IntroductionWelcome| 00:04 | Hi! I am George Maestri, and welcome to the
Character Animation: Fundamentals in the 3ds Max.
| | 00:09 | Character animation is a very deep topic.
| | 00:13 | You can spend a lifetime animating characters,
| | 00:16 | but we're just going to get you started
animating your the first characters in this course.
| | 00:20 | We're going to start off by
understanding the value of strong poses, and then we
| | 00:26 | are going to animate some characters in motion.
| | 00:28 | We're going to understand
how forces affect characters.
| | 00:32 | After that, we're going to do
some pose to pose animation.
| | 00:35 | We're going to animate
characters between some strong poses.
| | 00:39 | After that, we'll understand how to walk
characters, and make exaggerated walk cycles.
| | 00:45 | Then we'll go ahead and concentrate on
runs, and get your character running in place.
| | 00:52 | Finally, we'll work on
facial animation, and dialogue.
| | 00:55 | We're going to animate a simple line of
dialogue, and then were going to animate
| | 01:00 | the entire character
speaking a line of dialogue.
| | 01:04 | So with that, let's go ahead and
get started with Character Animation:
| | 01:09 | Fundamentals in 3ds Max.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you are a Lynda.com premium
subscriber, then you'll have the exercise
| | 00:06 | files available to you,
| | 00:08 | so you can follow along with the
files that I'm using in the exercises.
| | 00:12 | Now, if you do download the exercise
files, just go ahead and place them on your
| | 00:16 | Desktop, because that's where I'm
placing mine, and that way you'll have them in
| | 00:20 | the exact same position that I have
them. And in these exercise files, we have
| | 00:25 | one folder for each chapter.
| | 00:28 | So if I look into each folder,
you'll see that we have individual 3ds Max
| | 00:33 | files for those chapters.
| | 00:35 | So go ahead and get the exercise
files on your Desktop, and let's move on.
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| Character rig overview: a simple character| 00:00 | Now, if you do decide to use the exercise
files that come along with this course,
| | 00:05 | then you'll have two rigs that
you will be using in the course.
| | 00:09 | One is the simple rig, which we have here;
| | 00:12 | the other is a little more complex.
| | 00:14 | Now, the simple rig is used mostly for
basic body animation, and also walks and runs.
| | 00:20 | And this rig is really fairly simple;
each of the controls here are basically
| | 00:26 | just around the
individual parts of the character.
| | 00:30 | So for example, I have controls here to
move the feet, to list the feet. So if I
| | 00:35 | select this one here, I can move the feet.
| | 00:39 | Now, each of these are labeled, so for
example, this is the left foot, this is
| | 00:44 | right foot, this is toe.
| | 00:46 | We also have a hip control, which we
can use to move the hips, and the legs are
| | 00:51 | controlled via inverse kinematics.
| | 00:54 | We also have two spine controls that
allow us to move the character's spine, and
| | 01:00 | then we also have this chest/shoulder
control, which allows the character to
| | 01:04 | move left and right.
| | 01:06 | We have individual controls for
the hands, and the fingers as well.
| | 01:10 | So this is a very straightforward rig,
and you basically manipulate it by
| | 01:15 | selecting any one of these controls.
| | 01:18 | Now, the geometry of the character
himself is frozen, so that we don't
| | 01:22 | accidentally select him.
| | 01:23 | Now if we want to, we can go into
Layers, and you can see that the geometry of
| | 01:28 | the character is in two layers, and
each one of those is frozen. We can
| | 01:32 | certainly unfreeze or freeze them.
| | 01:34 | And then we have the Rig Upper and
Lower, which are really what we're
| | 01:39 | working with as well.
| | 01:41 | And then, these rigs do not render.
| | 01:44 | The character does have a basic
lighting rig on it, and if you want, you can
| | 01:48 | render that character, and
this rig will not show up.
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| Character rig overview: a full character| 00:00 | We also have a second rig that we're
supplying for this course, and if you are a
| | 00:05 | premium subscriber, you will get
this as part of the exercise files.
| | 00:08 | Now, this is a more complex character.
We're using this mostly for the lip sync,
| | 00:13 | and facial animation.
| | 00:15 | Now, the rig itself of the body is
pretty much the same as the simple character;
| | 00:20 | everything is named the same.
| | 00:22 | The only difference is that this
character has actual hands with fingers, rather
| | 00:26 | than just the mitten hands that
we had in the other character.
| | 00:30 | This is also a character that deforms
the body, rather than being a segmented
| | 00:35 | character, like the other one is.
| | 00:36 | Now, we also have a very full facial
rig for this character, and let me go
| | 00:42 | through this a little bit.
| | 00:44 | Each one of these controls controls a
different part of the face, so we have
| | 00:47 | blinks for the eyes, we also have
eye directions, and all of these are
| | 00:52 | manipulated via translation.
| | 00:55 | We have controls for the character's brow;
| | 00:58 | we have controls to dilate the
pupils, which is kind of nice.
| | 01:03 | And then, along the lower half of
this interface, we have all of the mouth
| | 01:06 | control. So we have a jaw control;
| | 01:09 | we have this dial control, which
controls all of the shapes needed for dialogue.
| | 01:16 | We have a smile control; move it
straight up the character's smile, you can
| | 01:19 | bias that left or right; if you
move it down, the character frowns.
| | 01:24 | A sneer, which basically
just sneers the character.
| | 01:29 | This one here basically does the
opposite on the lower lip. And then we have
| | 01:33 | some special purpose lip/mouth shapes
here. This one tucks the lower lip under
| | 01:38 | the teeth, for like an F or a V shape,
and this one here kind of purses the lips
| | 01:43 | for like a shhh type of sound.
| | 01:46 | So those are some of the controls for
the complex rig, and we'll get to this rig
| | 01:52 | in the later chapters.
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| Using screen drawing tools | 00:00 | Now, I have to admit that I've been
around for while in animation, and way back
| | 00:05 | in the old days, we used to have things
other than flat screens. We'd have large
| | 00:10 | Trinitron tubes made of glass, and I got in
the habit of actually drawing on the screen.
| | 00:18 | I started, actually, as a cell animator,
and when I transitioned to CG, one of the
| | 00:24 | things I liked to do was to take a dry
erase marker, and actually draw on the
| | 00:29 | screen to get poses, or lines of
action, and that sort of stuff.
| | 00:34 | Now, as screens have gotten more modern,
we now have screens made of plastic, and
| | 00:38 | it's not a good idea to actually use
markers on an LCD screen, so I have kind of
| | 00:44 | adapted this technique, and I use
what's called the Screen Drawing tool.
| | 00:48 | Now, typically what I do is I use a
program called Linktivity Presenter.
| | 00:53 | Now, this is a free program, and
you can actually get it here at
| | 00:57 | linktivity.com/presenter.
| | 01:00 | Now, as of the recording of this
course, this is freely available.
| | 01:04 | I can't guarantee that this will always
be available, but there are a number of
| | 01:09 | programs that allow you to do
this, and this is just one of those.
| | 01:13 | And what it does is it allows you
to actually draw over the screen.
| | 01:16 | So if I wanted to sketch out a pose, I
can take this Pen tool, and I can draw
| | 01:22 | over the screen of my character, and I
can get whatever sort of pose I want, and
| | 01:29 | I'm going to be using this in the course.
| | 01:32 | And then once I've drawn that pose, I
can go back to the Select mode, and I can
| | 01:38 | move the character, or do whatever, and
that screen drawing will stay in place.
| | 01:44 | Now, I can certainly erase that here by
just hitting Erase All. So typically what
| | 01:49 | I do with this tool is I use this to
sketch out poses, or to remember where parts
| | 01:56 | of the character are at.
| | 01:58 | And it's actually a little bit more
useful than using a ghosting tool, because
| | 02:03 | a lot of times, when we ghost, we're
actually only ghosting the rig of the
| | 02:07 | character, because we're not animating the
entire character; we're actually animating the rig.
| | 02:11 | So this can be a good supplement to
ghosting, and really help you to sketch out
| | 02:16 | poses, line of action, or whatever.
| | 02:19 | So if you want to, you can download
Linktivity, or there are a number of other
| | 02:24 | tools that I'm sure you can
find that do very similar things.
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|
1. Posing Digital Characters Creating strong poses| 00:00 | When you first start animating characters,
one of the first things you'll need
| | 00:03 | to learn is how to pose characters
| | 00:06 | So let's go over a few of the finer points
of what makes up a good pose for a character.
| | 00:13 | Now, the first thing that you need to be
aware of is what's called the line of action.
| | 00:18 | Now, what that is, is if you take a
pose, you'll see that each pose, if it's a
| | 00:24 | good pose, it'll have a line. The character
will follow a line of action, and this
| | 00:31 | will lead the audience's eye to the
character; it'll be pleasing to the eye, it may
| | 00:36 | draw attention to something,
| | 00:38 | but a good line of action is
really important for a good pose.
| | 00:42 | Here's another character. You can see
the line of action is downward; you can
| | 00:47 | see that the character is a little bit sad.
| | 00:49 | And then we can also have line of
actions that help with describing actions.
| | 00:54 | So for example, if this
character is going to toss a ball,
| | 00:57 | this isn't a really a
very good line of action;
| | 01:00 | it's really just straight up and down.
| | 01:02 | If we extend that line, give him a
really backwards reach, you will have a
| | 01:06 | much stronger animation,
| | 01:08 | so when he throws the ball, that line of
action actually will follow his body through.
| | 01:15 | Another important thing is called Silhouetting.
| | 01:18 | Again, if you have a character in a pose,
typically the pose will read well if you
| | 01:23 | can see it in silhouette.
| | 01:25 | This is because the audience's eyes
tend to draw out the outline of the
| | 01:31 | character first, and then look at what's inside.
| | 01:35 | Here is that exact same
pose at a different angle.
| | 01:39 | So all I did was I moved that camera
a bit, and if you look at this, it looks
| | 01:43 | confusing, even compared to the silhouette.
| | 01:46 | And if you look at this in silhouette,
you don't even really know what's going
| | 01:50 | on with this character, because
you don't have a strong silhouette.
| | 01:55 | Here are some other poses.
| | 01:57 | Now, again, this pose will
have a strong silhouette.
| | 02:00 | You can see that things are out from
the body, and that the outline of the
| | 02:04 | character reads really well, as compared
to something like this, which is just,
| | 02:09 | again, the camera returned a little bit.
| | 02:11 | This doesn't read; you don't really know
what the character is doing here. Here, you do.
| | 02:16 | The last thing I want to talk
about is weight and balance.
| | 02:19 | Any pose you create for your character
needs to have balance and weight.
| | 02:25 | Now, typically when you pose a character, the
character will come kind of rigid, like this,
| | 02:30 | and this isn't really what
I would call a balanced pose.
| | 02:33 | It's very symmetrical; there's really
no sense of weight to the character.
| | 02:37 | He almost looks like a
mannequin or something.
| | 02:40 | And you can create Weight by distributing
the weight through the character.
| | 02:44 | So, you can see that now the weight is on one
foot, the character has a bit of an arc;
| | 02:50 | this is much more pleasing
than something like this.
| | 02:52 | When you do something like this, you
want to make sure the character's weight is
| | 02:56 | balanced; that he's not going
to tip over. Something like this.
| | 03:00 | So if you push him too far in one
direction, again, he is going to appear
| | 03:05 | unbalanced. The pose is not going to be
stable; it's not going to be pleasing to the eye.
| | 03:09 | The audience is going to say,
wait; something is wrong here.
| | 03:12 | So when you create poses, you want make
sure that the poses have good line of
| | 03:15 | action, they silhouette well, and
that they also have weight and balance.
| | 03:21 | So with that in mind, let's go ahead
and start actually posing characters
| | 03:25 | for animation.
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| Using Selection Sets to help pose characters| 00:00 | Now, before we start posing our
characters, a lot of times it makes sense
| | 00:04 | to set up some selection sets, so that it
makes it easy to select parts of your character.
| | 00:11 | This will make posing go a lot easier.
| | 00:14 | Now, in 3ds Max, we have a feature called
Selection Sets, and that's right here;
| | 00:19 | we have none defined at that
moment. And we can edit them here;
| | 00:23 | we'll get to that in a little bit.
| | 00:25 | So let's say we wanted to have something
where we could select all the parts, or
| | 00:29 | all the rig of the character.
| | 00:32 | We can do that, first off,
by selecting everything.
| | 00:35 | So if I were to do this manually,
I'd have to go through, and select all of
| | 00:39 | these different parts here, and
sometimes that can be very tedious.
| | 00:44 | But now that I have these all selected, I
can create what's called a selection set.
| | 00:49 | So I can just type in the word All, and
hit Return, and now, when I deselect it
| | 00:55 | by left clicking, I can reselect it
here, just by selecting it in that menu.
| | 01:01 | So let's say I wanted
something for, say, the left arm.
| | 01:05 | So all I have to do is just select all
of the parts in the left arm -- and I
| | 01:10 | accidentally selected that chest
there. So, this is all the left arm here,
| | 01:14 | so all I have to do is do Left Arm, and
just type that into the Selection Sets.
| | 01:21 | And now I have two: I have one for
the entire character, and one just for the
| | 01:26 | left arm, and I could do the
same for the right arm as well.
| | 01:30 | And sometimes it may be easy to select
that arm, but if the arm was all folded
| | 01:35 | up in a pose, it might not be so
easy to select everything in that arm.
| | 01:39 | So once we have that Selection Set,
though, it makes it very, very easy.
| | 01:45 | And we can go through this, and do selection
sets for all the major parts of a character.
| | 01:49 | And if your character is a little bit
more complex, you can, again, make it much
| | 01:54 | easier to select
multiple parts of the character.
| | 01:57 | Now if you make a mistake, or want to
change something, or want to delete a
| | 02:01 | Selection Set, you can certainly go
here to edit Named Selection Sets, and this
| | 02:06 | brings up a list of everything
that is selected in each set.
| | 02:12 | So if I wanted to, I could go in, and
just independently remove, add, or subtract
| | 02:19 | Objects from these selection sets,
| | 02:21 | so I can go through, and really
just edit these however I want.
| | 02:26 | So, before we get started, go ahead and
set up some selection sets of things that
| | 02:30 | you think you might want to
select on your characters.
| | 02:32 | And these are interactive, so if you
find later on, as you're working with
| | 02:38 | a character, you need a selection set,
you can always just add that in very,
| | 02:41 | very quickly.
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| Using layers to select characters| 00:00 | Another way to select and manage
your character is to use layers.
| | 00:05 | Now, this depends on how you
rig the character, and set him up,
| | 00:09 | but layers can be useful in
selecting parts of a character.
| | 00:13 | Now, in 3ds Max, we have a Layers
palette here, and I can just open up that
| | 00:19 | window, and you can see that we
have a number of different layers.
| | 00:23 | We have Layers for the geometry of the
character, which we have frozen, so that
| | 00:27 | we don't accidentally select them.
| | 00:29 | And then we also have rigs for the
upper and lower part of the body.
| | 00:34 | So, if I wanted to, I could Select the
upper part of the rig just by right-clicking
| | 00:39 | over this, and hitting Select,
| | 00:42 | and that would select that part of the rig.
| | 00:45 | Now, if I went here, and did the Lower part, I
could select the lower part of the rig as well.
| | 00:51 | Now, another thing you can do is you can
actually turn these off by Hiding, or Freezing.
| | 00:56 | So, if wanted to, I could Hide the Upper
or Lower part of the character. So if I
| | 01:02 | hid the Upper Geometry, and the Upper Rig,
then all I'd have would be the Lower
| | 01:09 | part of the character.
| | 01:10 | So that's another way to isolate your
character, so you can see it a little
| | 01:14 | bit more clearly.
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| Learning the basics of posing characters| 00:00 | Now let's go ahead and
start posing our character.
| | 00:04 | Now, when you pose a character, you want
to understand the weight distribution of
| | 00:08 | the character, and also the mood of the
character; what story are we trying to
| | 00:13 | tell with this character?
| | 00:15 | Remember, animation really is about
storytelling, so we want to make sure that
| | 00:19 | we have a pose that supports the story.
| | 00:23 | But let's just go ahead and do some
simple poses, just so you get an idea as to
| | 00:27 | the workflow of how to pose a character.
| | 00:30 | Now, typically when you get a character
from a rigger, it's going to be in this
| | 00:34 | very, very neutral pose, with the arms
straight out, and the legs very stiff.
| | 00:39 | And while that might not be a pose that
you want to use in your animation, it is
| | 00:44 | a very useful pose, because this is
the neutral position of the character.
| | 00:50 | Now, sometimes when you pose characters,
you may do things like over-rotate an
| | 00:54 | arm or wrist, and you may kind of get
yourself into a position where you don't
| | 00:59 | really know where the character is,
| | 01:01 | so if you have this neutral position,
you'll always have that to come back to.
| | 01:06 | So one of the things I like to do when
I first start posing characters is to
| | 01:09 | just select everything while the
character is in this neutral pose, and just hit
| | 01:14 | a keyframe for that.
| | 01:16 | So once I do that, I know I have that
neutral pose that I can always come back to.
| | 01:22 | Now, I don't need to have
this pose on the timeline.
| | 01:25 | I can move it back into the negative frame.
| | 01:29 | So if I wanted to, I could say, move
this pose to, say, -1 or -2, and that way
| | 01:35 | it's there if I want it, but I
don't have to show it on the screen.
| | 01:39 | But I'm going to keep this at Frame
0 here, and let's go ahead and start
| | 01:43 | posing this character.
| | 01:44 | Now, the first thing I want to do is I
want to start working with these arms, so
| | 01:48 | I'm going to make sure I
have Auto Key turned on.
| | 01:51 | Then I'm going to select each arm, and
just rotate it down to the character's side.
| | 01:57 | And this is just very slightly more relaxed
pose, but it also could be something that I can use.
| | 02:03 | But again, you don't have a lot of action;
| | 02:06 | you don't have a really strong line of action.
| | 02:07 | It's very straight, very stiff;
almost like the character is at attention,
| | 02:11 | but we can still use this, as you'll
see later, so I'm going to go ahead and
| | 02:15 | keyframe that as well.
| | 02:17 | Now let's go ahead and actually pose him
into something that's a little bit more
| | 02:20 | of a story type of pose.
| | 02:22 | We want to kind of get a little
bit more of a mood to this character.
| | 02:26 | So let's kind of just slouch him over.
So, probably the first thing we want to do
| | 02:31 | is just start working with the hips.
| | 02:34 | Now remember, a lot of the tension in a
character comes from the weight of the
| | 02:39 | character moving down, and
the legs supporting him.
| | 02:44 | So we've got a lot of tension here.
| | 02:47 | We've got the weight of the character
coming down, and the legs supporting it.
| | 02:51 | So this whole area right here
is very critical to any pose.
| | 02:58 | So let's go ahead and start with the hips.
| | 03:00 | First thing I want to do is just
get a bit of a bend in that knee.
| | 03:04 | So again, remember, we've got this
weight pushing down from gravity, and then the
| | 03:09 | legs are pushing back,
| | 03:11 | so we want to get at least a little bit
of a bend in the legs to kind of get a
| | 03:16 | sense of that tension.
| | 03:18 | When the character's legs are perfectly
straight, it doesn't feel natural to the audience.
| | 03:24 | So I'm going to go ahead and rotate
this character back a little bit, and then
| | 03:28 | let's just go ahead and kind of
slump him over; rotate him forward.
| | 03:32 | So I'm going to go ahead and work with
both of these spine joints here, and even
| | 03:37 | maybe rotate his head forward just
a little bit; kind of dip his head.
| | 03:42 | And as you can see, even with that, we've
got kind of a nice S-shaped line of action.
| | 03:49 | So we're starting to get a bit of
a line of action to this character.
| | 03:52 | Now, we don't have to have
his legs straight on like this.
| | 03:57 | I can certainly rotate his toes in, for
example. Again, he is kind of a shy guy,
| | 04:02 | so maybe kind of rotate one foot in.
| | 04:05 | Now, if I push this leg out, it's going to
affect the balance of the character as well.
| | 04:12 | So, if I do that, I need to kind of re-center
him, or maybe give a little bit of a rotation.
| | 04:20 | Again, one of the things you want to
check with poses is that you don't want
| | 04:24 | your poses to be totally symmetrical.
| | 04:26 | It's okay to have the character
slightly on one side or the other.
| | 04:33 | So even something like this, with one
toe a little pointed in, will give it
| | 04:37 | visual interest,
and make it look more natural.
| | 04:40 | Now, if we look at him from the side,
you'll see that by pushing those legs out,
| | 04:44 | we've kind of changed the
balance of this character.
| | 04:48 | He is very front-heavy; he
is almost about to tip over.
| | 04:52 | So we need to kind of grab those hips,
and adjust them back just a bit, and get
| | 04:59 | him over his feet, so that
way, he is not falling over.
| | 05:03 | And then also, these arms will
hang at the character's side.
| | 05:07 | So I can either put them down vertically
like this, but that's not as natural as
| | 05:13 | maybe giving just, again, a
nice little bend to those arms.
| | 05:18 | So let's go ahead and grab that elbow,
and rotate that, and then maybe even grab
| | 05:23 | the wrist a little bit, and rotate
that; maybe even curl it in a bit.
| | 05:27 | And just that even supports that line of
action. When you have the arms like that,
| | 05:32 | again, it just follows that line. And we
can do the same on the other side, and
| | 05:39 | we may do it a little bit
more, or a little bit less.
| | 05:43 | We don't want too much
symmetry in our character.
| | 05:46 | I may rotate this hand in a little
bit, and maybe what I can do is curl the
| | 05:51 | fingers on the other side a little bit,
so maybe he has got just a little bit
| | 05:55 | more relaxed hand on both sides here.
| | 05:59 | And as I do that, you can see I'm
interpenetrating the legs, I'm just going to
| | 06:03 | pull that out just a bit. Here we go!
| | 06:04 | Okay.
| | 06:05 | So that's a much more natural pose.
| | 06:08 | Now, I think I've touched almost every
part of the rig in this pose, but just to
| | 06:13 | make sure, I want to go ahead and select all,
and just do a keyframe, just to lock that in.
| | 06:19 | So now we've gone from straight out and
arms down, to a pose that actually has a
| | 06:26 | bit of a story behind it, and we
actually have a much stronger pose here.
| | 06:31 | Now, let's go ahead and do one more pose,
and let's kind of do the opposite: let's
| | 06:35 | make him a little more boastful;
a little bit more assertive.
| | 06:38 | Now, if I want, I can actually start to
unrotate all of these parts, but that
| | 06:46 | can be actually very time-consuming,
and that's one reason why I created this
| | 06:51 | pose here, is because that's actually a
really good starting place for additional poses.
| | 06:57 | So I'm going to again go to
my Selection Set; select ALL.
| | 07:01 | That selects everything. You can see
I have a keyframe, and all I have to do
| | 07:06 | is just hold down the Shift Key, left-click
on this, and drag it, and I can move
| | 07:11 | all of those keyframes, and copy
them further down the timeline.
| | 07:15 | So now I've gone from this, to this, to
this, and then I copied the keyframes at
| | 07:21 | Frame 2, and so I'm back to this,
| | 07:23 | so I don't have to worry about undoing this.
| | 07:27 | This kind of puts me back to a neutral
position, which is one reason why we like
| | 07:31 | to hang on to these sorts of poses.
| | 07:34 | So let's go ahead and do the opposite
with this character. So in this case, I'm
| | 07:38 | going to go ahead and
rotate his spine forward.
| | 07:41 | Again, I want him to be more assertive;
I want him to be leaning into the scene.
| | 07:46 | So I'm going to move the body forward as well,
but I don't want these knees to be stiff.
| | 07:51 | I want to have at least some bend to
those knees to give him a sense of tension.
| | 07:57 | And then let's go ahead and
stick his chest out.
| | 08:00 | Let's go ahead and rotate his spine
back a bit, and with the second one, back a
| | 08:05 | bit more, and go ahead and
work with the head a little bit.
| | 08:09 | And now we've got kind of a pose here,
and let's go ahead and move the feet out.
| | 08:14 | Again, we're trying to get
him a little more assertive.
| | 08:17 | A lot of times, when characters are
assertive, that means that they're taking
| | 08:21 | up more space, almost like how an
animal will kind of stretch out its arms, just
| | 08:26 | to make itself look bigger when it attacks.
| | 08:30 | So let's go ahead and rotate those arms
out, and I want to be in Local mode for
| | 08:36 | some of these rotations here,
to make it a little bit easier.
| | 08:40 | And let's go ahead and just kind of get
his arms out, so that way it looks like
| | 08:45 | he is kind of taking up more space.
| | 08:47 | And if he is assertive, he
may have his hands into fists.
| | 08:50 | I'm going to do the same for the opposite arm.
| | 08:54 | So again, I'm going to go ahead and
rotate this, and let's do that elbow,
| | 09:05 | maybe rotate this hand down a bit, and
again, let's go ahead and curl up that
| | 09:09 | hand into bit of a fist.
| | 09:12 | And maybe let's go ahead and give him a
little bit more asymmetry here, so I'm
| | 09:16 | just going to go ahead and play with
the spine, and the hips, and kind of get him
| | 09:21 | a little less symmetrical, let's just say.
| | 09:24 | Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and
grab that foot, move it out a little bit,
| | 09:28 | and if we want, we can also use these knee
controls to kind of get his knees out just a bit.
| | 09:33 | Okay, so that looks pretty good. So
that's just another example of a pose.
| | 09:38 | So I'm going to go ahead and use my
Selection Set, select ALL, and again, just
| | 09:43 | keyframe everything, so I can lock in that pose.
| | 09:46 | So now I have a couple of different poses.
| | 09:48 | I have my completely neutral pose, I
have a pose that's neutral with the arms by
| | 09:54 | the side, I have a pose that indicates
a depressed or a sad mood, and then I
| | 10:00 | have something that's a
little bit more assertive.
| | 10:03 | And as you can see, posing a character
really just means getting that character
| | 10:08 | into a pose that tells that story.
| | 10:11 | Now remember, we usually start with the
hips of the character, try and get that
| | 10:15 | weight balance set up properly, and
then we move up to the spine, and complete
| | 10:21 | the pose.
