Hey folks, instead of hearing my mouth run about nothing, I decided to post links to some really great resources about the physics of animation. I highly recommend anyone just beginning in animation, or even someone more experienced that never understood the physics behind their animation. To please check these links out, they describe it far better than I ever could.
http://www.animationphysics.com/
Alejandro Garcia a professor in the Department of Physics at San Jose State
University(website:http://www.algarcia.org/)
http://www.algarcia.org/Pubs/PoAP_Siggraph.pdf
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Tips on Walks
Small disclaimer, and spoiler alert for those of you who didnt already know...I'm a....complete....NOOB! Yes that's right, so all this jumble of information below you is just some random things I have picked up by research and working on my own walk cycle. I still have a lot to learn myself, but I hope for anyone reading this other than myself, can pick something up from this. If not, at least you know I'm good at wasting your time :).
"Setting the Tempo"
This is normally this first thing we do before we can eat our walk cycle up. First we gotta set the table boy!
Example of Tempo's from Richard Williams
4 frames- Cartoon Run
6 frames- Realistic run or
8 frames- Normal human run
12 frames- Business like walk/ March Time
16 frames- Strolling walk
20 frames -Elderly or tired
24 frames- slow step
32 frames- even slower
Lets talk physics
The basic version of it is this, to walk from point A to point B, there need to be acceleration, and in order for there to be acceleration there needs to be a force. With me so far? Hang in there, were almost home. All we feel is us pushing our foot against the ground, and that's half the battle, the other half of it or the "force", comes from the earth itself. So, your foot pushing is the acceleration, and the force is the earth....Gee, I hope the youtube video I got this from is right... This is Newtons Third Law, a push or pull on an object that is resulting from contact with a separate object. I think I got this down, my brain hurts now so I'll move on.
This is a pretty cool site I found on the topic, worth a look:
http://www.rubberbug.com/walking.htm
Random Garbage
With pretty much all of the average walks I have seen, there seems to always be a pause at the top of the arm swing, and at the back, with a faster motion between the two. Perhaps I can capture this if I am doing this type of walk. People barley pick up there feet, surprised we don't stub our toe more often. While working a walk cycle my mentor peter gave me. I noticed the heel begins to lift off the ground right after the passing position. Furthermore, and this is rather important, the heel rising off the ground on the frame after the passing position is NOT done by rotating the foot back and rising the toes. I found it better to use the ball roll, because then you wont have issues with your foot arc. You transition from ball roll to rotating that foot and rising those toes, it should be a smooth transition into that.
Ok this is about the fiftieth time I've noticed this, my legs appear to look better when I have a cleaner graph editor. I know this sounds obviously but not really. Check this out. The first picture is what my curve editor looked like before I blew keys away. The second is after. After blowing keys away my legs seem to run smoother. I'm still learning when and how much to change the graph editor and what are good rules of thumb for it.
*Overlapping the hand at end of each swing can really add fluidity to the animation
*DONT make cycles of head action in circles or figures 8's....like I once did....
*Move the shoulder back and forth in an arc
*Shoulders appose hips
*Belt line bends down with lowest leg
*Your feet are never straight ahead of you, never parallel they are typically tilted off its axis. Moreover, the knee control is always pointed over the big toe.
Arm movements,
With the heavy and bulky character I am working with, I was told by a girl working at framestore, "the weight of the step should influence the swing and thrust the arm forward". Looking at a walk cycle done at ianimate with a similar character, I noticed the lower arm draaaags until it the upper arm is at its peak, and THEN the lower arm catches up. I think this could vary a little bit though, it should look like a nice transition.
Final
This is a walk cycle I did for practice, this is NOT in any way, a good walk cycle. There are a lot of things that can be improved. I sent this to my mentor, and I got a lot of feedback. Here are a few things the could have made this walk better:
--> *The hips translate left and right too much
--> *When the hips are shifting
his weight from one leg to the other the rotation begins half way.... too soon.
the rotation should hold in place longer and then quickly change as the weight has
finally been transferred
This walk too me an awfully long time to get to this level, it was a freaking struggle, especially with the legs. So now...I am going to take everything I have learned doing this walk, and all the notes I have gotten on it, and apply it to the next walk cycle I do! I hope all this stuff helps.
"Setting the Tempo"
This is normally this first thing we do before we can eat our walk cycle up. First we gotta set the table boy!
Example of Tempo's from Richard Williams
4 frames- Cartoon Run
6 frames- Realistic run or
8 frames- Normal human run
12 frames- Business like walk/ March Time
16 frames- Strolling walk
20 frames -Elderly or tired
24 frames- slow step
32 frames- even slower
Lets talk physics
The basic version of it is this, to walk from point A to point B, there need to be acceleration, and in order for there to be acceleration there needs to be a force. With me so far? Hang in there, were almost home. All we feel is us pushing our foot against the ground, and that's half the battle, the other half of it or the "force", comes from the earth itself. So, your foot pushing is the acceleration, and the force is the earth....Gee, I hope the youtube video I got this from is right... This is Newtons Third Law, a push or pull on an object that is resulting from contact with a separate object. I think I got this down, my brain hurts now so I'll move on.
