Animation_excersise_guy

[jamagica]

I finally had the guts to try to build a full figure (next up, actually connecting parts that comes next time)

 

This is mainly for the use of anatomy study, rigging education, and animation

 

(I just bought Jeff Lew's vid and it's on its way...I have to prepare in any way possible )

[Rodney]

Looks like you are really making strides in your efforts to animate.

Keep sharing along the way. There are lots of folks who are watching and learning right along with you.

 

Your experiments and studies are certainly interesting to me.

I'd love to have more time to study anatomy for instance.

 

Rodney

[jamagica]

Yeah..it helps a lot to study it in many areas;

 

- it helps you know what parts primarily move when it comes to certain actions

- when you're modeling you know the rigth proportions (example: A normal person is about 8 heads tall

 

-All that knowledge increases your creativity in creating characters since you know the proportions...at the bottom of my post is a character I've already come up with (i've also been drawing for about a year)

 

Those are just some I've come up with...

 

Without furtherado: The fat ninja:

[rossk]

Sorry, I thought "the fat ninja" was one of the cooler character concepts that I'd seen in a while... so I just had to

[bentothemax]

LOL, nice drawings.

 

That figure looks nice, perhaps, once hes rigged, for those of us whos animation skills lack, we could all do an exercise, with the same character.

 

Then when done compare and lealrn from others.

 

hehe, still cant get over the last one!

 

Ben

[jamagica]

RossK,

 

that's just scary! That's happened to me twice now in my lifetime..once with you and another time with someone else (my eye character)

 

Well, he's finished rigging..just gotta make some constraint poses, facial poses, finger poses, etc.!

The rig is OK...

[steve392]

Nice to see you going for it ,looks good to me and that riging phew thats a mystery to me .Well done

[jamagica]

All done rigging!

 

I'll make some poses then post up the guy...let you guys tell me what you think of the rig.

[Fishman]

You may want to do two things when considering a rig. One is to go to Jeff Lew's site and download his free models of the green guy and the yellow guy. Jeff's rig is great and easy to use. You may be able to take what you've done and add it to your rig. His rig does IK legs and FK arms.

 

The other option is to wander over to the Rigging and Relationships forum and read through the thread on Rigs. In there you'll find mtpeak2's rig which is much more complicated but has FK/IK switching and a raisable heel. I was able to take the raisable heel and add it to Jeff Lew's rig, so the concepts are pretty portable.

 

When you watch Jeff's video he makes a point about using null targets to manipulate rigs which is pretty cool. By using null targets all you end up with are translation channels in the time line which are much easier to understand and manipulate than rotational channels.

 

Looks like a good start!

 

Scott

[jamagica]

Oh! I'm not a novice with rigging..I've just never rigged a biped before...I use nulls and constraints..I actually learned from David Rogers' book, Animation:Master 2002, A Complete Guide

 

No need to worry about it..it's suitable

 

Might as well toss it out now!

 

I only have the "hand clench" poses and the "blink" pose

Animationguy.prj

[Fishman]

No offense intended, just looked like a fairly standard 2001 type rig, which is OK but has some flaws, particularly around the balance poses. I saw those bones way out behind and in front, and I've never liked them.

 

The rigs I mentioned are ones that I really like, clean and easy to work with. I've worked with David's book as well, but these rigs range from Jeff's absurdly simple (not to mention completely functional) to the sublimely complicated (also completely functional). Since you mentioned Jeff's video (which you'll love), I thought you'd be interested in his rig.

 

Haven't time to check out your rig just yet. I'm always looking to see how other people do their rigs.

 

Have fun!

 

Scott

[jamagica]

The bones way behind the model aren't intended for movement..they're target bones for the elbow so that it will always bend that direction..you don't even touch those, same for the ones in front of the knees

[Fishman]

The ones in front of the knees I use nulls as targets rather than bones. The elbows can be the same unless you are using some sort of orient like constraint. Just a personal preference kind of thing I guess, I find nulls easier to translate rather than bones.

 

Scott

[jamagica]

I have changed the knee targets to nulls (if you go to the showcase section of the forum you'll see the final version) but I have the foot bone as a bone rather than a null...shoot it'll be fine, right? so, check out the showcase section