3D Animation. Progressing in Maya (Identifying Problems)

With Maya been new software to me, I thought it would be useful if I documented the issues that I came across, so in the future I would have better knowledge of how Maya works and how I could tackle some of the problems. During the production of my 3D animated character, I noticed some issues that seemed hard to resolve at the time due to the lack of knowledge with the software itself. I found my self often noticing parts of the body and face moving in peculiar directions, that I myself did not set or 'do'. Usually it would involve rotations or timing errors where certain movements had less fluidity and generally made my animation robotic. This usually occurred when I adjusted the wrong axis curve on the graph editor, basically through lack of understanding with how the system worked.

One screen shot of my graph editor:

When key frames are made at both start and the end of 'dramatic' poses, it is then padded out with in between motions in order to make the movement smoother. However, I found myself key framing a lot of the motions I made, which in result often messed up with the timing to the audio and actions became swifter for the worst. This was done for the fact I didn't pay attention to the start and end poses of the movements, I just did them as I went along. So to resolve this, I began figuring and planning the poses at both the beginning and end of the motions. Once this was done, I could then analyze the animation and add pieces in between to smoothen out the movements. This was done through looking at the graph editor and tweaking the curves in which key frames/moves where set. As previously stated, I found that sometimes my character would move in peculiar ways, such as radical rotation of hands or arms. Before I had no idea how to resolve them and ended up going back and deleting those key frames so I could re-do them. However, within paying close attention to how the graph editor replicates the animation, I began figuring out how to fix those problems.

With the image above you can see how the different coloured lines replicate the animation on XYZ axises. The dots on the lines show the key frames which I have made during the movement sequences. Where curves are, indicate how the axises are being manipulated for different motions. So when I came across those rotation errors, I went to the graph editor and found the axis in which I thought the error had formed. Once I found it, I could then playback and see how the curves on the axis change where the issue is and from there I could tweak them and resolve that issue. It took me a considerable amount of time to understand how the graph editor actually worked, within moving the curves to adjust the timing and positions. However, once I grasped the axises and saw where animation took place on the curves, I found it easier to fix problems and tweak movements to give my animation more life.


Evidence of me planning the timing of a movement:

Within taking this small documented post, I feel comfortable to use it to reflect back on, So I know that I understand Maya a lot better than previous and feel less daunted by the software.