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| Creating stock poses| 00:00 | Now, when you create a character, and
start posing it, you'll probably be
| | 00:04 | using him in some sort of film or
piece where you will use that same
| | 00:08 | character over multiple shots,
| | 00:11 | so a lot of times it makes sense to
create a library of poses for your
| | 00:15 | characters ahead of time, so that way
it makes it easier to pose them when it
| | 00:21 | comes time to animate.
| | 00:23 | Now, I have taken this basic character,
and I have just placed him into just
| | 00:27 | a handful of poses.
| | 00:29 | If I do a Select All here, you can
see I have about seven poses here.
| | 00:35 | I have this neutral pose here at Frame 0,
| | 00:39 | and then every two frames, I have another pose.
| | 00:42 | So I have arms at the side; arms at the hips.
| | 00:46 | Now, some of these are just very simple
pose; showing his palms, you can see
| | 00:52 | he's got that kind of sad pose we did,
the proud pose, here's another pose, and
| | 00:58 | then here he is folding
his arms in another pose.
| | 01:01 | So, what you can do is you can start
creating libraries of poses that you
| | 01:05 | want for your character.
| | 01:06 | Now, typically what I like to do is
have specific things for the arms, like
| | 01:11 | when you cross the arms like this, a lot of
times it's very difficult to get it right,
| | 01:16 | so once I have it right, I like to save
that pose, so I don't have to go through
| | 01:19 | all that work again.
| | 01:21 | So what we can do is we can take these
poses, and save them with the character, and
| | 01:25 | that way, when we load the character for
a scene, we have all these stock poses
| | 01:30 | just kind of hanging out with the
character, that we can use later.
| | 01:33 | So what I usually do is I take these,
and put them into the negative frame
| | 01:38 | numbers of the timeline.
| | 01:40 | So if I do a Select All, you'll see that, well,
all of this starts from Frame 1, to Frame 14.
| | 01:45 | But, if I go into my Time Configuration, I
can change my start time to any value I want.
| | 01:53 | So let's go ahead and change it to -20.
| | 01:56 | And if you see what I have here, now, is
I've got a whole area here that I'm not using.
| | 02:01 | And that won't be used in the animation,
because typically we start animating at
| | 02:06 | Frame 1; we animate in the positive frames.
| | 02:09 | So what I can do is make sure all of
these are selected, and then just go on the
| | 02:13 | timeline, and left-click and drag,
rubberband select all of these keyframes,
| | 02:18 | and then just drag them down, back
past the 0 point, and then I have all
| | 02:25 | these poses stored.
| | 02:26 | Now, of course I want to get this
character into that basic neutral pose at Frame
| | 02:32 | 0, so I have that to start with.
| | 02:34 | So, again, I can just do Select All,
find that pose that I want to start the
| | 02:39 | character with, select it, and then I can hold
down the Shift key, and drag it over Frame 0,
| | 02:45 | so now the character at
Frame 0 is in a neutral place.
| | 02:51 | Now, if we want to start animating with
these poses, it's very simple; we can do
| | 02:55 | exactly the same thing. Make sure we
have everything selected, and then I can
| | 03:00 | just select the pose that I want, let's
go ahead and maybe do this one here, and
| | 03:05 | just Shift+Select, and Shift+
Drag to get that into the timeline.
| | 03:11 | So now let's go ahead and let's say we
are going to start at Frame 1 with our
| | 03:14 | animation; we will start him very sad, and
then maybe we want him to cross his arms.
| | 03:19 | So I remember I have an
arm crossed pose here at -2.
| | 03:24 | So again, I can just left-click, select
these keys, hold down the Shift key, and
| | 03:29 | drag it wherever I want.
| | 03:30 | So now he is going from this, to that.
| | 03:36 | And you can see that, well, yeah; of
course we will need to in-between this, but
| | 03:40 | we have options here with this pose.
We actually can create different poses
| | 03:46 | very, very quickly.
| | 03:47 | Now, let's say I didn't want his arms to be
folded. Let's say I wanted his arms on his hips.
| | 03:52 | Well what I can do is I can just take
this pose here, where his arms are on his
| | 03:58 | hips, and just copy those arms.
| | 04:00 | So again, I have a selection for the
left arm, so I can just, again, click,
| | 04:05 | select that, and just drag that over
to Frame 8, where I have the animation.
| | 04:10 | And then, select the right arm, and
again, and select, click+drag that over to
| | 04:15 | Frame 8, where I have that pose. And now,
instead of crossing his arms, he has got
| | 04:21 | his hands on his hips.
| | 04:23 | So not only can I copy entire
poses, but I can copy parts of poses,
| | 04:29 | and this opens up a lot
of different possibilities.
| | 04:32 | So if you have certain hand gestures,
or if you want things like crossing
| | 04:37 | arms, hands on hips, things that may
be difficult to pose, go ahead and pose
| | 04:41 | them ahead of time.
| | 04:43 | And that way, you can actually start
posing your characters a lot more quickly;
| | 04:47 | it will be more interactive,
and more spur of the moment.
| | 04:52 | So these are some of the values of
storing poses, and creating a library
| | 04:57 | of poses.
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|
|
2. Animating Characters in Motion Understanding forces and character motion| 00:00 | When you start animating characters,
the most important thing you need to
| | 00:03 | understand is the concept of force.
| | 00:06 | Characters move because of force, and
there are two basic types of forces acting
| | 00:12 | upon your character.
| | 00:14 | One is external forces: those
things outside the character.
| | 00:19 | The force of gravity bringing your
character down, wind pushing your character
| | 00:23 | back, the force of an object striking
your character; really anything outside of
| | 00:29 | the character would be
classified as an external force.
| | 00:33 | Internal forces would be those created
by the character themselves. In other
| | 00:37 | words, forces created by the
character's muscles, and these would be the leg
| | 00:42 | muscles, standing up against the force of
gravity, the character lifting his hand,
| | 00:47 | or lifting an object.
| | 00:49 | So anything that the character creates
is an internal force, and any animation
| | 00:54 | that you do is going to have a balance
between internal and external forces.
| | 01:02 | So in order to illustrate this, we're
going to do a simple animation here of a
| | 01:06 | moving platform, or a
character on a moving platform.
| | 01:10 | So I have this box here, and it's
basically just animating back and forth,
| | 01:14 | so let's attach our character to
that box, and then we'll have some forces
| | 01:19 | with which to work with.
| | 01:22 | So what I need to do is attach this
character to that box, So the first thing
| | 01:27 | I need to do is just do a select a link,
so I'm going to go ahead and move my
| | 01:32 | timeline back to zero, select that ring around
the character; it'll be called Character Root.
| | 01:38 | It may be hard to get that but let's go
ahead and select that, and then just click
| | 01:43 | and drag that to the box.
| | 01:46 | And once we do that, the character is
now linked to that box, and he should
| | 01:50 | move along with it.
| | 01:51 | So now that we have this set up, let's go
ahead and start animating the character
| | 01:56 | responding to force.
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| Understanding drag| 00:00 | The first force we want to take a look
at is called drag, and that's the tendency
| | 00:05 | of an object to remain at rest.
| | 00:09 | Now, when we have this moving platform here, we
have a couple of forces acting on the character.
| | 00:15 | If I go to Frame 0 here, you can see
we have gravity is pulling the character
| | 00:21 | down, but we also have
the motion of that platform.
| | 00:26 | So as that platform moves forward, we
have a giant mass, which is called the
| | 00:33 | character's torso, and
that wants to stay in place.
| | 00:38 | Now remember, a body at rest wants to
remain at rest, so Newton's laws of motion.
| | 00:43 | So that torso kind of just wants to stay
where it is, but the platform is moving
| | 00:49 | out from under the character's feet.
| | 00:52 | So we have this motion here, and we
contrast it with this motion here.
| | 00:58 | And so what it's going to look like
to the eye is that there is a big force
| | 01:03 | pushing against the chest, when in fact
it's actually pulling against the feet,
| | 01:08 | and the chest just wants to stay in place.
| | 01:10 | But regardless, this tendency is called drag;
| | 01:14 | objects want to stay where they are.
| | 01:16 | So if you move part of an object, the
other part will want to stay where it is.
| | 01:22 | So let's illustrate this through animation.
| | 01:24 | So I'm going to go ahead and just
select the hips of the character, and let's go
| | 01:29 | ahead and turn on Auto Key, and set a
keyframe for that neutral position.
| | 01:35 | But let's also go ahead
and just relax those arms.
| | 01:38 | I'm going to go ahead and just take
each one of these arms, and drop it at the
| | 01:42 | side. Let's go ahead and set keyframes
for all of those as well, and make sure
| | 01:48 | that we have this nice relaxed position.
| | 01:51 | So now we have this platform moving forward
over the course of, say, about 24 frames here.
| | 01:59 | So let's go ahead and just play this, and
then it moves back over another 24 frames.
| | 02:05 | So let's go about 6 frames in, and
let's go ahead and illustrate that
| | 02:10 | body dragging behind.
| | 02:12 | So I'm going to go ahead and go into Move
mode, and then just pull those hips back.
| | 02:18 | Remember, that torso wants
to stay where it is,
| | 02:22 | but it's not just going to
move back, like this.
| | 02:25 | If we did that, it would
not really look correct.
| | 02:28 | You can see how that doesn't really
look right, because what we're also going
| | 02:33 | to get is a rotation.
| | 02:35 | So let's go ahead and also
rotate that body back as well.
| | 02:39 | Now remember, the force is here, so the
drag kind of transmits itself through the body.
| | 02:47 | So now you can see how, when it comes forward,
it feels like, yeah, he wants to stay in place,
| | 02:54 | and then after a while, he will
eventually stand up, because this platform is
| | 03:00 | moving at a fairly constant rate.
| | 03:02 | So once it's moving at a
constant rate, there is really no force.
| | 03:06 | Force is determined mostly by acceleration.
| | 03:10 | So I'm going to go ahead and just
highlight the hips, and then left-click, and
| | 03:14 | highlight the keyframe at 0, which is
that neutral position, hold down my Shift
| | 03:20 | key, and drag that key into position here.
| | 03:24 | So now it feels like, yeah, he kind of is
getting hit by a force as that moves forward.
| | 03:32 | Now we need to do the same in the
opposite direction, so again, I'm going to grab
| | 03:36 | my hips, start with a keyframe -- so
I'm just going to go ahead and hit my
| | 03:40 | keyframe button here -- and then let's go
another 6 frames in. And let's go ahead
| | 03:46 | and push him forward a bit, and then down.
| | 03:50 | I want to make sure those knees are bent;
| | 03:52 | I don't want those heels lifting
at all. And then rotate him forward.
| | 04:00 | So now, you can see how
it's starting to take effect.
| | 04:06 | So now go another 6 frames forward to
Frame 36 -- so I'm really just doing these
| | 04:10 | poses just every 6 or 12 frames
here -- and that straightens him out.
| | 04:16 | See how he has that motion? And it looks
more like the platform is affecting his motion.
| | 04:27 | So I'm going to go ahead and
set a keyframe at the end here.
| | 04:29 | Let's go ahead and select the
hips, and just kind of finalize this.
| | 04:33 | Now, the force of the body
doesn't just move to the hips;
| | 04:39 | the spine itself is also flexible.
| | 04:42 | So we can do the exact same thing for
each of these spine joints. So let's
| | 04:47 | do that very quickly.
| | 04:49 | I'm going to select the lower spine
here, and again, as he moves forward, I'm
| | 04:53 | just going to go ahead and bend his
spine back a little bit more, and I can do it
| | 04:59 | on both of these here.
| | 05:00 | So let's go ahead and set a keyframe
here, and then bend back the other spine
| | 05:06 | joints, and again, just get
a little more flexibility.
| | 05:09 | And now that I have these, I can select
both of them, and again, just drag that
| | 05:16 | forward to Frame 12.
| | 05:19 | And then at Frame 24, again, we want
to do this in the opposite direction.
| | 05:24 | When he bends forward, he is going to
go ahead and do that again, and then we
| | 05:32 | can select both of these, and
again, just straighten him out.
| | 05:37 | So I'm going to drag that to 36, and
then again, to that last frame there.
| | 05:41 | You can see he has got a lot more.
| | 05:43 | Now, this may be animating a little bit
more than the force of the platform is
| | 05:49 | indicating, so let's go ahead and
tighten this up a little bit, and I'm going to
| | 05:54 | do that just by unrotating that spine
just a little bit, and moving it forward.
| | 05:59 | I don't want as much of a bend.
| | 06:02 | Now remember, when I bent those spine
joints, I actually moved him a lot more, so
| | 06:08 | maybe I don't have to move the
hips as much when he does that.
| | 06:13 | So again, here in the front, maybe move
those hips back and up a little bit, and
| | 06:19 | maybe unrotate it just slightly,
and let's take a look at that.
| | 06:29 | So that looks pretty good.
| | 06:30 | It looks like the character is
actually getting affected by that platform.
| | 06:37 | So now that we have this external
force indicated, we can move on to the
| | 06:42 | next step.
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| Working with secondary motion| 00:00 | Now, once you have the basic motion of
the torso, you can start moving to the
| | 00:05 | extremities of the character,
| | 00:07 | and typically in animation,
this is called secondary motion;
| | 00:11 | it can also be called drag.
| | 00:13 | Now basically, the theory is that as
the character moves forward, the force
| | 00:19 | transmits through the body successively.
| | 00:23 | So we have the ankles being pulled
forward first, and then a little bit later,
| | 00:28 | the hips move forward, and then the spine
and the chest move forward a little bit later.
| | 00:35 | So it takes a while for that force
to be transmitted up the body, and out
| | 00:41 | through the extremities.
| | 00:43 | So we can illustrate this using
secondary motion, and just animate that out.
| | 00:48 | Now, we already did the spine, and that
was kind of on the border between drag and
| | 00:53 | secondary motion. It gives the
spine a little bit more flexibility,
| | 00:57 | but we can add even more
by working with the arms.
| | 01:00 | So I am going to go ahead and
grab that left shoulder here,
| | 01:03 | and let's go ahead and make sure we
have a keyframe for that at Frame 0.
| | 01:08 | And then, as that character moves
forward, again, these arms will want to
| | 01:14 | stay where they were.
| | 01:17 | So we're going to actually have that
drag out behind him, and then kind of come
| | 01:24 | into more of a neutral position sometime later.
| | 01:27 | In fact, I am going to go ahead and
push this out even further to maybe about
| | 01:32 | Frame 18, where these will settle in.
| | 01:35 | So now -- actually, let's go to Frame 16; okay. I
am actually trying to dial in the timing here.
| | 01:41 | So you can see how, now when I play that,
it kind of has a bit of a drag to it.
| | 01:48 | In fact, we can even delay that maximum
part, where it rotates back the furthest,
| | 01:53 | probably behind the hips. Remember, the
hips were animated back at Frame 6, so
| | 01:58 | let's animate the arms back at Frame 8.
| | 02:00 | So you can see that by doing that, it
drags them behind, and gives it some
| | 02:06 | nice secondary motion.
| | 02:09 | So let's go ahead and play that. You can
see how that gives a nice pendulum effect.
| | 02:12 | So let's go to Frame 24, and set a 0
keyframe, and then we are going to go, not to
| | 02:18 | 30, but 32, which is 8 frames past
that, and let's go ahead and rotate that.
| | 02:25 | Now remember, the hips are at their
maximum 6 frames in, so we are going to make
| | 02:29 | this two frames behind it, at 8 frames in.
| | 02:32 | So there we go, 32, and then at 40, it
should center out, and then we can also
| | 02:39 | copy that keyframe, and remember, I'm
just selecting that 0 keyframe, holding
| | 02:43 | down the Shift key, and dragging;
a very quick way to copy keys.
| | 02:47 | So now, you can see, we've got a much
better sense of secondary motion. In fact,
| | 02:54 | one of the things we could do is actually
almost overshoot this final position here.
| | 03:00 | So I am just going to move is slightly ahead here,
so it gives it even more of a pendulum effect.
| | 03:05 | You can see how, on that first one, it
kind of rocks back and forth before it
| | 03:11 | settles, and that gives it
a much more natural motion;
| | 03:14 | we can do that on the back as well.
| | 03:16 | So this is coming back, so I am going
to overshoot it a little bit at Frame 40,
| | 03:23 | and then it should settle in at Frame 47.
| | 03:26 | So now we've got, not only secondary
motion; we got a little bit of overshoot
| | 03:31 | there, just give it a nice realistic animation.
| | 03:35 | So let's go ahead and do the same thing for
that right arm, and let's go ahead to Frame 8,
| | 03:43 | rotate that back; again, we are
going to get fairly similar motion here.
| | 03:47 | 16; we are going to zero it out,
plus a little bit more for overshoot.
| | 03:55 | Then at Frame 24, I am going to put it at 0,
and again, I am just copying that 0 key.
| | 04:03 | Frame 32, it's going to rotate forward.
| | 04:07 | 40, it's going to rotate back,
| | 04:12 | and then some, and then again, we
want to zero that out at the very end.
| | 04:17 | So now we've got some
very nice motion on the arms.
| | 04:24 | And again, this is just external forces; just
the force that's acting upon the character.
| | 04:29 | Now, the last thing we need to do is
the character's head, which also will
| | 04:33 | have secondary motion.
| | 04:34 | And again, let's do that
2 Frames behind the hips.
| | 04:37 | Let's go ahead and just rotate
his head back just a little bit.
| | 04:42 | And then at Frame 16, we will rotate him
forward. You can just settle him in, and
| | 04:48 | then make sure that he cycles
right at Frame 24.
| | 04:53 | And then let's go ahead and do this
one more time: Frame 32, I am going to go
| | 04:56 | ahead and rotate that head back.
| | 05:00 | Frame 40, it's going to come up a little bit.
| | 05:03 | And then, at the very end, I want to
cycle that, so I am just going to copy
| | 05:07 | that neutral keyframe.
| | 05:09 | So there we go. We've got pretty good
external forces acting upon this character.
| | 05:15 | Now, the one thing about this is that it
is just the external forces, it's that
| | 05:20 | force of the moving platform and maybe
a little bit of that force of gravity.
| | 05:25 | But once you have this, you can start
animating the motion of the character's
| | 05:29 | muscles against these forces to
actually start bringing the character to life.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Bringing the character to life| 00:00 | So at this point, we have the character
animating, but he's only being affected
| | 00:05 | by forces that are outside of him.
| | 00:07 | So let's go ahead and play this,
| | 00:10 | and as you can see, yes, he's moving,
he's moving realistically, but there's
| | 00:14 | nothing coming from him.
| | 00:16 | He's really just being pushed around by
forces, almost like a rag doll, but we
| | 00:21 | can fix that by actually animating the
character himself, using internal forces.
| | 00:26 | Now, before I do this, I need to
understand what it is that the character is
| | 00:31 | going to do; what is my character's intention?
| | 00:33 | Well, I know that if I were on such a
moving platform, I would want to keep my
| | 00:38 | balance. I would also want to see
where I'm going, so let's go ahead and
| | 00:43 | animate some of that.
| | 00:44 | So let's take a look at this animation here.
| | 00:47 | Now, when I get to this first keyframe
at Frame 6, the character is kind of
| | 00:53 | being pushed back, but if he wants to actually
counteract this force, he's going to need leverage,
| | 01:01 | and he can't get much leverage with
straight legs. You kind of have to bend
| | 01:05 | your legs, and turn them into levers, so
that your muscles can act against those forces.
| | 01:12 | So the first thing I want to do is
make sure Auto Key is turned on, and we're
| | 01:15 | going to drop those hips a
bit, and just move them forward.
| | 01:21 | You can see, as it's moving forward,
he's relaxing his legs, and moving forward.
| | 01:25 | Now, once he relaxes his legs, he can
start using them as a lever, and we can
| | 01:32 | rotate that body forward, and get a little
bit more sense of intention from the character.
| | 01:40 | So now it looks like he's doing the
standing up, because he drops his legs, and
| | 01:47 | as he is rotating, we already have this
key where he's standing up, but it looks
| | 01:52 | like he is doing the work.
| | 01:55 | Okay. We can do that on the
other side as well.
| | 02:00 | So let's go to Frame 30, and again, he
wants to stay stable, he needs a lever
| | 02:08 | with which to use his muscles, and so
he's going to drop his hips, and then he's
| | 02:15 | going to rotate himself up, and then stand up.
| | 02:20 | So even with that little change, he
has a little bit more intention. Let's go
| | 02:24 | ahead and play this.
| | 02:29 | So that works pretty good, but if I
were the character, I'd want to see where
| | 02:34 | I'm going, so let's go
ahead and add that in as well.
| | 02:39 | Now, I'm just going to work with the
hips and the body; I'm not going to worry
| | 02:41 | too much about the arms here.
| | 02:43 | But as he drops, he kind of
wants to look over the shoulder;
| | 02:48 | he wants to see where he's going.
| | 02:50 | So I'm going to go ahead and turn that
body just a little bit, and then as he
| | 02:57 | comes up, I'm going to continue that;
I'm going to continue the turn, and then
| | 03:03 | here at Frame 36, I'm going
to twist him quite a bit.
| | 03:07 | But again, because I'm twisting this,
you can see how it's kind of straightening
| | 03:12 | out the legs, so I want to kind of keep those
legs bend, so I have room to rotate him.
| | 03:20 | So now he should be rotating. He's got
a little bit of that rotation, but we
| | 03:27 | also can rotate the body as well, so
I'm going to go, again, to this Frame 36, and
| | 03:35 | kind of just start rotating that spine,
so that way it's kind of looking more
| | 03:41 | and more like he's looking over his shoulder.
| | 03:51 | And then we can also work with the head.
| | 03:54 | So as that head comes down here -- we
have a keyframe here at 32; let's go
| | 03:59 | ahead and just use that --
| | 04:01 | I'm going to go ahead and start
rotating his head back, so he can see where
| | 04:07 | the heck he's going.
| | 04:13 | And now I have a keyframe here for the
head at 40, but I'm going to go ahead and
| | 04:16 | delete that, and then just use
that last keyframe as my endpoint.
| | 04:23 | So now, even without the arms moving,
you can see he's got a lot more intention.
| | 04:32 | He has control over his own
body; at least for the torso.
| | 04:37 | Now, we haven't animated
the arms, we'll do that next.
| | 04:39 | But as you can see, by actually making
the character move against those forces,
| | 04:45 | you can get much more tension, and you
can start bringing your character to life.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Refining the animation| 00:00 | We've animated the character's body
and head, so now that has motor control.
| | 00:05 | We still haven't worked on the arms,
so let's do that in this lesson.
| | 00:09 | So let's go ahead and take a look at the
character, and just do a quick playback here.
| | 00:14 | And as you can see, he has control over
his hips, and his torso, and his head, and
| | 00:19 | that allows him to twist his body, and
look over his shoulder, as well as drop his
| | 00:25 | weight, but we still don't have
animation on the arms, and those are kind of
| | 00:28 | still flopping around.
| | 00:30 | Now, before we actually animate the arms, let's
understand what we're going to do with the arms.
| | 00:35 | As the character is being pushed back
and forth, one of the main things he wants
| | 00:39 | to do is maintain his balance.
| | 00:41 | So we want to go ahead and put the arms out
a little bit to kind of steady the character.
