So we've got to follow through animation to a pretty good spot.
We've learned about that principle and but there's still room to improve and let's discuss why that
is and why we can improve this and how.
So if we look at this piece as a chain, this kind of tail, we would assume that it would never really
get in a straight position.
If it's swinging back and forth, there would always be something kind of trailing behind.
So let's just do this for the first swing and then we can continue and do that for the rest.
So since this is the biggest swing, let's let's follow this.
So we have our two keyframes here.
If we have all these pieces selected and we have this kind of extreme pose, we can see in the graph
editor and then it travels down and they all go together, write each piece of the chain goes together.
And that doesn't really make a ton of sense physically.
It almost gets everything gets almost straight up and down.
And if all of this was traveling from a right to left direction, you know, these bottom pieces are
following these top pieces.
So this would lead and then this would follow and that would follow that one and the bottom would fall
the second the bottom one.
So we need to reflect that in our animation because right now they're all just moving together.
So if we just went to about halfway between these two key frames here at the bottom, let's just say
halfway around here, let's just keep these rotated back in the direction that they are following in
and we can do a little bit less just for this one.
So now if we take a look in the graph, Ed, we can see there's kind of different grades here.
And it looks like these two or maybe even maybe too much because they're going almost past their extreme.
So I'm just going to lift that one up because we want the extreme to be before it starts to slow down.
So now let's take a look at this, this top piece is starting to straighten out, but it's dragging
these bottom pieces so they're still getting dragged from this right to left direction.
They don't know that they're slowing down yet.
So we needed to reflect that.
So now when we get into this middle frame section, it's not straight up and down.
Right.
It's a progression.
This piece goes straight up and down.
Then this piece, then this piece and then this piece in time.
Right.
But in this key frame, they're not all going to be straight up and down yet.
So when we scrub forward, we need to keep that going.
And another way that we could do this is actually offset the animation.
Now, it's not something that I would encourage, but it is maybe an easier way to conceptualize this
stuff.
So let's just delete these key frames and we can offset them so you can kind of see what I'm talking
about.
So we could take all these bottom pieces and let's select all their key frames and move them back to
key frames.
Then we can select these bottom two and move them back to key frames.
And then finally, we can select this bottom piece and move this back to keyframes, so we've created
an offset.
If we select all of these now, we can see in our curves there's an offset here.
Each one progressively gets animated with this follow through.
So now if we play this back.
It's much more, you know, feels like a chain and not that everything is kind of moving in one piece.
Now, this might be a little exaggerated.
We might have needed to do maybe one frame offset instead of two or maybe progressively get to one.
So maybe we could drag this one back one frame, just shift middle mouse trying in the graph editor
there, as usual.
So, yeah.
So maybe the further we get down the chain, the less frame offset there is something like that because
there is quite a bit of weight here, you know, just by the size of this kind of picture that we've
created here.
So maybe settle a little quicker towards the end.
But that's the idea of adding Polish this fall through.
Now, I hesitated to show you this offset method because it gets a little bit dirty when you're animating.
Now, look at our timeline.
There's keyframes everywhere.
So let's say if we wanted a retime this thing, you know, where do we even begin to, like, shift
click and making sure everything's being retimed evenly?
So that's why I would encourage you to also consider a method of going to undo on some of this and also
encourage you to consider a method where you intentionally place these offsets.
Right.
So that they're all being keyed at the same time.
That's why I showed you that first.
So, you know, we'll add a little offset here with them all together.
I'll deselect this top one and add even more of an offset here.
And, you know, we haven't changed time.
We're still in this middle middle frame here between these two extreme poses.
And then I can get to this bottom one and add even more of a offset there.
So then when we select all of these, it's a much cleaner, right?
There's only one extra key frame.
And we're kind of adding this offset in the value right this way.
We're adding that offset.
And we can continue to do that through all of these key frames.
So, for example, here, we would know, you know, maybe these wouldn't be in this position until
later.
So let's go to this halfway mark and let's just middle mouse drag this value.
If middle mouse drag here, it'll actually save that key frame.
And when we hit key, we can see that it brought it over here.
So instead of copying and pasting it, we actually have saved that key from over here.
So we can actually just delete this because we know we don't want it to continue to go in that direction.
Right when it's here.
When all of these have finished, the top ones have finished going over to the left.
This one is still falling behind it.
So we want to show that.
And we already have that kind of animation built in with these offsets so we can just delete that key
frame and just kind of take what it gives us.
We could also offset these even more by, you know, playing favoring these key frames on the left.
So moving the key frames up here.
And let's just take a look at this first swing.
So we we already have that kind of follow through offset, but it's much cleaner, right?
We only have these kind of two key frames.
And if we wanted to retime this stuff, it's way easier.
We're only dealing with like one key.
So go through this and add these offsets to the animation and choose whichever method you like.
You could click and drag and use these offsets if you're confident, you know how many key frames you're
going to offset them and you're not going to need to retirement.
Or I would encourage you to use this method that is a little more deliberate and you're taking control
of your animation and choosing exactly what keys to put where instead of animating everything and then
just kind of offsetting stuff.
It's not really the best way to go about animation, but you're learning.
So, you know, do whichever you like for now.
But later on, you know, if you got deeper in animation, you would not want to use those offsets that
often.
Now, one other thing we could do is use the graph matter again to our advantage.
So instead of setting offsets here, you know, let's take a look at this little keyframe section here.
This is getting dragged at staying back, at staying back, rotated this other way, and then it finally
starts to rotate and start to follow the other direction.
Right.
Right on thirty eight.
Right on this key frame.
Well, it's, it's still getting pulled.
Right.
And when it's going in this direction, so it's starting to flatten out either way too soon.
And of course we can grab this key frame and drag this down.
We could set a middle key frame here.
There's all different things we could do.
But just a super quick I just want to show you the other thing you could do is to use the tangent handles.
So if we actually grab the tangent handle here and middle mouse drag it down, we can continue this
type of animation for longer without having this set.
Another keyframe, so we could do this for the top one two, so we could middle mouse drag this so that
the peak is later, it's past the keyframe, but the animation we're getting is kind of for free almost
that it's keeping this rotation longer without us having to set new keyframes.
So that's another method you could use to help offset this animation is by rotating the tangent handles
as offsets as well.
So that's another good way to, you know, eliminate having too many key frames in your scene in an
early blocking stage where you want to try to keep the scene and number of key frames as low and as
clean as possible.
So thanks for watching and I'll see you the next lesson.