Just a little somthing

[Geoff]

Hey guys,

I made this as a quick very basic demo to show my friend(not that im good at adding effects etc lol) The timing is WAY OFF and im going back and redoing it to get that better. I need to know if u guys think it will look convincing when i get the timing better. Ill take any feedback

 

thanks

Geoff

knight_back_flip.mov

[Camillo]

Hi Geoff,

 

Well . . . he does go over. The important thing is to keep trying.

 

Search on the internet for a video of someone doing a back flip and study it.

 

Timing and feel of weight are important. Your knight looks almost weightless at times.

a little squash and strech will help. also, Preston Blair's book on animation is a good start

to understanding motion. I come from a 2D cell animation background and it helps with creating motion in 3D.

 

Did you do it as an action or in a choreography?

 

Camillo

[phatso]

I assume you-re doing it in slow motion on purpose...

 

Not a bad first try, but you might want to do another one from scratch, and take a physics approach - you know, conservation of momentum and all that. This will involve doing things a bit backward. Establish the basic arc of motion first and then go back and animate the arms and legs.

 

Create an altitude spline on the timeline. This will determine the knight's overall vertical position at every frame.

 

First: The knight, standing straight, goes down a ways and stays there for a moment. This means his feet will go thru the ground. Second, he quickly accelerates upward until the point where his feet leave the ground. Third: from the time his feet leave the ground until they touch down again, the spline should take the shape of a parabola. A good approximation is to adjust the bias handles so they run parallel to the spline. Fourth: his feet should go thru the ground again as he decelerates. Fifth: raise him up slowly until he is standing on the ground. At the transitions between first and second movement and the penultimate (Ooh I got to use a big word!) and last movements, set the control points to zero slope. The slope of the spline as he leaves the ground and as he touches down again should not change radically at those control points. All of the foregoing with the knight standing straight up and rigid, and coming down about where he took off.

 

Next: Click the Rotate button. Adjust the rotation center so it's at his center of gravity (the hips). Make keyframes so the knight is straight up until his feet leave the ground, spinning backwards as he jumps, and standing straight when his feet hit the ground again. Between the time his feet leave the ground and when they hit again, the rate of rotation should be constant, meaning that the start and stop rotation control points need to be peaked. (I would have suggested rotation during jump-up and recovery periods, but then the feet would slide on the ground.)

 

Then: Animate the feet and legs. Use zero-slope and peaked control points liberally to keep feet from moving except when he's in the air. This is the point where you need to tweak and tweak and tweak until it's believable. You'll have to have him lean forward a bit as he begins the jump, have the body arched back when he leaves the ground, legs pulled in at the top of the flip, body arched forward by the time he hits the ground again, and probably do a couple of balancing steps forward or backward at the end, depending on what your eye tells you about whether he's going to fall over. This is also where you correct for the fact that the rotation started and ended when his feet left and returned to ground - you will animate a bit of rotation into the jump and recovery periods, by tweaking the way he crouches.

 

Next: Animate the arms. I'd guess they will look best if they go straight up by the time he leaves the ground, then windmill forward as he's spinning so that by the time he hits the ground again, they've come all the way forward and down and are behind his back a little, with elbows bent.

 

Finally: Go back and tweak the shape of the rotation spline so the spin looks natural at every point. When he pulls in his legs and windmills his arms forward, that part of the spin will have to be made faster and the rest slowed down to compensate.

 

Last but not least: Post the results and bask in glory.

[Gerry]

Hey, that's what I was gonna say!

[Geoff]

Hey guys,

thanks and i did it as a choreography but camillo when you mentioned action i thought hey ill make it reusable lol. Phatso thanks for your feedback i just quickly read through and didnt understand some of it such as when yuo said the spline should take shape what spline? lol im not that experienced with the program. I am gonna start redoing it tonight and ill probably incorporate it into a fight scene im making next. Im not good at modeling so i thought id work on animating skills lol.

 

thanks again guys ill try post an updated video tonight and i am starting from scratch because i couldnt get it to save there was some error

 

thanks

Geoff

[phatso]

Gerry - well, see how much work I saved you?

