bobcroucher
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Posts posted by bobcroucher
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Hi All,
In this shot, only tinwoodman appears. It is form the other two's POV.
I created a new walk cycle for tinwoodman in which he carries his axe. On this entire adventure, TinWoodman probably always needs to carry his axe, (unless he has game-like inventory bag within which to store it.
) So we may want to go back to some of the other walking scenes and have him carry his axe there as well.I tried for a more gleeful gait than the previous walk I tried to more closely match the Bob Taylor mood from the cinematic. I only got halfway that merry, but I think it is enough. Bob T's looked almost like TinWoodman was skipping toward the house.
The new reusable action is: TinWoodsmanWalkWithAxe.act.
Comments welcome.
Thanks,
Bob
Here is the current movie from SVN:
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Hi All,
I Added 3 paths, constrained the models. I added walk cycles to all 3. I created a new walk cycle for Scarecrow. The "Too Shiny" .wav file is MIA at the moment.
I haven't decided whether we can get away without lipsynch or not, we may need it for the final render quality.
I am open to comments and critiques.
Thanks,
Bob
The following link is the latest on SVN:
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Hi Guys,
I looked at issue #3267, and didn't observe the described behavior in the latest software, but I may be missing something. This issue appears to be different from that one though.
This problem is very annoying. However, I hate to add another layer of bones just to avoid it. More bones means less speed.
I changed the Blink pose to run the enforcement of the constraints from 0.01% to 100%, rather than 0% to 100%. Now sliding the slider up and down many times, never turns the constraints OFF, so no keys are ever created, and no problem occurs. This is an easy workaround for now.
However, there still may be times when we just don't want to auto-key certain constraints, when they are turned OFF. For this I could add a new property to constraints which would allow it to be disabled. I considered this when it was written in Alpha, but couldn't come with a concrete example of a constraint which you would not want keyed when turning it OFF. So, following the usual AM philosophy, I didn't add the property, since I couldn't determine a real use for it.
Thanks all for discussing this problem,
Bob
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Hi All,
Here is a rough take.
I Modified a woot run to make a walk.
I animated a new TinWoodsman walk cycle.
These actions are both in the Actions folder under the actor.
The Movie is the wrong resolution.
I didn't get around to making a walk cycle for ScareCrow, so I just set a scale bone on TinWoodsman's walk cycle and used his action for now.
There is supposed to be music leading up to scarecrow's line in this shot, so the scene should be lengthened accordingly, like Bob Taylor's animatic.
Bob
The latest on SVN:
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Hi All,
Here is my shot from last week. It is supposed to be take2, but it was really the 1st week anyone worked on it. It looks a bit mundane next to scene 1_05_28. Suggestions for added liveliness would be helpful.
For continuity, I think Woot, and Scarecrow will need to be added to the shot as well.
Thanks,
Bob
The latest on SVN:
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Hi George,
Yves suggestion would work, but many times, if the action is correctly animated, lengthening the stride might not seem natural. For instance, when we walk, we have a natural stride length. We can walk with a longer or shorter stride, but it won't likely look as comfortable.
Your other choices involve changing the path or the speed at which the path is covered.
You may think of your model as sitting on the path, where the path is a rack with teeth, and your character has a pinion gear engaged to this path which drives his motion. This engagement constrains his action motion, exactly to his position along the path, this is why his feet don't slip (much).
So to change the speed of your motion, here is what you do:
Start with a path, you feel is the right length.
Your scene is a certain length, and he will walk for the duration of the scene, or a known portion of it.
So in this case, you are correct, the chor range of your action is equal the chor length.
So that your path constraint is no longer dependent on the chor length, set up an ease channel as follows:
Select your model, choose Select -> Constraint -> Path Constraint.
The ease is around 7 properties down.
At frame 0, set the ease to 0%
At the last frame of your scene, set the ease to 100%.
This just makes sure, that if your scene changes length, your path motion won't.
Now your model will cover the entire path in the length of the shot.
If he is moving too slowly, then the path is too short. By lengthening the path, he will cover the new longer path in the same length of time. He will repeat more times to cover this longer path, making him cycle quicker.
If he is moving too quickly, then the path is too long. Either shorten the path, or have him just walk a part of the path by changing the ease value at the final frame of the chor. Change it from 100%, to the percentage along the path where you would like him to quit walking.
The timeline draw of the action shortcut will display small ticks in the red bar for every cycle of the action. This can give you a quick glimpse of how many times your action is repeating, and how many frames it takes to repeat.
