It's a bird, it's a plane, it's....thom?

[Darkwing]

So I'm kinda fiddling with superhero type effects and currently I'm working on flying!

 

shot2.mov

[Shelton]

Nice. Reminds me of the brother in Heroes who can fly when he takes off

 

Steve

[Darkwing]

yeah, that's sort of the effect I'm trying to mimic. I need to speed up his take off, it has to be like a bullet of sorts. Soon time for some telekinesis stuff

[Gerry]

Yep, nice simple effect.

[Darkwing]

Something I continually have trouble with is blending two actions together. For instance, if you look at this vid closely, after the strut, he snaps into the take off position. I've tried the Blend and Add options for the action in the choreography but with no success. What exactly should I be doing to make two actions blend into each other?

[Xtaz]

Hi Chris ... nice start ... I guess that more antecipation would be great ...

flight.mov

[Darkwing]

Dang, well, yeah, you're good. Motion and general animation technique is something else I'm trying to play with in these tests, I can do it with real life actors, not so great with the CG ones currently, but I'm trying So, all the advice you guys can give will be appreciated!

[Darkwing]

oh and who's that character you used, is it one of yours, or one that comes with AM, cause it's a nice character that might be good for these tests due to having certain appendages that thom hasn't

[robcat2075]

Something I continually have trouble with is blending two actions together. For instance, if you look at this vid closely, after the strut, he snaps into the take off position. I've tried the Blend and Add options for the action in the choreography but with no success. What exactly should I be doing to make two actions blend into each other?

 

Simplest solution is to start the second action with the pose that ends the first action.

 

And I agree with Xtaz that he oughta crouch down way more before he leaps.

[TheSpleen]

all of you amaze me.

Bravo! some great effects there.

[Xtaz]

oh and who's that character you used, is it one of yours, or one that comes with AM, cause it's a nice character that might be good for these tests due to having certain appendages that thom hasn't

...you already know it .... I presented it in this post.... feel free to download and use it

[Darkwing]

yep...my memory is just that bad

[Darkwing]

Landing's always the tricky part they say

 

shot4.mov

[Xtaz]

Hi Chris .... some advices ....

 

- Try to animate each part of the model independently... I notice clearly that the hand´s keys ( right/left ) are in the same frame.. and the same occurs with the feet

 

- In this context there are two situations in which the knee bends :

 

-------1) to generate energy to take of ...or...

-------2) to absorb the impact in the land

 

note that your character comes down until the frame 38, then it goes up a little , stabilizes the y-axis for 10 frames, then lands flexing legs.

if we consider the second item mentioned above, your character should not bend his legs, because, as you have stabilized the Y axis, there isn't impact to absorbing.

To solve this problem, I suggest you to keep the curve of the Y axis always descending until the absorption of the weight through the legs.

 

Pay close attention to the curves of the axes in the timeline. analyze and understand it .. this is a key to a good animation

[Darkwing]

I always use the white timeline, less confusing for me (insert sheepish emoticon here). As for the key framing, yeah, they're all on the same frame. I quite dislike keyframing which unfortunately is the whole methodology behind animation in general. But yeah, so basically don't make him his feet straighten out for the landing so close to the ground correct? Have more space between him and the ground so that when he "falls" there's actual shock for him to absorb, thus the knee bending action

[Darkwing]

OK, here's another try at it. This time I made him swing his legs out in front of him and then arced his back backwards and then forwards, more like he's jumping in mid-air. I think he still needs a harder landing and that my timing is off some. I also expect his right leg to be further back so that he can have balance when he lands.

 

shot5.mov

[robcat2075]

I actually liked the shot 4 version better.

 

One rule of jumping and landing is to always re-contact the ground with (nearly) fully extended legs, maybe even tippy toes, so the legs can have their full travel to cushion the mass of the body as it falls. The more they can bend the more they can seem to be opposing large mass.

 

 

I had some notes on jumping and landing here

[Darkwing]

so, heel to toe essentially? When he lands, he should land on his heel, then his foot has complete contact one frame later?

[robcat2075]

so, heel to toe essentially? When he lands, he should land on his heel, then his foot has complete contact one frame later?

 

you can land on your toes too and then have the heel contact next. That's probably what we do more often in real life. But I've never jumped over a 10 story building.

 

I'd say landing on heels is more graphic, toes is more real. Although I may have seen some Superman drawings where he leads with a toe. Hmmm...

 

 

 

Someone jumping and skipping rope maybe never touches with their heel at all.

[Darkwing]

I see, well, I touched this one up a bit following some of those tips. Not quite there yet

 

shot6.mov

[robcat2075]

I see, well, I touched this one up a bit following some of those tips. Not quite there yet

 

shot6.mov

 

 

The first thing I notice about that is that when he settles down for that landing his butt is moving pretty much straight down and then does an L turn and starts moving forward the moment his heels touch. That would not be a normal path.

 

 

Here's sort to what i imagine you're going for, if we just watched it from the side. I didn't animate the arms at all for this quickie.

 

LandingToe.mov

[Darkwing]

yep...that would be it. Not as low to the ground with the swoop, but yeah, that's it. Funny how your quicky is considerably better than what I spent a few hours on Oh well, I spent the last 4 years trying to learn how to model. Now it's time for animation

[robcat2075]

That took me a few hours too. I always think it's going to be fast and it never is.