| | 00:48 | So let's go to the first keyframe here,
I'm going to go ahead and select my left
| | 00:52 | shoulder here, and let's go to Frame 8
here, and that's where we have that first
| | 00:57 | keyframe for the arm.
| | 00:59 | And let's make sure we have Auto Key
turned on here, and I'm going to go ahead
| | 01:03 | rotate that arm out to kind of
start to get him to catch his balance.
| | 01:10 | Now, one of the things I've noticed here
is that this arm is really straight, and
| | 01:15 | when you have no motor control, and
you're being pushed forward like that, the
| | 01:19 | elbow will be straight,
because it's just undergoing drag.
| | 01:22 | So if we bend this elbow, it will tell
the audience that, hey, this character is
| | 01:27 | controlling the arm.
| | 01:28 | He is not being controlled as much
by physics of him being pushed around.
| | 01:33 | So let's go ahead and do a nice bend on
the arm, and get that out to the side, so
| | 01:37 | he is catching his balance.
| | 01:39 | So even doing that gives much more
intention, so let's just play that.
| | 01:45 | As you can see, it gives a
much stronger pose.
| | 01:49 | Now, if we contrast that to this other
arm here, you can see that we've got
| | 01:55 | actually no control over that arm.
| | 01:57 | So let's go ahead and finish
off with the left arm here.
| | 02:00 | And I can just use my selection set
that I created, and let's go ahead and
| | 02:05 | select that left arm, and you can see
that as he pushes himself up, that's good,
| | 02:11 | but then here at 16, he has kind
of got a strange keyframe here.
| | 02:14 | So let's go ahead and just copy in a
neutral, and then just kind of dial in a
| | 02:20 | nice pose here for the character. Grab
that left shoulder, again, put that arm
| | 02:25 | out to the side, and let's go ahead
and just kind of keep that a little bent.
| | 02:34 | So now that character is
basically straightening up a little bit.
| | 02:41 | And then at 24, let's just go ahead and
just relax that arm a little bit, because
| | 02:46 | he has got his balance.
| | 02:47 | But I don't want to make it
completely straight.
| | 02:49 | I kind of want to keep a nice bend to it.
| | 02:54 | And again, if I want, I can select the
entire arm, and keyframe it, just to make
| | 02:58 | sure I've got that locked in.
| | 03:00 | So now let's go ahead and take
a look at this left side here.
| | 03:06 | So that looks pretty good.
| | 03:07 | There is a little bit of a hop here
at the cycle point, but we can certainly
| | 03:12 | fix that a little bit later.
| | 03:13 | So now let's go ahead and do
the same thing for the right arm.
| | 03:17 | So I'm going to go ahead and grab that
right shoulder here. So now, as he moves
| | 03:23 | out, I'm going to go ahead and get that
shoulder out, and then start bending that
| | 03:31 | elbow, so that way, he has got a
little bit more control over his hand.
| | 03:39 | And by Frame 24, again, I just
want to select everything for my right arm,
| | 03:47 | and make sure that I have a bit
more of a kind of a neutral pose here.
| | 03:53 | I seem to have rotated that
thumb somehow. Here we go!
| | 04:07 | Okay, so let's go ahead and get
this character back in position here.
| | 04:13 | So, I want to maybe even rotate that arm
just back a little bit; there we go. Okay.
| | 04:18 | I've got pretty good little animation
up to Frame 24, where he starts moving
| | 04:27 | back, so let's get a
strong pose as he moves back.
| | 04:31 | So again, we want to indicate motor control.
| | 04:34 | So right there at Frame 32, he's starting
to look over his shoulder, so let's go
| | 04:39 | ahead and accentuate that with the pose.
| | 04:41 | So I'm going to move that arm out
and up, so that way his shoulder looks
| | 04:47 | like it's more back.
| | 04:50 | And let's go ahead and rotate that arm
just a little bit here, and go ahead and
| | 04:54 | just tweak that in, and let's twist
that hand to get a nice little curve here.
| | 05:00 | And then on the other side,
we can do the same.
| | 05:02 | We can get his arm out a little bit,
because he is still trying to catch his
| | 05:06 | balance. Grab that hand, and rotate it.
| | 05:11 | If I want, I can even work a little
bit with these fingers here. Rotate those
| | 05:18 | fingers back a little bit, and even on
this one, let's go ahead and relax that
| | 05:21 | hand a little bit more.
| | 05:22 | That gives it just a nice curve.
| | 05:25 | So now as he goes back, you can see, it
gives so much more of a stronger pose,
| | 05:32 | and then we can relax the
character back into his initial pose.
| | 05:36 | In fact, what we can do is we can
select everything in the character here,
| | 05:40 | and make sure we have that final pose at the
last frame, so that should work out pretty good.
| | 05:47 | So let's take a look at this.
| | 05:52 | So that looks pretty good.
| | 05:53 | I can tweak it a little bit more.
| | 05:55 | But the basic point in this is that
we have two types of forces that are
| | 06:01 | affecting our character.
| | 06:02 | In the first half of this chapter,
we animated the external forces: those
| | 06:07 | forces that are acting upon the character, so
drag, secondary motion; those sorts of things.
| | 06:13 | And then in the second half, we
actually animated the character himself,
| | 06:17 | bringing him to life.
| | 06:19 | So when you animate a character, always
be aware of whether the forces acting on
| | 06:25 | the character are coming from
outside or inside the character,
| | 06:28 | and when they come from inside the
character, make sure you understand the
| | 06:32 | character's intention, and
that will guide your animation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Creating Pose-to-Pose Animation Keyframing initial poses| 00:00 | Now let's take a look at how
to do pose to pose animation.
| | 00:04 | Now we should be familiar with posing
characters, but now let's take a look at
| | 00:09 | how to string those poses
together, and animate between poses.
| | 00:14 | Now, I have our simple character
here, and I have three basic poses.
| | 00:19 | He's going to start off with his arms
crossed, like this, and then he's going to
| | 00:23 | wave, and I have two poses for the wave.
| | 00:27 | So what I've done with this
posing is blocked out the basic poses.
| | 00:32 | I just want to understand what
the character is going to do.
| | 00:37 | I'm not really worried
about timing at this point.
| | 00:40 | So I've got one pose here, and I've keyed
everything for the character on all of these.
| | 00:46 | So I have keys on every single body parts,
| | 00:49 | so that way I've locked in each of these poses.
| | 00:52 | Now, when I start blocking out this
animation, I may need to repeat poses.
| | 00:57 | So, for example, where the character waves,
I may want to have him wave more than once.
| | 01:03 | Let's say we want to have him wave three times.
| | 01:06 | So if that's the case, then we can copy
and paste these poses to create a cycle.
| | 01:12 | So, for example, if I have
everything selected -- I can do that using my
| | 01:16 | selection set here --
| | 01:18 | I can just go ahead and rubberband
select those poses at Frame 2, hold down the
| | 01:24 | Shift Key, and just drag them.
| | 01:26 | So now I have one at Frame 4, and then
another one at Frame 6, and I can do the
| | 01:31 | same for the keys at Frame 4;
| | 01:33 | I can copy them to Frame 8.
| | 01:35 | So now I have two waves,
| | 01:37 | but if I want, I can obviously
copy more than one set of keys.
| | 01:42 | So I can rubberband select multiple
keys, such as these last two, and then I
| | 01:47 | can copy those as well.
| | 01:48 | So now I have this character
going into three separate waves.
| | 01:54 | But I really want to add one more pose here.
| | 01:57 | Going from this pose, to
this pose is a little simple,
| | 02:02 | because really, what the character is
doing here, if you look at his waist here,
| | 02:06 | he's shifting his weight; he's
shifting his hip, and typically, when a
| | 02:11 | character shifts his weight, he will
drop his hips to gain more leverage, just
| | 02:17 | like we did in the last chapter.
| | 02:19 | So let me show you how to do that.
| | 02:21 | I'm going to go ahead and select
everything in the character, using my
| | 02:25 | selection sets here, and I'm going
to grab all of these keyframes of him
| | 02:30 | waving, so from Frame 2 on.
| | 02:32 | Let's just go ahead and
push those back two frames,
| | 02:35 | so now I have space for another
pose at Frame 2.
| | 02:40 | Now, if I want, I can start posing him
from here, but I had a little bit of
| | 02:45 | foresight when I created this, and
so I saved out my neutral poses.
| | 02:50 | So I'm holding down the Control+Alt
keys, and left clicking to reveal my
| | 02:56 | negative keyframes.
| | 02:57 | So I have my neutral pose here at -4,
and the hands down at the side at -2.
| | 03:04 | So what I can do is I can actually take
part of this pose, and copy it, so that
| | 03:10 | I have an in between pose here.
| | 03:13 | So what I really want is, I want the
upper part of the body of this character to
| | 03:18 | be a little bit more stiff,
with the arms at the side.
| | 03:21 | So what I can do is, I can just
rubberband select the upper part of the
| | 03:26 | character, and then I really
don't want the hips;
| | 03:29 | Alt+Select those to deselect them.
| | 03:32 | So now I have everything
from the spine up selected.
| | 03:36 | So now I can just rubberband
select only those keys, and then click and
| | 03:41 | drag them to Frame 2.
| | 03:44 | So now I have kind of a
neutral pose with which to work with.
| | 03:47 | So now I can start posing this character.
| | 03:50 | So I'm going to go ahead and select the hips,
which don't have a keyframe on them right now.
| | 03:54 | So I'm going to go ahead and turn on
Auto Key, and let's go ahead make sure
| | 03:57 | we're in Local mode here, and I'm
going to drop the hips, rotate the body
| | 04:04 | forward a little bit, and maybe even the spine.
| | 04:08 | So what I'm trying to do is, I'm
actually trying to squash this character.
| | 04:11 | We're doing a little bit of
squash and stretch.
| | 04:14 | And so, for the arms, I also
want to pull them in a little bit.
| | 04:19 | So he's got his hands folded,
| | 04:21 | so I want to make sure I unwind that just a
bit, and kind of give a nice in between pose.
| | 04:29 | So as he's uncrossing his arms, that's
really the pose that I'm looking for.
| | 04:35 | And if I want, I can also grab those
hands, and go ahead and curl them in just a
| | 04:41 | little bit, because they are moving, and
we're going to have a little bit of drag here.
| | 04:45 | So now, we're starting here, and
then he goes down before he goes up.
| | 04:53 | Now, one of the things I'm getting
here is I'm getting a little bit of a
| | 04:56 | crossover with the arms,
| | 04:58 | so I'm going to go ahead and
change this pose.
| | 05:01 | I'm going to go ahead move one of these
arms out just a little bit, so that way
| | 05:06 | we get a little bit of a
stronger in between here.
| | 05:09 | So I'm going to ho ahead
and move and this one in,
| | 05:10 | so we're going to have one arm
moving out a little bit faster.
| | 05:14 | So remember, the green arm,
or the left arm, is on top,
| | 05:18 | so that's going to move out first.
| | 05:20 | So I want to go ahead and just kind of
push that right arm in just a bit here.
| | 05:26 | Okay, and we can tweak this as we go. So now
he squashes, and then comes up into that pose.
| | 05:35 | So I'm going to go ahead and move my
timeline back, so that 0 is my first frame.
| | 05:40 | So again, I'm going to hold down the
Control+Alt key, and then left-click, and drag
| | 05:45 | to make sure that 0 is my start time.
| | 05:48 | So at this point, I have the basic
poses of my animation blocked out.
| | 05:52 | He's starting with his
arms folded across his chest.
| | 05:56 | He comes down into a squashed position.
| | 06:00 | Then he comes up, and he waves three times.
| | 06:03 | So now I have my poses blocked out, and
now I can start timing my blocking pass,
| | 06:09 | and timing my animation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating the blocking pass| 00:00 | Once you have your poses in place,
you can start timing out your animation.
| | 00:06 | Now, the first pass of your pose to pose
animation is usually called the blocking pass,
| | 00:12 | so let's go ahead and do that.
| | 00:13 | I'm going to go ahead and use my
selection sets to select everything in the
| | 00:16 | character, and you'll see we
have one keyframe every two frames.
| | 00:21 | So he starts here, with his arms crossed,
squashes, comes up into a wave, and
| | 00:28 | waves a couple of times.
| | 00:29 | Now, what we want to do is
actually start retiming this animation.
| | 00:34 | We want to start giving each of these
poses a little bit more time, because right
| | 00:38 | now, it's once every two frames, and if I
played it, it will just zip through that
| | 00:43 | in about half a second. Now, we're
animating at 30 frames a second,
| | 00:47 | so let's go ahead and start
pushing back some of these keyframes.
| | 00:52 | Initially, I've got my first pose is at
0, my second one is at 2, so I'm going
| | 00:56 | to select from 2, all the way to the end,
and then just left-click, and drag that,
| | 01:02 | and let's just give him a
second in that initial pose here,
| | 01:05 | and so I'm going to go ahead and
move this second pose to Frame 30.
| | 01:08 | Now, when we play this, you'll see what
happens is that this in-between isn't
| | 01:17 | really what we want.
| | 01:19 | We want him to actually
hold this pose for a while.
| | 01:23 | So I'm going to go ahead and select
my keyframe at 0, and then hold down my
| | 01:29 | Shift key, and drag all of those keys
to Frame 24, which is about six frames
| | 01:35 | before that second pose.
| | 01:37 | So now he holds it, and then he comes up,
so this is a good way to do a blocking pass.
| | 01:43 | Now, one of the things I like to do
when blocking out animation is to use what
| | 01:48 | are called stepped curves, and this
will allow the character to jump from
| | 01:53 | pose, to pose, to pose.
| | 01:54 | And it's a lot more similar to
how hand-drawn animation would be.
| | 01:59 | You would draw the key poses, and then
film the timing for the key
| | 02:02 | poses, and then, once you've got that
worked out, then you'd do the in-betweens.
| | 02:08 | So I can do this in my Curve Editor.
| | 02:10 | Now, I want to make sure everything
is selected, and let's go into my Curve
| | 02:15 | Editor. You can see I have curves for
just about everything in the character here.
| | 02:20 | Let me go ahead and zoom in here, so we
can see this a little bit more closely.
| | 02:24 | And you can see that we've got
keyframes here, and then each one
| | 02:28 | in-betweens over a curve,
| | 02:32 | but I'm going to go ahead and use my
Region tool here to select all of my keys
| | 02:37 | here, and I'm going to
change my tangents to stepped.
| | 02:42 | And once I do that, notice how they turn into
this stepped or a square wave type of curve.
| | 02:49 | And what this does is it allows the
character to step between poses, and a lot of
| | 02:55 | times, this is going to be more
advantageous when timing out animation, because it
| | 03:00 | allows you just to see the poses.
| | 03:03 | You're not going to have in-betweens
that are going to trick the eye.
| | 03:07 | If we have solid in-betweens, a lot of
times the eye will see that motion, and
| | 03:12 | the animation will look
floaty, or it just won't look right,
| | 03:15 | but when you have it in steps,
the eye just picks that up.
| | 03:20 | And a lot of times this is a great
way to show your work to a director or
| | 03:24 | somebody else for an approval, just to
make sure that they understand where
| | 03:29 | you're going with it, before you go
through and in-betweening everything.
| | 03:33 | So let's go ahead and, once everything
is in Stepped mode, let's go ahead and
| | 03:36 | just start timing our animation.
| | 03:38 | So we need to figure out how long he's
going to squash, and then how long it's
| | 03:43 | going to take in to come up.
| | 03:44 | I'm just going to go ahead
and do six frames for each.
| | 03:48 | He is at Frame 30 here, so I'm
going to push it to Frame 36 here.
| | 03:53 | And then, for the wave, I want him to
wave approximately two times per second.
| | 04:01 | So we're animating at 30 frames per
second, so I'm going to round up a little
| | 04:06 | bit, and do eight frames per pose.
| | 04:10 | So that means that this first pose
here has to go back one, two, plus another
| | 04:16 | six, for a total of eight, so I'm just
going to push that back to Frame 44, and
| | 04:22 | then 44 plus 8 is going to be 52.
| | 04:27 | And then, again, what I'm doing is I'm
just sliding each one of these six frames,
| | 04:32 | because we're adding six frames
to the two that are already there.
| | 04:36 | So now that I have this, I should
have at least a simple blocking pass.
| | 04:46 | Now we have to take a look at this
and see, is this really what we want?
| | 04:51 | Can we adjust the timing a little bit more?
| | 04:54 | Well, I think we actually can.
| | 04:56 | One of the things I'd like to do is
maybe make him squash down a little bit
| | 05:01 | more quickly. So he is squashing down
from 24 to 30, so that's six frames.
| | 05:07 | Let me go ahead and squash him down
just a little bit faster, so that way he
| | 05:12 | comes down faster, and then comes up slower, and
that might give me a little bit better timing.
| | 05:18 | And again, you can
adjust these however you want.
| | 05:24 | So once you have the timing exactly the
way that you want, you can save this out,
| | 05:28 | and present it to whoever you need to,
or just kind of put it into your reel to
| | 05:33 | see how it works, or we can now start
doing what I call releasing the curves, and
| | 05:39 | actually starting to in-between.
| | 05:41 | So let's go ahead and do that
before we move on to the next step.
| | 05:45 | So I'm going to go ahead and select
everything, let's go back into the Curve
| | 05:48 | Editor, and again, let's make sure
that we have all of these keys selected.
| | 05:54 | Right now, they're on Stepped tangents,
but let's go ahead and do Auto tangent here.
| | 05:59 | It'll set all the tangents to Auto, which
will make sure that the holds stay held.
| | 06:05 | And now I've basically turned them back
from stepped to curves, and so now you
| | 06:12 | can see we've got a basic animation.
| | 06:18 | Now, this certainly isn't
complete, but it's a good first pass.
| | 06:23 | So remember, once you have your poses
in place, go ahead and set your tangents
| | 06:29 | to Stepped, then move the key poses out
on the timeline to the timing you think
| | 06:35 | will work, do a test, adjust as needed,
and then once you have the timing you
| | 06:41 | think works, then go ahead and
release the curves by setting them to Auto.
| | 06:46 | Now once you have this, you've got a
good first pass, and you're ready to move on
| | 06:50 | to refining the animation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Moving holds| 00:00 | So now we have the blocking pass done
with our character, and let's go ahead and
| | 00:04 | play that to see what we have.
| | 00:08 | So as you can see, we've got a hold
at the beginning, and then he squashes
| | 00:12 | down, and then waves.
| | 00:14 | Now, the one thing that I'm noticing
is that this hold is just dead; the
| | 00:18 | character kind of has no life in him
whatsoever, and that's because we've copied
| | 00:24 | two identical keyframes.
| | 00:27 | And so, even though the character is
standing, typically a character will move.
| | 00:31 | You have gravity affecting the
character, the character is breathing, he's
| | 00:37 | moving subtly, even though he's
holding the pose, and so even just a subtle
| | 00:42 | motion of the character within
a pose will add some life to him.
| | 00:47 | So let's go ahead and actually give
a moving hold here between 0 and 24.
| | 00:53 | Now, this first pose here, let's go ahead
and just leave this the way that it is,
| | 00:58 | and let's go ahead and
work with that second pose.
| | 01:00 | Now, these two poses are identical, so we can
just start to play with our second pose here.
| | 01:07 | So I'm going to make sure I have
Auto Key turned on, and first off, let's
| | 01:12 | understand where we want
to move the character.
| | 01:14 | Before we start ever moving a character,
always trying and get in your head, what is
| | 01:19 | it you're trying to do?
| | 01:21 | Well, the character has his arms crossed,
he's leaned back, he's kind of skeptical,
| | 01:26 | and so let's go ahead and emphasize
this a little bit by kind of pushing the
| | 01:31 | character back, maybe leaning him back
even a little bit farther to emphasize that.
| | 01:37 | So I'm going to go ahead and start with
the hips here, and I'm going to go ahead
| | 01:40 | and move the hips down just slightly.
| | 01:43 | Gravity is taking effect.
| | 01:45 | Maybe move him a little bit over to
the right, so basically, he's just kind of
| | 01:49 | drifting a little bit to his right.
| | 01:54 | Now, even with that, it actually gives a
little bit of life to the character. But
| | 01:59 | we can actually add a little bit more
to this. We can lean him back more, so I
| | 02:05 | can select this spine joint here, and
go ahead and just lean him out just a
| | 02:10 | little bit, and that, again, will give
some flexibility to the spine; give it a
| | 02:16 | little bit more life.
| | 02:18 | I can also grab this one
here near of his hands;
| | 02:22 | I can also lean that a little bit more,
so again, he's leaning to his right.
| | 02:28 | And we can also adjust the head, so
again, to balance, maybe his head's going to
| | 02:32 | go the opposite direction.
| | 02:34 | So he's going to kind of do that, and
then that gives a much better sense of life.
| | 02:41 | So let's go ahead and play this.
| | 02:45 | So now he's alive. He is moving just
a bit, but he is still holding his pose.
| | 02:53 | Now, even with a moving hold, we
can still add in a little bit more.
| | 02:57 | Now, the character is kind of skeptical,
maybe he is a little impatient, so let's
| | 03:01 | go ahead and emphasize that by moving
another part of the character, such as his
| | 03:06 | toe. Let's go and make him tap his toe.
| | 03:08 | So I'm going to go ahead a few frames
in here, and I'm just going to grab that
| | 03:12 | left toe here, and I'm going
to set a keyframe at Frame 2.
| | 03:17 | And then I'm going to go forward
maybe 5 or 6 Frames here; let's go ahead
| | 03:21 | from Frame 2, to Frame 8, and go ahead
and bring up that toe just a bit, and
| | 03:29 | then drop it down again.
| | 03:31 | So I'm going to go ahead and select
this keyframe at 2, and just copy it to
| | 03:35 | Frame 12, so now he's doing 6 up,
and 4 down.
| | 03:42 | So let's play that. That looks good,
but we can emphasize this a little bit
| | 03:48 | more by duplicating it.
| | 03:50 | So I'm going to go ahead and select all
of these. Again, I'm just left-clicking,
| | 03:54 | and dragging here, and just hold down
the Shift key, and I'm going to copy all of
| | 03:59 | these keys, so we have, now, two toe taps.
| | 04:07 | So again, just that little bit of
motion adds a lot to the scene. So when you
| | 04:12 | have a character who is standing in one
pose for a while, go ahead and move the
| | 04:18 | character slightly within the pose, just
to give the illusion that the character
| | 04:22 | is alive, and where you move the
character is going to depend upon the mood and
| | 04:27 | the attitude of that character.
| | 04:29 | Now, once you have all of your moving
holds in place, it's time to start
| | 04:33 | in-betweening the actual motion of the
character, and we'll do that next.
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| Animating weight shift| 00:00 | We have our moving hold in place, and
now it's time to start in-betweening the
| | 00:04 | rest of the character.
| | 00:06 | But before we do that, I do want to
talk a little bit about shifting between
| | 00:10 | poses, and weight transfer.
| | 00:13 | Now, we just animated a simple pose as
our in-between here, but what we're really
| | 00:19 | doing is we're actually shifting
his weight from one foot to the other.
| | 00:24 | So if you look here at Frame 24, you
can see that this leg here is bent, which
| | 00:31 | means that it's the free leg, and
this leg here is the one that's actually
| | 00:38 | holding up the weight of the body.
So this is where all the weight of the
| | 00:42 | character is being transmitted to the ground.
| | 00:46 | Now, typically when a character stands,
he will favor one foot over the other.
| | 00:51 | We rarely stand with our
weight completely on both feet;
| | 00:55 | one foot will have a
little bit more weight on it.
| | 00:58 | And typically, when we change
pose, we also shift our weight.
| | 01:02 | So in this case, the character now is
putting his weight down through this
| | 01:07 | leg, and the weight is on this leg, and you
can see that this is the bent leg as well.
| | 01:14 | So this is the free leg; this is the
leg that's not fully supporting the
| | 01:17 | weight of the character.
| | 01:19 | Now, let's take a look at
this a little bit more closely.
| | 01:22 | I'm going to go ahead into my Layer editor, and
just turn off Geometry_Upper, and my Upper Rig.
| | 01:29 | Now, as you can see, we've got this sense of
weight transfer. Really, it's all in the hips.
| | 01:38 | So what happens is we've got the
hips here, okay, so the hips are being
| | 01:45 | supported by the weight of the body.
| | 01:48 | Now he shifts his weight, and what
happens? The weight of the body is now
| | 01:54 | released, so basically, both legs are
bent, gravity takes hold here, and the
| | 02:01 | actual weight of the character is
dropped, because he's bending his knee.
| | 02:07 | Remember, when you change weight, you
bend your knees, so that way you have a
| | 02:12 | lever with which to readjust the body.
| | 02:17 | Then he comes back up into another pose here.
| | 02:22 | So really, these hips are actually moving
along an arc. So they start here, drop,
| | 02:30 | and then they push back up again.
| | 02:32 | Let's take a look at this one more time.
| | 02:35 | So as he drops his weight, those hips
move in an arc. They also lean forward just
| | 02:41 | a bit, and then straighten out as they come up.
| | 02:45 | By having that sense of motion, you
get a much more realistic animation.
| | 02:52 | So let's go ahead and turn on that
upper part of the body. I'm going to go into
| | 02:55 | my Layers editor here, and just
unhide Geometry_Upper, and my Upper Rig.
| | 03:00 | So once we have this weight transfer,
you can see that the upper body kind of
| | 03:06 | follows along, but we still have a
little bit more in-betweening to do, which
| | 03:10 | we'll do in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating pose-to-pose transitions| 00:00 | Now, once you have the hips animating,
and you have a good shift of weight, you
| | 00:05 | still need to animate the upper body.
| | 00:08 | So we are going to do that in this lesson here.
| | 00:11 | So let's go ahead and see what we have.