If you want the action to run at a similar speed to how it was animated, then you would like one cycle to take about as many frames as the original action length. You may adjust above until this is accomplished.
Feel free to ask for clarification, as this control mechanism is often counter-intuitive for many.
Bob
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Hi All,
Okay, I made a few more adjustments. I changed the camera framing and added a 15 frame truck backward just as woodman is heading up on top of the axe. I added some overshoot to his feet and legs, and that's about it on this one for this week.
Bob
Here is the link to the latest movie on SVN:
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Nancy, the eyes look much better now.
I posted a newer animation. The new textures are a little too noisy for shaded realtime renders, so I turned them off for this one. I smoothed and retimed the lipsynch a bit, adjusted his head and eyes more, and moved the axe so his arms don't hyper-extend.
Bob
Here is the link to the latest movie on SVN:
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Hi Animation Fans,
I have made my first changes to this scene.
I didn't know if I should just append this pass2 stuff to the pass1 thread, or create a new thread??
- I animated some response of the axe to the Tinman's antics.
- I added first pass lipsynch, (dopesheet only so far).
- I tried to get TinWoodman to address Woot with some more deliberate head motion. His silver glazed eyes still strike me as a bit impersonal. It will hopefully be better with the final rendered eyes.
I have three days left, so further critiques are welcome.
Here is the link to the latest movie on SVN:
Thanks,
Bob
- I animated some response of the axe to the Tinman's antics.
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Hi All,
I added cloth simulation to Nimmie Aimee's skirt today. The latest movie is posted on SVN.
Some of the cloth changes were permanently added and committed to the Nimmee Aimee model.
I will add these steps to the Wiki too, but for now, here are the steps to simulate a Nimmie scene:
- Set the Cloth_ExpandWaistBand pose to 100% at frame 0 of the chor or action.
- Check frame 0 carefully, to be sure that Nimmie's dress isn't touching any of the deflectors. If they are touching, fix them by reposing that frame with muscle or any other technique.
- At frame 1 of the chor, set the Plugin Properties.SimCloth.Scale property of the Cloth_WaistBand group to 75%. This will shrink the waist band down, and grip Nimmie's waist without the need for attached groups, which have problems with penetrating her body.
- Set the collision radius property of the chor to 0.5cm. It can be larger to prevent penetrations due to spline curvature, but then everything must be that far apart at the beginning too.
- Set the substeps to 16, and the subdivisions to 0. These are Plugin.SimCloth properties of the chor. For fast movements, this can be set higher, for slower movements it can be less. I have had better luck when the steps don't change dynamically.
- Set the Time range, if something less than the whole chor length needs simulated.
- Add the Deflector Material to any additional needed deflectors, like the ground. You may need to embed the model which you are adding the deflector to, unless it should be a deflector in every scene. Embedding is a little dangerous, since the embedded model will never get another update when the original model changes.
- Then choose the Chor/"SimCloth Simulate" menu, and watch and wait...
- If there are problems, see my cloth tech talk for some of the answers.
- When you are happy with the results, the Muscle motion from frame 0 to frame 99 can be deleted from the timeline to save space, since the motion there is never seen in the shot anyway.
Nimmie Aimee's apron will not currently simulate and is going to require some serious ingenuity, or a new feature to get it right for the final shots of this film. More about this later.
Bob
- Set the Cloth_ExpandWaistBand pose to 100% at frame 0 of the chor or action.
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Thanks Ken.
The link in my first post now includes a few changes.
1) The scene was longer than requested, so I sped up Nick's motion a bit.
2) I exaggerated and extended Nimmie's crying.
3) I smoothed out Nick's hand transitioning onto the tree.
I have one day left, unless some major critiques roll in, I will probably try to sim Nimmie's skirt tomorrow.
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Hi All,
Here is one days work on take 2, utilizing Robert Holman's suggestions. The keys are evenly spaced, and I sense a need for changes to the timing. I have two days left. Any suggestions are welcome.
Robert Holman's Critique of Take1
Take2 Movie as currently on SVN
Thanks,
Bob
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Hi HomeSlice,
It was more of an experiment on the left door, to try a less deliberate close.
The thought was that maybe Tin Woodman was not that into doing Tin Head the favor. Maybe I should make the left door more careful like the right door, since both reflect his mood, they probably shouldn't differ that much.
Bob
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Hi All,
In accordance with my last week's posting, I swore that I'd post earlier this week.
Your feedback is appreciated.
