Introduction
I made an appointment for 1 to 1 tutorial this week. Although his network is not very good, it is difficult for me to read his reviews from Discord. But he checked my creature animation for me and recorded the video! I can adjust my creature animation again.
Process
Before the course started, I sent Luke my question:
1. The head seems to get stuck and the animation is not smooth, but I can’t find the problem?
2. In the loop animation, how do I create overlap?
3. For the two controllers on the horse waist, I can’t find a good reference to adjust them. Do you have any good suggestions?
4. The horse’s legs are still strange, how should I adjust them?
Luke will help me solve these problems in order. First, we found that horse head get stuck. Before this, I checked my graph editor, the key frames of 1F and 24F are in the same position, but why is there this problem. Luke pointed out that this is because the curve of the neck controller moves too slowly at the beginning, and moves too fast at the end. Once played, it will become such an effect. So I need to make the curve change less sharp and more even.
In addition, when I track the horse’s mouth, its motion trail is triangular, I should make it 8-figue!
But the answer to the second question still puzzles me. I know that Luke is teaching me how to create loop animation, such as shortening the timeline to 23F, and selecting all controllers to make the keys of 1F and 24F become plateau. But if I want to create overlap, how do I do it?
Then Luke started to adjust the horse waist controllers. By observing my reference picture, I can see that the movement of belly is mainly changed by hips. When the hips descend, the belly moves forward, and when the hips rise, the belly moves backward. Of course, in order to create overlap, I can delay the rotation of the belly by a few frames.
Similarly, when I adjust the spine controller, I also refer to the movement of the hips. When hips fall, spine also falls, and vice versa. This is to make the horse’s back more smooth. In order to create overlap, I can delay its up and down movement by a few frames.
But now Luke has to help me review the animation of the horse’s legs. It can’t be said that it is difficult to adjust, but it is confusing because it has four legs, two kinds of movement changes, and they all have their own movement pattern.
First of all, the joints of the horse’s feet are triangular, which is an incorrect shape. We can make it more natural through fetlock roll, I haven’t thought of adjusting this before! I just adjusted the hoof roll!
Luke thought that my neck could be lower, so he returned to adjust waist controller and increased the maximum value of rotate X.
In addition, the translate Y of the hips controller also has a problem. I confuse the highest point and the lowest point.
Now I officially started to adjust my animation. Although I adjusted the neck controllers, the head still got stuck. I checked the controllers and finally found that the curve in the chest controller’s translate X was sharp. Sure enough, the animation became smooth after adjustment.
Fortunately! After this adjustment, the motion trail on the head is a perfect 8 figure!
In order to enhance the head swing, I adjusted rotate X in the head controllers.
At this time, I started to adjust the hips controllers. I found it very strange. Why did I make a mistake about the up-and-down relationship between the controllers and the head? It shows that I was not careful enough. I checked my reference picture again, and indeed in this position, the hips initially dropped. And my hips animation rises first and then starts to fall. Then I adjusted rotate X according to translate Y, because at the lowest point and highest point, the forward and backward tilt of the hips of the horse is the largest. After the adjustment, the motion trail of hips is also 8 figure.
Now start to adjust the belly and spine, I want them to follow the movement of hips, but this is not very obvious.
This is an animation of a horse covering its feet.
I first adjust the front leg of the horse, and then switch on motion trail. By observing the trail, I found that the animation of the front leg is not smooth. This is because my keyframes are not polished, and the action is fast and then slow. I polished the key frames and adjusted the position of each frame to make them more even. Finally, in order to reduce the deformation of the legs, I lowered the translate Y of the chest controller to make the initial position lower, but we must pay attention The horse’s knee will not bend when it touches the ground. The same is true for the other leg.
I guess the reason Luke wants me to change the frame number to 23 is because in the motion trail, 1F and 24F overlap, it will become a sharp curve.
Now let’s take a look at the comparison of the two sets of hind legs, which depends on whether the fetlock roll is adjusted.
We can know by referring to the picture that this joint should be kept straight and should not be bent so severely.
I readjusted the back legs in the same way I adjusted the front legs, paying special attention to whether the legs were straight. Finally, I made the stride of the hind legs bigger, because it was the same as the front legs.
I originally wanted to use overlappy to create the tail animation, but it can’t create loops, and I don’t know how to adjust the parameters, because in the reference picture, the horse’s tail movement is very small, so I adjusted it myself.
This is the final animation! I think it’s okay!
Conclusion
In this week’s adjustment, I learned:
1. The movements of different parts of the horse (such as belly, spline) are derived from the movements of Hips, so there is no need to pay special attention to the legs.
2. If in the loop animation, when the controllers get stuck, you can check whether the start key and end key are identical, or whether the curve changes evenly.
3. Whether the Motion trail is 8 figure depends on whether your curve is average and the direction is correct.
4. The front legs and back legs of the horse should be kept straight in the contact pose, especially the back legs, and the fetlock roll needs to be adjusted if necessary.
5. To create a loop animation, shorten the timeline to 23F, and select all controllers to make the keys of 1F and 24F become plateau.
6. In the horse animation, when the hips fall, the belly will move forward, and when the hips rise, the belly will move backward.
7. In the horse animation, when the hips drop, the spine will drop, and vice versa.