how many handles for animation
 

i am trying to learn setting up an character for animation. and not to do something only i can use, i wanted to do it usefull from the beginning. probably i should get a book about it which i am not willing to do just now. not sure if it is possible, but i dont want me (or the animator who gets the model) to go down to ik-handle level or locators. so i imagine parenting them to little objects outside the character which then can be animated and drive all the skeleton. it might be overkill, but you only set a character up once. now the questions:

• how many of the animateable little helpers are usefull?
• what kind of help would a animator dream about?
• is documentation needed to explain the animator how to use the character?
• is a command center (a big thing with a lot of sliders to control most of the character (head nodding, open/close hands, flex muscles w/o moving, breathe .... ) a waste of time to implement or very handy ?

i know - a lot of questions. hope to get a few answered.

thanks

1) i just use selection handels for all the spine, shoulder, head, elbows, wrist. Ik for the legs. Loactors for the hand functions, and locators for the eyes.

2) A MAYA built in skeleton genorator=)..

3) Is good for a beginer to have some back up documention to help you along

4) I only use sliders for the facial animation, but it comes down to the person.

I like having as much control as I can over my charcter so I use mostly FK from the root up. I do use all IK for game animation.

thanks kurt.

you use mostly FK? wow, sounds like a lot of control (and a lot of work while animating). is that the secret to sucess?

Depends mate... most animation for games is IK, but a lot of work for feature film is still done using FK.

I just find I can pose my characters better using joint rotation than moving the ik all over the place and sometimes get that nasty elbow flip=) The other thing about Fk you can get better offsetting in the elbows and wrists.

My last animation with the baseball oger was all Fk except the legs had IK.

I guess i like the pain of a little bit more work to have a bit more control...

Im working on a freelance job right now for a game and it all IK=(

what about IK/FK switching? :)

if u wanna set up a character for complete animation, then good luck to ya cos you would need a lot of control to suit everybody cos the more advanced lot wud want stuff like individual finger curls, finger spread, some expression driven stuff and i reckon it wud just get very messy