We have got our character shifting
| | 00:16 | weight, and then going into that wave.
| | 00:18 | So let's go ahead and focus on this
pose, to pose, to pose, where he shifts his
| | 00:23 | weight, and goes into that wave.
| | 00:25 | We can make that a lot stronger than it is.
| | 00:28 | So one of the first things I want to
do is, let's go ahead and focus a little
| | 00:31 | bit more on what's going on here.
| | 00:34 | Okay, so if we take a look at this in
a frame by frame, you can see how the
| | 00:38 | hands are overlapping, and we need to
kind of tweak this animation, and get the
| | 00:43 | arms working together a little bit more.
And then, as he comes up into the wave,
| | 00:49 | the in-between could be a lot stronger,
| | 00:51 | so let's go ahead and do that as well.
| | 00:54 | So let's start with this first
portion of the animation effect.
| | 00:58 | I am going to go ahead and zoom in on my
timeline, so we can see it a little bit better.
| | 01:01 | So I am going to hold down Control+Alt, and
right+click, and zoom into about Frame 50 here,
| | 01:06 | so that way we have got enough time here.
| | 01:10 | So let's select our character here. You can
see we have got keyframes here at 24, and at 28.
| | 01:18 | So I am going to go halfway in
between to 26, and let's go ahead and start
| | 01:22 | unfolding this character's
arms a little bit better.
| | 01:25 | Now, in this case, the
character's left arm is on top,
| | 01:31 | so I am going to make sure
that that one unfolds first.
| | 01:34 | I am going to grab that left elbow here,
and let's make sure we have Auto Key
| | 01:38 | turned on, and I am going to start to
unfold that, and also I can twist that
| | 01:43 | hand just a little bit, because
that hand will drag just a bit.
| | 01:48 | So now I have got that arm unfolding a
little bit more strongly. In fact, we can
| | 01:54 | unfold it even more.
| | 01:56 | I can actually straighten that out
to get more of a good silhouette.
| | 02:01 | So as it kind of comes out, you can
see, I have got this silhouette now that
| | 02:06 | shows where that arm is moving.
| | 02:09 | In fact, you can see here we have
got a nice a line of action here,
| | 02:14 | and this is going to convey
information to the audience.
| | 02:18 | It will make the silhouette look a lot nicer.
| | 02:20 | So now let's go back to this frame
here at Frame 22, and let's go ahead and
| | 02:26 | start affecting the other arm.
| | 02:30 | So now this comes through here.
| | 02:32 | And so, as this comes out, this
arm will come down a little bit.
| | 02:39 | So now we have got plenty of room for
that right arm to start coming down, and
| | 02:44 | now we have got a much
better unfold of the character.
| | 02:48 | So the arms are coming apart much easier,
and now, as he comes up into the wave,
| | 02:54 | we want to make that
little bit stronger as well.
| | 02:57 | Now, we started getting a better pose
here at 28, where we got this nice line of
| | 03:04 | action, where the arm is kind
of dragging behind the shoulder.
| | 03:09 | So let's go ahead and
continue that in the in-between.
| | 03:13 | So again, I am going to select this, and
you will see that this goes from 28 to
| | 03:18 | 34, so that's going to be 6 frames.
| | 03:22 | So let's go 3 frames in, halfway in,
and let's go ahead and get that nice
| | 03:26 | line of action again.
| | 03:27 | So I am going to rotate that shoulder just
a bit. We have got a nice line of action.
| | 03:32 | I want that arc to that arm.
| | 03:35 | So again, what I am looking at is, I want
this arm out from the body, and I want
| | 03:40 | it to be curved, and that
gives a nice flow to that arm.
| | 03:45 | So as it comes up, I am getting a
little bit of a jump here. I wonder
| | 03:49 | what's going on here.
| | 03:51 | So we have got this here, this here,
and this here, and I am not sure.
| | 04:01 | So let's go ahead and take this; I believe
something is going on with this shoulder,
| | 04:05 | So let's go ahead and delete that.
| | 04:07 | Let's see how that works.
| | 04:09 | Yeah, that's working better, but
we still need to curve that a bit.
| | 04:19 | There we go. Okay, so I just maybe
rotated that the wrong direction.
| | 04:24 | But again, we've got a nice curve here,
and then this straight line here is
| | 04:30 | probably a little bit off, and again,
I want to make sure that I get a nice
| | 04:34 | curve to that, and I can also select
the fingers, and curve them. And then as
| | 04:44 | he comes up, I want to make sure that this
still has a nice curve, as you can see here.
| | 04:55 | So that gives a much stronger sense of motion.
| | 04:59 | Now, we can do the same
for the right arm as well.
| | 05:03 | So I have got this key here at 30, and
let's go ahead and take this right arm,
| | 05:07 | and put that out as well.
| | 05:09 | So again, I want to have a nice curve
to that arm, and that gives a nice arc
| | 05:14 | kind of coming out from shoulder to shoulder
here, so this gives a nice fluid sense of motion.
| | 05:21 | And then what we can do is
we can start to drag this arm.
| | 05:25 | Now, this arm might not come into
position exactly at the frame that we end this
| | 05:30 | pose, so I am going to go ahead and just
bring that out, and then as he starts to
| | 05:35 | wave, that will settle back in.
| | 05:37 | So I am going to go ahead and bring
this out just a little bit on that first
| | 05:41 | pose, so it has time to settle in.
| | 05:45 | Now we have got the arms, and we have
got the spine, but we still don't have
| | 05:49 | the head animating, and that's really
the last major part of the character
| | 05:52 | that we want to animate.
| | 05:54 | Now remember, the head is going to drag
behind the motion of the hips and the spine.
| | 06:01 | So I can grab this head, and one of the
things I can do is I can just start to
| | 06:06 | push keyframes back.
| | 06:08 | Yes, we animated everything at Frame 28,
but we don't have to keep it at Frame 28.
| | 06:14 | So I am going to go ahead and select
this head keyframe at 28, and just push it
| | 06:18 | back a few frames, maybe to Frame
30, and then as he comes up into that
| | 06:24 | pose, I want to do the same thing.
| | 06:25 | Again, that head is not going to come
up exactly at the same time as the body.
| | 06:30 | It's going to drag behind.
| | 06:33 | It's going to come into
place a little bit later.
| | 06:36 | In fact, I can drag that
behind even one more frame.
| | 06:42 | So now you can see that he comes up
into that pose, and then the head comes in
| | 06:47 | a little bit later.
| | 06:49 | So now this should play a little bit stronger.
| | 06:51 | So now he comes in, and then he comes
up, and you can see that's a lot smoother
| | 06:56 | than what we had before.
| | 06:58 | So now we have the first set of poses
in-betweened, and now what we have to do is
| | 07:04 | animate the wave, and we'll
do that in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a wave| 00:00 | Now we're in the home stretch, and
we're almost done with our animation.
| | 00:04 | We've got the first half of our
animation done, and all we need to do is animate
| | 00:08 | the last half, where the character waves.
| | 00:10 | So let's go ahead and see what we've got.
| | 00:11 | I'm going to go ahead and hit Play, and
you can see that he in-betweens into that
| | 00:17 | wave pretty nicely, but the
wave itself is very stiff.
| | 00:20 | You can see that arm is exactly in the
same place at every part, and that's not
| | 00:26 | really very natural.
| | 00:27 | The arm is going to be a lot more fluid.
| | 00:29 | So let's go ahead and actually
animate this wave, and it will give us a nice
| | 00:32 | sense of drag, and secondary motion,
as well as overlap, and follow through.
| | 00:39 | So first, let's take a look at
what's going on in this wave.
| | 00:43 | The wave starts at the shoulder.
| | 00:47 | So we've got this shoulder
basically rotating this arm back and forth.
| | 00:53 | Now, when it rotates it down,
the hand wants to stay in place.
| | 00:59 | Remember, this is object at
rest wants to stay at rest,
| | 01:02 | so the hand wants to stay where it is,
| | 01:04 | so it's going to drag behind
the motion of that shoulder.
| | 01:09 | So the shoulder is going to move first; the
hand and the elbow are going to move second.
| | 01:15 | So let's go ahead and see
what we've got going on here.
| | 01:18 | So now we've got this character comes up,
and then that shoulder rotates down,
| | 01:23 | but the elbow doesn't want to go down.
| | 01:26 | It wants to kind of bend, so
that that hand stays in place.
| | 01:29 | So I'm going to go a few frames forward here.
| | 01:31 | We've got this starting at Frame 34.
| | 01:34 | So let's go to Frame 37, about three
frames in, and let's go ahead and just bend
| | 01:40 | that elbow, so that the hand stays in place.
| | 01:43 | In fact, let's go ahead
and bend the hand as well.
| | 01:45 | We've got two joints here.
| | 01:48 | That's going to drag behind.
| | 01:50 | So even here at Frame 42, that's
still going to be dragging behind.
| | 01:57 | So this is still going to be in a
nice arc, and again what I'm looking at is
| | 02:01 | almost like this is a blade of grass.
| | 02:03 | This is going to become a nice arc, and it's
like a blade of grass blowing in the wind.
| | 02:09 | So that's the motion that you want to get.
| | 02:11 | So now it goes down like that, and
then as this rotates up, the opposite
| | 02:17 | is going to happen.
| | 02:18 | This hand wants to stay where it was.
| | 02:20 | So we're going to rotate that elbow, so
that it's almost stiff, and then rotate
| | 02:27 | that hand, so that it's dragging behind.
| | 02:29 | So now we've got this;
| | 02:35 | we can even drag that elbow behind a
little bit more, just to kind of give a
| | 02:42 | sense of flexibility to that hand, and
then as it comes up, we want to start
| | 02:49 | cycling that. In fact, I think I'm going to
go ahead and push this frame here at 48 back one.
| | 02:54 | And then, once we have this,
we can start to cycle it.
| | 02:57 | So I can actually use my Selection
Set, select my entire Left Arm, and you can
| | 03:02 | see that between Frame 34, and
Frame 50, we have a complete cycle.
| | 03:10 | So I'm going to go ahead and select all
of these keyframes, and then just copy
| | 03:15 | them once, and copy them again.
| | 03:19 | Now we've got a little bit more fluid motion,
| | 03:24 | but it looks like that hand is
snapping a little bit too quickly.
| | 03:30 | So one of the things we can do is I can
delete this keyframe here at Frame 45,
| | 03:36 | and that'll make it ease in a little bit more.
| | 03:40 | So then we can also delete this
keyframe at 61; those would be the two that we
| | 03:45 | want to delete here.
| | 03:47 | So now you can see how we've got a
lot more of a fluid motion to that arm.
| | 03:57 | Now, one of the things I am also
noticing is that the right arm here also needs
| | 04:04 | to have some animation.
| | 04:05 | So you can see it going in and out, and
that arm is really going to be relaxed,
| | 04:09 | so I want to keep that arm
pretty much at the character's sides.
| | 04:14 | So as he comes in here, it is going to relax.
| | 04:18 | So I'm going to go at Frame 42, and just
kind of drop that, so it's almost vertical.
| | 04:27 | And it looks like we've got the same
thing at Frame 50, and than at Frame 58,
| | 04:33 | again, I can copy that keyframe here.
And to give it a little bit if variety, I
| | 04:37 | might want to just turn that a little
bit, just so that it's not completely
| | 04:42 | cycling, and then we have
another one here at Frame 74.
| | 04:46 | So now that should look pretty good.
| | 04:58 | So now we've got most of
the animation in between.
| | 05:01 | Now, we could probably go over this a
little bit more, but by now you get the
| | 05:05 | process of how we're
doing pose to pose animation.
| | 05:09 | It really is just a matter of going
over the animation multiple times.
| | 05:13 | First off, all we need do is to
do is just get the poses in place.
| | 05:17 | Then, in the second pass, we time
those poses out in the blocking pass.
| | 05:23 | Then, in the third pass, we start in-betweening,
and we focus on weight change, and
| | 05:28 | make sure that the character's shift
of weight is working. And then we go
| | 05:32 | through on a final pass, and do
secondary motion, overlap, drag, and make sure
| | 05:37 | that the character is flowing
from pose to pose very easily.
| | 05:42 | Those are some of the steps for
animating pose to pose animation, and you can
| | 05:46 | use these techniques in a lot of
different contexts, in whatever you animate.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Animating Walks Analyzing a walk| 00:00 | In this chapter, I'm going to take
a look at how to animate a walk.
| | 00:04 | Now, before we actually start animating,
let's go ahead and just take a look at
| | 00:08 | the walk, and understand a little bit of
the mechanics of how a character walks.
| | 00:14 | So we have a very simple, basic walk
here; this character is just kind of
| | 00:18 | walking along, and a walk is
really an exercise in balance.
| | 00:25 | So the character puts himself out of
balance, and kind of knocks himself forward,
| | 00:30 | or basically falls forward, catches
himself, and then repeats that again.
| | 00:37 | So there's really four major poses in the walk.
| | 00:41 | The most stable of these poses is
what's called the extended position, and this
| | 00:45 | is where the foot is
extended at its maximum point.
| | 00:50 | Now, when this foot is extended,
basically, you have the character on both feet.
| | 00:57 | Now, in this position, you can see that
when this foot is forward, the hip of the
| | 01:05 | character is also forward.
| | 01:07 | Remember, all motions of characters start
with the hip, so that hip is rotated forward.
| | 01:13 | Now, in order to maintain the balance of
the character, his shoulder has to twist
| | 01:20 | in the opposite direction, so
that shoulder is twisting that way.
| | 01:26 | So the basics of a walk is, when the
foot is forward, the shoulder is back, and
| | 01:32 | you can see that very clearly here.
| | 01:35 | So this is position one;
this is the extended position.
| | 01:38 | Now, the next position is where
the character shifts his weight.
| | 01:44 | At this point, in the extended position,
we have the weight on both feet, but as
| | 01:51 | he moves forward, you can see
how there is a shift of weight.
| | 01:56 | So this knee bends,
and why is that knee bending?
| | 02:00 | Because he's taking the weight off of
this foot, and placing it on this one, and
| | 02:08 | that causes that need to bend, and
also his weight to fall forward.
| | 02:12 | So basically what he's doing is he's
falling forward, and he's catching his
| | 02:18 | weight on that foot.
| | 02:21 | So basically we go from both feet,
to that knee being bent, and once he
| | 02:26 | catches his weight, he rights himself, and
this is the third position, which is
| | 02:32 | called the passing position.
| | 02:34 | And the reason it's called the passing
position is that's because this foot is
| | 02:39 | passing the other leg, so what we have is
this foot is behind, and then it moves in front.
| | 02:46 | So this is what's called the passing position.
| | 02:49 | Now, in this position, he basically has
his hips and his shoulders equal, but
| | 02:56 | there's another thing
that's happening here as well.
| | 03:00 | When this leg passes, notice how we
have a leg here that is free, and what that
| | 03:07 | is, is that's a huge weight that's
pulling down on that hip, so it's going to
| | 03:11 | go ahead and pull that hip towards that,
so it's going to pull that down, so the
| | 03:17 | spine will twist just a little bit that way.
| | 03:21 | So now that we have this passing
position, we go to the next position, which is
| | 03:27 | basically just before the extended
position, and this is where the character is
| | 03:31 | really out of balance.
| | 03:33 | So we've got this really heavy foot
in front of the character, and that's going
| | 03:38 | to pull the character out of balance,
and it's going to pull him toward that
| | 03:44 | foot, so when he falls down,
he puts his foot on the ground.
| | 03:50 | The main positions we need to
understand are extended, cushion, passing, and
| | 03:54 | then extended again.
| | 03:56 | Now, once you have that,
you have a pretty good walk.
| | 04:04 | So now that we understand a little
bit about the basic mechanics of a walk,
| | 04:09 | let's go ahead and start animating one.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting up a character for a basic walk| 00:00 | Now that we understand the basic
mechanics of a walk, let's go ahead and animate
| | 00:04 | our character walking.
| | 00:05 | Now, we're going to do this walk in two
parts: we're going to take the lower half
| | 00:10 | of the character -- the feet and the
hips -- and we are going to animate that,
| | 00:14 | and then, in the second part, we're going
to go ahead and animate the upper parts.
| | 00:19 | So we're gong to start at the bottom, get a
firm foundation, and then move up to the
| | 00:23 | top part of the character.
| | 00:24 | Now, in order to make this as clear as
possible, I want to just show the lower
| | 00:30 | part of the character,
| | 00:31 | and we have our layering
set up so that we can do that.
| | 00:34 | So I am going to ahead and open
my Manage Layers window here,
| | 00:38 | and I'm going to go to Geometry_Upper,
Hide that; RIG_UPPER, and Hide that, so
| | 00:44 | all we have revealed are our Geometry_Lower,
and the lower rig as well.
| | 00:49 | Now this gives us just the lower part
of the character, which will make it easy
| | 00:53 | just to animate the hips and the feet.
| | 00:55 | Now, before we actually get started
with the walk, we also need to make a
| | 00:59 | decision as to how long the walk will be.
| | 01:02 | In this case, we're animate 16
frames per step, for a total of 32 frames.
| | 01:10 | So we can set that down here in
our Time Configuration window,
| | 01:14 | and let's go and bring that up. We're
going to be animating at 30 frames per
| | 01:18 | second. Our Start Time;
| | 01:20 | let's go ahead and make that a 1. We're
going to say 0 for the neutral pose here,
| | 01:24 | and I am going 32 frames in
advance of 1, so, 32+1 is going to be 33.
| | 01:31 | So, I'm going to make this a total of 32
frames long, starting at 1, for an End Time of 33.
| | 01:39 | So hit OK, and now we're ready
to actually animate our walk.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a walk: the feet| 00:00 | Once we have our basic character set up,
we can actually start animating the walk.
| | 00:05 | Now, in this video, we're just going to block
out the footsteps, as well as the hip motion.
| | 00:10 | Now, before we get started, I want to
make sure I turn on Angle Snap, so when I
| | 00:14 | rotate the hips, I'm rotating
them at even integral numbers.
| | 00:19 | And then I'm going to change
my coordinate system to Parent.
| | 00:22 | Now, I also want to keep the Motion
panel up, and that will allow me to see exact
| | 00:27 | values of each key as I animate the character.
| | 00:32 | So, first thing we want to do is just
go ahead and set some keys for the feet,
| | 00:36 | and the hips, and then we can start
blocking out, and positioning the characters.
| | 00:41 | So first thing we want to do is go ahead
and just Control+Select both feet, as well
| | 00:46 | as the hips, and then I'm just going
to go ahead and just hit a Set Key here,
| | 00:52 | so you can see the keys show up, and
let's go ahead and turn on Auto Key, so
| | 00:56 | that way our keys can change
as we position the character.
| | 01:00 | Now, one of things that I want to do is
go ahead and get my character's position
| | 01:05 | on to integer number boundaries.
| | 01:08 | In other words, I don't want
to deal with decimal points.
| | 01:11 | So if I click on the left foot -- in this case,
we're going to look at the Position Y key --
| | 01:17 | you'll notice that the
value of this key is 19.641.
| | 01:19 | Well, it makes it very hard to
animate when you've got a lot of decimal
| | 01:25 | points floating around,
| | 01:26 | so I'm just going to go ahead and
round this up to 20, and now that gives me a
| | 01:32 | nice even number as a
starting point for that foot.
| | 01:35 | I'm going to do the same for the right foot.
| | 01:37 | Select that, again, the value is the same,
| | 01:39 | so I'm just going to go ahead and
type in 20, and then select the hips, and
| | 01:45 | you'll see that right now it's at 13.6.
| | 01:46 | I'm going to ahead and round that up to 14.
| | 01:52 | So now that we have this, let's go
ahead and start animating our walk.
| | 01:58 | So the first thing we want to do is
decide upon the character of the walk.
| | 02:01 | Is the character going to take small, tiny
steps, large steps, or something in between?
| | 02:07 | Well for this walk, we're going to do
something in between, and I'm just going to
| | 02:10 | position each foot slightly
ahead of the opposite foot.
| | 02:15 | So let's go ahead and start with the left foot.
| | 02:17 | I'm going to select that, and go into
Selected Move mode here, and then just move
| | 02:23 | this forward, and if you notice here,
we're moving it negative Y direction.
| | 02:28 | So we're going to move it
negative Y, somewhere around -40.
| | 02:32 | Now, if you notice, that's
just ahead of the opposite foot.
| | 02:38 | In the left foot's motion panel, I have a key
value for the Y position of -20, and change.
| | 02:48 | Now, I want this to be on an integer boundary,
| | 02:50 | so I'm just going to go ahead and
delete everything behind the decimal point,
| | 02:54 | and hit Enter, and make it exactly -20.
| | 02:56 | Now remember, we started at +20, and we
went 40 units in the negative Y direction,
| | 03:04 | which gives you -20; 20 minus 40 is -20.
| | 03:09 | So that puts the foot exactly
in front of the opposite foot.
| | 03:13 | But as you can see, the foot is off the
ground, and the character is still not
| | 03:17 | positioned, because we need to move the hips.
| | 03:20 | So I'm going to go ahead and select the
hips, and we moved the foot forward -40.
| | 03:24 | I'm going to move the hips forward half that.
| | 03:28 | So I'm going to move forward -20.
| | 03:29 | Now remember, the Y value
of that hip should be at 14.
| | 03:35 | So moving it forward -20
should put it somewhere around -6.
| | 03:43 | So again, I have -6 here.
| | 03:44 | I'm just going to delete what's after
the decimal point, and just keep it at -6.
| | 03:49 | So now we've got the hips
positioned between the feet,
| | 03:52 | but the hips are a little bit too high,
| | 03:55 | so we can certainly move those down.
| | 03:58 | But also, the hips need to
rotate back and forth.
| | 04:01 | Remember, when the left foot is
forward, the left hip is forward,
| | 04:05 | so we need to do a rotate.
| | 04:07 | So I'm going to go ahead into Rotate
mode, and make sure Snap is turned on,
| | 04:11 | because, just to make it easy.
| | 04:12 | You can see how it jumps in 5 degree increments.
| | 04:15 | So, we're going to rotate it -15,
so it matches the left foot.
| | 04:21 | So now we should have the basic pose.
| | 04:23 | Now, the one thing I'm noticing
here is the hips are a little too low.
| | 04:25 | So again, we can move these either down
or up. So I'm going to go back into Move
| | 04:30 | mode, and just move those hips up, not
so that their legs are overextended, but
| | 04:36 | just so that they have a nice natural bend.
| | 04:37 | And once we do that, we have our first pose.
| | 04:43 | Now, before we animate our next pose,
I want to make sure that these two
| | 04:49 | controllers here, which are knee
controllers, are ahead of the knees.
| | 04:54 | So if they move behind the knees, for
example, you can see how the legs snap to
| | 04:59 | look at those objects.
| | 05:00 | So I want to make sure that these are
well ahead of the characters, so that the
| | 05:04 | knees are always pointing forward.
| | 05:07 | Okay, so now that we have that,
let's go ahead to the next step, and that
| | 05:12 | will be the right foot.
| | 05:14 | But before we do that, we have
to move our time slider forward.
| | 05:18 | Remember, this walk is 16 frames per step.
| | 05:22 | So 16 plus Frame 1 equals 17, and
now we're going to take the right foot,
| | 05:28 | and move that forward.
| | 05:29 | Now remember, we moved the left foot
40 units to get it into this position,
| | 05:35 | so we're going to have to
move the right foot twice that.
| | 05:38 | We're going to move it -40.
| | 05:39 | You can see that right here, and that
gets it even with the other foot, and then
| | 05:45 | another -40 for -80 puts it right in
front of the opposite foot. And again, we
| | 05:51 | have the same thing happening here
on the right foot's motion panel.
| | 05:55 | You'll see that under the Y
Position, Key Info, we have -60.
