Introduction
Because I am busy with a collaborative project, I did not submit the animation assignment for this week in time. I hope Luke can understand me. And now I pay more attention to the details of some animations. Although I don’t know whether these details can be produced with my own ability, I am willing to try to do better.
Tips:
1. Don’t do anticipation casually, it will cause chaos. The effect can be achieved by delaying the key frame.
2. If you want to adjust the animation in the character set, just keep it.
3. The animation of the tail and ears must be completed in blocking.
4. If there is a problem with the sound, go to Audio to check if the correct source is selected.
Problems:
1. The monkey’s movements are rather blunt.
2. The operation in the graph editor cannot be undone.
3. As soon as you press S, Maya gets stuck.
4. Tom’s head keeps moving.
5. Forgot to adjust the animation to the character set.
6. What part of the animation should be completed during Blocking?
7. Audio can only be heard when playing animation.
Process
The first thing I need to do is to change all curves (stepped) to auto in the graph editor, so that I can directly see how my animation is automatically framed. However, the current animation looks particularly mechanical, the Monkey looks inanimate, and Tom’s hand is even distorted by the transition. Only Monster looked slightly better.
Monkey
I decided to adjust Monkey’s animation first. Because Monkey only has a hip controller, I directly use Motion Trail to observe the monkey’s body movement curve. Obviously, this is exactly a straight line, which is why the monkey’s movements are so blunt. Through constant adjustments, I turned it into a curve, and at 150F, I hope that the monkey will have an upward movement, which will be sudden, but it can also express its emotions. After the adjustment, it looks much better now.
At the same time, I hope its chest can overlap with hip, which means that I have to delay the time of chest exercise. The following two GIFs can clearly see the difference between the movement of the chest and hip. But be aware that WordPress sometimes has problems, which makes my GIFs useless. If Luke finds that the pictures are not moving, you can contact me.
Because I adjust the changes of my body through the channel box of the hip controller, I need to know the role of each channel. I am now adjusting each channel separately. I want the chest movement to be like a bounding ball, so I have to be patient and modify the curve a little bit. Of course, in order to overlap, I constantly change the direction of the ups and downs of the chest and the direction of rotation, so that it looks more real.
I watched the monkey’s body movement repeatedly, and felt that the monkey’s panting in the last few seconds was not exaggerated, so I adjusted the curve in the last few seconds.
Now I start to adjust the overall movement of the head. I hope that the monkey will have some sensation of shaking his head, which requires me to constantly make its trail bend. The adjustment method is also very simple, that is, continue to delay the key frame, add overlapping, so that the monkey’s movement starts from the hip, then to the chest, and finally to the head. In the last few seconds, I added some head shaking that does not exist in the reference to express the monkey’s nervousness. I am quite satisfied with my adjustment, but I don’t know how Luke will modify it.
The monkey looks much more interesting! I need to continue to adjust the details.
Such as the hands and legs of a monkey. I don’t know why the cycle I added in blocking does not work anymore. In fact, I am not very familiar with the operation of cycle, so I went to Maya’s official website to search:
https://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2020/CHS/?guid=GUID-619CAE9C-107D-4504-A769-227DDC847153
It turns out that when I was in the spline, I didn’t know why there were more key frames in the last few seconds of the curve, so it couldn’t loop anymore. Delete the following points and select cycle again. I didn’t make this movement too obvious, because it would interfere with the audience’s realization. In fact, if you look closely, you can also notice that I also forced myself to shake my whole body during the performance.
Of course, the movements of the hands are the same. At first I wanted to follow the same key frames as the feet, but this would cause the hands to shake too much and not follow the body movement (I used Ik). So I had to key frames one by one. Secondly, I also wanted to make it slower than the movement of the head, so I kept adjusting the movement of the handle.
The last step is of course the expression! Because of the model, I can’t adjust the expression too much. This also tells me that it is best to use the standard model given by the teacher, which makes it more convenient for me to do animation. I have been trying to adjust my chin, trying to make a pouting effect, but unfortunately, this model does not allow it. The eyes too, I can’t make complicated blinking movements, as Luke showed me. I hope I can do this next time I have a chance. twenty four
The Monkey animation is ready!
Tom
Another complicated animation is Tom. This model is different from a monkey because it can be adjusted in many places and is a very good model! Of course, after the spline, Tom also exposed a lot of problems. For example, the arm is distorted by transition, and the animation of the tail is not made, and its expression will be more complicated than that of Monkey. This requires me to adjust according to the body, head, arms, fingers, tail, ears, and facial expressions.
