This week, Ting introduced us to Studio Library. It is a useful plugin for Maya animation, mainly used to save and manage character poses and animation clips. It works like an animation library, allowing us to store useful poses, facial expressions, or movement sections and reuse them later. Compared with adjusting the controllers again every time, Studio Library can make the animation workflow more efficient and help us manage different versions of movement.
In class, we also continued the Piranha Plant attack project from last week. This time, the task was to make the Piranha Plant jump down three steps before connecting it to the attack animation against Mario. This exercise helped me understand the importance of transitions between actions. A character should not only complete separate movements, but also have continuous rhythm, clear weight shifts, and proper anticipation, so the jump and attack can feel natural.
At the same time, I continued improving my girl dancing animation. Based on previous feedback, I kept adjusting the body weight, pelvis rotation, and movement rhythm. I also tried using nCloth to create a skirt for the girl, hoping the fabric could move more naturally with her body. This made me think more about the relationship between character animation and cloth simulation, and how technical testing can influence the final visual result.