Introduction
This is my last animation! After finishing it, my animation task is almost over!
Process
As usual, I will go to the tutorial and reference. I still watched Tang’s tutorial. As a professional animator, he used his experience to sum up a set of methods for making game animations. These are:
Idle: Character characteristics, stable center of gravity 0F
Anticipation: long time, large arc (slow) 10F
Extreme: The pose of the waist and chest is close to the attack pose, and the pose of the hand is close to anticipation 12F
Attack: (fast) 13F
Cushioning: short time, large arc (fast), venting force, the body moves forward but the hand moves backward 14F
Maintain: small arc, long time (slow), increase the definition of action by 20F
Idle: recovery 30F
How to increase the sense of blow:
- Anticipation frame is close to extreme pose
- There is a big difference in the range of motion between Extreme and attack
- The arc of Attack movement is large (jumping, raising)
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1aE411Z7tU?p=601
Then I also checked the combat animations in UE4 and Breath of Wild. Through a frame-by-frame comparison, I found that if I want to make a continuous attack animation, I have to pay attention:
- Shift the center of gravity, pay attention to the left and right legs
- Maintain a sense of blow, attack fast, and slow recovery
- Consider the anticipation of connecting to the next action, and it can also be regarded as recovery
I still started making animations from anticipation. The more difficult thing was that I didn’t find a very suitable reference, and there was no way to perform, except for breath of the wild, so I referred to the movements of LInk to design the animation. At the beginning I just blocked, I have to make sure that the pose is natural.
I also shorten the timing of anticipation and attack as much as possible, but the faster the speed means the fewer frames, no special effects, and the moving speed of my sword makes the audience hard to see.
But when Xin changed his pose, I didn’t know how to make it. I took screenshots of Link’s poses one by one. He should use blending because the transition between actions is very fast.
But if I raise my arm excessively without moving the collarbone controller, then the model is broken.
It’s not bad to watch the animation now.
Another point to note is the movement of the feet and knees. I actually went to the show to observe the movement of my knees. But I always forget the key frame, so the key frames of different channels are messed up. At this time, I need to go to the graph editor to adjust.
Here I found that I didn’t adjust the shoulder controllers, which is also the reason why my animation is unnatural.
The third action is also completed. And I originally wanted to do a rotating attack, but the reference did not find a suitable one, and there was not enough time, so I made a hack.
Finally, I copied the pose of the first frame to the last frame, even though I knew I might not need to export this animation. At this point, blocking is complete!
Then I polished my animation and set the spine offset, now the curve looks messy. I need to adjust the key frame a little bit. In addition, I use motion tail to make the hips move more smoothly.
I felt that the action of jumping up and hitting the ground was not obvious enough, so I added an extreme pose. This looks much better! twenty three
At this time I also adjusted my head, the reference is still Link. Although I want him to keep looking forward, it’s so weird! In addition, I didn’t add too much detail to the hair, because I couldn’t see it at all when it was played.
This is my animation! However, I hope that the position of the sword cut can be a bit more middle, which is more logical, so I have adjusted the translateY of the arm.
This is the final scene of my animation!
Conclusion
Rather than saying that combat animation is more complicated, it is better to say that because I have no reference, many actions cannot be considered. I am not very satisfied with the animation in Maya, but in the game, the animation plays faster, and the most important thing for players is to experience the game feel.
I will make an appointment for Alan’s tutorial tomorrow and let him see my animation for me.