3D Animation For Beginners | By RFK Global: Saudi 3D Animation Studio

In this scene, we will be adjusting the movement of this character pouring a cup of coffee.

An important aspect of human animation are ‘arcs’ (swooping actions which help our animations look natural and less robotic). So, we are going to spend a little time going over this…

Interface Tips
It is helpful to complete the workspace with 2 viewport angles and the graph editor to view the keys and and side windows – with the channel box editor and outliner ready at all times.

The Movement
Here, we’ll drag through, or ‘scrub’ through the timeline to check on the curves. There are a couple of harsh angles which can be seen here, so we are going to try and smooth them out.

However, the movement is not just in her arms… We tend to put our whole bodies into simple movements, so we want her torso to lean with her jug, but we don’t want it to be too exaggerated.

Keyframes
Using the ‘angle bracket’ keys will cycle you through the key frames on the Timeline. This is a quick way to look at the main movements of a selected control, without putting the entire animation in stepped mode and without computer interpolation. One downside of this, however, is that it’s not time accurate. So, it’s good to have your timing already sorted.

The jug is contained to the hand, so when the wrist moves, so does the jug. We need to have the arm controls in Inverse kinematic mode so when we move the wrist, the whole arm moves. This should make for a smoother arc motion in the jug.
Let’s move the hand holding the jug accordingly, using the W and E keys to cycle through transformation and rotation tools.

The Graph Editor
If moving the control in the viewport isn’t accurate enough, we can adjust the keys in the graph editor, selecting and dragging keys we want to move to change the timing – or using the shift key and dragging up or down with the middle mouse button to change the value.

General
We are focusing on what we see in the Rendercam Viewport, as we don’t want to animate anything that isn’t seen, but we will use my perspective view on the right to keep an eye on a different angle of the character. Looking from an additional angle will help the movements look a little bit more natural.

Our character is going to inhale the tea aroma, so we are going to focus on her shoulders, to get a deep breathing in motion

Polishing
After being satisfied with the main keys, we can scrub through them on the timeline to check how the computer joins them up, or interpolates them – we can add or delete keys as necessary, in the graph editor. Patience may be required for this part of the process.