Animating the base control/ Root Control yes or no

[tevin93]

Hi

I'm learning animation and recently I have been told that you should never animate or key the base or root control. I recently tried to do a animation of a character walking and another crawling on there hands and knees. I was given two different opinions and told by groups of people that you should never ever put keys or animate the base control on a rig but a few others said its fine. I don't which is correct and thought I might ask others what they say 

I'm learning animation and recently I have been told that you should never animate or key the base or root control. I recently tried to do a animation of a character walking and another crawling on there hands and knees. I was given two different opinions and told by groups of people that you should never ever put keys or animate the base control on a rig but a few others said its fine. I don't which is correct and thought I might ask others

[jmreinhart · Accepted solution]

If your rig only has a single control that moves the whole rig then it's alright to key it. Some rigs will have a control like that named "placer" or something similar and another one named "move". If your rig has both of those controls then only use the placer to place the character in the scene but don't key it, you can use the move to key instead. 

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

I Think it’s ok to move so you and get a sense of motion for your character.   But Don’t use it to place your character in a scene.   Have it crawl or walk from the zero position.   I have characters for my own projects that have cloth simulations so I have the character completely reset and at zero at -60 frames.  Then at frame 1 the character is in the pose and starting the animation.  This is to let the cloth settle into place before the movement starts.   But you should still have some way to move the entire thing around when it gets referenced into a scene.  Since I don’t work in a professional environment I had to learn good pipeline habits the hard way.    

[tevin93]

thank you for the reply.. If I understand you correctly when a character rig has something like a waist control as well as the large circular control/master control at the bottom of the feet like that DAVID rig then use the waist control to move the character but only use the master control to place the character in the scene.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

yes, that is what I would suggest.

[ezemate7]

I  have an advanced ball rig from school should I still not animate that and just set that and just use the one called gIKSpine.