Introduction
This time I mainly made beginning, which is an animation of Xin pulling out a sword. Originally, I wanted to do idle animation first, but after thinking about it, it would be better to determine the standing posture. And I will use it to understand the use of some plug-ins. This will actually take some time, but once I master the use of plug-ins, it can make my future work easier.
Process
First of all, I downloaded and learned some plug-ins:
Studio Library
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV17T4y1E7yg?from=search&seid=17122864231341668196&spm_id_from=333.337.0.0
The main function of this is to store poses, because I will do different actions next. This function can help me directly read the poses I have made, which is very convenient.
aTools/ Animbot
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1ja4y1H7xR?from=search&seid=15138626548366004414&spm_id_from=333.337.0.0
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1ja4y1H7xR?from=search&seid=518512952117880949&spm_id_from=333.337.0.0
Everyone is familiar with this plugin, but aTools is free, so I chose it. My favorite feature is that it can store animations in the background, so that you can avoid the loss of animation data caused by Maya crashes.
In addition, although I haven’t tried it yet, it can make two physical aligns through the key frame setting, which seems to be more convenient than direct constraint, because I need to import it into the game engine.
Before idle animation, I want to make a sword drawing animation as a transition. So I checked a lot of related materials and finally got inspiration from this video. It is not difficult to find that his hips also move along the 8-shape after drawing the sword, and the center of gravity will be more forward.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKZgbtuTho4
This video is far from enough, so I recorded the reference of drawing sword and idle myself.
To be honest, I just finished the operation because my right leg was broken, so I can’t control my center of gravity well, but I do my best to perform.
In addition, I also recorded the animation of Breath of the Wild’s Link as a second reference.
Observing my performance, first of all, my center of gravity is on the left leg. The hips rotate to the left. The whole upper body rotates so that the left hand can’t be seen, but there is no obvious displacement of the leg. Then I drew out the sword and flew an arc. On my way to draw the sword, I took my left leg to keep the center of gravity on it, and my body was facing the right and the right hand was behind. My eyes are looking forward from start to finish.
Then I will make animation based on my performance. The front is very smooth, until I feel that the spine animation is not natural enough, the result is that the character’s center of gravity is wrong, and I can see it clearly in the side view.
Then I made his spine animation move more, and confirmed with motion tail, I can see that the curve is very smooth. But the rhythm is somewhat average, so there will be no sense of power. I want to make the ease in and out effect.
But at this time I also found a problem! I forgot to adjust 24FPS to 30FPS! Once I adjusted it, the frame numbers were all messed up! I spent a lot of time adjusting the frame number to an integer and moving it to a suitable position. In order to make him have the effect of jumping, I also adjusted the curve of his hips as a bouncing ball.
Then I adjusted my head. Although I wanted to keep the head facing forward, because Xin’s movement range was relatively large, his head would be distorted if it remained the same. For the sake of beauty, I still made his head rotate slightly. Of course, I adjusted these in the front view, because this can ensure that my eyes look straight ahead.
However, the 28F motion tail does not look smooth. Only the hips controller has key frames. I guess this is because I let the hips bounce, so the head will follow this movement. So I didn’t adjust it here.
This is the animation after adjusting the spine and head controllers and offsetting them.
I have adjusted my legs before. Just like the reference, I temporarily lost the center of gravity and stepped out of the legs. In order to increase the details, I adjusted the toes controllers on the way up the feet. This is what Luke once taught me. .
In my reference, my right leg moved twice, but this would look weird in the animation, so I didn’t add it. In addition, when Xin reached the highest point, his right foot was on tiptoe, so I adjusted the stretchy to at least keep it from leaving the ground. But because the right leg still looks weird, I decided to ask my classmates how to adjust it tomorrow.
Then I adjusted my left hand. In fact, I didn’t need him to fully grasp the scabbard, but the overlap that needed it was particularly obvious. But there is a problem. My hands will move unnecessarily with the body. At this time, I need to switch to IK and use the functions in the biped. This is a problem I encountered in Term1, and Yann now tells me how to solve it. After switching to IK, I have to pay attention to the location of PoleArm_L. In the last personal project, it bothered me for a long time.
Before starting to adjust the right hand, I went to understand the fake constraint of aTools, because I don’t want to use constraints to make animations. However, the effect is not particularly good, maybe I chose the wrong one. 18
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fcn3ZHmCSIE
I need to pay attention to the moment when I pull out the sword on my right hand, so I will pause this action for a while. And I changed FK to IK, in order to make the arm more stable, this is really helpless choice. Then I also adjusted my left hand, paying attention to ease in and out, and turning the motion tail into an arc.
In addition, I also adjusted the hair, although this is almost impossible to detect, but it is also considered to increase the details.
After adjusting these, I finally start to adjust the sword. Because this needs to be imported into unreal engine4, I decided to ask Yann for some export details. For example, can I directly use constraints, bake animations, and export fbx files?
Yann said that this is not possible. I have to create bones and then constant to the bone points, so that the animation can be baked to the bones instead of the model.
In addition, in order to avoid the problem of the previous project, I first exported my model and animation and found that it can be read, which is enough.
Then I figured out the order. First, I have to create two bones, one for the scabbard and the other for the sword, and add weight through add influence. The skeleton of the scabbard is connected to the hips. But the bones of the sword will restrain the scabbard at first, and then restrain it with the hand, so that’s it.
Yann helped me solve the problem I encountered during rigging: If I want to re-assign weights, but I cannot find the bone points I want to assign, because the parent bone is not displayed. I can find add influence so that an irrelevant bone can be weighted!
This is the case after adding bones.
Although this is theoretically the case, in actual operation I found that I have no way to constrain the sword by two objects at the same time. If I constrain the scabbard at the beginning, I cancel the constraint at 6F, and the sword will shift. Such a sword Restraint with the hand again, the position is wrong.
Yann and Yu, and I thought of some solutions:
- Copy the model of the sword, one is bound with the scabbard and the other is bound with the hand, just adjust the visibility. But Yann is not sure if there will be problems if importing unreal engine4, so he suggested that I try to use a model to complete it.
- Using the fake constraint of aTools, remember to right-click and select paste all frames to have an effect. Both sections use this function, but if you want to modify the hand direction, you have to use it again, which is more troublesome.
- Use aTools in the first half and use parents in the second half, but once parents are used, all attributes will turn green, and the position recorded by the original aTools is gone. This method is not feasible.
Finally, I used Method 2 and adjusted the position of the hand and sword myself. I know the model is broken, but I can’t help it. After all, this can be exported to fbx file and there is no bug.
In order to achieve better results, I still choose to adjust my animation frame by frame. Observing the motion tail of the sword, I think this curve can be more smooth, so I adjusted the position of the sword again.
After adding emoticons and making the scabbard feel heavier, my animation is complete.
Conclusion
I mainly spend my time learning plug-ins and studying constraints. To be honest, my animation speed is still not fast enough, and some simple details have not been noticed. But I believe I will make more and more progress.