Original subtitles

- [Instructor] The time has finally come

to start polishing our animation and jump into spline.

To make the 3D space as clear as possible,

I will just hide the camera rig.

From there, we need to switch our interpolation mode

from step to bezier.

So what I will do is that in the action editor,

I will press Control + Tab to switch to the graph editor.

Then I will make sure that I display all the curves

by enabling the Show Hidden option.

And on top of this,

I will press Alt + H to make sure

that I have no curve or transform channel hidden.

From there, we can press Control + Tab again

and switch to the action editor.

Press A to select all the keys, and then T,

and choose Bezier.

Then select the punching bag and do the same.

Now if we play our animation,

it's no longer in step mode.

We have interpolation between the keys.

And since we've built a very detailed blocking,

our animation already looks pretty good.

This is why I've been very insistent

whenever I was telling you not to jump

into spline too early on,

because now our work will mostly to improve the animation,

rather than fix issues.

Before I jump into the graph editor,

I will rework a bit of the timing of the animation

by moving some of the keys here and there.

Since we have the bag that is supposed

to be synchronized with the character,

it would be better to use the Dope Sheet

so that we can move all the keys from the bag

and the character at the same time.

Again, I will make sure

that the Show Hidden option is enabled.

And as I want to make sure I won't be moving the keys

from our camera rig,

I will lock all the channels.

And from there, I will make some artistical choices.

So it's harder to justify that pure mechanical choice,

but I felt like the impact of the hook

wasn't that impressive.

So maybe I should hold for a couple of additional frames

the overshoot of the hook.

So from there what we can do

is select all the key frames after frame 45,

and we can offset to beat those keys

whether toward the end of the animation

to hold the pose longer.

Or if you want to shorten it,

get it closer to the beginning of your animation.

The other moment in the animation

I spot wasn't looking that good at this stage,

so it's very rough, it's very floaty,

but still, you can feel the animation, is the switch kick.

It's the moment where the character

stepped back into the switch.

I was hesitating whether to make the character

jump as soon as he reaches the extreme back,

or make him hold the beat down

before he make the jump to the switch kick.

In the end, I've chosen to make him jump

into the switch kick as soon as he hit the down pose.

So what I did is that I've selected all the keys.

As you can see, I've made a test

where I've made his down pose longer,

but then I've moved it backward

so that he instantly jump into the switch.

It's now time to jump into the graph editor.

So I've pressed Control + Tab to switch to the graph editor.

And as always, I will start by polishing

the root of my character.

And I always start with its location.

You know it's like the bouncing ball,

we are not playing with squash and stretch

unless we have figured out the position

of the ball in space.

Now I will press Q to access my quick favorite

and calculate the motion path

of the current torso controller.

And I will be only calculating the motion path

from a frame of five to 30 or 25.

Because I will stop polishing my animation by chunk,

I won't be polishing the root on the whole animation.

That will be a nightmare to handle and very odd to track.

So what I do is that I select a part of the animation

that I feel is clearly defined,

in this case, the jab cross motion.

And I will work on this part until I feel it's satisfying,

and then move to the next one.

It doesn't mean that I won't come back

to this part later on.

But at least I feel like it's more satisfying

to polish a part, feel like it looks good,

and then jump to the other part,

than trying to polish the whole animation at once.

Now let's talk about the curve.

What I want to do is to bring as much contrast and impact

into this animation as possible.

I want it to be super snappy.

So the idea is to hold a bit longer

your character back when he's back.

And when he's moving forward,

move it in faster and jump into the other shoot.

So if we have a look at the edited curve,

the Y channel is the back and forth channel

of our character, so, basically,

the motion that helps him to punch into the bag.

As you can see, that from four to eight,

the character is slowly moving forward

as he's taking his step forward.

And then, from eight to 12,

he's moving really faster while he's punching,

while it was way more linear previously.

Then we have a plateau shape between frame 12 and 16.

But this is the transition into the cross.

