New Character With Animations

[dre4mer]

Hey guys!

 

Here is a character i've been working on the rigging for over the last week for a short film i'm involved in. So these are mainly to test out his skeletal rig (no facial poses yet) The rig I finally settled on uses the TSM2 and wieght mover, with Cog bones for the knees and elbows (Thank you Mike Fitzgerald!) and custom CP wieghting to fix a few other problems. The rig seems to be working pretty well so far, comments and crits welcome.

 

-Ethan

 

You may want to save these so you can play them looped in your player. Sorry I don't know how to automatically make the MOVs play looped.

 

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WalkCycle3SlightTweak.mov

TipToeCycle.mov

FasterRunCycle.mov

[KenH]

Nice work. On the run, his upper body comes forward when his foot hits the ground. It seems like that happens a few frames too early. Also, with such an exaggerated movement on the foot fall, you might ark his back the other way on the crest of the run.

[Stuart Rogers]

You may want to save these so you can play them looped in your player. Sorry I don't know how to automatically make the MOVs play looped.

Are you using QuickTime Pro? If so, set your running movie to looping (View->Loop, or Control-L on a PC (IIRC)) and then simply save the movie (that's save, not export). Ta-da! (Well, it works on my Mac.)

 

The WalkCycle3 movie especially could do with some head movement. (My iBook can't play back smoothly enoughfor me to comment further.)

[dre4mer]

Ah thanks for the comments and info! Here is the same set except saved with looping. Though I don't know why they woudln't be playing smoothly on your I-book. Ken, your thinking maybe some springy back arch to give more punch to the run?

 

-Ethan

 

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FasterRunCycle.mov

WalkCycle3SlightTweak.mov

TipToeCycle.mov

[KenH]

It depends what sort of run you're doing. Naturally, as you stretch your leg forward, your upper body lags behind arking the back

 

As it is now, he seems hunched over.

 

PS His fingers bend backwards in the walk.

[Stuart Rogers]

Though I don't know why they woudln't be playing smoothly on your I-book.

Because my iBook is ancient, and doesn't have the horsepower to handle most H.264-encoded QT movies (your movies use H.264).

[dre4mer]

Here's a little update on this character. I've been working on texturing him, and practiced my first ever walking without slipping animation! Sure seems like there should be easier ways to do it. I've never been able to get the stride length tool to give me zero slippage, so this is just manually keyframing the model bone in the chor to match the distance traveled. As you can see there is a still a hint of movement that shouldn't be there on his footfalls, I don't quite know how to totally get rid of this?

 

-Ethan

 

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TsitraSneak.mov

[Stuart Rogers]

Does your character's rig include a heel lifter in each foot? I'm guessing not, and that you're trying to rotate each foot bone around the toe end. I've never been able to do that without some slippage (at least, not without laboriously keying every frame). If that's what you're doing, I think the slippage you've got is probably the best you'' be able to get.

 

If your rig does have heel lifters, then for this movement you should be able to keep the heel permanently lifted so that when you place each foot of the ground it stays put until it's time to lift off.

[dre4mer]

Stuart, thanks for the reply,

 

The rig is mainly based on the TSM2 rig with some mods, so I do have a foot control bone, heel bone, and toe bone to work with. Though in this particular test animation he's on his tiptoes so that probably isn't helping me out much. But your right I guess I should be able to get it locked more solidly with this rig.

 

-Ethan

 

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