Aug 5, 2009

Quick Trick: Crop Your Shot

This is going to be fast. It's all I get time for these days!

A little trick I started using recently that helps me to evaluate my work is to trim how much of my shot I playback when I set it to loop and sit there watching it.

I find it hard to "evaluate" motion unless its complete to a certain level. Sometimes I find myself changing bits of animation that are really working just fine, and its the motion after that I haven't started working into yet that is changing my perception of it ( I tend to start refining from start to finish in sections, as opposed to passes across the whole shot ).

So its quite simple... if you just want to get a feel for how stuff is going, try setting your playblast to not include the last 10 frames, or however many frames you feel are not "figured out" yet.. and just get a feel for what youre up to... kind of like thinking "if my shot just ended here, is that motion working?"

I know... strange one... but helps me.

Over and out.



4 comments:

TJ Phan said...

As abstract as you may think these quick tips are, they do make sense. They do help me break out of possibly stale habits and see things differently. Thanks, and keep these tips coming whenever you find time!

Juan Carlos said...

so true..

Cameron Fielding said...

Thanks TJ! glad you're still here and reading buddy...

PHILIP said...

Woah.. I totally understand what you mean.Its like dealing with one chunk of your shot until its wroking fine and then moving on,I came across this approach through Jason schleifer(blog).That changed my workflow and i'm so glad.And one more important advantage in this method is how quickly things get done.All of a sudden we feel like we're animating faster and less stressed.