 

Geoff - I wasn't referring to any of the splines in the model. You can move the whole model up and down... let's see, I haven't done a knight backflip, but I think the inverse kinematics are arranged so you can move the hips and the whole model moves... otherwise use the model bone. In A:M, virtually everything can be assigned a spline and animated; splines aren't just for modelling. This is one source of frustration for newbies - complication, you know - but also one of A:M's great strengths. If you move the knight up and down (either by moving hips or the model bone, you'll have to experiment) the position of a control point will move up and down in the timeline. You set the frame counter to various frames and adjust the knight's vertical position; the resulting control points will make a spline that represents altitude versus time. (Don't forget to set a beginning control point at frame zero.) This is the spline I was talking about.

 

Then, when you rotate the knight, you'll be making another spline that represents rotation. Set a control point at the beginning, set a control point where he starts spinning, set one where he stops spinning. You don't have to set one at the end.

 

I'm no animation expert, but I can tell you that believable animation is all about Newtonian mechanics - forces, momentum, center of gravity, etc. That's kind of what I was getting at.

[Geoff]

Hey,

I was working on somthing but when i went to save it i came up with an error. Thanks for the explanation. The screenshot isnt loading so ill post it later.

 

thanks again

Geoff

[Geoff]

Hey guys,

Here is an update. He still doesnt flip with good realistic looking timing(and yes he is supposed to go backwards) he goes to fast at the end but i think it is a good improvement. How do you make the "action" go for more frames in the choreography? I wanna stretch out the flip to make it go slower so you guys can really see what hes doing. Thanks for all the help so far.

 

Thanks

Geoff

knight_back_flip1.1.mov

[Geoff]

hey guys,

i was showing the animation to my mom and cousin and i realized somthing. I left his arms up in the first frame. Im gonna start the third version tomorrow and hope fully get it even better. thanks for all the help phatso

 

thanks geoff

[Geoff]

Hey guys,

 

I finally did somthing with the backflip. I added music to (my first time doin that) I had to hold speakers up to my comp mic and record it through record pad to get that part of the song. I couldnt figure out how to load music files in from itunes or windows media player, how do you do it. Its a pain in the butt to do it the way i did it lol but the sound quality isnt too horrible. Anyways tips, suggestions, critisism always very much appreciated.

 

Thanks a lot guys

 

Geoff

knightbackfliprender1.2.mov

[phatso]

Gett'n better... I'd stretch out the beginning and end squats to at least 3 times as long. Even an olympic gymnast couldn't jump that fast.

 

Which brings up a point - do you watch yourself do the motions in a mirror (difficult for a backflip, I know) or at least ask yourself, "Could I move like that?" People have a very strong instinctive idea of how the body moves when they think of it in terms of their own bodies.

[Rodney]

Thats a fun execise Geoff.

Something of interest to me is that each of these characters look like they would weight different than the other. This provides for a nice example of the principles of animation in action.

 

Add some more anticipation and exaggeration in the squatting positions and you'll have established some really nice weight to the characters.

 

Something to look at should you refine further is to break up the asymmetry a bit too.

For instance, if you were to have one leg leave or return to the floor a bit earlier than the other.

 

Very nice thus far.

 

Can show us this jump from the side?

[Geoff]

Hey,

Thanks guys ill try to get started on a new version tonight or tomorrow. The legs do hit the ground at diferent times its just to fast to see sadly lol. Anyways Rodney heres a side view. Question does anyone know how to imprt songs from either itunes or windows mediaplayer into the program for use in a choreography. I wanna do a usic video but i can only figure out how to import stuf i recorded using the free recording thing that comes with windows. I had to hold a speaker up to my comp mic and record the piece i was gonna use and it will only let you do 1minute. If anyone knows how please let me know.

 

Thanks

Geoff

knightbackfliprender1.3.mov

[phatso]

The rotation seems strange - almost none at first, then super-fast spin. The models should spin faster when they pull their legs in, but not all that much.

 

Disclaimer: videos in youtube may be smoother than they appear.

[Geoff]

Hey,

 

Yeah the animation is still really sloppy i need to find the optimum rotating speed. What happened is i was trying to not go past 1:00 (I think thats how the frame language works lol) and so i made him go to fast at the end. Im gonna try to start on a new improved one soon.

 

Thanks

Geoff

[Tai Shan]

Each animation you show gets better and better. Keep going!