Character sets and trax editor?

[phang7]

hello,

can you be a good character animator if you don't work with character sets and trax editor?

I storyboarded a new short animation project, but don't know if I should get into those or if I can go ahead and animate it without trax editor.. (?)

thanks.
P.

[nonquad]

The trax editor shines at higher-level stuff; coordinating clips from multiple animators; reusing background animation etc.

For a typical short, you wouldn't be using it anyway... it's not a bad tool to learn though.

I would suggest using character sets though. Quite apart from the trax functionality, character sets provide a nice way to set pose keyframes without having to change your selection; if you animate with autokey and a character set enabled, then you can set individual keys just by manipulating the rig, and use the keyframe button/command to key the whole pose. It's a nice way to work.

But basically, you can certainly make a good short without either of those tools.

[ame]

Depends if you play strictly by the rules or are a more technically "creative" animator.

Personally, I thing Character Sets are big fat bag of ass. My main issue with them, is that they consider being part of a character set an "input" and preclude other input types.
Let's say your eyeballs are part of a character set, and you then want to constrain them to something. SORRY! No can do. This helps me HOW? If you hook them with the constraint first, and THEN make them part of the character set, there's no problem.

In this way, character sets can force you to try and pre-imagine everything that your model can/ever will do, which is a kind of silly concept. I often customize setups on a per-shot basis to be the most effective animator I can, and simple constraints, IK, what-have-you setups can be quick to create. Character sets and any reliance on them in a pipelione make this next to impossible.

Also, the blending functions that become available by using ChSets are pretty much ass, too. They make a great demo, but I don't know if you'd ever use a blended animation for anything above low-level game stuff, or maybe characters in the way-way-way background. Yuo most certainly will not turn any heads with blend-based animations. You'd have to layer so heavily on top of them to make them good, you'd be better off doing the blending yourself.

All-in-all, I've been a professional Maya animator and TD for years, and all character sets have ever done for me is piss me off. You can gain everything they have to offer with some REALLY simple Mel scripts, and thereby not pick up any of the crappiness.

Character Sets : Boo-Urns.

[nonquad]

Fair enough. But I am also a professional TD, and I like sets. And I say that from years of experience of my own - although my professional career is yet young.

It's true that character sets are considered an input, but in most cases you can have your cake and eat it too.

Want to put something in the character set, and also have the option to constrain them on a per-shot basis? Put a group above the character set item, and allow constraints on the group. Works even better for IK; like each IK target can move in its own constrainable space.

Then if you want to make the rig more robust, you can put a second group above the constrainable group, which -is- in the character set.
Then, at any time you can bake your top-level group onto the constrainable one, and voila! All of the animation is now effectively within the structure of the character set; free to move and copy as need be. And the constraints are still active, still ready for another round of tweaking!

I like character sets for precisely the same reason you hate them: they define the character in a precise and enduring way, such that he never becomes totally entangled with one particular scene or another. It forces organization. It also tends to encourage you to take the time you would spend making patch fixes, and spend that time making improvements to the master rig instead. Thus, over time your rig becomes increasingly robust, accumulating improvements, and your rigging time is not siphoned away making expendable structures with no enduring benefit.

So. I can see the validity of your perspective; it does take a certain amount of commitment to build and maintain a rig which enjoys the advantages of character sets, without sacrificing flexibility, and perhaps that commitment is not worth making in situations where the character is not intended for sustained reuse... but I also believe my own position is entirely reasonable: a robust rig will always pay off in the long run, given enough animation time. A rig which sets up clear conventions and adheres to them is also easier to share with other animators. And you don't get into the situation of having to do the same pitch fixes repeatedly.

Trax, I won't defend. My own experiences with it have been mixed. But I haven't given up on it. I still believe that there is a place for it, and that I will eventually encounter that place and be glad it exists. Time will tell.

[ame]

touchee (i think or HOPE that's how it's spelled). I do say my response was to:

can you be a good character animator if you don't work with character sets and trax editor?

I storyboarded a new short animation project, but don't know if I should get into those or if I can go ahead and animate it without trax editor.. (?)

And I still say it's an unneccessary feature; or rather unimportant to one's success. Everything, you too, have to say is valid and well grounded. I have learned however, that as a rule, you should always make your rig as simply as possible, and make all other higher level features additions and in the peripheral, not entrenched in the base, character sets easily being one of the wayside dwellers.
To preclude advanced features, ironically, ensures forward-compatibility, and the ability to step back and rethink and re-adjust what you've created.
All of us TD-types over-do it sometimes, and it's great when you can slink back a step with no one knowing, versus that being a HELLA-bad pipeline-pooching.

rockout -J.