I found the following 2 videos on youtube, they show how professionals deal with animation.
This one taught me relevant things, and I followed a course on greasepencil to do the same thing this guy is doing, he blocks out the poses and refines them later on. I learned also that its relevant to hide parts of the geometry, good idea to use a mask modifier and focus on one pass at a time. The dude also uses a secondary root to have control over the rotation of the character, smart idea that I suppose solves the issue of gimbal lock.
This other video was also very useful. The same guy talks about the animation workflow and overall gives you an idea how you could approach this practice. I have seen references to animation terminology I found in the book “the animator survival guide” and overall I can understand this type of content abit better, previously I understood almost nothing of what they were talking about.
There is 1 problem. I still cannot figure out how to deal with more than 1 character. All such animators create actions for 1 character at a time. Is it how they work on average? What if your character is punching another one on the face, you will probably have 2 armatures. Will you create an action called “punch in the face” and another one for the other character called “receives punch in the face” and enter posemode with both armatures selected? I dont know.
Are there videos that show me a pro while he animates multiple characters interacting together? Having seen videos I quoted here helped me alot. Can you advise valid videos that show professionals while they animate?
Ability to pose two armatures in pose mode is recent.
I don’t know if animators did not get used to it, or if they just don’t consider that is important enough to be demonstrated.
Anyways, that is not the same movement that will be described by those characters. So, that will not be same action.
If same action is used on several characters, that means that they have same poses and similar rigs.
In pose mode, “Whole Character” Keying Set will work on both armatures if bones of both armatures are selected.
Dopesheet mode will display keyframes of both actions. Graph Editor, too.
NLA Editor will show action strips for both armatures.
Basically, only thing that can not is Action Editor mode of Dopesheet.
So, if you are not in this mode, you should not feel any annoyance while posing two characters as one and creating keyframes for both of them.
Workflow stays the same.
I mainly use dopesheet and then spline the animation just like tutorials told me. But I suppose you were saying that if I remain in the timeline I will be able to insert main poses for more than 1 armature with ease, right? I think this could work.
Any video you recomment where a professional does it? I learn lots of things observing the pros.
Sorry. I use Blender since decades. So, I am actively following the development.
But I have no interest in searching at learning content. So, I have no clue who to follow to see that.
I am talking about keyframes insertion, automatic keyframing, keying sets.
But if you want to insert poses from a pose library ; there is a restriction.
The pose will be applied only to active armature.
And if you want to create a pose asset, only pose of active armature is registered.
Because a pose asset is an action. And there is a different action for each armature.
Currently, new pose library introduced in Blender 3.0 is a work in progress.
Developers will continue to work on it. They still have to figure out how it should work in case of multiple armatures selected.
In that case, it could be improved.
