Blenders default human rig works pretty well. However when I animate it (by tracing a video) it looks super jerky and like it has no gravity. Any tips on how I can avoid this?
You mean you’re key framing the metarig? Have you tried generating the rigify armature from it? I know it looks complex, but it is a very well made armature.
If you just want to play around or “dabble” then a few tips might be enough. Anything more than that, and it would be hard to cover in a few posts on a forum.
But the rig only matters in terms of it’s how well you can interact with it. The rest is up to the animator. A bit more information would help anyone interested in offering assistance. Like what kind of animation it is. A blend file would be good too.
Unwanted snappy, jerky motion can be caused by a few things. Like packing too many key frames close together for example. People often try to counteract certain motion, by micro managing keys. In my experience it makes the situation worse. Using fewer keys and editing the resulting curves in the graph editor will give you a smoother result. Besides being easier for you to manage.
I am using the generated rigify armature and it is very powerful. We are doing this for a budget short film so it needs to be as HQ as possible. If you have links to good tutorials that would be fantastic.
It is mostly upper body animation which I have no problem with. When it comes to walking/lower body animation the whole thing just goes to crap.