 

I do like your concept of the shot. I like that small dot in the sky that grows into a whole guy.

[Darkwing]

ok good, the term quicky can be misleading in the world of animation

 

At least that is one thing I've always been half decent at and that is coming up with shot angles and whatnot.

[Darkwing]

Here's another go at it. It's the same shot from two angles. I caught one mistake already and it's his arm flips around in the wrong direction, can't believe I didn't catch it before rendering, oh well, it's not hard to fix.

 

shot7.mov

shot8.mov

[robcat2075]

Here's another go at it. It's the same shot from two angles. I caught one mistake already and it's his arm flips around in the wrong direction, can't believe I didn't catch it before rendering, oh well, it's not hard to fix.

 

shot7.mov

shot8.mov

 

The front angle is the weakest since we can't see the bend in his legs.

 

I liked the lay out you had in "Shot4" the best of all so far.

 

 

Here's another rule about falling and jumping objects: when they are falling down, like he does after he swooped up a bit, they can't slow down before they touch the ground. Gravity accelerates them until some other force can counter act it like the pressure of the leg on the ground. But until that toe or heel touches he can't slow down.

 

Of course he's a superhero with flight powers, but I see it like he turned off his invisible jet pack at the top of that last hump and falls to his feet from there.

 

I sort of imagine the motion like he came down a ski jump shoot and the plopped down right in front of it.

[Darkwing]

yeah, that's sort of what I've been going for, not a controlled landing but a fall after the "jet-packs" shut off

[robcat2075]

yeah, that's sort of what I've been going for, not a controlled landing but a fall after the "jet-packs" shut off

 

 

It's hard to do! I struggled with what i got and it's still not quite what i wanted.

 

But that's a real "animation" task... trying to make something that can't be appear as if happened.

[Darkwing]

ok, well i just tried this as a basic test to see if this idea mght work better. mind you it's quite late at night and i didn't really put much effort into it and i've already picked out a bunch of things in it, but this test is just to see how well a back-flip works and this test has proven (I think) that further, more detailed testing is worthy

 

shot9.mov

[robcat2075]

ok, well i just tried this as a basic test to see if this idea mght work better. mind you it's quite late at night and i didn't really put much effort into it and i've already picked out a bunch of things in it, but this test is just to see how well a back-flip works and this test has proven (I think) that further, more detailed testing is worthy

 

shot9.mov

 

I'm not into that one. The problem is... where does the imaginary jetpack force turn off and how do we know it? Your original ski jump layout has more potential there.

[Darkwing]

ok, back to the drawing board I guess. I kinda liked the back-flip, but if it could very well just be because of my inexperienced ways in the matter. Guess it's time to review some scenes from Hancock

[Darkwing]

Well, been a while since I tinkered with this, kinda forgot where I was at so I fixed buddy's arm here and re-rendered

 

shot10.mov

[Darkwing]

OK, so I have a question. I'm trying a new sequence, one in which dude is strutting forward. A car is in his path. When he comes to the car, without stopping, he looks and pushes the car to the side. So I have the strutting action created and applied to him in the chor, so how do I go about making his arm go from whatever position it's in now in the action, to pushing the car, to going back to where it should be when he's done. DO I have to in the chor set a keyframe on any bones I think will be effected where it starts and then go about it manually in the chor? Cause I'm not entirely sure how one character animates if the character does more than one thing at a time

[nimblepix]

Well, been a while since I tinkered with this, kinda forgot where I was at so I fixed buddy's arm here and re-rendered

 

shot10.mov

 

Since this is a WIP, I suggest that you wait until his feet touch the ground before bringing his arms down.

[Darkwing]

Yeah, something I noticed yesterday and why I didn't see it months ago is that his arms swing up too late. They should swing up to give him momentum to spin around, not his spinning causing his arms to go up.

[HomeSlice]

OK, so I have a question. I'm trying a new sequence, one in which dude is strutting forward. A car is in his path. When he comes to the car, without stopping, he looks and pushes the car to the side. So I have the strutting action created and applied to him in the chor, so how do I go about making his arm go from whatever position it's in now in the action, to pushing the car, to going back to where it should be when he's done. DO I have to in the chor set a keyframe on any bones I think will be effected where it starts and then go about it manually in the chor? Cause I'm not entirely sure how one character animates if the character does more than one thing at a time

End the first walk action a second or so before he reaches the car.

Create a new chor action and have it start 6 or 12 frames before the first walk action ends. (so the two overlap)

At first, leave the chor action's Blend Mode to "replace". You'll change it later.

Follow Robcat's advice about shift-selecting all the control bones on the last frame of the walk action. Select the chor action and rotate all the bones a little to create keyframes on the first frame of the chor action.

Manually animate Thom doing his thing, then switch the Blend Mode of the Chor action to "Blend".

On the first frame of the chor action, set Blend Percent to 100% (I think, it may be 0% ... can't remember).

Ease the Blend percent in during the time that the chor action and the first walk action overlap.

Add *another* walk action 6 or 12 frames before the *end* of the chor action.

Set the Blend Mode to "Blend". And ease the Blend percent in during the time that the chor action and the last walk action overlap.

[Darkwing]

Thanks for the tips, I'll give em a try in the morning