Stop using the Graph Editor in this way 

intro: 0:00 create breakdown 0:38 wrong use of the graph editor 5:08

After a decade of working in the HR field, i have now taken a leap of faith and folllow my passion to beacome an animator. Dont have any teachers in the small town that i am. I am self learning and your videos and tutorials are a blessing. Thank you so much 🙏

Thank you for this reminder Alessandro, sometimes I just go on autopilot and forget that nobody is gonna open my scene and see how "pretty" the curves are, what matters in the end is the animation, and most of the time it won't matter much (exception would be those crazy gimbal lock rotations messing FX later). I guess there's also a psychological thing going on with having the curves look "right", which as you said, is just nonsense.

Amazing video Alessandro. One of the reasons I like animation so much is that the process of producing it is not a closed formula. As Alessandro said, people have to understand the graphic editor, so they know when and how to use it correctly, in some cases you use it one way, in other cases you use it in another way, and in others you mix the two, that's what I say. I think it's pretty cool.

Another gem of a video on a concept so easily overlooked, but yet so important. Cheers Alessandro and Merry Xmas.

I have to chime in on that one cause graph editor is my one true love, it’s true that sometimes cleaning breaks the nice stuff but if you setup your scene with a graph editor workflow in mind your curves will/should directly represent what’s in screen, it’s then up to the animator to put the most out of it. Love your content as always, I’m a graph editor nerd so I had to give my 2 cents ahah

Hi Alessandro! Have you heard of the space switching method used by Richard Lico? Basically, one of the ways he uses it, is he constrains a locator to the controller, then bakes the controller animation to it. Then he reverses the constrain and now the locator controls the body part but is acting outside of the rig's hierarchy, acting now on world space. That way you can polish whatever body part you want and it shows exactly what it is doing on the graph editor because it's not being influenced by the counter animation of the other body parts. That way it becomes possible to polish and make cleaner curves on the graph editor, without losing functionality. After you are done with your polish/changes, just bake the animation to the original controllers and delete the locators, and the curves of the graph editor will again represent the body part acting alongside the counter animation of the other parts influencing it.

Excelent explanation, its really useful how you fill all those gaps of knowledge we normally have as begginers Animators with these quick videos, Its important to know how and when use a tool, not only apply a proccess and expect everything will be good. Having real control of what we do in our pipeline its essencial Thanks you always to share this kind of tips

guilty as charged! thanks for the great video and explaination.

Priceless information!

this is of great help ,. thanks a lot

Ciao Alessandro! Sto studiando da autodidatta e questo che stai mostrando è stato uno dei miei più grandi dilemmi, che col tempo ho cominciato a risolvere. Mi è capitato di pulire troppo il graph editor, tanto da snaturare parte dell'animazione, rendendola priva di carattere. Ti dirò di più, con il tempo e affinando di più la mia tecnica, alcune scene che mi è capitato di animare non è stato necessario lavorare sul graph editor, se non per piccoli fix fatti osservando bene la scena e non fatti per far risultare bello e pulito il graph editor. Una cosa che sottovalutavo ma che è dannatamente scontata, è affidarmi ai miei occhi: se la scena funziona non me ne devo fregare se c'è qualche "imperfezione" nel graph editor. Seguire determinate regole va bene, ma bisogna sapere anche come, quando e quanto implementarle, per questo ti ringrazio per la tua spiegazione. Questo video è una piccola perla che aiuterà molti animatori autodidatta e non.

Great lesson

great tips.thank you

I wish I had seen this long before. but I had to learn it the hard way if I may add some explanation, (and correct me if am wrong please) (first one needs to understand what is gimbal-lock to understand what's going on) the curves look noisy because the trajectory is maintained by the interdependency of more than one axis of rotation like when you "move" in diagonal, the trajectory is maintained by moving the values of x and y so same when doing complex rotations, it starts moving around the values of all the axes that's why the rotation in one axis in the second example went as expected and that's why you should never modify the graph without checking the viewport

Grazie Alessandro! Sei una meraviglia!

Amazing ..

so helpful !!! , thank you so much.

Thank-you for posting this. I make this mistake a lot trying to make pretty curves. I was wondering if the same idea applies when using translates on the COG and IK feet? There is no gimbal on them so is it better to clean up/smooth out the keys on translations or does this mostly apply to rotations.

never seen this plugin before, seems useful do you have a video on the plugins and stuff like that that you use?

Can you make Video on how to get Production level workflow my animation has improved but i don't think it's right way to make it and i am going to apply for riot as a character animator don't know what to put in my demo reel

Nice 👍 sir

Hello Mr. Camporota, How can I join your mentorship program?

what plug in to show the arc?

Do you have Instagram sir?

After a decade of working in the HR field, i have now taken a leap of faith and folllow my passion to beacome an animator. Dont have any teachers in the small town that i am. I am self learning and your videos and tutorials are a blessing. Thank you so much 🙏