The Secret to Unlocking Blender's Full Potential: Animation Layers

[@skywalker0794]

Man, your channel is honestly so great! Really appreciate you sharing your knowledge/workflows and everything else that you know. All of this is very helpful and the fact that you cover both Blender and Maya makes you even more valuable. Keep it up please!

[@Aridiki]

Dude your content is always top notch. I'm so glad I found your channel

[@fireboltarien7858]

Mark, you're the only Game Animator I've come across to use both Maya and Blender at the highest level. How do you not get overwhelmed by the Hotkey/Viewport navigation of both Maya and Blender ? At times I end up doing Maya viewport/hotkeys in Blender and vice versa.

[@charlyghb]

Bro, I got to say your content that you upload to your channel It’s outstanding thanks for all the contribution that you do do on animation on KZbin so people can learn.

[@Amelia_PC]

Animating in Blender makes me want my MotionBuilder back. Thanks for this tutorial!

[@PlanetXtreme]

LOL same here

[@PlanetXtreme]

Man, Maya's system is a lot more intuitive. Which I find surprising, considering how much easier Blender is to use in a lot of other aspects.

[@Marandal]

This is something every Blender ANimator should know about

[@Allisfm]

Yeah... Great content and looks great. I use AL a lot, but, I would recommend also to warn people that it's actually bugged as hell and has a lot of unpredictable stuff that can easily break the whole work you've done during the day. And still demands a lot of workarounds, and to add insult to injury there's zero info about how to make it work in a proper way if you need more than "turning head" layer... well, but that's the best that Blender can offer here...😥

[@grzegorzabedzki3466]

I love using animation layers addon! It's definitely worth its price. I was lucky enough not to need to use NLA editor much before, so switching to it was easy, and I truly appreciate how much more comfortable it made my work. It does have it's issues though, when exporting the animations as fbx for game engines, the only animation that is exported is the currently selected active layer, i wish it would take into the account the whole layered animation instead. It's not a big issue since i can just merge them all,but it still adds a little unnecessary work sometimes. I'm still trying to convince my coworker to use animation layers addon, but he refuses. I'm going to send your video to him, maybe it will convince him at last! Thank you for sharing this knowledge around! Definitely looking forward to see more videos from you!

[@RomboutVersluijs]

Isn't that actually the correct workflow. When your down, bake everything into a single layer. He even showed that in one of his videos. Ps isn't there an option when you export, you can choose how thing are exported by baking everything

[@dondahighhh12]

this is useful!

[@nixellion]

4:20 If I understood this part correctly, then I think it's no different than Maya, just that it starts with Override\Replace mode instead of Additive\Combine by default. In Maya if you create a pose on, say, Additive layer and then switch it to override, or the other way around - it will also break the pose. Because keyframe values are recorded either in absolute or in additive values at the time of creating a keyframe. I don't think there's a way to fix it in maya, other than saving your pose in worldspace coordinates, changing layer type and then restoring your pose, using a script or a pose library. Could be automated with a script. I assume it could be the same in blender.

[@MarkMastersAnim]

Yeah, that makes sense. Thanks!

[@npatch]

Yap, most likely changing the blending mode does only just that and doesn't change the keyframes based on "imagined" intent of the user. Imagine if your animation was a clip already with values as additive but you got started in replace mode and then switched to additive which would mess up the values. And yes, you can script a ton of things in Blender with python (although it's not always the most straightforward thing, but you can def modify the values if you want).

[@A_2the_J]

Howdy Mark, Keep up the Great work! Q: What version of Blender are you using? 3.2?

[@MarkMastersAnim]

I'm currently on version 3.5!

[@HimmelBlau081]

Where can we get this Model for Blender ?

[@spittingame4241]

Hello Mark, I need alot of help with animation. I have got all of my models, clothes, shoes and they are rigged with Auto-Rig pro (I did most of the work) but I just need some to do some of the major animations because I'm tired of being a one man army. Is there someone you can recommend or something?

[@PatricioRuizCampistegui]

Nice!! Great tutora

[@antoonsorg]

Yes i hope animation layer wil still work because blender is upgrading or replace the nla layer. Finaly it was for years a pain in the ass. But animation layer is absolute worth the money for animators.

[@nikosupreme]

I love this plug in but I notice that my character will randomly go into t pose during the ending of an animation when it is turned on and i can't figure out why

[@KnucklesEmerald-wj9vo]

deleting key frames didn't help?

[@nikosupreme]

@@KnucklesEmerald-wj9vo nope. I had to delete the entire animation layer, losing all of the info and start over.

[@ifthis_]

What happens when you use Add instead of Combine? I think combine is attempting to merge the transformations from the 2 actions based on their respective influence levels. Whereas Add i think should add the transformation values to the idle layer. Disclaimer, I'm driving right now, so I did not test this theory.

[@ifthis_]

btw, fantastic video, love how you detailed your explanations are.

[@ifthis_]

...and yes I was watching this while driving, it's a boat, and it's pretty easy. but i just noticed now at 9:18 that the addon animation layers looks to be using Add instead of Combine as the blend mode. so i could be on to something. Combine is probably to get the average when merging two or more layers. i'll test when I park this thing.

[@se7399]

@@ifthis_ that is kinda of neat xd

[@shrike_dev]

Is there anything else blender lacks in the animation departement aside from proper layers?

[@GinnyGlider]

Yes... "Onion skinning" that is, which is common in 2D animation so when I saw a maya user utilizing this in 3D it blew my mind as it provided him a visual aid to see the flow of his animation which is exactly what I needed. Fortunately, an existing addon named "AnimeExtras" accomplishes just that! (Late reply I know :) EDIT: While I was searching for that addon I stumbled upon a similar one named "Mesh Onion Skins" After a brief test seems far more updated (and stable) than the one I recommended (It even has the option to show the motion paths!! :D

[@billyand2]

anyone know if this work with blender 4.0 properly?

[@toffotin]

Just installed and it seems to work fine

[@Neo095botxplayz]

Wait till 2025 if you don't want to pay 😶

[@bmd_videos]

Damn m bored already, maya makes it easier

[@beardedghinzu]

that's why i hate blender its dumb and unlogic (i mean too straight-logic and unintuitional)