| | 06:01 | Remember, we started 20, minus 80, -60, and
let's go ahead and just round that off.
| | 06:06 | We can do the same for the hips.
| | 06:09 | Again, I want to make sure
that we're moving in Parent mode.
| | 06:12 | If we were in Local mode, notice how,
because the hips are rotated, you would be
| | 06:17 | moving them out of square.
| | 06:19 | So I want to make sure I'm in Parent
mode, and that puts it right on the Y-axis,
| | 06:23 | so we can move it forward.
| | 06:25 | So I'm going to go ahead and select that.
| | 06:27 | Remember we're at -6, so
again, plus 40 should be -46.
| | 06:35 | So somewhere in that range,
right there, and this value here,
| | 06:39 | again, in the Motion panel, the
Y value should be exactly -46.
| | 06:43 | So I'm going to go ahead and
delete what's behind the decimal point.
| | 06:47 | Now, if we notice, you'll see that the
hips are rotated in the wrong direction.
| | 06:52 | They were rotated for the left foot.
| | 06:54 | Now we have to rotate them for the right foot.
| | 06:56 | So I'm going to go into Select and Rotate.
| | 06:59 | We need to take off 15, plus another 15,
for total of 30, to rotate them in
| | 07:05 | the opposite direction.
| | 07:07 | So that should be a good
first step. So there we go.
| | 07:10 | So now we just have that foot
sliding from one position to the other,
| | 07:15 | but you can already start to
see the character of that walk.
| | 07:18 | Now I'm going to go ahead and select
the left foot, and I want to make sure I
| | 07:21 | have a keyframe for that.
| | 07:23 | I can just go ahead and click on Set
Key to make sure I have that, and now we're
| | 07:27 | going to do the final step.
| | 07:30 | So all we have to do, again, is move
this forward to the end, which would be 33,
| | 07:35 | and that's 16 frames ahead of 17. And
again, I'm going to move this 80 units.
| | 07:41 | So we're starting at -20.
| | 07:41 | We're going to move -20 minus 80 should
be -100, and let's go ahead and hit
| | 07:50 | Backspace on that in the Motion
panel. And this, again, is going to move
| | 07:55 | forward another -40.
| | 07:56 | Again, I'm looking down
here to see what the value is.
| | 08:02 | So we get that, and so the actual
value here in the Motion panel, the actual
| | 08:07 | value of the key will be -46 minus 40, which would
be -86. And again, I need to unwind that rotation,
| | 08:17 | so I'm going to go ahead and move
that -30 degrees, and we should have it.
| | 08:23 | So now I've got right foot, left foot.
| | 08:27 | So that should pretty much do it.
| | 08:29 | If I look at my right foot here,
though, I don't have a final keyframe there,
| | 08:33 | so I'm going to go ahead and select that, and
make sure I have a keyframe at 33 as well.
| | 08:38 | So that should be at least
the basic blocking of our walk.
| | 08:43 | So let's go ahead and play this.
| | 08:45 | As you can see, we've got a pretty good motion.
| | 08:47 | We've got the hips rotating,
and we've got the feet moving.
| | 08:51 | That's really all we need for this first pass.
| | 08:54 | Now, in the next video, we're going
to go through, and refine this, and do
| | 08:58 | additional passes to lift the feet
off the ground, and finalizing this
| | 09:03 | portion of the walk.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a walk: the lower body| 00:00 | At this point, we should have
the feet and the hips blocked out.
| | 00:04 | So we have basically
the blocking of the motion,
| | 00:08 | but we don't have a full walk just yet.
| | 00:11 | So let's go ahead and concentrate on that.
| | 00:14 | So what we want to do is start moving
the feet, so that they lift up, and that the
| | 00:19 | walk is more natural.
| | 00:21 | So let's go ahead just start
scrubbing through this from the start.
| | 00:25 | Now, you'll notice here that
the foot is moving forward.
| | 00:29 | So what we're trying to do is
basically a shift of weight.
| | 00:34 | In the frame before this, the weight
was basically centered on this foot.
| | 00:40 | This was the foot that's
supporting the character.
| | 00:43 | At this extended position, we're
basically shifting the weight.
| | 00:48 | We're going from this foot, to this foot.
| | 00:52 | So in order to do that, we
need to indicate that visually.
| | 00:57 | So what we can do is create
what's called the recoil position.
| | 01:01 | This is usually a fourth of
the way through the cycle.
| | 01:05 | Halfway through is what's called the
passing position, where one foot passes the other.
| | 01:10 | Halfway into that is what's
called the recoil position.
| | 01:15 | So what I want to do is, at
Frame 5, start animating.
| | 01:19 | I want to make sure Auto Key is turned on.
| | 01:21 | I'm going to select my Move tool, and my hips.
| | 01:25 | So what I want do is, I want to get a sense
that the character is shifting his weight.
| | 01:29 | So this foot here; the left
foot is taking up his weight.
| | 01:34 | So as you can see, as he moves
forward, his weight is bending this knee.
| | 01:42 | One thing we can also do is rotate
those hips forward just a little bit.
| | 01:49 | So what we have here now is the
character is basically compressing this leg, and
| | 01:54 | leaning forward just a bit.
| | 01:56 | So this gives it a much better sense of weight.
| | 02:00 | Now, as this character goes through
the walk cycle, he's actually placed his
| | 02:06 | weight on this foot, and so as this foot
passes, we want to actually extend that
| | 02:12 | foot to show that the muscles of this
leg are working to support the character.
| | 02:18 | So what we can do is we can move up the hips.
| | 02:23 | So now I've got the hips going down, and
then up, and then they move forward again.
| | 02:31 | So let's go ahead and do
a little bit more on this.
| | 02:34 | So as this foot starts to move forward,
what's going to happen is, it's going to
| | 02:39 | lift up at the heel first, and then the toe.
| | 02:43 | So one of things I'd like to do is to
kind of walk this in place, so that I can
| | 02:48 | lift the heel, to make him look like
he's rolling off the ball of his foot.
| | 02:53 | So what I'm going to do is I'm going
to select the keyframe at Frame 1, hold
| | 02:58 | down the Shift key, and
drag that forward 2 frames.
| | 03:01 | So what that does is it locks that
foot down, and then it moves it forward.
| | 03:07 | But as that body starts to move forward,
you can see that that leg is starting
| | 03:13 | to get hyperextended.
| | 03:14 | So in order to correct that, we can
rotate this heel up to show that the
| | 03:22 | character is coming off of that heel.
| | 03:25 | Now, of course, we want to make sure that
the heel is at 0 at the start of this,
| | 03:30 | so I want to make sure I set a key at
Frame 1, and then rotate it into Frame 3.
| | 03:36 | Now, once this is lifted up, the
character is going to move forward with that leg.
| | 03:45 | So now what we need to do is
lift up this foot as it passes.
| | 03:50 | But before we do that, I want to select
this heel, and again, just bring it back
| | 03:55 | to that neutral position.
| | 03:56 | So I'm going to go ahead and select
the keyframe at Frame 1, hold down the
| | 04:00 | Shift key, and just drag a
copy of that key to Frame 9.
| | 04:06 | So that basically puts the
heel back on that foot bone.
| | 04:10 | Now in this pose -- I'm going to go ahead
and turn this around, so we can see this
| | 04:14 | leg a little bit more clearly --
| | 04:17 | so as that moves forward, this leg
is going to lift up as it passes.
| | 04:22 | Now, this is why it's called the
passing position, is because this foot is
| | 04:27 | passing the other foot.
| | 04:29 | So as you can see, he
lifts it up, and sets it down.
| | 04:33 | But in this middle position, you'll
have a lot of weight on this foot.
| | 04:38 | So you have weight that is pulling down
on this foot, and so what we're going to
| | 04:43 | do is we are going to get a torque that is
going to pull that toe forward just a little bit.
| | 04:50 | So we can use our Rotate tool to
rotate that foot a little bit forward.
| | 04:56 | So now he lifts up, and moves forward.
| | 05:00 | Now again, and I want make sure that
that heel is at 0 when he sets it down.
| | 05:06 | So again, I'm just going to go
ahead and rotate that back to 0.
| | 05:09 | So now you can see, we're starting to
get a pretty good sense of motion here,
| | 05:17 | but let's go ahead and do one more
little thing in that passing pose.
| | 05:21 | Let's take a look at this from the front.
| | 05:23 | Now, remember how we talked about the torque
of the toe rotating the foot around the ankle.
| | 05:29 | Well we have another set of torque here as well.
| | 05:33 | We've got this leg here pulling straight down.
| | 05:36 | Gravity is affecting it, and what that's
going to do is that's going to create a
| | 05:41 | pivot here, and a rotation around
that in order to keep it balanced.
| | 05:48 | So what we can do is we can select
the hips, and rotate those a little bit
| | 05:53 | towards the free foot.
| | 05:54 | Now, this is a little bit too much, so
| | 05:56 | I'm going to go ahead and turn off Snap
here, and rotate that down just a bit here.
| | 06:02 | So I still want this hip rotated
a little bit towards this foot.
| | 06:08 | So now this is starting to look pretty good.
| | 06:10 | You can see this sense of weight
as the character moves forward,
| | 06:15 | but we still need to set down that
foot a little bit more realistically.
| | 06:19 | So notice how this foot is coming forward,
but it just kind of slides into place.
| | 06:24 | I want to have a little bit more
of a firm set down of this foot.
| | 06:29 | So I'm going to go a little bit past halfway;
| | 06:32 | I'm going to go to Frame 14, and I'm
going to rotate this foot up just a little
| | 06:38 | bit, and move it forward.
| | 06:40 | So now it's like he moves his foot up, and
then he flips it up, before he sets it down.
| | 06:47 | So now it gets a little bit more realism.
| | 06:51 | But as he flips it up, you'll notice
how we have this toe here, which is also
| | 06:57 | going to experience secondary motion.
| | 07:00 | So we want to go ahead
and set some keys for this.
| | 07:02 | We're going to go ahead and set a key
at 1, and at 9, because we really don't
| | 07:07 | want to key it through that
first part of the animation.
| | 07:11 | But then, as that foot starts to move
forward here, I am going to start to rotate it.
| | 07:18 | So as it starts to flip up, the toe will
drag back, and then right before it sets
| | 07:24 | down, it will rotate up.
| | 07:27 | So now you get this kind of loose
motion here, and then at the very end, I want
| | 07:32 | to make sure that at Frame 17, this is flat.
| | 07:36 | So one of things I can do is I can just
take the rotation keyframe at Frame 1,
| | 07:41 | and again, Shift+Drag it to 17.
| | 07:46 | So now you can see how we've got
a pretty good motion of that foot.
| | 07:52 | So this is basically just the tools for
one foot, but you can do the exact same
| | 07:59 | process on the other foot.
| | 08:02 | So I'm going to go ahead and leave that
up to you, and we'll go ahead and pick
| | 08:06 | this up in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a walk: making the cycle symmetrical| 00:00 | At this point we should have the
basics of the character's walk animated, so
| | 00:04 | let's just go ahead and play that.
| | 00:06 | You would see we have a very
simple walk, but he is walking forward.
| | 00:11 | One of the things we want to do as we
animate a walk is we want to check to make
| | 00:15 | sure that the walk is consistent on both sides.
| | 00:18 | Now this is important for the lower
body but also for the upper body.
| | 00:23 | Now when the character is walking
across the screen like this, it makes it
| | 00:27 | difficult to check one side of
the character against another.
| | 00:31 | So what I am going to do is a little
trick here, and I am going to make the
| | 00:34 | character walk in place so that way we can
check how good of a walk cycle we've created.
| | 00:41 | So I have got this red circle
surrounding the character here, and it's called
| | 00:45 | character root, and what we can do is
we can move this backwards to make the
| | 00:50 | character appear to walk in place.
| | 00:53 | So if I play this, you can see how the
character walks forward, and I know that
| | 00:57 | the character is taking 40 unit steps.
| | 01:01 | So he is taking two steps for total of 80 units.
| | 01:04 | So all I have to do is move him 80
units back and we should be okay.
| | 01:10 | So I am going to make sure I have
Keying turned on here. I am going to select
| | 01:14 | this, and let's go ahead and set a key
at frame 1, and then go here to frame 33
| | 01:23 | into the Motion panel so I can see my
keyframe value here. And I am going to move
| | 01:27 | this back -80 frames or so. And then
here in the keyframe data I can just delete
| | 01:36 | that and make sure it's exactly 80 frames.
| | 01:39 | So now you can see that the character
is pretty much walking in place, but we
| | 01:43 | have a little bit of a problem here in
that this is slowing down. And you can
| | 01:48 | see how that works a little bit, and
that can be fixed in the Curve Editor.
| | 01:53 | So you can see here that the curve is
doing a slow in and slow out, so all I have
| | 01:56 | to do is just left click, rubber band
select all of these, and let's just go
| | 02:01 | ahead and set all these to linear.
| | 02:04 | Now once we do that, you can see how
that snaps into place there, and now we have
| | 02:09 | our character walking in place.
| | 02:11 | Now the main reason we did this was so
that we can check our right and left side
| | 02:16 | of our walk to make sure they're
pretty much accurate so we are not stepping
| | 02:21 | higher with one foot or the other.
| | 02:23 | So we can check this in an orthographic
viewport. So I am going to go out to my
| | 02:27 | Quad view here. Just click here. And
let's go ahead and select our Front view,
| | 02:33 | which is basically a side view for
this. So we are actually animating him
| | 02:38 | moving towards the right here.
| | 02:40 | So let's go ahead into the passing
position here at frame 9, and let's take a
| | 02:46 | look at this angle versus
the one on the opposite side.
| | 02:50 | Now this is a great place to
use our Screen Drawing tool.
| | 02:54 | So I am going to pull up Linktivity
presenter here and just select the Pen tool.
| | 02:58 | And then I am just going to
draw the angles of his joints.
| | 03:02 | So I am just going to trace along
the front of his thigh and shin.
| | 03:09 | And then I can also--if I want to--trace
around the back of the foot so I have a
| | 03:14 | good sense of the angle of that foot.
| | 03:17 | So I am going to go back into Cursor
mode here, and let's scroll forward to the
| | 03:22 | second half of this cycle, which
will be right here at frame 25.
| | 03:27 | And you can notice here that he is a
little bit far forward, but let's go ahead
| | 03:34 | and just slide him back a little
bit and see what the angles are.
| | 03:38 | You can see here that the angles of
his foot are a little bit different.
| | 03:43 | So I can grab this pose here and move it
up and rotate it so that it's as close
| | 03:54 | to identical to the other foot as possible.
| | 03:57 | Now normally you will think I can use
Ghosting for this, but if we use ghosting--
| | 04:02 | let's go ahead and turn that on here.
| | 04:05 | If we show ghosting here, it's going to
ghost the controllers, not the objects
| | 04:10 | in the scene, so it's not going to be
able to compare A to B. So this is one
| | 04:15 | reason why this makes good sense to do this.
| | 04:17 | So now that I have this, I should have
a more balanced walk cycle, and we can
| | 04:22 | certainly go through the rest of our
character's walk and make sure that left
| | 04:27 | and right are pretty much in balance.
| | 04:34 | So once we have this in balance, we can
now go ahead and start moving on to the
| | 04:39 | upper part of the character and start
animating the rest of the walk cycle.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a walk: working with the spine| 00:00 | At this point, we have the lower part
of the character animated. And if we do a
| | 00:04 | quick play, you can see how he's
animating and walking in place. And we are having
| | 00:10 | him walk in place so it will be
easier to animate the upper body.
| | 00:13 | So let's go ahead and move on to the
upper body. And let's reveal those layers.
| | 00:18 | So I am going to go into Manage
layers and we have two layers here.
| | 00:22 | Geometry_Upper and RIG_Upper. And let's
just go ahead and reveal those, and you
| | 00:28 | can see how they show up here. And
let's go ahead and play this animation.
| | 00:32 | So as you can see, now much
is happening above the hips.
| | 00:36 | So let's go ahead and start animating.
| | 00:39 | Now typically what I like to do is I
like to start with the hips and just
| | 00:42 | work my way up the body.
| | 00:45 | So the first thing I'm going to do is
just animate the spine itself and not
| | 00:50 | worry too much about the arms or the head.
| | 00:52 | Now the first thing I want to do is
get the twist of the spine. So in another
| | 00:57 | words, I want to get the torsional
motion of the spine around the vertical
| | 01:04 | axis--in another words around this
axis here. And that will get the arms
| | 01:10 | moving with the hips.
| | 01:12 | So if you remember here, the hips
move forward as the legs move forward.
| | 01:17 | But in a typical walk, the shoulder
will move back, so we need to rotate the
| | 01:22 | spine to move the shoulders back and forth.
| | 01:25 | So best place to do that is
with this first extended position.
| | 01:29 | I am going to go ahead and make sure I
have Auto Key turned on and go ahead and
| | 01:34 | select my spine and start rotating those.
| | 01:37 | Now I remembered that I
rotated my hips 15 degrees forward.
| | 01:43 | So I need to rotate the spine a
total of 30 degrees in the opposite direction.
| | 01:48 | So I have three joints, I can
rotate each one of these 10 degrees.
| | 01:52 | I am going to go ahead and turn on
Angle Snap here and move that one 10, move
| | 01:58 | this one 10, and then move this one 10 again.
| | 02:04 | Now if we take a look at this from
the top, you can see how those hands are
| | 02:08 | behind the hips, which is exactly what we want.
| | 02:13 | So now we have got that first pose, but we
need to do the same thing on the opposite side.
| | 02:18 | So I am going to take that, and the
first thing I need to do is actually unwind
| | 02:23 | this, so I need to move it 10 degrees back, 10 degrees
back, and 10 degrees back again, and what that
| | 02:31 | does is that just puts it even.
| | 02:33 | So I need to move it another 10 in
order to put it back on the other side.
| | 02:37 | So a total of 20 degrees back for
each one of these spine joints.
| | 02:42 | And again, turning on Snap
can help a lot with that.
| | 02:46 | Now I've got it going from here to here.
| | 02:50 | So as this right foot moves forward
here, the left hand also moves forward.
| | 02:56 | Okay, so now what we need to do is
also copy these keys so that it cycles,
| | 03:00 | because it kind of dies right
here after frame 17, so I need to copy
| | 03:04 | everything from 1 to 33.
| | 03:08 | Ctrl-select all three of these, right-
click to highlight this keyframe, hold
| | 03:13 | down the Shift key and
just drag that over to 33.
| | 03:16 | So now I should have that working.
| | 03:18 | So let's go ahead and do a
quick play. And there we go.
| | 03:22 | So now the twist of the spine is
working just fine, but the character also has
| | 03:27 | other spine motions that we need to
consider, and one is the forward and back
| | 03:34 | motion of the spine.
| | 03:36 | Now we can see that--here if we orbit our
camera here so we can see him from the side--
| | 03:40 | you can see that as he falls forward,
we probably can accentuate that with
| | 03:47 | some spine motion to make him lean forward.
| | 03:50 | So again, I am going to go ahead and
just do this a spine joint at a time, so
| | 03:54 | somewhere around frame 5 or 6. I am
going to go ahead and rotate this.
| | 03:59 | Now I might not want to rotate it
exactly in 5-degree increments, so I am going to go
| | 04:03 | ahead and turn off snap here. And let's
just go ahead and rotate that forward and
| | 04:08 | then rotate the other one forward as well.
| | 04:11 | So I can see I am doing
somewhere around 6 degrees or so.
| | 04:14 | So now he leans forward and then comes
back up into the other extended position.
| | 04:22 | As he falls forward, he gives
a much better sense of weight.
| | 04:26 | So we can do that same thing here on frame 21,
rotate this forward, and the other one as well.
| | 04:35 | And once we have those leaning forward,
you can see how now he is actually got
| | 04:40 | a little bit more of a
sense of weight to his walk.
| | 04:43 | Now there is one more twist of the
spine that we can consider, and that's one
| | 04:48 | that we will see from the front view.
And in this case he is walking in the left
| | 04:53 | viewport towards the front, so let's go
ahead into that viewport, and as he goes
| | 04:59 | into this passing position at frame 9,
you can see how the spine is rotating
| | 05:05 | just a little bit towards that foot.
| | 05:08 | So remember, we have this foot here
free, so that's creating a huge weight on
| | 05:15 | the hips, which is going
to rotate them this way.
| | 05:19 | So in order to compensate, we need
to push the shoulders that way by
| | 05:25 | rotating the spine.
| | 05:27 | So I can do that again just by
selecting some of these spine joints.
| | 05:31 | I am just going to select the lower two
in this case, and I am just going to go
| | 05:35 | ahead and twist those so that, again, he
has got a little bit of a side to side
| | 05:42 | twist. And then I can do the
same thing again at frame 25.
| | 05:48 | Again, just push him a little off
of center, and that should do it.
| | 05:53 | So now once I have all this, I can go
back into my Perspective view and get a
| | 05:57 | pretty good sense of how that spine is moving.
| | 06:00 | So I am going to go ahead and play
that, and you can see we have got a pretty
| | 06:04 | good sense of motion in that spine.
And you can see it has a lot more
| | 06:08 | flexibility, which will really help to
bring the character to life as well as
| | 06:13 | to sell the animation.
| | 06:16 | So go ahead and refine your spine
motion of your character, and then we'll go
| | 06:21 | ahead and pick this up and do some
animation of the character's arms.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a walk: arm motion| 00:00 | At this point, we should have these
spine animated. And the next step is to keep
| | 00:06 | moving up the body and animate the arms.
| | 00:10 | So let's go ahead and animate one of
the character's arms, so you can see the
| | 00:14 | process. So let's do a quick playback here.
| | 00:16 | You can see we have got some nice spine
motion, but his arms are still pretty stiff.
| | 00:22 | So let's go ahead and make
them a little bit more natural.
| | 00:25 | So first thing I want to do is go
ahead and start rotating the arm.
| | 00:28 | Now I am going to make sure I am in a
Local mode here so that way I am rotating
| | 00:33 | these along very specific axes. And make
sure I have Auto Key turned on as well.
| | 00:39 | So I am just going to go ahead and just
rotate these down on both sides so that
| | 00:43 | they are close to the character's side.
| | 00:45 | So I really just want to get the
arms away from that extended position.
| | 00:51 | But once I do that, you can see that
his arms towards the side looks a little
| | 00:54 | bit more natural, but it's still not there.
| | 00:58 | So let's go ahead and just do this left arm here
and go through the process of animating that.
| | 01:04 | First thing I want to do is go ahead
and select the shoulder. And we have the
| | 01:09 | left foot forward, which means that
the left arm is going to be back again.
| | 01:14 | They mirror. So I am going to go ahead
and just rotate that arm back, and I want
| | 01:22 | to make sure that I get enough space
there so that the hand is a little bit
| | 01:27 | away from the body.
| | 01:28 | It really helps with the silhouette.
| | 01:30 | Now, this arm is pretty stiff. And
remember, the arm starts here, so it's
| | 01:34 | rotating back, so the next joint
here is not going to be quite there.
| | 01:39 | We are going to have a little bit of a
drag, so I am going to go ahead, rotate
| | 01:42 | that down, and maybe even take that
wrist a little bit and rotate it. And then I
| | 01:47 | want to make sure that I get that arm
out just a little bit from the back of the
| | 01:52 | character, not too far, because then
that is going to look unnatural.
| | 01:55 | So something like that.