This is a pretty cool site I found on the topic, worth a look:
http://www.rubberbug.com/walking.htm
Random Garbage
With pretty much all of the average walks I have seen, there seems to always be a pause at the top of the arm swing, and at the back, with a faster motion between the two. Perhaps I can capture this if I am doing this type of walk. People barley pick up there feet, surprised we don't stub our toe more often. While working a walk cycle my mentor peter gave me. I noticed the heel begins to lift off the ground right after the passing position. Furthermore, and this is rather important, the heel rising off the ground on the frame after the passing position is NOT done by rotating the foot back and rising the toes. I found it better to use the ball roll, because then you wont have issues with your foot arc. You transition from ball roll to rotating that foot and rising those toes, it should be a smooth transition into that.
Ok this is about the fiftieth time I've noticed this, my legs appear to look better when I have a cleaner graph editor. I know this sounds obviously but not really. Check this out. The first picture is what my curve editor looked like before I blew keys away. The second is after. After blowing keys away my legs seem to run smoother. I'm still learning when and how much to change the graph editor and what are good rules of thumb for it.
*Overlapping the hand at end of each swing can really add fluidity to the animation
*DONT make cycles of head action in circles or figures 8's....like I once did....
*Move the shoulder back and forth in an arc
*Shoulders appose hips
*Belt line bends down with lowest leg
*Your feet are never straight ahead of you, never parallel they are typically tilted off its axis. Moreover, the knee control is always pointed over the big toe.
Arm movements,
With the heavy and bulky character I am working with, I was told by a girl working at framestore, "the weight of the step should influence the swing and thrust the arm forward". Looking at a walk cycle done at ianimate with a similar character, I noticed the lower arm draaaags until it the upper arm is at its peak, and THEN the lower arm catches up. I think this could vary a little bit though, it should look like a nice transition.
Final
This is a walk cycle I did for practice, this is NOT in any way, a good walk cycle. There are a lot of things that can be improved. I sent this to my mentor, and I got a lot of feedback. Here are a few things the could have made this walk better:
--> *The hips translate left and right too much
*The hands don't rotate in a curve. they just remain parallel
*The feet are too far apart
*This is a heavy built character, and it would have been nice to show that body builder stature
This walk too me an awfully long time to get to this level, it was a freaking struggle, especially with the legs. So now...I am going to take everything I have learned doing this walk, and all the notes I have gotten on it, and apply it to the next walk cycle I do! I hope all this stuff helps.
Keep grinding.
Mute those translations and rotations buddy!
While animating I realized this would be a great tip to jot down before I forget. Right now I am working on a walk cycle, and I had some weird stuff going on in the chest. I wasted a lot of time guessing what the problem could be, instead of muting the rotation values in the channel box one by one until I found the rotation that was screwing up. For any beginners out there like myself I hope this is useful for you!
Keep grinding! :)
Keep grinding! :)
Learning things about your rig
Hey there! I know its been a while since my last post but I wanted to show a significant amount of improvement before my next post...and I think I have...just a tiny tiny amount haha. But enough crap talk.
So this post is about...you guessed it..learning your rig. I guess I'm only calling it this because my mistake was caused probably by mere inexperience. Hurricane Sandy hit and knocked out most of my power except for downstairs. So I grabbed my computer lugged it down there, hunched over it, and began animating my new acting shot with excitement.
Man did I think I was bad ass or what, I was smashing through it and the blocking was looking great(for me, to anyone with skills it might make them throw up). But what I failed to realize was this...when I turned my character and moved him I also moved his main root controller under his feet. So when his foot got to the edge of the root circle, I would just move the root control circle forward. This screwed me over big time, because now not only did I have to track the feet but that circle as well! Now I just made my life harder...ok no biggie, but then I realized his path was off. I'm not entirely sure if its because I was too busy gloating over how great I thought this shot was going that I failed to look at the path, or because I just made my life a whole lot more complicated than it had to be. Anyways, the point of all this is this, I learned something very valuable. On the next shot I did, instead of moving the root control under his feet, I jsut moved the feet out of the cirlcle..yeah...This was like a no brainier after I did it. I have no idea if this is correct or not, I'm just a noob animator trying to learn more everyday. So if there is actually anyone out there reading this, I encourage you to reply if anything is off! This is one reason why I am recording all my mistakes and achievements, to learn from them :).
Until next time, and as Jamaal Bradly says, Grind till the wheels fall off!
So this post is about...you guessed it..learning your rig. I guess I'm only calling it this because my mistake was caused probably by mere inexperience. Hurricane Sandy hit and knocked out most of my power except for downstairs. So I grabbed my computer lugged it down there, hunched over it, and began animating my new acting shot with excitement.
Man did I think I was bad ass or what, I was smashing through it and the blocking was looking great(for me, to anyone with skills it might make them throw up). But what I failed to realize was this...when I turned my character and moved him I also moved his main root controller under his feet. So when his foot got to the edge of the root circle, I would just move the root control circle forward. This screwed me over big time, because now not only did I have to track the feet but that circle as well! Now I just made my life harder...ok no biggie, but then I realized his path was off. I'm not entirely sure if its because I was too busy gloating over how great I thought this shot was going that I failed to look at the path, or because I just made my life a whole lot more complicated than it had to be. Anyways, the point of all this is this, I learned something very valuable. On the next shot I did, instead of moving the root control under his feet, I jsut moved the feet out of the cirlcle..yeah...This was like a no brainier after I did it. I have no idea if this is correct or not, I'm just a noob animator trying to learn more everyday. So if there is actually anyone out there reading this, I encourage you to reply if anything is off! This is one reason why I am recording all my mistakes and achievements, to learn from them :).
Until next time, and as Jamaal Bradly says, Grind till the wheels fall off!