Week6&7: Body machine animation

Introduction

In the past two weeks, our animation has become more difficult to do, because we need to do the body machine assignment. This is an assignment that requires us to apply the basic knowledge of animation. I am very happy that Luke praised my animation.

TIPS:

To lock the controller that may be selected but not used.
First key Extreme pose and Contact Pose.
Can use flat tangents.
Don’t rotate the arm excessively.

PROBLEM:

The arm automatically rotates in a circle.
Unable to determine frame rate.
Don’t know how to switch ik to fk.
I want to fix the handle on the railing, but I don’t know how to do it.
The animation popped up.

Process

Firstly , let us watch the reference. It shows that a men is doing parkour. He run at first and then jump across the railing. In total, there are 39 frames in the vedio.

This time I still choose David as my character. After all, this kind of muscle-filled character is very suitable for sports animation.

Then I built a rough scene according to the reference picture, especially the railings and the platform where the characters landed. Actually I don’t know if the distance of each object is appropriate, but I think if I can’t animate well, I will adjust the position.

The next step is to determine the camera’s movement because the reference image only has 39 frames, so I only do 39 frames.

Remember to fix the camera and objects that do not require interaction, so that only the character can move, making it more convenient for animation.

When I started to do the action, I found that the frame rate of reference above is not the same as that of Maya. Although the picture software shows 39 frames, the actual playback second is three seconds, so I tried two frames. An action, Key until 78 frames.

The next step is to officially start the action. The first action is that the character has lost his balance. This shows that I have to pay attention to the rotation position of the hip, especially to maintain balance on the front.

What I have to do now is to key out the Extreme pose and Contact pose. I encountered a little trouble during the animation process.

For example, I adjusted the waist rotation too much, which caused the character’s rotation direction and the forward direction to look mismatched, so I revised the waist rotation value.

There is also a funny question. After I adjust the character’s wrist, his wrist will rotate in a circle as soon as I play it. I reset the value to 0 and re-adjusted it.

There are also some minor issues. For example, I did not pay attention to two key actions in the same frame, which caused me to do it again. In addition, I also adjusted the controller that should not be adjusted, which allowed me to directly lock its parameters afterwards to prevent me from adjusting it again.

In the end, I made some Extreme pose and Contact Pose first.

The next step is the remaining frames of K. Because of the Extreme pose and Contact Pose, I only need to adjust the frames automatically filled by the computer, which is very convenient for me.

However, I also have some minor problems. For example, in frames 22-30, the character’s hand has to grab the railing, but once I move the waist, the arm also moves. It took me a lot of time to adjust the position of each frame to the same of. But in the close-up, the hands are still moving. I want to switch to ik and fk, but I have not seen this kind of controller, and I do not know how to adjust it. I can only ask the teacher when I leave it.

(Update) The teacher told me that I only need to change FKIKBlend from 0 (FK) to 10 (IK). I did not find the controller before because the controller ran far away.

The teacher helped me fix the plug-in remotely and showed me how to use it.

First select the frame range, and then be sure to check Maintain Offset. Select the immovable object in the Master, select the object to be fixed in the Slave, and select Snap in the Options.

In some frames, there are no keyframes but animation. Based on experience, I clicked flat tangents in the curve editor so that there is no movement between the two points.

Finally, I completed the blocking of the animation and adjusted the speed in Premiere.

Review & Spline & Polish

The teacher praised my animation, which made me very happy because it shows that I have improved. But there are still some minor issues that need to be corrected.

For example, some movements cannot keep the body in balance.

Also, the trajectory of the hip is softer in the final squat.

There is also a guiding nature of the head, it is best to rotate this head.

The most important thing is that there is a pop around 32 frames. Actually, I found it when I did it, but it didn’t change it.

Now I start spline and polish my animation.

First select hip and check its curve. You can see that this curve is not smooth, so I have to find a way to make it smooth.

In Translate, I want to make the curve as linear as possible. In Translate Y, I want to make the curve as smooth as possible, for example, keep adding keyframes to make a straight line become a curve.

Similarly, the trail in the Top view is not smooth, which needs to be adjusted.

Next comes the feet and arms, which need to be adjusted like a small ball bounce. Later, I found that the knees sometimes bend suddenly in the legs, because its position is not adjusted well or the curve is not smooth enough, I adjusted it again in the curve editor.