Get a nice line of action on that.
| | 01:59 | So once I have that, then I can go to
the next major position, and that will be
| | 02:06 | at the next extended position, which
will be at frame 17. And in this case the
| | 02:11 | left foot is back, so the
left arm will be forward.
| | 02:16 | So first thing I am going to do is
grab that shoulder and move it forward.
| | 02:19 | And now with this arm here, when that
arm swings around, it doesn't just swing
| | 02:24 | directly forward, it swings around the body.
| | 02:27 | Remember that shoulder is rotating,
so if you think about it, this arm is
| | 02:33 | actually kind of moving more this way
than it is just straight up and down.
| | 02:39 | In order to make that visible to
the audience, we need to rotate this
| | 02:43 | shoulder in just a little bit so that we
have room to place the arm in front of the body.
| | 02:49 | So I am going to go ahead and rotate
that form just a little bit and then take
| | 02:53 | that hand and rotate it so that the
arm is a little bit in front of the body.
| | 02:58 | So now if we take a look at that, it's going
to go around the side and then over the body.
| | 03:03 | So remember, the trajectory of that
hand is going to create an arc like that.
| | 03:10 | So if we go ahead and scrub that, we might
even be able to see how that arc works. Okay.
| | 03:15 | So that's pretty close to that.
| | 03:18 | So now let's go ahead and take a look
at that. Looks pretty good from the side.
| | 03:22 | We might actually be a little too far
forward here, so I am going to go ahead
| | 03:26 | and just tweak this just a little bit--
and again, just get that hand in place.
| | 03:31 | So I want to make sure it
looks good from many angles.
| | 03:35 | So now I have got that arm in place.
| | 03:37 | Now in order to complete the cycle,
obviously we need to copy some keyframes
| | 03:43 | here, so I am going to go ahead and Ctrl-select
the shoulder, the elbow, and the wrist
| | 03:48 | and go ahead and again left-click
and drag, highlight this key, and then
| | 03:54 | hold down the Shift key and drag it to
the very end of the timeline at frame 33.
| | 03:59 | So now we should have a cycle.
| | 04:04 | And that's a good start. But if you
look at that arm, it's really stiff.
| | 04:08 | So the elbow is pretty much at the
same angle the whole way through, and so
| | 04:13 | there is not a lot of flexibility to that.
| | 04:15 | So we can use secondary motion to
make that a little bit more accurate.
| | 04:20 | As this shoulder moves forward, this
elbow is going to drag back, so I want
| | 04:27 | to kind of go somewhere towards the
middle of this cycle here. In fact, we
| | 04:31 | can go to this passing position, and I am
going go ahead and just straighten out that elbow.
| | 04:38 | So now as it moves forwards, you can see
how that's kind of dragging, and then as
| | 04:44 | it comes up, you can see how
the arm just naturally bends.
| | 04:48 | But it's not just the elbow
that's dragging, it's also the hand.
| | 04:52 | So again, as that moves forward, we
can go again to frame 9--which is that
| | 04:59 | passing position--and rotate that hand
back just a little bit. We don't want to
| | 05:02 | over-extend it, but just enough to let
the audience know that it's flexible.
| | 05:07 | So now we are going to do
the same thing coming back.
| | 05:11 | Now again, that arm looks very
stiff. It's almost at the same angle.
| | 05:16 | But again, this arm is moving up in
this direction, and then the shoulder
| | 05:22 | is pulling it back.
| | 05:24 | So we are going to have a little bit of
a overshoot in this direction, and so what
| | 05:29 | we can do is as this shoulder starts to
pull back, the object in motion wants to
| | 05:34 | stay in motion, so I am going to go
ahead and grab the elbow and bend it a
| | 05:38 | little bit more--and also grab
this wrist and bend that some more.
| | 05:44 | Now the one thing you have to be
careful about is that you don't bend it too
| | 05:51 | much, because if you do, what's going
to happen is you want to take a look at
| | 05:56 | this part of the hand.
| | 05:58 | You want to make sure that that is
not doing a double bounce or loop.
| | 06:04 | When you start to animate this, there
is often situations where the shoulder is
| | 06:09 | pulling it back and the elbow and the
wrist are moving forward and you get a
| | 06:13 | little bit of a bounce in that animation.
| | 06:15 | So just go ahead and pay attention to
that and make sure that we don't have that
| | 06:19 | sort of motion there.
| | 06:21 | So again, we just want to make sure
that's good. And then as it's being
| | 06:25 | pulled back, you can see how we get a
little bit more flexibility and that
| | 06:30 | should pretty much be it.
| | 06:32 | So let's take a look at that.
| | 06:34 | Okay, now there is probably a little bit
more overshoot that we can do right here.
| | 06:39 | Now one of the things I am noticing is
that when his hands goes back, it still
| | 06:43 | feels a little bit stiff.
| | 06:44 | So one of the things we can do is we
can just overshoot this a little bit in
| | 06:49 | the negative direction.
| | 06:50 | So I am just going to go two frames
into this cycle and then push that arm back
| | 06:55 | just a little bit and that should
give us a little bit more flexibility.
| | 07:02 | So that looks pretty good.
| | 07:05 | So that's basically how one arm is animated.
| | 07:08 | Now we can do the same thing for the right arm.
| | 07:11 | So I am going to just get that animated.
| | 07:13 | Let's go ahead and just take a quick
look at what the full cycle looks like.
| | 07:18 | Now I have gone ahead and animated in
the right arm, and I've used pretty much
| | 07:22 | the same method that I used for the
left. Obviously it's offset by 16 frames,
| | 07:28 | but it's pretty much the same process.
| | 07:30 | So now you can see how I have got
both arms animating and a much more
| | 07:35 | realistic walk cycle.
| | 07:37 | All we have to do now is just get
that head moving, and we should be done.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a walk: the head| 00:00 | The last thing we will
need to animate is the head.
| | 00:03 | We have pretty much the whole
character animated except for the head.
| | 00:08 | And as you can see, we have got some nice arm,
spine, hip, leg motion, but that head is
| | 00:13 | still very stiff, and it's still bobbing around.
| | 00:16 | It looks like he has got a
neck brace or something like that.
| | 00:18 | So let's go ahead and give him some flexibility.
| | 00:21 | Now the first thing we want to do is
do the left/right motion of the head.
| | 00:27 | You can notice here that basically
his head is turning with the shoulders.
| | 00:32 | So when the shoulders are facing to the
right, his eyes are facing to the right,
| | 00:38 | and when the shoulders are facing to
left, his eyes are facing to the left.
| | 00:42 | So the easiest way to do that is to
grab this head controller and face his eyes
| | 00:47 | forward--and again, I want to make sure
I am in Local mode and make sure I have
| | 00:52 | Auto Key turned on. And let's
just go ahead and face him forward.
| | 00:57 | So you can just make him look straight
into the camera here, and then obviously
| | 01:02 | he is going to turn again when that
shoulder moves the opposite direction, so we
| | 01:07 | just want to unwind that.
| | 01:09 | And then I am just going to copy this
frame here, hold down the Shift key, and
| | 01:14 | drag that to frame 33 so
that way we get a nice cycle.
| | 01:19 | So now when I play that, he is at
least facing in the direction that he is
| | 01:25 | walking, which is a good start.
| | 01:27 | But we still have a lot of inflexibility
in the forward and back direction.
| | 01:35 | So as you can see, his neck still looks
pretty stiff when viewed from the side.
| | 01:40 | So let's go ahead and select
that head controller again.
| | 01:44 | And let's do some secondary motion.
| | 01:46 | So right here he is falling down.
| | 01:49 | He is falling into that step. He is
placing his weight on that left foot, but
| | 01:55 | the head doesn't want to move in that direction.
| | 01:57 | The head wants to stay where it is.
The head is going to drag behind.
| | 02:03 | So somewhere around frame 5--actually I
am going to do this at frame 6 because
| | 02:07 | I have to give it a little bit of drag--
just push that head back so that he is
| | 02:12 | still looking in that direction.
| | 02:14 | So as you can see, he moves back, and then
as he stands up--somewhere around frame
| | 02:21 | 12 or 13--I want to go ahead and rotate
that back, so again, he has a little bit
| | 02:27 | of flexibility in this neck. And again,
we are going to do same thing here,
| | 02:32 | frame 22, rotate his head back, and then
somewhere around frame 28 or so, just go
| | 02:41 | ahead and nudge that forward just a little bit.
| | 02:44 | Go ahead and play that.
| | 02:47 | So as you can see, his head looks a lot
more stable. It has a lot more sense of
| | 02:52 | motion here. And let's go ahead and give
it a little bit better perspective on this.
| | 02:56 | And let's go ahead and play that.
| | 03:00 | So that's pretty much all
we need for a basic walk.
| | 03:05 | So let's just reiterate the process.
We start with the lower body, we get the
| | 03:10 | foundation of that walk blocked in,
we get the feet and the hips working,
| | 03:15 | then we move up the spine, get
the arms, and then finally the head.
| | 03:20 | Now we can certainly go over this walk
more and tweak it, give it a little bit
| | 03:25 | more character, but this is the
fundamental walk that you need to learn.
| | 03:30 | And once you understand this, then you
can start moving on to walks that have a
| | 03:35 | little bit more character, a little bit
more motion, more spring, more bounce,
| | 03:39 | more whatever. And we are going to be
doing a lot of that in the next chapter.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Adding Character to a Walk Changing a walk using poses| 00:00 | In the last chapter we animated a very
simple basic walk, and we understood the
| | 00:05 | mechanics of walking.
| | 00:07 | So let's go ahead and take a
look at this walk that we created.
| | 00:10 | So it's a very simple basic walk.
| | 00:14 | Now the mechanics of this walk are
correct, but the walk itself doesn't
| | 00:18 | have much character.
| | 00:19 | It really doesn't tell you much
about what's going on with the character.
| | 00:24 | And we can change that by
modifying the walk to add more character.
| | 00:28 | Now there are a number of ways of doing this.
| | 00:31 | One way is to just look at the
individual poses of the walk and affect them.
| | 00:36 | We're going to take a look
at the passing position first.
| | 00:39 | Now this walk is animated on 16 frames
per step, so if we go 8 frames into this,
| | 00:45 | you'll see we have a passing position.
| | 00:48 | Now just to refresh your memory, the
passing position is where the foot passes
| | 00:53 | under the character.
| | 00:54 | So if we want, we can affect this pose.
| | 00:57 | So let's go ahead and start with the hips.
| | 01:00 | I'm going to turn on Auto Key so we
get keyframes here, and then I'm going to
| | 01:04 | select the hips and move them forward.
| | 01:06 | We are going to move them in front of
the heel, so I want to give this character
| | 01:11 | his weight really far forward.
| | 01:14 | Now when we do that, obviously it looks
like this character is going to tip over.
| | 01:19 | We don't have a solid line of action here.
| | 01:22 | So in order to do that, we need to
get him more centered over that foot.
| | 01:28 | So in order to do this, we just have
to rotate those hips. So I'm going to go
| | 01:31 | ahead and make sure I select those hips
and then just rotate them so his body is
| | 01:37 | back over that, so I
have a nice little arc here.
| | 01:41 | Now when I did that, it kind
of straightened out that foot.
| | 01:43 | So I'm going to go ahead and just push that
down just a little bit so I have a nice little arc.
| | 01:49 | So when I do that, now I've got a
different pose. And let's go ahead and
| | 01:53 | just quickly play this.
| | 01:55 | And you can see that already it's kind of
giving a little bit more of a kick to the walk.
| | 01:59 | Now we can accentuate that pose a
lot more by working with the legs.
| | 02:04 | So I'm going to take this foot that is
passing, and let's go ahead and just move
| | 02:08 | that way high up. And let's go
ahead and rotate that foot down.
| | 02:14 | So I'm going to go ahead and just move
and rotate that foot. And now I've got a
| | 02:19 | much stronger pose, because now this
foot is in line, and again, I've got that
| | 02:23 | knee up really high and it
gives a nice silhouette there.
| | 02:26 | So you can see how when that leg
comes up, it definitely changes the
| | 02:31 | character of the walk.
| | 02:33 | It kind of gives you this
Ministry of Silly Walks type of walk.
| | 02:37 | Now we only have the
first half of this walk done.
| | 02:39 | Let's go ahead and do the second half.
so I'm going to go halfway into the
| | 02:43 | second cycle, which is at frame 25, and
I'm going to select the hips, move them
| | 02:51 | forward, and maybe a little bit down
and make sure I get a little bit of a bend
| | 02:54 | in the knee and then rotate those hips
back again, and select the foot--rotate it
| | 03:03 | down. And let's go ahead
and move that up as well.
| | 03:07 | So now I should have a fairly symmetrical walk.
| | 03:10 | Now you can see that by doing this, you
really change the character of the walk.
| | 03:16 | Now all we did was change one pose and
you changed the way that the audience
| | 03:22 | perceives that walk.
| | 03:24 | Now we can continue on with
this by changing another pose.
| | 03:28 | So in this case, let's go ahead and
look at what's called the cushion pose.
| | 03:33 | Now this is where the character is
switching his weight; he is placing his
| | 03:37 | weight on the planted foot.
| | 03:40 | So he has just set his left foot down
at frame 1, and at frame 5 he has all of
| | 03:46 | his weight on that foot.
| | 03:47 | Well, let's go ahead and accentuate that.
| | 03:49 | I'm going to select the hips, and then
I'm going to push them down, so I want to
| | 03:55 | give a little bit of a squash to him.
| | 03:58 | In fact, I can squash him even more by
rotating him, and you can see how I've
| | 04:03 | created a nice little squash there.
| | 04:06 | So now he squashes down and then he comes
back up--just really accentuates that lift.
| | 04:13 | We can do the same thing here at frame 21.
| | 04:16 | Again, just move him forward and down
and rotate him forward to give him a
| | 04:22 | little bit more squash.
| | 04:24 | So again, you can see how that's added
a little bit more bounce to that walk.
| | 04:29 | It's given it a little bit more life.
| | 04:32 | Now this has created a much more
active, a much more happy, bright walk.
| | 04:37 | You could certainly tone it down and
go in the opposite direction and make
| | 04:41 | a sad or a slow walk.
| | 04:43 | But as you can see, by changing just a
few poses in the walk, you can completely
| | 04:48 | change the character of that walk.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Changing a walk using foot placement| 00:00 | Another way to change the character
of the walk is to affect the footsteps.
| | 00:04 | In other words, change the position of the feet.
| | 00:08 | Now a simple way to do this would be
to place the feet closer together or
| | 00:12 | further apart to make the
steps shorter or longer.
| | 00:16 | Another way is to place the
steps towards or away from the body.
| | 00:20 | And let's go ahead and do
that by creating a basic catwalk--
| | 00:24 | in other words, the type of walk that
models use when they're on the runway.
| | 00:28 | This can also be used for something
like a tightrope walk where a character is
| | 00:32 | walking along a line.
| | 00:34 | So we have our basic walk here,
and let's take a look at that.
| | 00:38 | Now in this particular walk, the feet are
just directly under the body and they're apart.
| | 00:43 | But let's go ahead and push them
together so that the character walks in pretty
| | 00:47 | much a straight line.
| | 00:49 | So I'm going to go over to frame 1,
make sure I have Auto Key turned on, and
| | 00:54 | then I'm going to select the left foot,
and I'm going to push it in towards that
| | 00:59 | center line here. And I'm using the grid
here as my guide. And then I'm going to
| | 01:04 | select the right foot, do the same.
| | 01:08 | So now that first step, he is basically
walking on that line. And then we do the
| | 01:14 | same on the opposite side there.
| | 01:17 | We can select the right foot, push it
in, and again, with the left foot--
| | 01:22 | and this is at frame 17.
| | 01:26 | Okay, we can do the same at the end.
So I'm going to go ahead and select the
| | 01:29 | left foot, push that into the line, and
select that right foot in the back, and
| | 01:34 | again, center that on the line.
| | 01:37 | So now that we have this, we have
a basic walk where the character is
| | 01:41 | walking along a line.
| | 01:43 | Now we've got a couple glitches here.
| | 01:45 | The first one I see is that when the
character goes out to frame 3 here, we
| | 01:50 | have a keyframe on that foot, and that
kind of snaps that foot to the right,
| | 01:54 | which is not what we want.
| | 01:55 | So I'm going to go ahead and just
left-click and drag over that key at frame 3
| | 02:00 | and hit Delete. And then we have the exact
opposite thing happening on the left foot.
| | 02:05 | So when it goes to cycle here, at frame
17 it's fine, but by frame 19 it's kind
| | 02:12 | of snapped over to the side.
| | 02:13 | So I'm going to select a keyframe
at frame 19 and again hit Delete.
| | 02:16 | So this gives us a little bit stronger of a
walk here, so now it's a little bit smoother.
| | 02:22 | But one of the things I'm noticing here
is that at frame 9--which is our passing
| | 02:28 | position, the feet are
basically on top of each other.
| | 02:32 | This one isn't going out far
enough to get around the other foot.
| | 02:37 | So we can obviously fix that by pushing
that foot out and maybe even rotating it
| | 02:42 | just a bit to give it a
little bit more of a natural feel.
| | 02:46 | So now as he comes around, we're
just going to swing that foot around.
| | 02:50 | But by swinging that foot around,
you're basically placing it a little bit
| | 02:56 | further off to the side here.
| | 02:58 | And so what that's going to do is
that's going to place the character out of
| | 03:03 | balance, so we need to push him in the
opposite way in order to make this work.
| | 03:09 | So I'm going to select the hips and
push them over the other foot so that the
| | 03:15 | weight is a little bit more centered.
| | 03:17 | But when that happens, the hips also
have to rotate, because we really want to
| | 03:21 | get a smooth line of action on those hips.
So I'm gonna move these down just a bit, just
| | 03:27 | to make sure that foot is not off the ground.
| | 03:29 | And then I'm going to select some of
the joints of the spine and again, move
| | 03:32 | those over to get a little more of an S shape.
| | 03:35 | Now what happens with this is then you
can see what's happening is that he kicks
| | 03:40 | his hip out to his left
as that right foot passes.
| | 03:45 | And this is really why models on the
runway walk this way, because it makes
| | 03:49 | their hips move left and right, which
makes the clothes bounce a lot more and
| | 03:54 | shows off the clothing.
| | 03:55 | Now we have the exact same
thing happening here at frame 25.
| | 03:59 | Again, that foot is kind of coming
through. So I'm going to move that foot
| | 04:04 | out, rotate it just a bit, and again,
select the hips, move those over, maybe
| | 04:11 | a little bit down and make sure I don't
get that foot on the ground there, and
| | 04:15 | then rotate those to keep that weight
centered. So I'm going to also rotate the spine.
| | 04:20 | So now we've got it happening on both sides.
| | 04:24 | So as you can see, just by placing the
feet in a different position, it changes
| | 04:29 | the body mechanics slightly.
| | 04:32 | And what this does is it allows the character
to have a different character to the walk.
| | 04:38 | So one of the ways we can change the
character of a walk is to change the foot
| | 04:43 | placement of the character, just the
body so that the weight is still centered
| | 04:48 | and the walk will have a
completely different character.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exaggerating a walk: the extended position| 00:00 | At this point, we've seen a couple
of different ways to modify a walk.
| | 00:04 | Let's go through a walk a pose at a
time and really strengthen each individual
| | 00:09 | pose, and that'll make the
entire walk much stronger.
| | 00:14 | So we're going to go
ahead and use this walk here.
| | 00:16 | Now this is a little bit different
than the walk we've used before, in that
| | 00:21 | it's 12 frames per step.
| | 00:24 | So it's a little bit faster than the
walk we used before, which was 16 frames
| | 00:29 | per step, but the mechanics of
this walk are pretty much the same.
| | 00:33 | Now the first thing we want to do is go
ahead and get a strong pose at the very
| | 00:37 | beginning of the walk.
| | 00:38 | And in this case, that's going
to be at this extended position.
| | 00:43 | So we want to make sure that we get a
much stronger pose than what we have here.
| | 00:48 | Now in this case, we've got this character.
He is pretty much straight up and down.
| | 00:53 | I want to push him into the walk, I want
to make him a lot more determined as he
| | 00:57 | walks, and so let's go ahead and
start posing him with that intent.
| | 01:02 | Now before we do this, let's start
animating in Local mode, and I want to make
| | 01:06 | sure that Auto Key is turned on.
| | 01:09 | So I'm going to go ahead and select the hips,
and let's go ahead and rotate those forward.
| | 01:15 | So I'm going to make sure that he is
rotating into that walk, and I also want to
| | 01:20 | move him into the pose.
| | 01:23 | And what this is going to do is this is
actually going to overstretch this leg
| | 01:27 | and lift up that heel.
| | 01:29 | But that's okay because that'll just give
a little bit more character to the walk.
| | 01:33 | So I'm going to go ahead and rotate
that heel just to match how much we've
| | 01:38 | lifted it you, so I want to just go
to the point where that knee bends.
| | 01:41 | I don't want the knee over-extended.
I want it just gently bent like that.
| | 01:46 | So now we have a pretty forward pose, but if
you notice, he is a little bit out of balance.
| | 01:53 | So I'm going to go ahead and rotate
his spine so that he is a little bit more
| | 01:59 | upright--so he is kind of facing
in the direction that he is going.
| | 02:02 | Now that we've given him this bend in
the spine, you can see we've got a much
| | 02:07 | stronger line of action for this first pose.
| | 02:12 | And when you have a strong line of action,
it can really help sell the animation
| | 02:17 | because you're getting a changing shape.
| | 02:19 | It's not just straight up and down.
| | 02:21 | So we can continue this
further by working on the arm.
| | 02:26 | So I'm going to go ahead and push his
arms out as well. So I'm going to grab
| | 02:29 | that left shoulder, and I'm going
to push that arm pretty far back.
| | 02:33 | We're going to swing his arms a lot
because he is pretty determined, and then
| | 02:38 | we need to do the same on the opposite
side for the right arm, and I really can't
| | 02:42 | select that in Shaded mode.
| | 02:44 | So I'm going to go into Wireframe
here and just snag that shoulder.
| | 02:49 | You can see a little spot of blue
through the wireframe there, and just go ahead
| | 02:53 | and move that up as well.
| | 02:55 | Again, I want the arms away from the body
to give a little bit more of an arm swing.
| | 03:00 | So I'm going to push that back into Shaded
mode, and now we have a pretty strong first pose.
| | 03:07 | But again, we need to make sure that we
do this on the opposite side. So you can
| | 03:11 | see we've got this good strong first
pose. And then that second pose, it kind of
| | 03:16 | just goes back to that straight up
and down kind of body motion here.
| | 03:19 | So let's go ahead and copy
this over to the other side.
| | 03:24 | So in order to do that, I should
probably go into an orthographic viewport so we
| | 03:27 | have it as precise as possible.
| | 03:29 | So in this case, I'm going to go into
the Back viewport. I'll go ahead and
| | 03:33 | center that in just a little bit.
| | 03:35 | And if we're going to mirror a pose,
we need to have some sort of reference.
| | 03:40 | So in this case, I'm going to go ahead
and bring in my little Screen Drawing
| | 03:44 | tool here. And let's go ahead and
just trace out the outline of the body.
| | 03:48 | So I'm going to use that Pen tool, and
I'm just going to go ahead and trace the
| | 03:54 | silhouette of his body. Go
ahead and get the arms as well.
| | 03:59 | Again, I'm trying to get approximate
positions here, and I'm drawing with a
| | 04:04 | mouse, so I might not be as accurate as I
could be, and then also the front of the legs.
| | 04:10 | Again, I'm looking here for angles, I
want to make sure that I know what the
| | 04:14 | angles are, particularly the
angle of this foot that's up here.
| | 04:18 | Now I've got pretty much all the angles
here, I'm going to go back into Select
| | 04:23 | mode, and now let's go to
halfway through the cycle.
| | 04:27 | Remember, this is a 12 frame per step, so
I'm starting at frame 1, 1 plus 12 is 13.
| | 04:33 | So you can see, his pose has changed a
lot just through those few changes here,
| | 04:40 | so let's go ahead and push those hips
forward, rotate the body forward at the
| | 04:46 | hips, again, move that back a little bit,
and rotate up that foot--again, just
| | 04:54 | to get a nice bend in the leg--and then
get that spine back into position here.
| | 05:06 | Now let's go ahead and work on the arms.
| | 05:08 | I'm going to grab that left arm,
match it to what the right arm was, and we
| | 05:13 | still have that same problem with the
other arm, the right arm. So I'm going to
| | 05:18 | go ahead and grab that in
Wireframe mode and push that out.
| | 05:22 | And as you can see, we've got a
pretty close approximation of that pose.
| | 05:27 | This leg is a little bit off.
| | 05:28 | Let me see if I can move the hips.
There we go!
| | 05:33 | Okay, so sometimes those little tweaks can help.
| | 05:36 | So now that I have this, I can erase my
guidelines, move my Screen Drawing tool off.
| | 05:43 | And let's take a look
at this in Shaded mode.
| | 05:45 | In fact, I'm going to go back into
Perspective so we can see this a little bit
| | 05:49 | more realistically. And let's
just go ahead and scrub through it.
| | 05:52 | As you can see now, we've
got really strong pose here.
| | 05:59 | It's even gone a little bit better now,
even with just those two poses, but
| | 06:04 | it's still a little jumpy here, because his
hips are moving back to that initial pose.
| | 06:10 | But we can fix all of those in the next lesson.
| | 06:14 | Just remember that getting a strong
first pose is a great guide for getting
| | 06:20 | a strong walk.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exaggerating a walk: the passing position| 00:00 | Let's go ahead and continue
with our exaggerated walk.
| | 00:04 | Now we've exaggerated the very first
position of this walk--which is the extended
| | 00:09 | position--and when we do that, you
can see we have a very nice walk.
| | 00:14 | So what I've done is I've extended this
very first position--the middle position,
| | 00:18 | which is the opposite side--and then
I've gone ahead and duplicated that first
| | 00:22 | frame to the last and just mirrored
that pose so that we have a cycle point.
| | 00:27 | Now this is just one pose in the cycle here.
| | 00:31 | So let's go ahead into the passing
position, which is in the middle of the cycle.
| | 00:37 | And this is where the
foot passes the other foot.
| | 00:41 | So in this case, we've got this
right foot passing the left foot.
| | 00:46 | So this pose here really isn't all that strong.
| | 00:49 | We have a pretty strong line of action here.
| | 00:51 | Let's go ahead and continue with
that theme on the passing position.
| | 00:57 | So the passing position is
halfway through the first step.
| | 01:02 | So we have 12 frames per step,
so halfway through 12 will be 6.
| | 01:06 | So I'm starting at frame 1. That means
we're going to be 1 plus 6, which is frame 7.
| | 01:11 | And as you can see, we
already have some keyframes here.
| | 01:15 | So I'm going to make sure I have Auto Key
turned on, and we're also in Local mode here.
| | 01:20 | And let's go ahead and start with Move.
| | 01:23 | Now in this first pose, he
was kind of ahead of the feet.
| | 01:28 | So I want to go ahead and continue with this.
| | 01:30 | I want to go ahead and push those
hips ahead of the feet and then just
| | 01:34 | push them up almost to the point where
they are just pulling that heel off the ground.
| | 01:40 | Now this heel is naturally bending a
little bit just because of an in-between,
| | 01:43 | but I actually want to push it further.
