Yoda animation

[Redoakville]

Hi

I am looking for peoples thought's, comments, on my Yoda model and animation. I going to rework this model and do new animations with him. (There was a light saber battle I never had the time to do. Any helpful comments would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thx for your time.

Little_Green_002.mov

[MattWBradbury]

Some of his actions look fairly quick. You might want to slow some of them down to make him seem more like an old wise men than a young scoundrel. You might want to lower the saturation on his green skin color. Other than that, everything looked good.

[Dhar]

That's a good looking character.

 

Not knowing how sophisticated your rig is, the movements seem disjointed. The chest moves but the hips don't, or the head moves but the chest doesn't. Just remember, every part of the body that moves will move the rest of the body to a certain degree. When Yoda speaks, his whole body needs to be engaged, not just the part that speak

 

Keep up the good work.

[robcat2075]

That's a great looking Yoda!

 

I actually studied for a quarter under a guy who animated some Yoda in the Episodes 2 and 3, although he only mentioned it in passing. Charles Alleneck. Look for his name in ILM movies.

 

I like the fact that you avoided a lot of arbitrary arm waving. That would have been very un-yoda like.

 

Dhar has identified the big issue, sometimes called "isolated movement". In real life it's just about impossible to move one part of the body and not affect the ones connected to it (and the ones connected to those, and the ones connected to those...)

 

just moving a hand or head will cause the spine to slightly shift, to maintain balance and/or in reaction to the force of moving that body part.

 

I'd also suggest staging this from a 3/4 view rather than head on. As if he's talking to someone off to the side of the frame. It will be easier to do small hand gestures and small spine movements and make them look good.

[Darkwing]

Well, the model appears good, and the lipsynch worked well. His entrance seemed quite believably, but I agree with the others, some of the movements later on where a bit sharp and un-organic. But for the most part, welll done!

[Redoakville]

Thanks for your comments. I agree his movement is not top notch. I basically ran out of time. : ). I like the puppet better then the 3D Yoda and wanted to do an in-between version. This I think I did well from a modeling side but from an animation stand point,.. not so much. So, I wanted to get some other peoples opinion. Thanks again.

I ran into something “interesting” while modeling this Yoda. As I was working from the reference I had gathered. I discovered that the real Yoda was different in almost every reference I had. In the original 3 movies there was like a million Yoda puppets.(even in the same movie) All slightly different. Even in the new 3 movie, the 3D Yoda changes. Not as often but big enough to make modeling a pain in the butt. It came down to me having to just simple choose which reference I would follow for each little part of him. Something I never expected to run into. : )

 

*attachment* -just a fun animation I put at the end of my Demoreel

Little_Green_End2.mov

[dre4mer]

Nice looking model! I could see SSS doing some very cool things with his ears....

[bentothemax]

It looks really good! I just noticed that the lightsaber seems to turn purple when it comes across the screen, might just be my eyes but you might want to slow it down and take a look

 

 

Great job.

 

Ben

[agep]

Very nice. I especially liked the last clip

[gschumsky]

It looks really good! I just noticed that the lightsaber seems to turn purple when it comes across the screen, might just be my eyes but you might want to slow it down and take a look

 

 

Great job.

 

Ben

 

That frame turns into a negative...

 

Otherwise very cool. Nice model of Yoda.

[Dhar]

Like the clip says: "Impressive! Most impressive"

[Paul Forwood]

Really nice work!

I think the colour change that comes with the slash of the light saber was intentional wasn't it? Very cool!

His sleeves could react to gravity a bit more and his shoulders/upper body motion could improve but I'm impressed too.

[rusty]

Great work! The model is really good.

 

Off the top of my head, several things stood out to me:

1. When he enters his cape seems to bend in when it should hang straight down

2. As others have said, the body movements (animation) could be better -- the impression I got was that the 'arcs' were missing not right.

3. Related to the above, I also got the impression that the body parts were not staggered correctly -- I'm not putting that right... the shoulder should lead the arm, the upper arm leads the lower arm which leads the hands which leads the fingers (were talking frames).

 

This is just the impression I got, perhaps I'm wrong.

 

Nice job over all!

 

Cheers!

Rusty

[Fuchur]

Just a question but... Is he touching his ear with the lightsaber?

 

*Fuchur*

[Redoakville]

Thanks again guys. Your comments were greatly appreciated.

[Fuchur]

Thanks again guys. Your comments were greatly appreciated.

 

I have one more: Use a Dynamic Constraint for the Ears... if they are that long they just have to move a bit with the movement.

You could do it by hand too, of course.

 

*Fuchur*

[Redoakville]

Hey everyone.

Quick question, has anyone used a software called PFHoe? ( http://www.thepixelfarm.co.uk/products/pro...D=43&Cart=1 ) It does motion tracking of 2D footage and exports camera data to Amation Master. I'm thinking of buying it and was wondering if anyone has used it before. Does it work?

 

Thanks.

 

Andy

[goodguy20k]

Um, you might be interested in this:

 

http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/index.php/t-56175.html

 

It's a little for the other software... But I believe it does BVH, or something like that.

[Redoakville]

Thx for the Link, I did check it out... I went ahead and bought PFHoe 2.0. I did a few tests and am really please with the software and it's exporting to A:M. I'm attaching a quick test that I'm quite happy with. I'm busy with a wedding video right now but soon I'll start a new post under WIP, to show you guys how it works with A:M. I'm quit excited at the possibilities.

Track__test_003.mov