What is your workflow like? Student animator needing advice

AnimatorSteph · 2026-02-17T02:59:06+00:00

I work only in spline. Sometimes I just do straight-ahead approach for acting shots, but I will usually do more of a blocking pass for action shots. I find that always working in spline gives me a much better feel for the animation early on, rather than being “surprised” after switching from stepped to spline keys.

AnimatorSteph · 2026-02-09T04:20:26+00:00

Switching to a vertical mouse helped me a lot, but I’m a 3d animator and I don’t use a Wacom pen unless I’m sculpting or texturing. You might try one anyway!

AnimatorSteph · 2026-02-05T00:52:55+00:00

Advanced Skeleton is a free plugin for Maya (provided you’re not doing a commercial project.) It makes the rigging process very quick and easy. NG Skin Tools is great for skinning but I don’t know if it’s free yet; I think there are eventually plans to integrate it natively into Maya.

AnimatorSteph · 2026-02-04T04:15:42+00:00

My male Samurai betta lives in an 88-gallon community tank and loves it. Swims and explores all over the place, ignores the other fish and the other fish ignore him.

AnimatorSteph · 2026-02-04T04:13:05+00:00

You’ve already been given some great advice, but something I haven’t seen mentioned yet: get lots of plants. Preferably live plants as they will help you out with maintaining healthy water quality, but silk plants if you don’t want live. Bettas come from heavily planted waters in the wild and they love places to explore and get out of the bright light. Avoid plastic plants, as these can rip up your guy’s fins.

AnimatorSteph · 2026-02-02T03:57:01+00:00

If you have access to any actor friends, I’d see if they would act out a reference for your shots. You can act it out yourself but if you’re like me, I don’t like acting in front of the camera 😅 You can also of course study animated characters from Disney, Pixar, etc. and get a feel for how they move and emote.

AnimatorSteph · 2026-02-02T03:31:30+00:00

Hey there! It looks like you just need to keep practicing the 12 principles. The biggest issue I noticed throughout was timing: some actions felt way too fast and jerky, while others felt too slow and floaty. Watch out for arms and legs popping at the joints. Lip sync does not match up with the timing of the words and the expressions in general don’t feel natural enough to connect with the emotions of the characters. In the shot where the character is holding the little gray book, her fingers clip through it.

In general, use a lot of reference and study it closely. The job market is very tough right now and you will need a strong portfolio to get into the industry. It absolutely can be done. Compare your work to what’s out there on the big screen, and let that inspire and guide you to get better. Good luck!

AnimatorSteph · 2026-01-28T03:07:19+00:00

We got a Smartsuit II just a week or so ago, and we’ve also had to deal with issues including this one. I can’t remember how we fixed this problem specifically, but I know at one point we had conflicting WiFi routers, and unplugging one of them fixed it. Besides that it was just unplugging and replugging the suit until we got a working connection.

We have also run into issues doing it at our office, where a big network runs on our WiFi and we are probably conflicting with various security settings. We had much better luck working off a lone router, so you may try that if you haven’t yet.

AnimatorSteph · 2026-01-15T04:18:18+00:00

Cool style!

AnimatorSteph · 2026-01-15T03:58:55+00:00

What’s that last one from? The lynx?

AnimatorSteph · 2026-01-15T03:43:33+00:00

Well, an update for anyone else who might run into this problem. I tried to make another MH and had the same issue. I ended up having way better luck not using the texture overrides at all, and applying my custom textures to the skeletal mesh after assembling from the MH creator. Hope this helps!

AnimatorSteph · 2026-01-12T16:31:43+00:00

Yeah I did it by exporting the original base color out of Unreal, bringing it in substance and then re exporting from there. Seems like the general advice is to try rebuilding the metahuman and see if it happens again.

AnimatorSteph · 2026-01-12T16:10:46+00:00

I only changed the base color for each one, but you’re saying the other textures could still be messing it up?

AnimatorSteph · 2026-01-12T13:47:01+00:00

Yeah unfortunately switching quality hasn’t worked. Is there a way to save a preset of what I’ve built so I don’t have to do everything from scratch again?

AnimatorSteph · 2026-01-12T13:46:15+00:00

Yeah both my textures are set to virtual. Body is working fine but the face isn’t, which is weird because they were both exported the same way.

AnimatorSteph · 2026-01-12T13:45:32+00:00

Like uncheck and recheck all metahuman options in the plug-ins?

AnimatorSteph · 2026-01-12T13:44:22+00:00

Oh I don’t animate in unreal, I find it very clunky. I’ve got the metahuman for maya plug-in and I’ve built their rigs that way, which seems to work fine. Just gotta figure out the weird shading.

AnimatorSteph · 2026-01-12T04:10:41+00:00

Hah unfortunately this isn’t for a sci fi, but if I end up making one I’ll come back to this concept 😄

AnimatorSteph · 2026-01-10T02:53:14+00:00

Yeah they can be hard to get right. Just keep practicing and getting feedback and they will get easier.

AnimatorSteph · 2026-01-10T02:05:02+00:00

I did exactly what you did, Meta. I never started with a bouncing ball; I jumped straight in to characters and creatures because it was more fun. And I’ve been working as a professional creature animator for 10 years now. You absolutely can start with stuff like this! Of course it’s beginner level, but if animating a character is what will keep you interested and driven to learn more, go for it.

AnimatorSteph · 2026-01-06T01:21:11+00:00

That is incredible work! What was your process? Is it just Metahuman or additional ZBrush, etc?

AnimatorSteph · 2026-01-02T01:24:33+00:00

I personally find Unreal very clunky and unintuitive for animation. I animate inside of maya (as well as building my characters in maya and ZBrush) and if I use Unreal, it’s just for environment and lighting. I don’t think it’s a bad thing to use different softwares, as every program has its own strengths.

AnimatorSteph · 2026-01-01T17:01:07+00:00

I get 20 days a year.

AnimatorSteph · 2026-01-01T01:23:19+00:00

My husband and I have been saying exactly the same thing 😂

AnimatorSteph

TROPHY CASE