Hi everybody! I come to you today because I'm having a bit of a dilemma. I've always animated in spline without blocking animations out first. I realized this can be a bit of a problem as I'm always trying to tweak the inbetweens as I go and it can be a lengthy process.
I decided that it'd be worth my while to try to learn how to properly block out my animations before I start polishing them, and I found that getting a finished block out, to get a feel for timing and such, was significantly faster than animating straight ahead with splined curves.

However I of course run into the problem I'm having right now. Once I've finished a block out and I like how it looks and feels, I'll switch the tangents from stepped to flat, and find that the animation becomes an almost unrecognizable mess. The inbetweens don't come out as I intended/expected. Is this normal?

So my question is this: What do I do from this point? Do I go back into stepped and add more inbetweens (My block out consists of 2's and 4's) or do I polish while I've splined the curves? I'm worried that if I start adding keys all over the place, the animation is going to look incredibly jittery and even more inconsistent then it is right now, and what if I DO start adding keys and feel like the timing is off later down the line?

OK, I can only explain from how I do it. I block out the largest moves first to get my timing and tell the story. Then I go and add manual keyframes for the in-betweens every 2, these are usually only minor movements like over stretch ect to keep the organics. from there once i move into spline it only auto generates minor in-betweens so the motion looks like i intended. From there it's over to the curve editor to tweak the movements. Still takes time but usually works out OK.

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