Quick Trick: Draw your Timing

Not too long ago I started using 'drawings' at work to figure out timing beats for certain animated shots, and it was one of those great moments when you discover something that you instantly use over and over again, so I thought it best to post the process here on Flip.

I found myself looking for a fast way to record a timing reference for certain shots, I wanted a way to quickly get an idea of the timing of certain actions or beats without having to go into blocking and actually start posing stuff out, but also without having to go to the reference room and go through the motions of recording myself, converting video to Linux and basically taking a load of time from my schedule. For me, when I'm figuring out a shot early on, I pretty much use the basic building blocks of story, posing ( with staging ) and timing to construct my blocking. I really enjoy posing characters, in fact its my favourite part of animation, but I find that having some kind of 'map' of the timing in a shot early on can be a tremendous help, because then you can really take the time to construct those poses with care.

So to cut a long story short, we have the option to draw over our shots in the camera view, and do very basic animation this way, and I found a way to mirror this specific process in maya one to one using fCheck. Instead of drawing the animation however in the traditional way with sketches, I simply move my mouse around to record the 'timing' of the shot, or particular beats or actions in the shot and it records that timing in the form of a little dot moving around on the screen. I`m not thinking about shape or anything like that here. After deleting the drawing and doing a bunch of takes, I usually get a decent feel for the timing of an action and I start using the specific frames the dot hits extremes on to time my poses in stepped blocking.

To make this clearer I made a few examples using maya and fCheck to illustrate what I mean, this is pretty much exactly what I see doing a similar thing at work:

This shows a timing idea for the wingbeats of a large flying creature like a dragon or something similar.


In the above example, I can get an idea pretty much instantly of the timing of those wingbeats without having to do any posing in the shot at all. All I am doing is drawing with the mouse. I can make the timing as even or as varied and complex as I like. Once I have some timing that I like, I can use the movement of the dot as a guide for what frames I need to start posing my extremes, for example, the up, the down, and a very good indication of the ease-in and outs that I need to get the feel that I'm going for.

To 'record' your timing using fCheck in maya, you do this; Set your playblast output as fCheck and playblast a blank screen with as many frames as you think you'll need ( usually the exact length of your shot ). Press play when fCheck loads, and as soon as you press and hold the right mouse in windows, it will start printing a small dot or line depending on how fast you move the mouse per frame.. this results in the perceived capture of your mouse motion. Luckily enough when you choose 'save animation' from the fCheck menu, it saves these drawings into the frame renders so you have it for good.

Agreed, the application of this idea is limited to certain actions, but let your imagination help you here... I have used this for very obvious and easy things like jumping and bouncing, but its also fantastic for subtle things like eye darts and weight shifts. You will start to find that the little moving dot often makes no sense to anyone but you as you start to use it to map more abstract actions.

Basically, anything that can help us "see" our animation quicker before we labour over posing and spacing is gold.

Here are a few more examples I did quickly for different timing beats:

( a samurai style decapitation! - the timing is clear for the antic, the swing and the head drop/bounce. Of course, the beauty of this method is trying many different variations really quickly until you have one you like. There is an indication of the arc on the sword and the spacing with regards to how far the sword/head moves, but this is really not important... its the timing I'm looking for. )

( Basic up/down timing for a really proud horse as he trots along )

( Angry guy picks up his pint, necks it, and slams it down again )

( A couple of different head turns )

Its possible to visualize a variety of different timing beats using this technique, so give it a try and see if it lets you experiment a little more.

Quick Trick: Track Those Arcs

OK, so poses are real important, timing is really important, in fact it seems there are 143,311 things that are really important in animation. One of my favourite out of the huge principle pile however is the concept of arcs. More specifically, I mean that practically all movement on your characters should describe a clean and natural arc through 3D space ( or mostly 2D really - unless like me, you work in games ).

To be honest I`ve known about arcs for a while, but only recently have I started to use them. Oh man how important they are. To discuss WHY they're important aesthetically would take all day, so I`m gonna stick to one aspect of their use for now - and thats mainly just keeping a handle on how smooth and dynamic your actions are.

Using a visual arc tool in Maya can really REALLY help you with your motions... during animation, but also afterwards for finding exactly where all those tiny pops and glitches are. The curve can help you see how smooth and 'organic' your motion is, and the spacing between the objects that represent each frame can visually show your spacing which is super useful.


note: don't confuse this with a "path" animation where an object is constrained to that path. The sphere is animated freely, and the curve updates as changes are made to describe the motion through space.

Some very basic examples of using arcs

• on everything ( arcs don't necessarily have to be smooth curves ! )
  
• on walk cycles - see the path of action on the feet , and the ease-in and outs of the foot plants.
• use a trail on the tip of a character's nose to make sure the head movements are natural and spaced well.
• on a jump - see the gravity through the spacing, and path of action visually with the trail.
• keep track of a complex arm movement, by using a trail on the wrist, and another on the elbow.
  

If you've ever used Maya's motion trail tool before, you probably know its a little suspect. I used 3DStudio Max when I was at Ubisoft, and one thing I did like about the package was it's really fantastic motion trails. So I wrote one for Maya that essentially mimics it exactly - and its also a little more straight forward and visual to use than Maya's own ones.


Trails will update dynamically as you change animation on your object. You can have any number of trails per scene, and even on varying frame ranges of the same object.

You can get it here: cMotionTrail