BabaJ
I would think one should narrow their scope of search to rigging tuts.
I bought the rigging tuts from 3d from 3DBuzz which even though are a bit old, they are highly instructive. They have technical and character. Both give you plenty to chew on.
However, I find that even though I (somewhat) know rigging, it doesn't translate automatically into animation.
Animation is composed of 2 things (so far as I see):
1 Core animation concepts (keyframing, tweens, anticipation etc), which are taken basically from 2D animation (see The Animator's Survival Kit [amazon.com]) and then adapted for 3D.
2 Technical implementation of those concepts. Here is where we scope and do other things that make things easier. Things such as working backward from the climax frame etc… Problem is that implementation is highly dependent on the software. You need to have technical know-how of the program and experience from many hours of animation where you polish your workflow. Even so, it's good to take a look at other people because more often than not see people working with a totally different workflow (and getting great results).
It's the second part that's giving me problems. What are the best practices for scoping? How granular? What about animation? Should you work on as many layers as possible or just a few? Do takes come into play?
Here is one example of something I read in the docs but I cannot make work. It would be much easier to understand if we had a tutorial.
Maybe you can explain https://www.sidefx.com/forum/topic/46686/ [sidefx.com]