2 YEARS LATER AND STILL A BANGER

Probably the best NLA Tutorials out there. Exceptionally educational.

10:55 The reason combine fixes the idle to walk overlap is because you were previously replacing, and when an animation is not fully weighted in, it is effectively being "blended" (aka Lerped) between the actual pose and the model's reference pose (conceptually the "zero" pose if you think of every bone's pos/rot/scale as a massive multidimensional vector). When you switch to combine, it's taking the weighted average of each track that is overlapping, and combining them together. The math is something like "Store the sum of all weights of tracks you want to blend between. For each track, divide the track weight by the sum of all weights, and store this biased weight. *Add* together each track's pose with biased weight. (i.e. lerp between reference pose and actual pose using biased weight)". Essentially the combine is a sum-of-weighted-averages-of-sources. But the weights might have a "normalize" step so that even if you are blending a track with a weight of 0.5 with a track of weight 0.25, it will scale those weights so that they add up to 1 (0.66 + 0.33). Done this myself with unity playables, which are the underlying API for Unity Director Tracks, which are very close to these NLAs. The math is basically the same.

Even in 2023, it is still the best video on NLA.

I was beginning to lose interest in animating because of my frustration with the NLA. I found your video's and you really explain it so well. I can't wait to put to practice what I have learned! Thanks so much!

One of the best tutorial, most detailed and clear. Hats off to you! Please never stop bringing such awesome tutorials.

Dude you just unlocked level 99 for me. Now I can create my own Animated films using Mixamo animations :D Thanks a billion! That Hold Forward thingy was my biggest problem especially with flip animations. Thanks to you I puzzled together a animation tweak like no other, my new techniques sure are sloppy but it works like a charm now.

I totally loved the NLA videos. You make it realy easy to understand. Well done man.

You are my hero. Please pardon me while I shower you with complements. Superficially, I have to say, while your accent is fun (but very understandable), your English is immaculate. Thank you for your clear, logical progression of instruction. Just when my brain asks a question, you answer it-clearly and completely. You are a master-level instructor of concepts. There is simply no better A-Z Blender animation tutorial playlist than yours. I feel like I can now accomplish anything with Actions and NLA. So many artists (Ian Hubert) blaze through one-minute tutorials, showing how fast they can do things, that you're left almost more confused than if you hadn't watched the video in the first place (as if they're showing off how fast they can do things). You teach at the pace, and with the level of detail, that I reckon makes the most valuable difference to your followers. There is one missing piece for me that would help... I can see the value of using rigify to manipulate characters; however, when I watch these tutorials, the actual manipulation of the character goes by so fast, I end up lost. I would love a simple video on how to efficiently manipulate a rigify model. Those controls look fancy, and I have inferred from your tutorial which control is the chest, for example; however, I would love it if you would make a simple video showing which controls are which, and how to effectively manipulate the rigify model to engage in various poses. I get G, R, S for move, rotate, scale-I just don't know which control to grab to quickly manipulate the model-and, this whole thing about IK, and switching from IK to FK and back, and key-framing that it is still very fuzzy to me. For all I know, you already have videos on this subject on your channel, so I’m going to go through your videos and see. :-) That being said, your description of some of the shortcuts you use in the interface, and alternate methods to accomplish similar results is SO helpful. I'm going to re-watch this video several times just to pick up on those nuggets of gold. Thank you, thank you, thank you! SUBSCRIBED! LIKED! Now I have to figure out this Patreon thing.

Your explanation is very clear and has solved my long confusion. Thank you very much!

Thanks for this seris on the animation and the NLA. I'm starting strong thanks to you!

You saved my life. If it wasn't for your video, I would still be struggling with the export of animation and the problem of skeletal restraint. Thank you for everything.

Thanks for taking the time to make such a detailed video on NLA. Very helpful indeed!

You are an amazing instructor! This has been very very helpful. Thank you for your clear explanations, which will greatly assisted me in completing my next project. Keep it up :-)

Thank you so much for explaining this! I'm making my first character animation sequence ever, and it's for a client, and this is a total game changer for me. Cheers!

Man, you are a legend! I spent a couple of days finding any info about the NLA tutorials that dive deeper than just basic things till find this one. Working with Mixamo animations makes it almost impossible to ignore NLA. It's saj that this pipeline makes pivot point static. But it's such a minor downfall for this workflow

Excellent tutorial. Thank you very much!

Excellent in all regards. I literally just started with blender(for mechanical prototyping). If this is indeed some of the first info on NLA, then u are creating a springboard for others to leap off of. The day ur info becomes outdated is the day u will know that others have leaped from ur gifts.

thank you so much for your time and care

VERY GOOD Tutorial for NLA. Thanks.

Thank You for this Excellent tutorial!. If it wasn´t for yours videos, I really wouldn't know what to do!. You are the best channel of blender!

Excellent stuff, thanks 🙏!

Great tutorial as always. Looking forward to more

상세한 설명 감사합니다. 여러번 시청하면서 공부하겠습니다.

great info! thank you for sharing!