So the character is still moving forward,

but at a very slow speed.

And then there is a big drop forward

so that the character move very fast from from 16 to 18

when he's punching with the right cross.

Regarding the Z curve,

I'm just wanting my character to squat before he pushes.

So I further rised the first poses

and lowered the Z curve at the beginning.

Then as he push, he's raising a bit,

but he's not jumping, he's pushing forward.

So don't create a too big overshoot.

Then he's diving into the right cross.

And as he punch, he's going straight.

There is a quick dive, then a plateau,

then he's recovering.

From there, I've been working on the rotation of the root.

And I did approach the rotation a bit

as I did for the forward momentum,

meaning that I've tried to contrast it.

I'm starting with the X rotation curve,

which allow us to make our character

lean forward and backward.

So what I did is that I've just made him

slightly bend backward,

when he was dropping in the beginning,

as his torso is dragging.

And then, I will make him lean into the punch.

So I haven't moved this curve that much,

because it wasn't needed from the rocking we have done.

The curve I did put more work on was the Z rotation curve,

because at this stage, it's allows the character to twist

and the power of a punch is all about twisting.

In the beginning when the character is moving forward,

I've input the new information

we didn't have during the blocking,

is that I've slightly pushed up the curve

so that the torso of the character is opening a bit,

and it creates a little anticipation

for the left jab that will twist the opposite way

a couple of frames later.

Then to bring contrast to the animation,

what I did is that I created a slight plot.

And then we are rapidly transitioning

into the opposite twisting during the right cross

and there is a very slight overshoot.

Instead of our initial stimulus with our curve we have here,

I have something that is more contrasted.

On there, I'm taking my character from all angle

and I work on the other curve just to eliminate

any pops or any weird changing the direction.

For example, here, the X location of the character

is going right, then left, then right.

So I'm just stabilizing the character

while he's punching with his right cross,

his weight is going over the left leg, and that's it.

He's no longer bouncing right and left.

But once I'm done with my root,

I generally work on the feet.

That's because the contacting point

has a lot of influence on the rest of the body,

so I like to time them as soon as possible.

I want to make the foot accelerating forward,

so easing forward,

by scaling the first pose.

And I want to get rid of this straight leg pose

that doesn't look natural at all,

so I will offset the curve by one frame.

Then I've converted it to vector

because I want the foot to plant on the ground

so it does a hard stop.

And from there, I will duplicate

a couple of key of the Z curve

and slightly push it up at the time the foot is traveling.

This will create a subtle step,

instead of having the foot sliding on the ground.

And we can quickly work on the heel controller

using the X rotation.

As the character move forward,

his weight is more on to the left leg.

So we can lower a bit the heel,

slightly raise it mid-air,

and then set it to zero and to vector

and just half turn the foot contact with the ground,

so that the heel will slam on the ground.

Now you can work on the bit

of overlapping motion for the toes.

Select the main toe controller.

Once the leg has left the ground,

rotate a bit the toes down

as they are dragging toward the previous pose.

And as the leg touch the ground,

rotate them up a bit.

And then, one or two frame later,

flatten them on the ground.

From there we can work on the right foot.

And it doesn't feel natural at all

to have the right foot moving

at the same time as the front foot

as if our character was floating.

So we need to offset the motion by at least one frame.

This will straighten a bit the back leg

so it feels way more natural that the back leg

is getting pulled and no longer pushing.

It's pushing while throwing the left jab,

but then it's getting dragged by the body.

Since it's sliding on the ground,

we don't have to work on the Z location curve.

But one thing that is bothering me

is the orientation of the knee.

It's a lot pointing on the outside.

So I will rework rapidly the position of the knee

by changing the position of the pole target

and offsetting it mainly using the X location curve.

For this specific case,

don't focus on the graph editor.

Just focus on the shape of the leg

and remember that your knee is more or less

aligned with your foot.

So having the knee pointing to the outside is very weird.

I'm just fixing this.