Howdy fellow developers, and community members!
My name is Momo6097, and I am an animator (and builder,3D modeler) and today I figured i’d share some of the techniques I use when animating!
1.Keyframe Blocking
So this is really important, and sometimes frustrates new animators. A keyframe block is basically making it so a body part doesn’t automatically change to a different position between two keyframes. For example, if you are making a kicking animation and want the leg to pause before going back down to the ground, you can copy the keyframe (the one you want to pause) and place the two keyframes side by side.
In the Gif you’ll see that the two middle keyframes are exactly the same, I just copied the first one and pasted it over a little bit so the leg paused!
https://gyazo.com/868209fd69d9e2f92cc922b4a62726ee
2.What Editor To Use
As a novice or intermediate Roblox developer, you may be confused with certain animation editors. I don’t recommend Blender to start with, as it is not easy to learn and you need some background knowledge on animation editing. Don’t get me wrong, if you want to give it a shot then go for it, I just found that backround knowledge on the animation editing system through Roblox helped me a lot with moving over to Blender. While I still tweek some of my animations through Roblox, I use both the Roblox Animation Editor and TheRing0fSaturn’s animation editor
https://www.roblox.com/library/1802787806/Rthro-Classic-Animation-Editor-ORIGINAL
The animation editor I just linked is great for new animators that wish to use the classic animation editor, with editional features.
3.Looping
A very basic skill in the animation editing process is looping. You always want to watch how your animation loops, especially if it’s a walking animation. I always copy the first keyframe in my walking/running animations and paste it at the very end so it doesn’t jolt body parts when the frame loops over. I would also just run your animation on looping for about 30 seconds, and observe any of its flaws (ex:body parts cutting into one another,sudden unwanted shifts in body parts, whether the frames are too close or too far).It’s a solid way of proof checking your work before you publish it.
4.Publishing Animations
ALWAYS give your animation a descriptive name that identifies exactly what it is (ex:“Upper left kick #1”) and it’s purpose. You’ll realize that as you practice, you will publish A LOT of animations which can make it hard to tell them from each other. This saves you the time of opening an animation in your editor and running it. Also, make sure you check whether the animation is looping when you publish it because if you don’t want it to loop and looping is activated then you have to open the animation again.
I really hope this helps some of you new, and intermediate animators with your practice. If you don’t understand something then please feel free to reach out to me on Roblox (Momo6097) or DM me on the dev forums. This may be overwhelming, but i’d be glad to go more into detail with you. Thank you, have a great day!