Thanks,
Bob
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Hi All,
This shot gave me fits this week. It is so short and simple, yet getting something natural really plagued me. KuKlip is just supposed to be turning towards Tin Woodman who is posing a question for him.
A note to myself: I feel envious of those who got something rough done in the first couple of days and posted it here early enough to get some cycles of feedback (Ala Martin, Marshall, Kenh, and others...). I'll try to do this next week.
Even though I'm done with this for the week, comments which could improve it would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Bob
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Hi Everyone,
My time seemed much more pressed this week. It took me until the end of Tuesday to get the scene all set up and ready to begin animating (I'm a little slow). I worked on the lipsynch Wednesday, Ku Klip's body motion on Thursday, touched up KuKlip on Friday, then had just 30 minutes left to add a few keys to Scarecrow and Tin woodman. They are pretty rough, but it does make a complete first pass. Specific suggestions are appreciated for myself or whoever gets to clean this scene up with a second pass.
Thanks,
Bob
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Hi Guys,
I wasted a lot of time on this one trying different shots and ideas, including:
- Woot's POV via a headcam style shot
- Faking TinServant's journey down the stairs, since he's barely in frame (it still just looked faked)
- Accidentally scanning the entire room in one shot which turned out nice, but I included the throne area itself which is forbidden by the script.
What I ended up with looks a lot like Rhett's original framing of the shot for layout, with a little more animation, and slowed down a lot.
It still doesn't really get across Woot's intended dumbfounded state of awe, but, hopefully the music, some beautiful final rendering of a fantastic model, and the following scene which includes a face shot of Woot which shows his amazement will help flesh this scene out as intended.
Bob
- Woot's POV via a headcam style shot
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Hey Noel. It looks pretty good.
Thanks for posting the links to your daily task logs. I didn't do that, but it seems like a good idea.
At the end of your shot Woot sets his elbow on his thigh, which seems natural, but raises his thigh to do this which doesn't seem natural. If he is resting, his thigh should still be resting on the ground too, like the other leg. Pointing your toe to raise your knee isn't a very maintainable or comfortable position.
Bob
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Hi Rhett,
This is a nice little motion. Doing this stunt would be nearly impossible in reality, but if tin woodman was able to perform it, the axe would have to work in conjunction with him to support his weight as he transitioned up. So the axe's angle with the ground would change slightly to stay under their COG. The axe appears a little too rigid, as if affixed to the ground.
Bob
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Thanks for the input.
Here is a new post. This one has:
- Brighter lighting via the chor property "Use Front Realtime Light"
- An added a blink
- Softened his upper torsor arch forward keyframe
- Widened his elbows a bit on the final pose.
Bob
- Brighter lighting via the chor property "Use Front Realtime Light"
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Hi All,
Here is my first TWO animation assignment. 1_3_33. I spent 5 days, 1 hour per day on this. I had fun learning, but I hope to learn more. Critique at will.
Thanks,
Bob
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Hi,
In version 14, I added the ability to set the chor range of an action to begin at negative numbers. So you can drag it back into the negatives, or type in a negative start time. The dynamic constraints will start simulating at the earlier time. It is really a new feature, and has some small potential to cause new problems, so you will need to wait for v14 to use it. At least it's on its way (in the pipe).
Thanks for the request,
Bob
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In his example when he dropped the pose into the choreography window on frame 20 the model went back to the T-pose.(the frame he copied and pasted) Is there a way to drop the pose on the model and just have it set keyframes for the group of bones at their current position?
Hi David,
The drag/drop poses technique is the same as a copy/paste operation. So it does not "Force Keyframes", so it cannot be used to force keys on those same bones when they are in some other position. If you drag/dropped the pose in this case, the existing keys would be replaced with default ones at that frame.
However, since most likely the animation was started by dropping the key pose, the keys exist for all of those bones already. So if a hold keyframe is what is desired, then a standard force-keyframe will work, since it will lay keys on all of those pre-existing channels.
The main point of the suggested changes is to eliminate constraints when they serve NO other purpose, but to force keyframes. In all other cases, the use of constraints, and the Auto-Force key feature both make great sense.
Bob
Woot's Arm IK
in TWO Rigging
Posted
Hi David,
I have attached a project file, which I had saved in the folder along with 1_01_14. Just play the action. It behaves poorly from frame 46 on. If it is actually the IK solver misbehaving, maybe you could pare it down to a simpler example than the entire Squetch rig.
Thanks,
Bob
WootIKArmsPoppingStraight.prj