One of the surprising and fun things about being in a room of animators from all over the world is all of the nerdy things you can learn.
Within the first hour of meeting we were discussing the hip alignment on a passing pose, bottom or top teeth showing on a 'n' phenom and what secret hot keys we use to speed up our workflow.
My favourite new thing I learnt , and I'm sure everyone already knows this but just in case.... is a shortcut for Maya. If you want to scroll your timeline without touching it you can press 'k' and hold down the left mouse key. There you can scroll the time line without touching it. Mind blown! An animator is easily pleased.
We discussed using only I.K verses switching from F.K to I.K when needed and many other things. It was like a nerdy conference of the minds and in just one day I feel like I learnt so much.
I really love a studio that is collaborative. I've worked places before where hot keys and scripts are closely held secrets. People would keep them to themselves so that they had a upper hand to everyone else. It's great to feel that as a team we want everyone to be equip with all the info.
I'm almost jealous of all the juniors in the room. They are gaining such level of insight that it took me years to cobble together.
In case you were wondering here are my favourite scripts that make my life a ton easier, but I'm sure I'll be discovering a lot more soon:
Tween machine
A machine that allows you to easily create inbetweens
ZV Parent
I hate constraints but this program makes using them a lot less painful
Animschool picker -
This free picker can be placed on any rig and allows you to easily select all your controllers. I mainly use this for the face but it's really useful
But people in work have recently been recommending Animbot
It seems insanely intuitive and helpful. I'm just looking into it and you do have to pay for it but I'm going to research a little more and let you know if it's worth it.
What shortcuts and scripts do you guys use? What do you find helpful?
