Help with smoother animation

[hypergolica]

Someone please help. I need to know how to make my animations move smoother. I keyframe a movement and then go into the graph editor and flatten the tangents. It helps but I still can't get that "fluid" motion. My animations are still somewhat "jerky". Any and all info will be greatly appreciated.

[chordinator]

It really depends on what you're animating. If you have a camera or some flying object moving in one direction, with several keys along the way, then flatting all of the tangents won't necessarily give you a fluid motion.

Try looking at the animation curves as a whole, in the graph editor, not just each key. Look at how fluid they are in the context of each fluid movement in your animation, and adjust accordingly.

Sorry to be vague, but you were too. Give us some details and maybe we can give you more specific suggestions.

[joojaa]

a flyghtrough is better done as path anim!

[joojaa]

a flyghtrough is better done as path anim!

[hypergolica]

First off, thank you VERY much fro your input. Allow me to be more spefic. Suppose you are keyframing a human torso in movement. It sways and turns to the left and then sways and turns to the right. After keyframing it, it is somewhat jerky with each change in direction. Now, what do I do to make all these movements untra smooth? My human models are smooth skinned, boned and have I.K. applied. Now when I animate camera movement I almost always apply the camera to a path. It gives really smooth movements. Should human movements be applied to a path?

[abinwylde]

before starting the animation u first think it in traditional animation way.for example if u r animating a walk cycle there will be seperate path(path of action) for foot,wrist,torso,head.u first draw it .follow it.before starting the animation u properly time and space the scene and think about FOLLOW THROUGH ACTIONS(important one).study it well.then only start animation.dont ever forget about follow through actions if ur looking for smooth animation.after doing all these u go to graph editor .

[failure]

What preview are we talking about? Vport? Playblast? Render?

[autumn]

Hi. I think your problem might be in that your just flattening the tangents. It might be better to go in the graph editor and manually ajust the tangents to follow the general flow of the curve. Remember also, the less keys you have, the smoother your motion will be, so be carfull using only what you really need. A bunch of extra unnecisary keys will definatly give you jerky motions.

[xcomb]

Yeah manually make your curve to look like an arch positive and negative and you should be fine.

[sparky]

another thing to think about is the # of keyframes you have. While it is not always the case, generally the fewer keyframes you have the smoother you can get the animation curve.

Just flatteng the curve will only work if you have just two keyframes and you basically are "easing in" and "easing out". between those two frames.