Clean Up the Pelvis in the Curve Editor
Polishing the pelvis and hips properly, in position and orientation, so the lower body is finished before the upper body starts.
Retiming got the beats right. This video makes the motion between those beats clean, working on the pelvis and hip controls in both position and orientation.
What the video covers
Polishing the pelvis and hips: their translation and their rotation, taken into the Curve Editor and worked until the curves describe what the poses intended. The goal is a lower body finished to the point where the upper body can be built on top of it without needing to come back.
Why finish the lower body first
The upper body is a response. Chest, arms and head answer what the hips already did. Building them on a pelvis that is still moving is the same mistake as polishing before retiming, one stage further along.
Curves hold problems that poses do not. A pelvis can be correct on every key and still drift, overshoot, or stall between them. None of that appears in the viewport until you look at the curves, and all of it reads as wrongness at speed.
Position and orientation fail differently. Translation errors read as floating or sliding. Rotation errors read as the body being steered rather than turning. They need checking separately because they are easy to confuse when watching the result.
What to watch for
- Overshoot you did not ask for. Default tangents will happily send a control past its key and back.
- Flat spots mid-motion. A flat tangent in the middle of a move stalls it. Flat where you wanted a hold, and only there.
- Stray channels. Check axes you never deliberately touched.
- Rotation order artefacts. A curve that suddenly jumps by a large value is usually a rotation representation problem rather than an animation problem.
Next: Clean Up the Spine and Arms.