All the same, working with NLA is still very cumbersome and inconvenient. This is one of the pain points of the blender. Even in Godot, the work with different animations is somehow more welcoming. I think, or rather I hope, that everything nodes projects will fix these shortcomings. And thank you very much for the video! As always awesome ^__^

Amazing! Thankyou very much

Thank you, you have made my animation work more efficient!

This tutorial has been very helpfull to gain a good insight.

What a perfect timing, I am doing animations with only dopesheet and graph editor. and I am still learning NLA animation combinations. Thank you so much.

Its lovely

really helpful - thank you!

Very helpful! Thank you!

Great piece of work, just great!!!! Now I want to do some animations LOL.

super!thanks!

Great work thank you❤️

Congratulations! It's good! Keep it up! I leave my like to help too! Good luck on your channel !!!

You are great!

Thanks!

Awesome tutorial, would love to see maybe a tutorial how you work on multiple characters in one scene. I tried to do little figting scene with same approach and it was nightmarish experience.

Great video. I use motion along Bezier curves (constraint) for precise editable movement. It results in far less keyframes.

Bro I really like your way of talking and your tutorial too You are a good person, your way of talking reveal that.

Thank you very much

your are godsend. thanks

Hello CG Dive, very nice video again it's very well explained thank you for all the TAF you shoot bro, it's awesome. Also, I hope you'll give us a tutorial on how to use Rigyfy animbox

Thanks

Useful

very good explanation and workflow using the NLA editor... Do you have a video where you show how to transfer animations from mixamo or other rigs to rigify rig

merci pour cette vidéo, j'ai fini par bien comprendre le fonctionnements des clés des actions ;)

you are number 1 one

thanks

This series is truly excellent. Thanks for sharing!

8:52 - For some reason when I push the actions down to the NLA, the idle action has the model sticking one arm straight out from her body while the other one works like it's supposed to. I tried a few times and it happened each time, even though I tried to do exactly the same steps as CGDive. I wasn't able to fix it. EDIT - This gets fixed later in the tutorial when you start messing with IK/FK keyframes. Don't worry about it, just follow the tutorial.

Tnx broo

You could add a path constrain on your root control for free walk. Anyhow thanks for sharing your nla workflow.

Great content man. Any tip on modifying influence per strip?

This tutorial series has been very enlightening! Since you use rigify, I have a bit of a dilemma and wanted to see if you had any insight: Sometimes when I'm working with a rigify rig, I do some animation and I come to the realization that an additional animation control would make my life easier. The problem is, if I make a change to the metarig to add those controls and then re-generate the rig, all of the NLA data is lost. The individual actions are still fine, so I could hypothetically just re-assemble the strips, but if I've already made a lot of edits to strips for timing, repetition, scale, etc, redoing all that work would be a huge headache. Do you know of a way to preserve that NLA data when re-generating a rigify rig?

cool tutorial as always, man! about the bullet time.. is there a way to slow down all the objects on the scene at once? or you got to do it each at a time?

Always a great tutorial! You're the best! Thank you!

One of the most detailed and Informative Series about Rigging on KZfaq. Thank you very much. I followed your Series completely and it helped me alot, especially the hierarchy topics for unreal engine. I have a little problem i can not seem to solve though. I have the normal bending issue around the knees and elbows which i solved through shapekeys that are driven by the bones of the rigify rig. My first Problem is that i have to manually change the driver to the control bones while animating and back to the game rig bones when baking. Problem nr.2 is that i cant get them exported to unreal when driven by the game rig when using nla. Is there a way to cover shape keys in the near future?

Very good tutorial! I have a problem with different type of animated character, where chosen animation in Mixamo is moving forward during walk, while ground marker staying at the same place. I manage to move every 42 frames that ground marker, but then there is problem with parenting camera to the character. Any help? Please.

9:29 But you do not need to active blending in the buttom action strip at all. Additive NLA Actions and Auto IK Pose Option are completely game changers for me.. just when I think I've watched all your videos, I come across something new again ;o

This is a great showcase of Blender’s NLA and graph editor workflow.

Another brilliant explanation. Really helps to understand the functionality of the NLA. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. THANK YOU! Dg

I am having a hard time turning my armature to a different direction. I have 2 actions The first animation runs on the y axis. When the first animation ends, I want the 2nd animation to turn to the x axis. I followed your video here with keyframing the root bone, but I can't achieve the solution. I've been researching for days got any ideas or videos that I can look into?

Thank you for great tutorial! Your Blender status bar shows the time and Frames Left. How did you display it?

you really figured out a good way to teach this editor

Is there a way to combine Multiple strips into 1 single strip?

Thanks a lot! Will try to use NLA animation in my project, this material was very helpful!

Good afternoon! Can you tell me how to edit these animations? I added this to NLA but I need to move the character's head

20:09 Pressing shift + tab didn't make a difference for me here, it still shows the weird pose.