And you can see that right here it's
| | 01:47 | already kind of a strong line of action.
| | 01:50 | He has just got this straight pose here.
| | 01:52 | So let's go ahead and
continue modifying this pose.
| | 01:55 | So now that I have this, I can grab
that heel and again, just push it off the
| | 01:59 | ground so he's almost on his toe.
| | 02:02 | Again, I just want to relax it like a
little bit, and I can also rotate those
| | 02:07 | fine joints just enough so that
we have a strong line of action.
| | 02:12 | Now if we look at this, we'll see that
we've got a real obstruction to this line
| | 02:17 | of action, and that's right there.
| | 02:18 | So you see it's kind of jutting out,
and we can go ahead and fix that.
| | 02:22 | Make the pose a lot stronger, just
by grabbing that heel and moving it.
| | 02:26 | So I'm going to go ahead and move that
foot up, and then I'm going to rotate it
| | 02:31 | down so that we have a much stronger
line of action--so that we are really not
| | 02:35 | interfering with that line of action.
| | 02:38 | So again, just push that up and rotate it
so that foot is almost parallel to that leg.
| | 02:44 | Now once we do that, you can
see how it's a much stronger pose.
| | 02:48 | He just goes into this, and then he
goes straight up, and you can see we've got
| | 02:52 | a much stronger line of action on both sides.
| | 02:56 | So let's go ahead and do
the same on the opposite side.
| | 02:59 | We're at frame 13 for this extended
position. 6 frames past that would be frame 19.
| | 03:05 | Now I'm just going to go ahead and dial
this, and I'm not going to match it exactly.
| | 03:10 | We just want to get a sense
for how this is going to look.
| | 03:12 | If you want we can tweak it later.
| | 03:14 | But let's just push this body up
and then grab that heel and rotate it.
| | 03:21 | Again, just so that knee just starts to bend.
| | 03:25 | We're just going to go ahead and make
this foot pretty much parallel to that
| | 03:29 | leg, push that up, and then maybe adjust
the rotation of the spine just to give
| | 03:34 | a little bit more of the bend.
| | 03:36 | So now he pops up and then pops up again.
| | 03:40 | You can see how he gets a
really nice extension there.
| | 03:44 | Now I've got an extra keyframe here--
somewhere right there on this hip--which
| | 03:50 | I'm actually going to go
ahead and delete at frame 11.
| | 03:54 | Play it. There we go.
| | 03:56 | Okay. So as you can see, he's got a much
stronger line of action, much stronger
| | 04:00 | intention, and the walk
feels a lot more determined.
| | 04:05 | So as you can see, by strengthening
each individual pose, you get a much
| | 04:10 | stronger overall walk.
| | 04:12 | Now let's go ahead and continue with
this and make this walk even stronger
| | 04:16 | in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exaggerating a walk: the cushion position| 00:00 | At this point we've got two very
strong poses, and this has actually strengthened
| | 00:05 | our walk quite a bit. And as you can
see, we've got a very strong pose here at
| | 00:11 | the extended position where the
character's feet are apart and then where the
| | 00:16 | character's feet pass each
other at the passing position.
| | 00:20 | Now we can also strengthen this walk a lot
more by working with the cushion position.
| | 00:27 | Now that's a position that's halfway
between the extended and the passing
| | 00:31 | position--so right here at frame 4.
| | 00:35 | Remember this is a 12-frame cycle, so
halfway is the passing position, 6 frames in.
| | 00:41 | 3 frames in, half of that, is that
cushion position, and that's where the
| | 00:47 | character is really setting
his weight on his feet.
| | 00:50 | So we can go ahead and affect
this to give it a lot more bounce.
| | 00:54 | Now the first thing I'm noticing here
is that this heel is up on the character.
| | 01:00 | So let's go ahead and animate that down.
| | 01:02 | Now before we do that, we need to make
sure we have Auto Key turned on--and also
| | 01:06 | I like to animate in Local mode as well.
| | 01:09 | So I'm going to go ahead and go into
Rotate, and we want to make sure that that
| | 01:13 | foot is flat on the ground.
| | 01:16 | Now it's rotating up because it was in
between into that passing position where
| | 01:20 | we lifted up that heel.
| | 01:22 | So now that we've got that on
the ground, we can also cushion him.
| | 01:26 | Remember, his weight is
coming down onto that foot.
| | 01:30 | So let's go ahead and squash him.
| | 01:32 | I'm going to grab the hips
and push them down quite a bit.
| | 01:36 | Now what this does is it squashes him
before he moves up into that passing position.
| | 01:42 | So we're getting a squash and stretch.
| | 01:44 | So we do squash, stretch, and this
gives a lot more bounce into that walk.
| | 01:50 | But we can squash him
even more through rotation.
| | 01:54 | So I'm going to go ahead and rotate
those hips so that his head is further
| | 01:58 | down, and then I'm going to select the
spine and go ahead and rotate that down as well.
| | 02:05 | So again, what we're doing is we've
got to make him as compact as possible.
| | 02:10 | So now that we've got that, you can
see how it really gives a much more
| | 02:15 | contrast to that walk.
| | 02:17 | But we can go even further by
taking this heel and tucking it in.
| | 02:21 | If you can see here, we've got with this
heel out is not as compact as he could be.
| | 02:28 | So let's go ahead and rotate that heel a
little bit and then move that into the
| | 02:35 | body--and again, I just want to
make them as compact as possible.
| | 02:39 | So that way when he stretches up,
we get as much contrast as possible.
| | 02:45 | A lot of times animation is about contrast.
| | 02:48 | So what you're trying to do is get as
much contrast in the poses as you can.
| | 02:53 | So now we have a pretty strong pose.
| | 02:56 | But one thing I do want to affect is the head.
| | 02:59 | As you can see his head
really isn't moving at all, really.
| | 03:03 | We really want to get a little
bit more life into that head.
| | 03:07 | So I'm going to push his head forward.
| | 03:08 | He does need to be looking in
the direction that he is moving.
| | 03:13 | So as we have him move forward,
then he can move up here.
| | 03:17 | We can drag it back a little bit here, so
now we've got a little bit more head motion.
| | 03:23 | Now we can do the exact same
thing on the opposite side.
| | 03:26 | So in order to make this as
precise as possible, let's go into an
| | 03:29 | Orthographic Viewport.
| | 03:30 | I'm going to go into my Back view here,
and I'm going to just do what I've done
| | 03:36 | before, which is trace out his body.
| | 03:40 | So I'm going to go ahead and
move in my Screen Draw tools here,
| | 03:43 | make sure we're on frame 4, and I'm
going to sketch out the angle of that
| | 03:51 | body as well as the position of this
foot, because those are other things
| | 03:56 | that we're working with.
| | 03:57 | We're working with the lower body
and the spine--really didn't affect the
| | 04:01 | arms all that much.
| | 04:02 | So let's go ahead and make sure that
we've got these affected, and then I'm
| | 04:06 | going to go back into Select mode.
| | 04:08 | Now again, we're going to go
a fourth of the way into the second step.
| | 04:12 | So 13+3 would be frame 16--
is that cushion position.
| | 04:18 | So move those hips down, rotate the
body forward, rotate the spine just a bit,
| | 04:27 | just to give him a little bit of an arc,
and also make sure that head is up.
| | 04:33 | Then I'm going to rotate that foot and
get that into position, and then this
| | 04:40 | heel also needs to be planted.
| | 04:42 | So let's go ahead and plant that heel.
And as you can see, when we plant that
| | 04:45 | heel, it moves the leg into position.
| | 04:48 | So now that I have that, we do
have a fairly good second pose.
| | 04:54 | So now that we have that in place, let's
go back into Perspective mode and take
| | 04:59 | a look at where we're at.
| | 05:00 | So now here's the walk.
| | 05:03 | So as you can see, he's got a lot more
life, a lot more pep than the initial walk.
| | 05:09 | Now we can go further with this if we
want by adding a little bit more drag
| | 05:14 | and kind of just touching
up the animation in general.
| | 05:17 | Let's just go ahead and take a
look at the final tweaked version.
| | 05:21 | I've got a version here
called Chap05_05_Final.max.
| | 05:26 | So let's go ahead and play that.
| | 05:28 | So as you can see, the final version has
a little bit more drag and a little bit
| | 05:32 | more secondary motion on the arms.
| | 05:34 | But the character has a
lot more energy in his walk.
| | 05:39 | Now we did this, again, just by really
pushing each individual pose in the walk.
| | 05:46 | Now you can do this for any walk.
| | 05:48 | This is kind of more of an energetic
walk, but you can certainly push poses
| | 05:52 | to make a walk slower, make the
character more happy, more sad, really
| | 05:58 | whatever mood you want.
| | 05:59 | Just make sure you push the poses,
and it will read a lot better.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. Animating Runs A run in four poses| 00:00 | Now that you understand how to animate
a simple walk, let's go ahead and move
| | 00:05 | on to animating a run.
| | 00:07 | Now runs and walks are similar in
that the character is propelling himself
| | 00:12 | forward with his feet, but they are
different enough so that we should learn how
| | 00:16 | to animate a run separately.
| | 00:18 | So let's take a look at this basic
run here. And as you can see, the
| | 00:24 | character is running forward.
| | 00:25 | Now the first thing you'll notice is that,
well, a run is usually faster than a walk.
| | 00:30 | Walk may take 12 to 16 frames per step.
A run may only take 4 to 8 frames per step.
| | 00:37 | So a run is actually a faster pace.
| | 00:41 | Now if I go into this Perspective
viewport, we can take a look at this a
| | 00:45 | little bit more closely.
| | 00:47 | Now the first thing is the character
isn't just stepping from foot to foot.
| | 00:52 | Typically in a walk, you have at
least one foot on the ground at any time.
| | 00:58 | But with a run, the character is
actually leaping through the air.
| | 01:02 | So at this point in the run, the
character is actually airborne;
| | 01:05 | he is off the ground, and then he hits
the ground, cushions--so what's happening
| | 01:12 | here is exact same thing in the walk,
is that the weight of the character is
| | 01:16 | coming down and that bends the knee
and then he pushes off again and leaps
| | 01:23 | through the air one more
time and then catches himself.
| | 01:27 | Now one of the things you'll also
notice with the run is that the motion of the
| | 01:30 | hips and shoulders are pretty
much the same as they are in a walk.
| | 01:35 | So in a run, the forward foot rotates
the hip forward and then the shoulder
| | 01:44 | will be back. So in this case, when the left
foot is forward, the left shoulder is back.
| | 01:51 | So we have that opposite
shoulder-hip rotation as well.
| | 01:56 | Now the arms, also, can be a lot more exaggerated.
| | 01:59 | Again, the run is a much more
exaggerated motion than a walk, so the arms
| | 02:05 | will probably swing a little bit more
and the character will move further
| | 02:10 | with each step as well.
| | 02:12 | So now that we kind of have a feel
for the type of run that we're going to
| | 02:16 | animate, let's go ahead and get started
on animating a run in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a run: the passing pose| 00:00 | Let's go ahead and start animating our run.
| | 00:03 | Now before we get started, we do
need to know how long the run will be--
| | 00:08 | in other words, how many frames for each step.
| | 00:12 | In this case, we're going to do about a
medium-paced run, which is a total of 16
| | 00:16 | frames for the cycle, or 8 frames per step.
| | 00:21 | Now as we animate this, we're going to
start with the lower part of the body,
| | 00:25 | just like we did in the walk.
| | 00:26 | We're going to start with the feet and
the hips and get those all working together.
| | 00:31 | And then in a second pass,
we're going to do the upper body.
| | 00:36 | So I have my timeline set
for a total of 16 frames.
| | 00:40 | We're going to go from frame 1 to 17, and
let's go ahead and get our first pose blocked out.
| | 00:46 | In a run, I usually find that the
passing position is actually a better place to
| | 00:52 | start than the extended position,
because the passing position actually is a
| | 00:56 | slightly more stable pose.
| | 00:59 | So let's go ahead and get started on that pose.
| | 01:02 | I'm going to view my character from the
side here, and I'm just going to go ahead
| | 01:07 | and start by making sure I have Auto
Key turned on, and I'm usually working in
| | 01:13 | Local coordinate system here.
| | 01:16 | So I'm going to go ahead and move the
character's hips forward pretty far.
| | 01:21 | Now remember, this is a series of
leaps that we're doing. So I'm going to go
| | 01:25 | ahead and move that forward and
then rotate those hips as well, and I
| | 01:31 | actually want to get those almost to the
point where the heels are lifting off the ground.
| | 01:37 | Now I'm going to have to determine
which foot I'm going to have planted first.
| | 01:42 | And let's bring that left foot down.
| | 01:45 | So I want to make sure that I get a
nice bend for that foot. So I'm going to
| | 01:50 | grab that heel control and
rotate that just so the knee bends.
| | 01:55 | Again, I just want a nice, natural bend,
and that's something we've done before.
| | 02:00 | And then I also want to make sure
that that foot is locked in place. So I'm
| | 02:03 | going into go ahead and hit the Set Key button
there to make sure we have a key for that.
| | 02:08 | And now I'm going to go ahead and grab
the right foot, and we're going to move
| | 02:13 | this up. And I'm actually going to move
this so that that knee comes right up.
| | 02:19 | Now notice how if I move it too far
up, that knee is flopping around.
| | 02:23 | And that's because we have these little
knee controls, and they're a little bit
| | 02:28 | too close to the body.
| | 02:29 | So I'm going to go ahead and move
those forward, so that way the knees don't
| | 02:33 | start flopping around.
| | 02:35 | So again, I'm going to go ahead and
grab this foot and bring it up so that it's
| | 02:41 | almost at a right angle to that body.
| | 02:45 | Again, I want to push it up almost as
far as I can, and then I'm going to go
| | 02:49 | ahead and rotate that foot so that the
foot is almost vertical here, and that may
| | 02:55 | force me to reposition this foot a
little bit as I rotate it, but let's go ahead
| | 03:01 | and do that and get a nice
bend to that foot here.
| | 03:05 | So now that I have this, I've got a
pretty good first pose, so this is a
| | 03:11 | good extended position.
| | 03:12 | This is where the character is about to
take off and make the leap to the next foot.
| | 03:18 | So now that we have this in place,
let's go ahead and continue on and get the
| | 03:23 | next pose in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a run: the extended pose| 00:00 | Once we've animated the passing position,
the next position will be the extended
| | 00:05 | position, where the character's
foot first touches the ground.
| | 00:10 | So in this case, we have a
passing position at frame 1.
| | 00:15 | We want the character to then reach
forward with this foot here and grab the ground.
| | 00:21 | So we're going to do this about
halfway through that first step.
| | 00:25 | We have 8 frames per step.
| | 00:27 | So we are going to move forward
half of that or 4 frames to frame 5.
| | 00:32 | Remember, 1+4 is 5. And let's go ahead
and start blocking out this position.
| | 00:38 | Now, I want to make sure Auto Key is
turned on, and for Position actually, I
| | 00:43 | want to make sure I am going to do
this in World coordinate, so I have that.
| | 00:47 | I am going to rotate this around local
coordinates here, and I want to make sure
| | 00:53 | that I get this foot flat.
| | 00:56 | So if I go into my Motion panel here
and click on Rotation, you will see that
| | 01:04 | X rotation here is kind of
coming right around 180.
| | 01:08 | So I am going to go ahead and just type
in 180 and then move this forward and down.
| | 01:17 | Now, if I go over to the Position here, you
will see that a lot of these are approaching 0.
| | 01:22 | So I want to make sure my Z coordinate
is at 0, which is right there on the
| | 01:28 | ground--Y is forward and back. And let's go
ahead and get that pretty close to about 72 or so.
| | 01:38 | That's just a good round number. And then
for X, let's just go ahead and keep it
| | 01:43 | where it is, which is somewhere right around 6.
| | 01:46 | Now that gets the foot out
in front of the character.
| | 01:50 | But we still need to move the hips to match.
| | 01:53 | So I'm going to go ahead and start
moving the hips forward. But remember,
| | 01:58 | when the character has the foot
forward, the hip is also forward.
| | 02:03 | This is exactly like the walk.
| | 02:05 | So we want to make sure that
we rotate those hips forward.
| | 02:08 | So I am going to go into Rotation, make
sure we are in Local and we are going to
| | 02:11 | go ahead and rotate those
hips forward about 10 degrees.
| | 02:15 | So if want to, we can check that key here,
and the Rotation is going to be along Z,
| | 02:22 | and I am going to make
sure that value is at 10.
| | 02:27 | So now, let's go ahead and just fine tune
the positioning of these hips.
| | 02:32 | I want the hips up just enough so that
the leg is straight but has just a nice
| | 02:38 | natural bend in the knee.
| | 02:41 | So right about like that. Okay.
| | 02:44 | So now that we have this part of the
pose, we can work on the other foot.
| | 02:49 | Now, the first thing I want to
do is kind of unwind this pose.
| | 02:54 | I've got this heel lifted off the ground,
so I want to go ahead and rotate that
| | 03:00 | down to a 0 value here under X Rotation,
we can just type in 0, and then I'm
| | 03:08 | going to rotate the actual
foot itself and then move it up.
| | 03:15 | So I want to get it slightly behind the
character and then get that foot kind of in line.
| | 03:22 | In fact, one of the things I'm doing is
I am getting almost that same angle as
| | 03:27 | the back, and that should strengthen that.
| | 03:29 | Now when we scrub this, you are going
to see that, well, this doesn't really
| | 03:33 | look right, and that's because
he is pushing off with this foot.
| | 03:39 | In order to do that, we kind of need
to keep that foot back so it gives that
| | 03:43 | impression that the force is
being transmitted through that foot.
| | 03:48 | So I am going to go ahead and just
scrub forward here. And let's just go
| | 03:52 | ahead and move this back.
| | 03:54 | Now, let's take a look at the
positioning of this foot here.
| | 03:57 | You can see that the seam between the
foot and the toe is right on that grid
| | 04:03 | line, and that's actually a good reference point.
| | 04:06 | Let's go ahead and remember that.
| | 04:08 | As he moves that back, we want to make
sure that this is slightly behind that
| | 04:12 | grid line. And let's go ahead
and just move that up just a bit.
| | 04:16 | So now we are getting it so that feels
like the character is pushing off.
| | 04:21 | And again, we can do the same with this
foot here, and maybe I am going to rotate
| | 04:25 | this just a little bit and move it down, and
then we can also play with this toe a little bit.
| | 04:32 | So here, at the beginning here,
we want that toe to be basically 0.
| | 04:38 | So I am going to go ahead and just set
a key there for 0, and then I'm going to
| | 04:44 | rotate this toe so that it's flat on
the ground here. And then as he kicks off,
| | 04:50 | I'm going to snap that toe back so
that it has a little bit of drag here.
| | 04:56 | So now it's going to seem like he is
pushed off between these frames, and so
| | 05:02 | this gives a much better sense of motion.
| | 05:06 | So now that we have these first two
poses and the in-betweens, we can do the
| | 05:11 | same on the other side and mirror these
poses, and we will do that in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a run: mirroring the basic poses| 00:00 | Once we have the first two poses animated,
we can go ahead and mirror those on
| | 00:06 | the other side to make
the other half of the run.
| | 00:11 | Now let's just go ahead
and review where we are at.
| | 00:13 | We have two main poses here:
| | 00:15 | we have a passing position at frame 1.
Four frames later we have an extended
| | 00:21 | position where the character
sets his foot on the ground.
| | 00:24 | Now, we want to go ahead and move
forward another four frames to frame 9 and
| | 00:29 | mirror the pose that we have at frame 1.
| | 00:31 | The easiest way to do this is to
basically do what we did with the walk and
| | 00:35 | make him run in place.
| | 00:38 | We do that by moving the
main node of the character.
| | 00:42 | Now, before we do that, let's take a
look at where his foot is at frame 1.
| | 00:48 | You can see here I've got his foot
right over this grid line, and we can use
| | 00:54 | that as a reference.
| | 00:56 | So let's go ahead and start
moving the character back.
| | 01:01 | So I am going to select my character
root here. Let's turn on Auto KEY
| | 01:08 | and make sure we set a key at frame 1.
| | 01:12 | Move forward eight frames to frame 9,
and let's move that back so that the right
| | 01:18 | foot is going to be just over that grid line.
| | 01:21 | Now, if we go into our Motion panel
here and go to Position, you can see
| | 01:27 | Position in Y is 91 and change--
or it depends on how you move it.
| | 01:34 | But I am going to go ahead and just round
that up to 92 so that it's a round number.
| | 01:39 | So all I have to do is just add
that much more for the second half.
| | 01:44 | So we go to frame 17, and we are
going to move this character back again.
| | 01:49 | But instead of 92, we are going to
do double that. So I am just going to
| | 01:53 | type in 184 into my Position Y Key Info.
| | 02:01 | So now he is moving back,
basically as fast as he is moving forward.
| | 02:05 | But before we do anything,
let's go ahead and check the curve.
| | 02:09 | So I am going to keep this selected,
CHAR_ROOT, and go into my Curve Editor.
| | 02:14 | Now, when I do that, you'll see how
it's actually doing a slow in and slow out
| | 02:20 | because of my default curves.
| | 02:22 | Now, yours may be different, but
be sure to check that anyways.
| | 02:26 | And if it's off, go ahead and set
all of those tangents to Linear by
| | 02:30 | hitting this button here.
| | 02:33 | Now that we have that, we should
have a fairly good motion here.
| | 02:38 | So now the character is moving back
as fast as he should move forward.
| | 02:43 | So let's go to frame 9, and
let's start mirroring that pose.
| | 02:48 | The easiest way to mirror that pose is
to use a Screen Drawing tool, and I am
| | 02:54 | going to bring in my Linktivity Control panel
here--and also, we should be in the right viewport.
| | 03:01 | So I am going to go here into Viewports,
and let's go into the Right Viewport,
| | 03:05 | so we have it spot on
right view of this character.
| | 03:09 | So, first thing I want to do is go ahead
and trace the pose that I had at frame 1.
| | 03:16 | I want to make sure I get this passing
position, the angle of each of the legs,
| | 03:24 | as well as the position and
orientation of the bottom of those hips. Okay?
| | 03:32 | And then I want to make
sure I get this foot as well.
| | 03:36 | So now that I have those, let's jump
out of our Linktivity mode here, and now
| | 03:40 | all we have to do is match poses.
| | 03:43 | So first thing I want to do is go ahead
and just select this heel and rotate it
| | 03:48 | up so that it's pretty much at that same angle.
| | 03:52 | Then I'm going to move these hips.
| | 03:55 | Now remember, when we did this pose here,
the character had to rotate forward to
| | 04:04 | get the right dynamic.
| | 04:06 | So actually, I have the hips rotated
forward, and I haven't un-rotated them.
| | 04:10 | So I can go back into my Motion panel
under Rotation here, and this will be
| | 04:15 | Rotation in Z. Right now it's at 10,
but I want to go ahead and set
| | 04:20 | a keyframe for that at 0.
| | 04:22 | So in fact, I can try dialing it in, but
the easiest thing to do is going to Key
| | 04:26 | Info and once we have set the key,
I can go ahead and set that to 0.
| | 04:32 | Let's go ahead and make sure I
get that position just about right.
| | 04:36 | It seems about right here.
| | 04:38 | Now, let's go ahead and
position the foot and the legs.
| | 04:44 | So I want to make sure I get that heel
at that same angle that I sketched out
| | 04:48 | there, right about like that.
| | 04:52 | Then we also, of course, need to unwind this toe.
| | 04:56 | So let's go ahead and move that.
| | 04:58 | And in fact, we can take a look at the
rotation for this, which is going to be on
| | 05:04 | Rotation X, and again, we want that at 180.
| | 05:09 | I need to do a little bit of tweaking here.
| | 05:11 | This knee is over-extended,
so I want to drop that down.
| | 05:16 | Make sure that, that knee is in
the right place. And there we go!
| | 05:22 | So now, I have got my second pose, and
let's go ahead and erase my guidelines. Great!
| | 05:30 | So let's do the exact same
thing for that third pose.
| | 05:34 | So I am going to move forward to frame 13.
| | 05:36 | You can see he is still sliding back,
but really what we would want to do at
| | 05:39 | frame 13 is mirror what we have at 5.
| | 05:42 | So again, I want to go ahead into my
Pen tool. And let's go ahead and trace
| | 05:47 | out position of this foot, the position and
orientation of this body, as well as this foot.
| | 06:04 | So now that we have that, I am
going to go back out of my Draw mode in
| | 06:09 | Linktivity. And let's go ahead
and get that position as well.
| | 06:13 | So I am going to do this
exactly the way I did before.
| | 06:16 | I want to start with that foot.
| | 06:17 | Let's go ahead and zero that out.
