Popping Cleanup
The final pass. Hunting down pops, hitches and everything else standing between the shot and a clean read.
The last video in the series deals with what is left: the pops, the small hitches, and the final points of polish standing between the animation and a clean overall read.
What the video covers
Finding and removing pops wherever they have survived the earlier passes, tidying anything the retiming and cleanup left behind, and taking the shot to a state where the motion is smooth throughout.
Why pops survive everything else
A pop is a discontinuity, and discontinuities hide. A single frame where a value jumps is invisible while scrubbing and glaring at speed. They tend to appear at the joins between passes, which is exactly where attention has already moved on.
They usually come from curves, not poses. Most pops are a tangent doing something abrupt, a duplicate key a frame apart, or a rotation crossing a representational boundary. The pose either side is generally fine, which is why looking at the poses does not find them.
Cleanup is subtraction. This pass should be removing problems rather than adding ideas. If new animation is going in at this stage, something earlier was not finished, and it is worth going back rather than layering over it.
What to watch for
- Play it at speed, repeatedly. Pops are found by watching, not by scrubbing.
- Duplicate and near-duplicate keys. Two keys a frame apart with different values is a pop by construction.
- Sudden large jumps in a rotation curve. Usually a representation issue rather than a mistake in the animation.
- Check the joins. The frames where one pass handed over to the next are the likeliest place for something to have been left behind.
That completes the Turn series.