animation

a.k.a for foot sakes

so its here...the stage i wanted to get to yoooonks ago...and i find myself with as little as a day to animate *thumbs up* ooo i do like a challenge haha.

Anyway, im animating a skip for Poca's walk cycle/rig demonstration....i guess this is the real moment when we find out how good the model/rig is.

So it doesnt help that all my feet attributes (toe roll, toe wiggle, foot roll, heel twist) have all gone missing....ah....no idea when this happened but its waaaayy too far back to recover now at this stage.....ah well. 

O lord...i just tried to add a mere smile and er...big mistake...it destroys the entire model...obviously i have gone and messed the whole thing up somewhere along the line...added too much history, gone back over things and changed and somehow messed the blend shapes up...o lord...if i had the time i would go weeeerrhey back and redo this but time is definitely not on my side...alas...i am without them...at least i have the old files so i can return to them in the future...best put up a playblast on the old blog since i'll now not have them. Must have been to do with the amount of history on the geometry...i dunno.

It also doesn't help that my Maya is not coping with the animation stage...i cant scroll through the frames or playback so its a matter of waiting to see what the results are when creating a playblast...definitely not a good way of working. 

I know i keep moaning about my copy of Maya....but it really is struggling and i think this project has possibly killed it.

Back to it...im using the legendary reference from Richard Williams book "the animators survival guide" for my skip cycle:

So i begin AAAANNND already there is a problem....firstly i discover NO BLEND SHAPES...then oh no...no foot attributes...so this means no real toe roll which makes walk cycles look less...well...believable...no idea why this is has happened..all i can think of is that i have overloaded the geometry so much its sort of confused itself along the way (much like myself) Ahem....anyway, its too late to go re rig, re attribute...re....lots of things so i'll just have to make do with what i got (even though it pains me...darn it) but ah well i guess i can highlight the following

IM A STUDENT AND I BLOODY LEARNING DAMIT...

perhaps i expected too much for my first rig to be o so wonderfully amazing...i should have been way more ahead than i am now to be testing and making adjustments...alas, its not to be so i shrug my shoulders (after standing back out by the road screaming at the traffic with my tesco carrier bags) and continue....already by pushing the model around have i learnt what i should and shouldnt have done

• the foot, though wonderfully cartoon looking, restricts the amount of curl that can be placed upon it....thus i have to rotate and change the translation to get a bit of arcs into my animation
• the shoulder...though delightfully lovely with the tshirt...is soooo fat that it restricts the amount of pinch the arms can have into the body
• the dungas....though charming in their own way...have limited the amount of bend in the legs
• the hips....summat....are too low and have also restricted the height the leg can reach...therefore she has limited levels of bend etc and her stride has to be longer to compensate....she therefore looks "special"
• the arms...although reflecting an aardman no indents heres my elbow sort of design...mean there is a great deal of pinching and collated with geometry mean she has limited movement there....i did add more edge loops but by gum i spose she could have done with more...selfish
• the torso....GOOD WORK....pleased that there is some nice twist in this from the IK spline twist attribute i applied....
• blend shapes.....get outta here man

so yeah...just a few pointers for me to note for next time...and when i say next time...i mean the easter holidays when i shall be going back and making these changes...im that ANNOYED by the way its gone....

I CANT EVEN USE MY OWN RIG!? i thought there was major issues happening with it, but ive handed it over to matt to see where the issue lies and he sees no problem with it....ITS......ME?! aaaahhhhh though he did agree the attributes on the foot are gone....gone forever which he thinks is to do with the connections editor. I havent deleted history so theres no reason why these attributes should mess up...so going back weeeerhey in time seems unnessary for no gaurantee of their safe return. Its been a positive point to hand over the rig to someone else and get feedback on its ease of use...your rig should cater to everyone and not just be specialised to you.

shut up sarah

"the job of the rigger is to make the animators life more easy" or in my case more DIFFICULT!

RIG ISSUES (cant remember if i've listed these already but here we go...this is notes for me for the future etc)

• foot attributes disappeared and unrecoverable
• blend shapes disappeared and unrecoverable (at this stage in the project)
• joint orientation on the right shoulder of the rig isn't correct...making the movement rotations more difficult
• hip bone isn't high enough..reducing the height of the upper leg, making the walk less believable
• the feet...those bloody feet

apart from that the model is painted to the best it can be.

im animating with the skeleton...not with the geometry on display...least this way maya can cope going through the different frames without crashing or me having to see what my animation looks like through the means of a playblast...

so im attempting a SIMPLE walk cycle so i can get in there and tweak away....following more legendary reference material from mr r. williams

heres a playblast...

god she looks thin...haha...oooooo merrrcy

its like 1:15am and im getting the JOY of animating y'all :)

its brilliant...and i made this darn tootin thing...me...I MADE IT....so nerr

shame about the feet

but neeeer

im very fortunate to have continual feedback from fellow animator matt...its always good to get someone elses opinion on things (especially the snipers) as they often spot things you dont always see (especially even more so the sniper) This combined with working in the ultimate now dubbed skele mode is working a treat!!

once more...

mmm think the neck movement is a bit too much on this...seems very obvious..making her look like a head banger haha! best change that. its a shame about the legs too...would have liked to get some nice arcs and follow throughs like the arms but i think this is the best the rig will do at the current time.

added: body lean/side to side movement

comments: that left arm seems a little too floopy...it could be becuase your seeing it with the primitive leg movement that makes it more obvious....needs tweaking back a little. Much better neck movement now....seems to flow nicely. Amazing what a bit of side to side movement can add and break up the static quality of the body more. She seems less robotic and more fluid :) that last key to return pose seems to stand out a bit too...

just noticed some dragging on that left hand there (screen right) after tweaking the right side (screen left) funny how you dont notice these things before until you've sorted out another area. 

aaaannd another..(its all in the documenting of progress i tell thee)

not sure what i make of this...i've added the counter shoulders to the hip movement...except im using the top of the spline handle to create this...i see why you would want a clavicle handle now as i dont think this is as strong a movement. That ending position needs to be put back to the middle. Hands still seem a bit floppy. Need to watch the rotations on the arms to....in terms of distance from the body. Perhaps break up the fingers...add a little bend so it doesn't look so rigid...no movement though otherwise it'll look strange....too much.

its looking good, theres just some weird snapping now happening on the right hand (screen left) to sort out, but i think its almost there :) huzzar!

ok so ive matched up the start and beginning for the looping. I could have made 5 seconds worth of animation, but it wouldnt allow me to go into the breakdowns where as this way i get to complete a bit more detailed animation. Looking much better...need a little more drag back from the right hand (screen left) the arms just hanging a bit too much. Not bad for an evenings/early mornings work :)

better...that end frame sees the knee bend a bit inward though so need to adjust that....nice follow through of the hands though the pass position is a little too even...needs to favour one side. Think its almost there though. Head key jumps a bit from end of 34 to 1 so need to go back and look at that.