MB Tutorial Part 41: F Curves and Key Controls Video Lecture | A Complete Course: Motion Builder - Professional Skills

alright in this lesson we're going to be
taking a look at some of the new
features of the f curves and key
controls windows now you will notice
that I have changed my UI around a
little bit to make these two windows a
tad more dominant now these two windows
have a lot to do with animation so
before I get started I'm going to need
to animate a scene so that I can
demonstrate some of the new features
that have to do with these windows so
first thing let me go ahead and bring a
cube into the scene and I'm going to
scale it up a bit about like so and let
me translate it over here to the edge of
the viewer window like so and all I'm
going to do is animate a quick sequence
of this cube bouncing across our viewer
so we'll drop an initial key frame and
then I'm going to take my time slider
and set it all the way to the end frame
150 and maybe 150 is a little bit too
big we don't really need to animate it
that long so let me go ahead i'll
double-click this set this down to about
frame 90 and what i'll do is i'll just
set my time slider to the end of this
which is 90 frame so that should be more
than enough and I'll place a keyframe
here after I let's move The Box first
before I place a keyframe well slide it
over here to the end of the animation
and press key and now we've already got
a little bit of animation going on so
let me set this over to frame 30 and I'm
just gonna place a key as a jump anchor
these are going to bring our box back
down as it jumps along now let me slide
this over to frame 60
and place another anchor key like so and
now we're ready to go ahead and add in
the jumps themselves so if I come here
to frame 15 I can slide this box up into
the air press the key button and look at
this my animation curve is already
updated so now we'll come over here to
frame 45 and I'll slide this up into the
air again press key and finally at 75
will slide this up and press key this is
all well and good I've got my animation
done per se but we have a bit of a
problem kinda looks like it's floating
exactly it doesn't really look like it's
bouncing off of the surface so if i drag
through this a little bit more slowly
for those that there might be suffering
from video compression we can see that
we're just kind of floating along we're
not really looking like we're bouncing
this is easily fixed now in
MotionBuilder 5 because now
motionbuilder supports weighted tangents
so now i can take the tangents that we
used to be able to edit and adjust their
weights as well to really have a
dramatic effect over the shape of our
animation curves here's what I mean let
me go ahead and just select all of the
keys here inside of my F curves window
and I'm going to right click and select
weight selection now will notice that
our tangents sort of jump a little bit
let's go ahead and have a close look at
what these just did let me grab this one
key here let's zoom in on it so we can
see nice and clearly
all right now if I grab my tangent and I
move it I can still adjust the tension
but look at this I can also adjust its
waiting as well so maybe let's try this
up here I can pull this out and look at
how the curve is changing very nice so
like right here I can make the Box stay
in the air just a little bit longer just
by adjusting this waiting a little bit
so I mean we can see here with a shape
of the curve here it's taking a lot
longer to actually reach its apex so
it's going to be staying in the air just
a bit longer than it is with these other
two curves anyone who's really animated
a lot before knows how useful weighted
tangents can really be oh absolutely so
we can see like here if I just hit play
that he really kind of looks like he's
lofting through the air at that first
curve so let's go ahead and do the same
thing with these other two curves I'll
just take the weights and pull them out
just a little bit so our box will be
staying in the air just a tad longer
now let's go ahead and rewind and have a
look at this
so he's really catching some hang time
now but it doesn't quite look like he's
bouncing really it still kind of looks
like he's floating through the floor and
why is that because our curve is just
kind of dipping and curving back up now
if an object is bouncing along the
ground there's a dramatic change in
direction it's not like a slow ease in
ease out curve it's a really sharp boom
going down then going back up using our
tangents and adjusting them we can fix
that now over here all we have to do is
just adjust our tangent which will
automatically take our tangent type over
to user and we can already get sort of a
spike sort of look so that we no longer
have this sort of ease in sort of look
we're just we're kind of bouncing
straight up off the ground but over here
if we try to do that look at what we get
let me zoom in so we can see just a
little bit more clearly if I try to
bring that up look at this not exactly
what you want our tangents are saying
are saying in a straight line so we
can't get the actual effect what we need
a sort of a point to this animation
curve fortunately there is a new tangent
type called break which fixes this for
us with break selected I can take these