I first adjust the spline, because this spline is FK, so I have to adjust each controller separately. Because my key in blocking is too complicated, I don’t know how to adjust it, so I can only do it by feeling. And I think my character seems to be out of balance, but I don’t know how to adjust, so I can only make Tom do more moves. For example, I have been adjusting the controller that controls the degree of hip distortion. I hope that this ass twisting action is after speaking. Later, I still found it too strange and advanced these two frames.
I know, you have to operate the master controller on the hip to keep your balance! Just need to move. In addition, I spent a lot of time adjusting the entire spine. Especially in the last few seconds, I need to ensure overlapping, so every controller is extremely important. In order to make Tom more vivid, I want his stomach to be like jelly, which is the effect of the small ball bouncing.
I found that I can stretch Tom’s body, which can make an exaggerated animation!
Now I am starting to modify the head animation, but because my body adjusts too much, if I don’t modify the head movement, Tom keeps shaking his head. So I went back to the body to adjust the animation and deleted unnecessary anticipation. Now my head won’t wobble.
Only then did I find out! I didn’t adjust it in the character set. I just adjusted the animations with no character set, but I can’t help it. I hope I can pay attention to it next time.
Tom was not eared by the key in blocking. I haven’t adjusted my ears and hair in the previous animation, so this is also a good try. For example, I will delay the top ear controller from the second ear controller in some frames, and the ears follow the head movement. Because I can’t see the other ear, I just keyed it roughly. Maybe my key is not very good, so after this, I hope Luke can check it for me and tell me some tips.
Why does the animation of the arm look weird, because I forgot the controllers of the spline arm, just adjust it in the graph editor.
Relative to the head, the arm is easier to adjust, but because I use IK completely, the automatic frame correction of the palm is a bit strange, and I still need to add frames to adjust. In addition, I added a lot of action details, which I did not do in the reference, which will make me feel that Tom is more real.
In addition, in this performance, I hope Tom’s fingers can be more direct, so I shortened the key frame spacing. Compared with the right hand, the left hand itself has a lot of details. Unfortunately, the movement I adjusted looks very different from the reference, but it is also good, so I ignored it.
The tail here took me a lot of time. This is because I didn’t master the basic principles of animation. This is the exercise of bouncing ball with tail, but it is placed in the assignment. At the beginning, I relied on my own feeling to key, but this would cause me to be unable to accurately know the time of each controller, which also made it very difficult for me to adjust. I had to delete the key frame and do it again.
In this place, because Tom suddenly aggravated his tone, I shortened the time of tail drooping when key frames. But this will cause the animation to pop, so I slightly reduced the amplitude of the movement.
On the contrary, in this place, although it was because I didn’t grasp the timing properly, the tail slowly dropped but adapted to Tom’s tone. I think this adjustment is fine.
At the end of the adjustment, even though it took a lot of time, I already mastered a little skill.
1. The tail controller closest to the body only needs to adjust the most basic position.
2. For the second, third, and fourth controllers that start in sequence, you can do an anticipation every few frames, or delay the key for a few frames in sequence, for the purpose of overlapping.
3. The final controller can do some small details, because it is the easiest to shake.
4. The animation of the tail and ears must be completed in blocking.
Now only Tom’s expression remained. Here I made it completely according to my reference: I first keyed the movement of the mouth, at least the mouth shape needs to match the voice. At this time, I found that the audio of the animation was not played synchronously. After checking, I found that my sound source became trax sounds, so there was no sound when I drag the timeline. The next thing I adjust is the eyes. Last time Luke told me the tips for making closed eyes and open eyes, I can use them here. Of course I also added a lot of anticipation, I don’t know if it is appropriate.
Only then did I realize that I still have a beard! Beard is also very important, but so far I have become accustomed to overlapping. I mainly use controllers near the nose and end. I took a look at Zootopia before, and I found that the tail animation inside is not always in motion, but relax appropriately.
I think the head can be more flexible, so I added some deformation, like a soft ball.
Monster & fly
In fact, I don’t think these two need to be modified, because monster and fly are both secondary and put in the background. So I didn’t spend much time adjusting their animations.
It took me at least three days and I finally finished it!
Conclusion
There are many different things in the animation this time. Although my character does not need a key leg controller, the addition of tails, ears and beards allows me to consolidate my animation foundation.