I have watched a couple videos on YouTube about the NLA editor for blender and I hear it is okay to work with now (some better addons) but it will improve more and I hear it can speed up the workflow with action strips I create from animation cycles or something like that.
My question is if I should go ahead and start looking into it more and practicing it with the bouncing ball projects perhaps? I am towards the end of the character bouncing ball assignments, improving my squash and stretch and such currently. Maybe I could create different cycles with the bouncing ball and turn those into action strips somehow after more research if it is worth to learn the editor this early in the game and use it often? I think the core concepts of the editor will remain the same but it will be polished a lot and run smoother. I also hear this editor can really speed up performance if you create a bunch of cycles for characters and use the strips to shuffle around the timing and combine actions.
Any other advice on the editor if you have used it before would be great and more resources to look into it soon would be appreciated if it will become a powerhouse tool for animation in the coming years!
p.s. I also saw blender is planning to use layered animation and have all the data in one block only along with other cool features for 2025 so I hope I can get to the full body character knowledge in time to start using these features! Least the basics of character animation haha.
I'd say if you feel you're getting ahead of yourself, just have patience, it's better to let the flow flow as it should. That said if you think nah, I wanna see what's it all about, that's fine as well. But in general I think the best way to get to 10 is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10, and not 1, 4 and 10 and I'm done. Shortcuts are always bad. If you played Mario Kart 64 and you always jumped to the left at the beginning of the Rainbow Road to try and get the short cut and you fell 90% of the time and realized it would have been better to just do the race normally, then you know.
Yes learning NLA is a good thing. The NLA in Blender is similar to Layered animation in Maya. My understanding is the new animation system will make more use of the NLA, but I'm not 100% on that.
Hi Brandon,
Yes the NLA is usable now. There's still some quirks and the "Animation Layers" addon helps with that, but it's still a pain in the butt if you start w/o it enabled and want to switch during the animation.
However, for the bouncing ball stuff - you don't need the NLA at all. In fact it will slow you down - plus the #1 thing you need to learn is how to control your animation to do what you want it to do.
Step #2 is then exploring different ways/tools/workflows to get you there in the most efficient way.
I only use the NLA when it will speed me up, or show non-destructive changes.
It is a useful thing to know how to use - but for now, still focus your efforts on the Animation Bootcamp stuff ;)
Ok thanks for the tips guys! I like seeing what all my options are when it comes to animating, different workflows and toolsets that I can use one day. Gives me things to think about now so I will be ready to use it all for my characters! I will wait on the editor tab for now. And I should be able to submit my next bouncing ball animation to you Wayne Friday. I have been doing a lot better to animate and learn every night now!
Also Wayne, when would be a good time to start learning different workflows and editors in blender? I heard the pose to pose method is what all starters use and then explore but would your step 2 be after the full animation bootcamp course? To get an idea. I do want to expand after that as well and take body mechanics and other fun stuff like environment creation and vfx with addons.
The body mechanics and workflow course is all about that stuff.
There's no "1 way to animate". But I intentionally left out a lot of workflow specific direction in the Bootcamp so students can try a bunch of different ways that work (and don't work) for them.
Then when I show specifically how to work when the animations get more complex (ie - after the bootcamp) then the students already have some kind of idea of what works for them and may have found their own cool tricks before I start saying "do it this way not that way".
I hope that makes sense.
There's always 4 stages.
Planning
Blocking
Spline
Polish
How each animator does each step is up to them. At the end of the day, it's all pixels on a screen. So whatever gets you there the most efficient way is the best way.
However, you also need to be mindful that other people often have input into what you are working on, so you want to work in a way that easily allows changes along the way w/o having to start again.
Learning this is what the body mechanics and workflow course is all about