tangents and point them in two separate
directions
so with that now we have an actual point
to our animation curve and let's go
ahead and rewind and have a quick look
and see how this has affected our
animation will hit play bounce you can
see that really hard bounce when it
strikes the ground on that first impact
and if you can't see it let me go ahead
and just demonstrate it comes in Boing
straight back up there's no point where
it's really sliding along the ground
unlike over here where the Box kind of
seems to touch the ground slide along
for a second and then come back up right
so we're really starting to get a much
cleaner animation just by jumping over
here to break tangents we go ahead and
change this second bounce as well
make it nice and sharp and then finally
we'll take our last tangent and make it
into a nice sharp bounce as well
alright so now if I hit rewind and play
back through this we have three nice
cartoony looking bounces no longer looks
like our box is floating to the floor
and we can really see how weighted
tangents and the new break tangents can
help us a lot in customizing our
animation curves now one more quick
thing about animation curves before I
move on let's say you've got a lot of
objects in the scene and you're looking
at a lot of things that are in the y
axis maybe Y rotation y translation even
y scale all of the colors of those
curves are going to be neon green
because that is how the the color coding
system works RGB equals XY Z let's say
you don't want that to happen maybe this
is a very important curve here and we're
going to need to access it a lot so we
need to set it apart from any other
green curve in the screen we can right
click over here inside of our default
view and select edit curve color and we
can make the color of this curve really
any color of the rainbow so instead this
may be some sort of cyan color and you
can see it actually changed color here
inside the view later on if we get tired
of that we can right-click and reset it
back to its original if you look at this
menu closely you'll notice we can also
edit the curve the colors of all curves
of this type so all objects of y
translate curves will end up being
changed we can also simultaneously reset
all curves so just a pretty cool feature
there just to make you aware of now I
want to draw your attention over to the
key controls window we do have some new
things going on over here first of all
the two menus that we originally had
have been condensed down to the single
animation menu so plotting and options
have now been brought down to animation
so we have all of our plot we can all
are plotting properties if you will we
can clear our properties we have our
layer options for mono and multi-layer
all here inside of a single menu instead
of two menus also we can select what
type of tangent we want to use while we
key right here right over the key button
very handy if you know you're going to
be needing flat tangents very cool just
select flat and so on with the rest of
the tangent types
another very important factor that is
new to MotionBuilder 5 is that now you
can select keying groups and properties
now for those of you who are familiar
with motionbuilder for if you ever
wanted to key a certain property of an
object originally you had to come in
here and select selected properties from
the key in groups you no longer have to
do that you can select anything you want
translation rotation any any one of the
the three TR or s even all three any one
of these it does not matter i can just
have translations selected and then
under properties i can select a specific
property that I want a key such as maybe
visibility and as long as it is in gray
it is going to be keyed that is very
cool so now I can come through here and
maybe let's rewind our animation maybe
during the second bounce I want our
object to become invisible so we'll go
ahead and we'll set key here for
translation
and now what I'm going to do is alter
our the translation of our box just a
little bit so we can see this so I'll
bring this actually back down but I'll
also kill visibility and then I'll set a
keyframe so watch this we've changed
translation and we've animated
visibility at the same time very cool so
you now no longer have to jump between
TRS or any combination thereof and
selected properties you can do it all in
just a few quick clicks and being able
to keep property so easily is definitely
a huge upgrade most definitely it really
saves a lot of time and hassle when
you're animating so just a quick
overview we looked at some of the new
features for f curves as far as weighted
tangents we took a look at break
tangents we saw how we can change the
color of our curves to really any color
of the rainbow and back again we took a
look at clean groups and properties
we've seen the new animation menu here
and how it's condensed down the two
menus that were originally in the key
controls window and how we can select
various tangent types right here in the
key controls window without having to
come over here into our f curves and
change them after they've already been
placed so a really nice workflow
adjustments been made for MotionBuilder
5 really with that that's pretty much
everything I wanted to show in this
lesson so thanks a lot everybody