Re: Color Coding Keys

[Jeffrey Dates <jeff(at)janimation.com>]

Yeah I understand...

If your animators are keying breakdowns just like Keyframes, then I could see that as a problem.  My initial thought would be to suggest that the animators only key the breakdown objects straight-ahead.  Meaning only key breakdowns on the objects that need it.  That way if you breakdown a head turn for instance, you won't get keys on your feet.  ( as you would with a KeyPose ).  That'd be the simplest visual cue.

The 'old school' way would be to have your KeyFrame animator annotate the "keypose" frames, and force the "clean-up" animator to maintain those positions above all in the Fcurve editor.

Some great insight, though hardly new.  Keith Lango really breaks it down so beautifully on his site.  I would also suggest your animators with "less experience" to study the articles Keith has online about Pose to Pose workflow.  He really articulates a great solution for Digital Pose-to-Pose workflows.   http://www.keithlango.com/tutorials.htm

Let me know if you come up with a solution..   I'd love to hear what works out for you.

Andre DeAngelis wrote:

Thanks Jeffrey,

 

The problem is that the breakdowns tend to be treated the same way as the poses.  We key all params the same way, so visually in the dope sheet, they will not be identifiable fro the pose keys.

 

It’s true that a disciplined animator will be aware of where the pose key frames are, but that’s harder for some animators than others (especially those with less experience).

 

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From: owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM [mailto:owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM] On Behalf Of Jeffrey Dates
Sent: June 29, 2006 2:48 PM
To: XSI(at)Softimage.COM
Subject: Re: Color Coding Keys

 

Well, you should be able to identify keyframes at a glance using your dopesheet.  If you key all your keyable parameters for a "Key Pose", then you'll have a vertical row of keys on each "key frame" when looking at all your keyable parameters in the dopesheet..  Then you go back in and break down individual keyable parameters, individually for the inbetweens.

So you should be able, at a glance, to identify the "Key Poses" because they'll have every keyable parameter keyed at a particluar frame.  Where the breakdowns will be placed arbitrarily based on motion needs.

Now I realize this isn't at all what you're looking for, and doesn't address individual color per keyframe.  It's just that, traditionally, animators used hand written "Dopesheets" to outline the keyframes.  As an animator you should be hyper aware of where the keyframes are regardless of what you're doing to "clean-up" curves.  Especially, if your approach is Pose-to-Pose.

That's not to say that having the ability to color key(s) won't be used. 

 

Andre DeAngelis wrote:

I can’t think of a way to achieve this, but I was wondering if anyone had any ideas as to how to identify “type” of keys?

 

Here at Ubi, we usually work with a pose based approach to animation.  Once the poses are set, those keys should ideally not be touched when the break-downs and anticipation keys are created.  What would be of enormous help for us would be to be able to know which of the keys in the Dope sheet/animation Editor are the pose keys, so that when we clean up and refine the Curves, they are not deleted by accident.

 

Maya lets you set unique colors for these keys.  Assuming that this feature is not in XSI, has anyone come up with an approach to identifying the keys another way?

 

Thanks

 

Andre