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 09 2023