Original subtitles

- [Instructor] Before we start detailing our blocking,

I'd like to introduce a new tool

that will help us accelerating the process.

It's the Breakdowner tool.

To show it to you,

I've created this simple action

with the bouncing ball rig,

with the main controller only animated

on the Z location access.

The Breakdowner tool is accessible

in the tool panel on the left

whenever you are in Pose Mode.

You can also access the Breakdowner option

going into the editor,

Pose, In-Betweens,

and the different Breakdowner option

will be available here.

If I now go on frame two,

where the ball stopped to raised the air

and I will select the Breakdowner tool on the left.

If I now left click and drag in the 3D view port,

You will see the ball going up and down,

whether going toward the pose on frame number five

or the pose on frame zero.

And as I'm doing it, you can see that

we have a percentage of breakdown

shown in the top left corner.

Currently 40%, this percentage correspond

to whether we are favorizing frame zero

or frame five.

If I create a breakdown this way,

we have a value of zero,

it will be exactly in the same pose as pose zero.

With a value of 100%,

exactly the same pose as frame five.

If I use a value of 50% for the breakdown,

the pose that will be created using the breakdown now

will be exactly in the middle

between the pose on frame five

and the pose on frame zero.

As most Blender tool,

we can isolate the channel we want

whenever we are using the Breakdowner.

Here I input a rotation pose on frame five

so the ball is interpolating both

its location and its rotation

from frame zero to frame five.

I now go to the Breakdowner menu,

choose the Breakdowner.

Or, you can use the shortcut shift+E to activate it.

If I then press R, it will only work

with the rotation of the ball.

If I press shift+E and then G,

it will only work with the location of the ball.

And you can absolutely combine those

with the X, Y, and Z key.

If I go on frame two, press shift+E

to activate the Breakdowner,

then G, then X,

the ball will only slide along the X axis.

It behaves exactly the same way

as any transform tool.

Two other tools are available to us.

The Relax tool, that we can access with alt+E,

and the Push tool that we can access with ctrl+E.

If my player is on the frame with a key,

and then I press alt+E to Relax the current pose,

the resulting pose will be closer to pose zero

as I get to 100%.

If instead, I press ctrl+E,

it will Push the current pose.

So basically, it will check the interpolation

between frame zero and five.

The ball is raising, and it will Push it higher.

The Relax pose tools that you can call using alt+E

will create an intermediate key pose,

or breakdown of arranging the pose,

between the previous key frame and the next key frame.

So using alt+E and Push it over 100%

is exactly the same that using shift+E

the classic Breakdowner,

and set it to 50%.

So this tool is very useful

when you start to detailing your blocking.

For example, here I have two poses

that are pretty extreme,

meaning that there is a big contrast

between those two poses.

With the torso root controller selected,

I can press shift+E, and Blender will

start interpolating between those two keys.

From there, I can choose to lower this controller

to create a better arc instead of

having a straight line.

And then, I can choose to use the Breakdowner

on the chest controller,

and whether keep a low percentage

so that I'm favorizing the previous pose,

or I can go beyond 50%

if I want to rotate more the chest

as if it was leading the animation.

So it's a very cool tool to

quickly block your breakdowns.

But I do advise you to use it

very cautiously and as less as possible.

I generally use it only for the root of my character,

and sometime to position the feet.

It's a fantastic tool to keep track of your arcs,

but certainly not a good tool to pose your character.

To summarize, we have seen that

the breakdowners allow us to create

a key between the two poses

by choosing the level of interpolation we want

between those two keys.

As any transform channels,

we can enter the value we want

the interpolation to be processed with.

We can isolate the location, rotation, or scale

of the transformed channels,

and we can choose the axis

we want to use the tool on.

There is also a Push tool and the Relax tool,

but I don't think they are very useful

since we can achieve the same result

with the Relax tool using the Breakdowner.

And I don't advise you to Push your poses

using a tool like that.

I would do this by hand to get a more accurate result.

The Breakdowner is a super cool tool

to keep track of your arcs,

and get a base for your pose and break downs,

but I would never use it

to create the final pose of one of my character.