Thank you. when you explain the "rigify_animbox" add on? I hope soon

I only discover this video today. Very interesting, althought a bit complicated. With the addon rigify animbox, the arms are too close to the body (my character had a A shape, not a T shape, may be that's what causes the problem). I didn't manage to fix that. I dont' understand how tu use the IK hand controler, it seems not to work. You explain it in the vidéo but I dont'understand very well.

Hey great video, wondering how to bake down all the animation so i can export it out ?

Okay, so I have a big ActionStrip, I split it with Y, I edit the cutted piece with TAB, when I'm done I press TAB to exit edit mode and BOOM! The cutted action strip returns to its full version before the split! How to deal with it?

Great tutorial! I have a dumb question,after I export fbx from blender,I can't transform it like moving or scaling it. The keyframe of the first and the last frame seems to be locked,the animate properties of the first and the last frame are activited. Other fbx downloaded from mixamo was fine,I can move or scale it in any software.

Some thing's I'm not sure about, why is it you go to frame 1 rather than 0 for creating keyframes etc? Also do you know what the shortcut is to select all bones? Not able to find it when trying to follow along for creating the two new actions

Question! When i click the autoblend nothing happens. It's only letting me manually do blending. Is there something i'm missing?

I still have like 2mins left but I cant hold back any longer I can not express how thankfull I am to make this -monster of tec- accessible to me its a super abstract system but understandable.... if you -cg.dive- explains it and you dive so deeb to just pick up any gem that can... yes indeed can change peoples live cause by this tec .... the production of animations for ... game.dev... or animation.portfolios... to get a job at all to get around.... or to get the dream job you wanted.... or just be able to quit the shitty job you have at present time... that drains your soul and kills your heart... becomes ACCESSIBLE acceccibility is crucial to skill skill is curcial to achieve new targets... targets in live and live itself you sir make good live accessible you make dreams accesible you make lifted lives accessible yeah I tend to go a bit over dramatic :D but thats what I want to say man

Every video tutorial is worth watching and learning repeatedly, thank you for your contribution~❥(^_-)

Hi Todor, Would you consider doing a tutorial on keyframing the IK/FK switch, but only on the bones (while setting up an action, for example)? I want to mix IK/FK while posing a limb of my character, but having trouble figuring out when and where I must place the keyframe(s) when switching. It would be awesome if you would do a tutorial, as I know it will be super well explained just like the rest of your courses! Thank you for your time! Edit: Sorry, more info, I'm using Rigify, and I want to animate the character using IK/FK switching, not just to pose. There's a lot of tutorials that explain how to make the switch, or use it for posing, but can't seem to find an explanation how to utilize the switching when animating. Thanks again!:)

how can I fix the problem of feet sliding in NLA's blending animation?

It is a simple explanation but I can't see what I do wrong. I add the other action above one to combine it. However even if I didn't add it, it still is "action and keys" the character goes to another location which I don't want. When I put it above like you, it still does the same thing. Is there another solution?

What are your thoughts on Animation Layers? I'm confused with the relationship with the NLA and there's not a lot of comprehensive videos about it. I want to spend my time and energy wisely to make sure I'm going down the right paths. My results have been somewhat chaotic.

When i use "combine" for the blending type it makes the bone i am trying to animate go in the completely wrong place. I have a walk cycle and am trying to modify it with a different action. i want my character to take a drag form a cigarette so i need to animate the hand bone in the new action. It almost works, but it combines the walk cycle animation and cigarette drag animation in a weird way and the hand spins like mad when transitioning from 1 action to the other. I am using a mixamo rig, is this the issue?

Sadly the animbox has disappeared from gumroad - any ideas where to get it?

Getting problem in making continuous walk cycle using mixamo walk animation , plz reply a solution.

Thank you very much for this tutorial. It helped a lot. I have a question, after preparing all the actions, if the movement that I want is doing the actions while following a curve path, how can I do it? Thank you.

Thanks for this video! The NLA editor is one of the less intuitive spaces in Blender so I always appreciate learning about it. At 3:34, you make a point to move to the starting frame before unlinking the action. Does that make a difference somehow in the NLA editor, or could you have unlinked before changing the frame with the same result?

can i scale the animaiton without slowing the speed?

Hey - I'm following along and at 20:45 I've run into some problems when editing an action. Any ideas what is going on here? kzfaq.info/get/bejne/bNeHoNGImse6gX0.html I've tried Tab and Shift-Tab but neither solves this issue.

When animating with a hair particle system, how do I attach the hair to the rig or model so that the hair does not stay stationary when positioning it? The hair moves with the position of the entire model, but if the models head is positioned the look left, the hair does not move with it.

@CGDive You were right, that video blown my mind too. Thanks so much!

Last time i saw this I missed some parts like animated strip time and dope sheet's extrapolation mode. I had to go through this again to understand completely.

You look like one Russian KZfaq blogger living in Japan and making videos about Japan, lol. Sergey Kuvaev JP his channel. Maybe anybody already was telling you

what is ik fk

Thanks!