will make animation better Physics lesson on gravity(smoothing tutorial) - By CC

[Cybernetic Cinema 576]

Hey guys, so lately I have noticed that people have been having a lot of problems when it comes to integrating a bit of physics into their animation. I am not really saying that it's necessary because the laws of physics is always broken when it comes to an animation yet I am saying having a little knowledge on how things go up and down by gravity should help you in the long run.

First things first is using folders:

To create a folder you have to go to the bottom left of the timeline tab

Folders are usually used to organize the items on the timeline. You can select multiple things on the timeline and click the folder button to automatically  place them all in a new folder.

Folders do not have an object assigned to them so the only thing that can be seen is the translate and rotate

Let's move on to using folders for rotating and translating:

Okay so the order of the folders for translating really just matters on the situation and personal preference, but I usually just do X folder out, Y folder in the middle, and Z is either the object we're translating or just another folder on top of the object

The same goes for the rotation folders, but they all must be inside the innermost translate folder carrying the object. If it were in the object, the object wouldn't rotate:

Now I will show you a bit on how gravity and movement should work so you can have your animation from looking like this:

To this:

First things first is that you need to know that x, and y, must never be animated on the same item when making arc movements! The reason being is that they are both considered to be 2 different components, which pretty much means one could be going at a constant speed while another is gradually getting slower.

Example

(X is going at linear speed)

(y is easing out, then easing in)

Put them together and you get this:

Now you might be wondering, "CC, where else can this be applied besides for simulating gravity?" Well young noob, I can tell you it can pretty much be applied anywhere when it comes to translating and rotating.

For example I want this cube to linearly rotate on the x component, I want the Y component to use an ease in and out, and I want the z component to ease in and ease out exponentially, so I create 3 folders, parent them to one another then voila!

...To be honest I don't know where this example will be needed in something but I am sure you get it now.

Just play around with this idea as you may not need to use all of those folders for a specific movement.

With the basic knowledge of this you should be able to get that smoothness when you need it, and if this helped at all, please consider leaving an up vote so I know. A comment would do just as fine too! :3

Edited April 3, 2017 by Cybernetic Cinema
Done!

[Emaniplex 6.3k]

1 hour ago, Cybernetic Cinema said:

Well young nub,

And you've lost me.

[Cybernetic Cinema 576]

1 hour ago, Emaniplex said:

And you've lost me.

To be honest mate I always thought "nub" was just a lower rank than noob, so I looked up the definition annnd, I changed that part

Edited April 3, 2017 by Cybernetic Cinema

[Mike 3.4k]

I've been waiting for someone to make this guide, been too lazy to do it myself  

[Anatoli 769]

i wouldn't have known about this trick if i didn't do it on my character a long time ago and when i did i was like "this makes things easy." 

[AlfaProductions 512]

I have a question would you be able to use this with camera shake?

[Cybernetic Cinema 576]

1 hour ago, alfadog said:

I have a question would you be able to use this with camera shake?

Depends on the shake your trying to achieve really, give me an example.

[AlfaProductions 512]

3 minutes ago, Cybernetic Cinema said:

Depends on the shake your trying to achieve really, give me an example.

like as if someone were holding a camera like reality tv style ya know?

[Cybernetic Cinema 576]

Yes it would, but I don't really think a person holds the camera usually, more of a mechanical arm. Also that's a bit too vague of an answer for me to work with  Either way though, it solely depends on experimentation. just play around with this idea and I am sure you will get some pretty cool movements. Just don't forget to mess around with the transitions and see if you even need folders at all.