robcat2075

I'd rather have the camera in one spot. Is there a better spot to put it so the most windows are most visible? I figure that no matter where you put it some thing will be not ideal. But maybe there's a better spot?

Can you tell me exactly what to try to set in the Chor ? I could try it in v17

It's not possible to make these projects all things to all people. Strong boundaries make for stronger projects. I'm sorry that's a deal killer for you. Hope you'll change your mind. There are lots of other places to stage interesting things besides in a window. I'll also note that those were "my" rules.. part of my offer to figure out how to engineer the transitions between what will still be very non-matching segments. If you want to commit to that task instead, Bruce...? But if I'm going to do it I want to frame it so that there's a real good chance it's do-able.

Even better!

that's quite successful! i suppose one could soften it by using an edge gradient.

I think you should get a small crew of people who know their sh*t and do a two-minute trailer. Not a ten minute trailer, a two minute trailer. Start out with that very narrow focus.

Your point is that explaining the deformation in terms of real-world mass muddies the concept because it's really about stylization. I disagree. I think my way of explaining it terms of real world mass gives the student the best chance to take out of this exercise insight that can be carried forward to the more complicated cases of moving things around. Most character animation doesn't involve things bouncing. It always involves moving masses around. I want the new animator to start thinking about those masses as soon as possible. Once you understand how they move you will know where to exaggerate that motion for stylized effect. At AnimationMentor I saw a lot of fellow students NOT get body mechanics and I think it was because school was dealing in abstracted rules like "it looks better for objects to move in arcs" rather than real explanations like "objects move in arcs because the have mass and can't change direction instantly" or "a hand moves in arcs because it's swinging on the end of a bone and not moving by itself." (After two quarters the faculty knew they weren't getting body mechanics across, but they were people who intuitively understood motion and not quite able to explain how they understood it.)

I think I said "imagine" it as made of separate molecules. I'm pretty sure I didn't mention molecular energy. I could have said imagine it as separate pieces of pigskin sewn together, or imagine it as separate plastic pellets melted and vacuformed together in a ball shape or imagine it as separate spoonfuls of jello in a containing plastic bag... All of those parts, even the molecules, have inertia and momentum. When the bottom of the ball contacts the ground, the molecules or pigskin or pellets or jellos at the top of the ball do not instantly halt when bottom does because they are only remotely connected to the bottom. Their inertia makes them continue down. Neither do they instantly fling themselves down just because the bottom of the ball has contacted the ground. The inertia that makes them continues down after the bottom of the ball has stopped also prevents them from suddenly zooming down faster than they had before (and there's no force in this bouncing ball situation that is even trying to make them do this). Of course all these molecules or skins or pellets are connected to each other (not so much the jellos) and those connections get stretched until they can't stretch any more and the ball has to stop squashing and start returning to its original shape. If that return is fast enough, the molecules or pellets or skins at the top get enough momentum to not only carry themselves higher but also eventually yank their loosely connected fellow traveling molecules or pellets or skins at the bottom of the ball with them. All of this is to get the animator away from thinking of the model as a rigid shell that deforms itself when it is near the ground simply because we have a slider to do that or because there's a diagram in Preston Blair that says that and start thinking of it as an real object that he needs to show is shaped and moved by the forces of inertia and momentum (and obstruction from other objects like the ground).

All this talk of squash and stretch ans overlap has very little reality with actual balls. Real balls hardly ever squash and stretch and overlap to the point we see it like we do in cartoons. However, other things in real life DO squash and stretch and overlap very noticeably, but those objects are very complicated to maneuver for a beginner and present too many intersecting issues simultaneously. Take a look at this guy's rhumba. He doesn't get body mechanics and he can't move mass plausibly on the screen. There's no way to even usefully critique that because there's just too much going wrong from the very first frame to ever just tweak it in to rightness. It's painfully obvious from watching that and his other 11sec entries that he doesn't know how to move mass onscreen without it looking fake and awkward. I'll bet you a dollar he's never done a decent bouncing ball. He really needs to be starting out with a far simpler case and a develop a good eye for moving simple things around before he leaps to full human bodies. As is true of us all. So we start out with a rigid bouncing ball just to get "falling" right and then move to a ball given an exaggerated combination of floppiness and elasticity so we can practice with managing a deformable shape in a very simple case. Then we move on to a little bit more.

At the beginning, we're not doing "personality balls" we're learning to plausibly move mass on screen and the ball is our simplest case to practice with. Personality comes later. Poor body mechanics is the hallmark of poor character animation and good body mechanics starts with being able to plausibly move masses on the screen.

Happy Birthday to one of our finest character creators!

Those unneeded splines could be hooks as well.

Call the cat and tell him to read it to you over the phone.

Why do i see splines sticking out on the side?

Something else I meant to say... In this theory of squash and stretch, squash and stretch is a form of overlapping action. The ball squashes because the bottom of the ball has stopped at the ground while the top tries to keep moving down. The ball stretches because the top has been forced into the air while the bottom lags behind because of its inertia.

Happy Birthday! May you have another fine year of knocking 'em out with A:M. Someday I'll see the movie that forum name is from!

Consider the case of hipster tennis players who swat a ball laying dead on the ground and are able to get it bouncing up. They are squashing it down and releasing it suddenly. It's the un-squashing of the ball that gets its center of gravity moving upward, fast enough to carry it into the air. A trampoline would be an obvious case of "the ground" storing some energy and giving it back to the ball. But for most grounds, like concrete or a bowling alley, it's probably very tiny. As tiny as the bowling ball's was... so i have no idea where all that bounce is coming from!

I will note that if you think my theory of squetch through too much there's an apparent problem: If the ball leaps back up in the air because it is rapidly unsquashing itself... how does a rigid, non-squishy ball like a bowling ball bounce at all? Why doesn't it just stop dead when it hits the ground? One excuse might be that it does squetch a tiny bit and unsquetches so fast that it is able to fling its mass back off the ground. But I dont' know if that has any reality in physics.

Here's a PRJ In the chor the POSE with the constraints is ON on frame 0 and keys forced there. At frame 5 the pose is turned OFF Stretchable_rig_demo_10f_Pose_ON_then_OFF.prj

Anyone know why the bones don't stay in place after keys with constraint results were forced on them? I ought to be able to turn the constraint off after that and have them remain in place. (post #27)

Something to try... what's the longest the ball can contact the ground and plausibly bounce up again?

A hard pedalin' tyke on a bike! Well done!

I'll note that there were lots of reasons to wish to move the camera in BUS STOP, for close ups or different compositions or rhythm or whatever... but that wasn't the concept. The concept was a static observer and everyone was able to come up with an idea that fit in that concept instead of an idea that failed because of it.

Hitchcock was an expert director who knew exactly how to cheat the camera position without tipping off the viewer that that the shot he was getting wasn't really strictly possible from Jimmy Stewart's vantage point. Use the camera position and available set to their advantages, not to their disadvantages, and there are more than enough possibilities for staging almost any action anyone will want to do.

Any feedback on these rules? Are they missing something?