And here, again I am in my Motion panel.
| | 06:24 | Rotation X for this foot.
It looks like 0 is flat.
| | 06:29 | So let's go ahead and move that forward.
| | 06:31 | I am going to go ahead and move the
hips forward, but again, remember we have
| | 06:36 | to rotate those hips.
| | 06:38 | So I want to rotate those hips about 10
degrees forward. And let's go ahead and
| | 06:53 | move this back a little bit here, I have got
this a little bit too far. So there we go!
| | 06:58 | Let's go ahead and rotate these back here.
| | 07:00 | So I want to make sure that's
about -10. There we go! Okay.
| | 07:05 | So now that I have got that in position,
let's go ahead and get this foot.
| | 07:09 | So I'm going to rotate this foot, move it up.
| | 07:13 | I do want to get rid of
the rotation on this heel.
| | 07:18 | So let's go ahead and rotate that down.
| | 07:20 | In fact, we can set a Rotation key here,
and this Rotation is going to be 0 in X.
| | 07:26 | So again, Rotation key, and then
go ahead and just get that position.
| | 07:36 | So that should be pretty close.
| | 07:39 | Now remember, with this foot here, we want
to make sure that this foot stays in place.
| | 07:46 | It looks like we're kind of floating.
| | 07:48 | So I want to make sure
that I keep this locked down.
| | 07:52 | So I am going to go ahead and select
this key, Shift-drag it to frame 9, so
| | 07:59 | that way I have that foot flat on the ground.
| | 08:03 | And then as it goes up, we are going
to have that same situation we had with
| | 08:09 | this other foot. And so I want to make
sure that that's on the ground there.
| | 08:15 | And again, I want to rotate that toe forward.
| | 08:20 | But I want to make sure I have a
keyframe here at 9, and then I can rotate
| | 08:26 | that forward so it's on the ground.
| | 08:35 | What I'm doing is I am getting
that kick off of the foot here.
| | 08:40 | So again, now we want to snap
that toe back, and we should be okay.
| | 08:46 | So now I have got two of these.
| | 08:48 | You can see it's pretty close.
| | 08:51 | So now all I am going to do is get that
last pose there, and again, that's going
| | 08:57 | to be almost exact same as the first pose.
| | 09:01 | So again, I can just go ahead and
sketch this out very, very quickly.
| | 09:09 | So, first pose is also going to be my last pose.
| | 09:14 | So again, I want to get
these hips in position here.
| | 09:17 | I want to unwind those in Z.
So go ahead and zero those out.
| | 09:24 | Move this up right there.
| | 09:27 | Now, notice how my knee controls
here are behind the knee.
| | 09:30 | So I want to go ahead and move those
forward and then grab my heel, lift that up.
| | 09:37 | You can see already I am
getting the right angles here.
| | 09:41 | Move the foot and rotate it.
And again, unwind that toe.
| | 09:51 | So I am not going to tweak this too much.
Just go ahead and erase my guidelines
| | 09:55 | and close my Screen Draw tool.
| | 09:59 | Then I am going to go into my Perspective
mode, so we can see this a little bit
| | 10:03 | better. And let's go ahead and see
what this looks like. There we go!
| | 10:10 | That looks pretty close.
| | 10:12 | Now, I can certainly go through and
tweak it and really refine it, but you get
| | 10:17 | the idea on the basic workflow here.
| | 10:19 | We've got the lower half of the body running.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a run: adding weight| 00:00 | At this point we should have a basic
motion of the hips and feet in place.
| | 00:05 | We've done the passing position as
well as the extended position.
| | 00:09 | So let's take a quick
look at what we've animated.
| | 00:12 | So I am going to go ahead and press
Play here. And as you can see, the character
| | 00:16 | looks like he's running, but it feels a
little bit off. And the reason it feels
| | 00:21 | off is because the character
really doesn't have a sense of weight.
| | 00:24 | Remember, in a run the character
throws himself off the ground, leaps through
| | 00:29 | the air, catches himself, and then
propels himself forward, but we don't really
| | 00:35 | have that yet with this run.
| | 00:37 | Let's take a look at the motion of those hips.
| | 00:39 | At frame 1, he is about to take off, and
when he leaps in the air, well, a leap
| | 00:47 | implies that he's kind of throwing his
weight up in the air. But if we look at
| | 00:52 | the motion of the hips, they are
actually moving down, and that's just because of
| | 00:56 | the way it in-betweens these two poses.
| | 00:59 | So we need to add in one more pose. And the
same thing is happening on the other side.
| | 01:04 | So when he catches his weight on his
foot, the weight should continue to move
| | 01:11 | down before he moves it back up again.
| | 01:14 | So let's go ahead and add in that motion.
| | 01:17 | Select the hips, go into Move mode and
make sure I have Auto Key turned on and
| | 01:23 | let's go to frame 3.
| | 01:24 | So frame 3, he should be leaping in the air.
| | 01:27 | So I am going to go ahead and
move those hips up just a bit.
| | 01:31 | So now it feels like he's at least
kind of leapt through the air, and now he
| | 01:37 | wants to catch that weight and cushion.
So frame 7 we are going to have a
| | 01:43 | cushion position very similar to a walk.
| | 01:45 | So I am going to go ahead and move those hips
down and maybe even little bit forward here.
| | 01:51 | You can see how he catches his weight,
and that just feel so much better already.
| | 01:57 | So let's go ahead and do that on the
opposite side. So I am going to go frame 9
| | 02:01 | to frame 11, and again, just move those
hips up, maybe even also a little bit
| | 02:07 | forward. And then from frame 13 to
frame 17--we are going to go into frame 15
| | 02:12 | actually--drop those down and again
move him just a little bit forward.
| | 02:18 | So with that we should have much
better sense of weight, and you can
| | 02:23 | already start to see that.
| | 02:24 | But when we move the hips, we also need
to adjust the feet to compensate, because
| | 02:29 | the feet also aren't in the right place.
| | 02:31 | So let's go through this first step here.
| | 02:34 | So in that middle position, again,
he's leaping through the air, and this foot
| | 02:40 | really isn't reflecting that. It's
really, again, just doing a straight in
| | 02:45 | between, between this pose and this
pose, but we need to make sure that that
| | 02:49 | foot reflects the fact that
he's leaping through the air.
| | 02:52 | So we are going to go ahead and move
that foot up and rotate it a bit, so now we
| | 02:57 | have kind of cocked that foot so that it
now feels much better when it sets down.
| | 03:03 | Now when the foot actually sets
down, it will set down on the toes.
| | 03:08 | Remember, when we run, we tend
to run on the balls off our feet.
| | 03:13 | So let's go ahead and grab that heel control
here. And let's go ahead and lift that heel up.
| | 03:19 | So in order to make that happen, I
do need to have an in-between here.
| | 03:23 | So one, I will make sure I
have a keyframe of 0 at frame 3.
| | 03:27 | So the easiest way to do that is to
select a keyframe at frame 1, hold down the
| | 03:32 | Shift key and drag that. And now let's
go ahead and just rotate that heel up
| | 03:38 | just a bit, so it looks like he is
catching the ground with his toe.
| | 03:44 | Then as he pulls forward, then his
foot flattens out. And again, we can do
| | 03:48 | that just by selecting this keyframe here
at 3 and Shift-dragging it so that it's flat.
| | 03:55 | So now that feels makes it feel like
he's really catching the ground. And again,
| | 04:01 | as he goes through this pose here, I
want to make sure that that foot is on the
| | 04:06 | ground and then it lifts up again.
| | 04:08 | So as you can see, that gives a much
better motion, and we can certainly do that
| | 04:13 | on the other side as well.
| | 04:14 | I am going to grab my foot here, and
then right here I am going to go ahead and
| | 04:21 | rotate that foot and bring it up so
that it feels like he's about to catch
| | 04:26 | the ground. And right here you can see I
don't have keyframes for that heel connector here.
| | 04:33 | I've got one here at frame 5, so I can
Shift and drag that 0 key for the heel to
| | 04:38 | make sure that it's locked down.
| | 04:40 | And then at frame 13, I want to rotate
it up, and then as it catches the ground I
| | 04:46 | want it to flatten out.
| | 04:48 | And again, what I am doing is I am
just selecting that zero key, holding down
| | 04:51 | the Shift key and dragging it
and I can do that twice here.
| | 04:56 | So now I've got a much better sense of up/down
motion and a much better sense of weight.
| | 05:02 | Let's go ahead and rotate that so
you can see it a little bit better.
| | 05:08 | So at this point we should have the
lower body animated. We haven't really done
| | 05:13 | anything above the hips, so let's go
ahead and move on to the upper body and
| | 05:18 | start to finalize this run.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a run: the spine| 00:00 | So now we have the lower part of the
body animated. We have the hips and the
| | 00:04 | feet animated. We have a
sense of weight to the character.
| | 00:08 | Let's go ahead and play what we have.
| | 00:11 | But as you can see, there is no upper
body animation, so the upper part of the
| | 00:15 | character is kind of dead.
| | 00:17 | So let's go ahead and start animating
that. And as is usual, we will go ahead
| | 00:22 | and work our way up the spine and then
move on to the rest of the character.
| | 00:25 | So let's go ahead and start with the spine.
| | 00:28 | I am going to go ahead and Ctrl-select
these lower two spine controls. And let's
| | 00:32 | go ahead and start dropping in some keyframes.
| | 00:35 | I want to make sure we have Auto Key
turned on, but this time I am going to
| | 00:38 | actually just going to set some keyframes
at frame 1, frame 9, and also at frame 17.
| | 00:46 | And that basically just locks in the spine,
so I have some basic keys to work with.
| | 00:52 | So let's go through to the extended
position and set some keyframes there as well.
| | 00:58 | So we are going to go to frame 5, and
as you can see the right foot is forward.
| | 01:04 | Now just like with a walk, when the
right foot is forward, the right shoulder
| | 01:11 | will be back, so we need to
rotate the spine to do that.
| | 01:15 | So right now we have kind of got the
spine so that the shoulders are pretty much
| | 01:20 | square, but let's go ahead and just do
a rotate, make sure we are on Local here,
| | 01:24 | and I am going to go ahead and select
each spine joint and just rotate them a
| | 01:29 | bit so the shoulders are forward.
| | 01:30 | So now he goes from square shoulders
and now the shoulders are forward at 9.
| | 01:36 | Because we have set a key, they are
square, and then at 13 we need to rotate
| | 01:42 | that so that the shoulders
are in opposition to the hips.
| | 01:47 | So now we should have a good
left right motion of the shoulders.
| | 01:53 | But if we twirl this around a little bit
and see him from the side, you will see
| | 01:58 | that his spine is very stiff in the
forward and back motion, so we should give
| | 02:04 | him a little bit more flexibility.
| | 02:07 | So let's go ahead and take
a look at what we have here.
| | 02:10 | The first thing I want to do is take
this first pose here and give him a little
| | 02:14 | bit more of a line of action.
| | 02:16 | So I am going to take that spine and
just rotate it a bit so he has a little
| | 02:21 | bit more of an arch to his back.
| | 02:23 | Now as he pushes himself up in the air,
that's going to accentuate--remember,
| | 02:27 | the body wants to stay where it is, so
this head and the body are going to want
| | 02:35 | to resist the forward motion of that spine.
| | 02:38 | We are going to rotate that body up
just a bit so that he is almost vertical,
| | 02:45 | and again, just accentuate that line of motion.
| | 02:49 | So then as he comes down, he is going
to squash. So we're going to actually go
| | 02:54 | into almost the opposite motion here.
| | 02:57 | But remember, as he comes down, he's
still resisting the forward motion a bit.
| | 03:02 | So I am going to arch the spine up just
a bit, and then as he catches his weight,
| | 03:08 | that spine is going to
rotate forward just a bit.
| | 03:12 | So you can see now he's going up, and
then he kind of drops down to give a much
| | 03:19 | better sense of weight.
| | 03:21 | Now we can do that again on the opposite side.
| | 03:23 | In fact, we can just copy the keyframes
for this first portion of it.
| | 03:28 | Just Ctrl-select both of these spine joints
and then Shift-select the keys at frame 1,
| | 03:35 | drop them in at frame 9 and at frame 17.
| | 03:41 | See, we already have a little
bit of spine motion there.
| | 03:45 | As he moves up, again, we are going to
rotate him back, give him a bit of an
| | 03:51 | arch to the back, keep that going as
he touches the ground, but then when
| | 03:58 | he actually cushions, we are going to
lean the body a little bit forward to
| | 04:02 | give that flexibility.
| | 04:04 | So let's take a look at this.
| | 04:06 | So now we have got much
better forward back motion.
| | 04:10 | Now the one thing I notice is that that
head is not really following along.
| | 04:15 | It's still a little bit stiff, so we can
certainly do the same thing with the head.
| | 04:21 | Now the way I like to animate the head
is to just remember that the character is
| | 04:25 | trying to see where he's going, so his
head is going to look forward, and that
| | 04:30 | will tend to get the right head motion.
| | 04:33 | So I'm going to get the head so he is
looking forward, and then I am going to
| | 04:38 | go ahead and select that keyframe here
on the timeline. Hold down the Shift key
| | 04:42 | and I am going to copy it to 9 and 17.
| | 04:46 | Now as he moves up, you can see how that
head is kind of kicking back, so I want
| | 04:52 | to make sure that his head is forward,
and then at frame 5 it's kind of rotated
| | 04:58 | a little bit to the right with that shoulder.
| | 05:00 | I want to go ahead and rotate it forward,
so again, he is just looking where he
| | 05:03 | is going. And then as that body falls
forward, he is going to want to see where
| | 05:10 | he is going, so I am
going to rotate the head up.
| | 05:13 | So I rotated that head
forward to the left and then back.
| | 05:18 | So let's do that again, rotate this head
forward here, two frames in at frame 11.
| | 05:24 | frame 13, I want to rotate it a little
bit to his right and then at the bottom,
| | 05:30 | I want to go ahead and
tilt that head up just a bit.
| | 05:34 | That should give me a good motion for the head.
| | 05:37 | So let's go ahead and take a look at
that. That head is a lot more stable, and
| | 05:42 | also the spine has a lot more flexibility.
| | 05:46 | So just remember, the spine is going
to be mostly secondary motion, so the
| | 05:51 | character is throwing himself forward
and up in the air, and the spine and the
| | 05:55 | head are going to resist that, and also
the shoulders will rock back and forth
| | 06:02 | to mirror the motion of the hips.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a run: left arm motion| 00:00 | At this point, we have the lower
part of the body and the spine animated.
| | 00:05 | So let's go ahead and just do the
arms, and we should pretty much be done
| | 00:10 | with the animation.
| | 00:12 | Now I'm going to start with the left
arm. And let's go ahead and get a sense for
| | 00:17 | where the extremes are.
| | 00:19 | So probably one of the first extremes
is where that foot hits the ground.
| | 00:24 | So the shoulder is rotated forward the
most, and the arm is probably going to
| | 00:30 | be forward the most.
| | 00:32 | Then we have the exact opposite here
when the other foot is forward and
| | 00:36 | the shoulder is back.
| | 00:38 | I'm not going to start this at frame 1.
I'm actually going to start this at frame 5.
| | 00:43 | So I want to make sure I have Auto Key
turned on. And let's go ahead and
| | 00:46 | start dialing in the arm.
| | 00:48 | Now the arm motion is basically
just going to be rotation.
| | 00:51 | So I'm just rotating this arm locally.
| | 00:54 | I want to get that first pose kind
of locked in. So I'm just going to
| | 00:58 | start moving down the arm here and make sure
I get that kind of in and get that elbow up.
| | 01:08 | So I just want to get that
arm in front of the character.
| | 01:12 | I can also work a little bit with that hand
and get that bent in front of the character.
| | 01:17 | And of course, characters don't run
with their hands straight out, so I can
| | 01:21 | certainly fold up that hand.
| | 01:26 | So now, I should have a pretty good first pose.
| | 01:29 | Now, notice how it's starting with the arm out.
| | 01:31 | That's because there is a keyframe
at frame 0 from the Auto Key.
| | 01:35 | But we'll fix that a little bit later.
| | 01:37 | Really, what I want to do is
get the motion from 5 to 13 done.
| | 01:41 | So let's go ahead over to the next
extreme pose which would be frame 13.
| | 01:46 | Now, what we want to do is rotate that arm back.
| | 01:50 | So remember, this is forward, so the
arm itself is going to be back. Okay.
| | 01:58 | Now, remember though, that the
motion of that arm is moving back.
| | 02:04 | So as this arm moves back, the elbow
and the wrists are going to drag behind.
| | 02:10 | So I don't want to have
that elbow completely extended.
| | 02:16 | I just want to have it bent a little bit,
and I want this arm to be a little bit back.
| | 02:23 | As you can see, we're starting to
get our arm motion a little bit.
| | 02:27 | But we also have some
things we need to consider.
| | 02:30 | So, as the character is kind of
cushioning here, that elbow will tend to bend
| | 02:36 | a little bit, and then as he starts
to move back--as he gets in to this
| | 02:43 | extreme pose here at the extended position--
that arm is going to start to straighten out.
| | 02:51 | So we basically have that.
| | 02:54 | Now, when that arm straightens out,
we don't want it to straighten out more
| | 02:59 | than it is at frame 13.
| | 03:01 | So I want to make sure that this angle
here is shallower than this angle, so
| | 03:06 | that arm is kind of starting to straighten out.
| | 03:09 | So as you can see, we've got a pretty
good motion there, and then as he starts
| | 03:15 | to move forward, that's when that
arm is also going to move forward.
| | 03:20 | So, what we can do is we can do
a little bit of overshoot here.
| | 03:24 | So, as he kind of comes down here,
that's where that arm will completely
| | 03:31 | overshoot, and we can start
to straighten out that elbow.
| | 03:35 | Now, I don't want to lock the elbow; I
do want to keep a bit of a bend to the
| | 03:39 | elbow, and we'll also straighten
out that hand--so right there.
| | 03:44 | And then as he comes up into this
passing position, we want to have the arm kind
| | 03:50 | of in that middle position. And now
this is where that elbow will be again at
| | 03:56 | the secondary motion, so it's
kind of dragging behind the arm.
| | 04:03 | So now you see we've got from
5 all the way up to the end.
| | 04:08 | That looks pretty good.
| | 04:09 | And now because this is rotation, we can
just copy keyframes. So I'm going to go
| | 04:14 | ahead and Ctrl-select the shoulder, the
elbow, the wrist as well as those hand
| | 04:22 | joints, and then Shift-select the
keyframes for all of those at 17, and then
| | 04:28 | just slide them back to 1.
| | 04:29 | So we should have a pretty good cycle there.
| | 04:34 | So now if we take a look at that, you
can see how we've got a pretty good arm
| | 04:39 | motion for this character.
| | 04:41 | So, all we have to do is the opposite on
the right side and we should be pretty
| | 04:46 | close to finishing this run.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a run: right arm motion| 00:00 | We're almost there.
| | 00:01 | We have the left arm animating and
all we need to do is the right arm.
| | 00:06 | So let's take a quick
look at what we have so far.
| | 00:10 | And as you can see we've got a pretty
good run, except the right arm is sticking
| | 00:13 | straight out which is not what we want.
| | 00:15 | So all we have to do is just
animate the right arm pretty much like we
| | 00:20 | animated the left arm.
| | 00:21 | Now I'm going to do this almost exactly the
same, except obviously on the opposite side.
| | 00:27 | So I do want to start with that position
where the opposite leg is forward, and
| | 00:33 | that's actually the strongest pose of the arm.
| | 00:37 | So I'm going to go ahead and just take
this arm, and we're going to go ahead and
| | 00:41 | rotate that into position here.
| | 00:44 | I've got Auto Key turned on, so
we're setting some keyframes here.
| | 00:49 | Now remember, when we have Auto Key
turned on, you're going also get a keyframe
| | 00:52 | at 0, but we'll figure
that out when we get there.
| | 00:56 | So I want to make sure that this arm
is in front of the body. So I'm going to
| | 01:03 | just go ahead and make sure I get
that arm there and make sure I rotate the
| | 01:07 | hand a bit as well.
| | 01:09 | And of course, we want to make
sure that we curl up those fingers.
| | 01:13 | So I'm just hitting Page Up and
Page Down to move between these.
| | 01:16 | So Page Up goes up in the hierarchy,
Page Down goes down in the hierarchy.
| | 01:21 | So I just want to make sure
that that's kind of rotated.
| | 01:25 | So now I have a pretty good first pose
here, and I want to make sure that we have
| | 01:31 | keyframes for all of these.
| | 01:32 | So now let's go ahead and do the
opposite pose which will be at frame 5.
| | 01:37 | So I'm going to go ahead and select that
shoulder, bring it down, and bring it back.
| | 01:44 | And again, remember this arm is moving
back, so I want to make sure I have a bit
| | 01:50 | of a arc to that hand, and also I want
to make sure I get those fingers. So I'm
| | 01:56 | going to go ahead and just Ctrl-select
all of those, and I want to go ahead and
| | 02:00 | select those keyframes and move them back to 5.
| | 02:03 | In fact, I can also move them back
to 1 just to keep them rotated in.
| | 02:07 | So now I've got this much of the motion,
let's view that a little bit more from
| | 02:12 | the side here, so now I've got this coming up.
| | 02:17 | Now as the character moves forward,
that arm is going to start moving back.
| | 02:23 | Before we do that, let's go ahead and
get the middle pose here, which is where
| | 02:27 | the character's arm is swinging forward.
| | 02:29 | So I'm going to go to frame 9 here and
make sure I get that. So this is where a
| | 02:35 | secondary motion really kind of plays a
factor, so the shoulder is starting to
| | 02:40 | move forward and the elbow doesn't
want to move forward so it's rotating in
| | 02:45 | the opposite direction.
| | 02:46 | So we can even do that a
little bit here on frame 7.
| | 02:51 | We can also move that back just a
little bit so we get a nice sense of drag.
| | 02:57 | And then again, we're having the opposite
here from 13 to 17. He is starting to
| | 03:03 | move that arm back, and the elbow is
starting to straighten out just a bit, but
| | 03:09 | it's still moving forward.
| | 03:12 | And we can also do it a
little bit on the wrist here.
| | 03:14 | So now we should have from 5 to 13.
| | 03:16 | Okay, so we can probably have a little
more life here at 15, because remember he
| | 03:23 | is squashing. So we want a little bit
of secondary motion on that elbow, and we
| | 03:28 | can straighten him out a little bit more on 17.
| | 03:32 | So let's take a look at
this again. There we go!
| | 03:35 | That looks good.
| | 03:35 | So now all we have to do is copy the
keyframes at the end at 17 to 1 and
| | 03:41 | we should have this.
| | 03:43 | So I'm just going to go into Select mode
by hitting Q and then just Ctrl-select
| | 03:48 | the shoulder, the elbow, the wrist.
And I already have the fingers selected,
| | 03:54 | so let's go ahead and just keep those
selected, hold down the Shift key, select the
| | 03:58 | keyframe at 17, drag it to 1.
So that should be pretty good.
| | 04:04 | Okay, so let's take a look at this.
| | 04:07 | As you can see, it looks pretty good.
| | 04:10 | Now if we want to just have the character
run through the scene, we can select
| | 04:15 | this main node and just go ahead and
delete these keyframes at 9 and 17 and so
| | 04:22 | that allows the character
to run through the scene.
| | 04:27 | Now remember, the process of the
run is very, very similar to a walk.
| | 04:32 | We get our main poses blocked out--
in this case, the passing and extended poses--
| | 04:38 | then we mirror those poses, we make sure
the character has weight, and then once
| | 04:43 | we have the lower body in place, we
work our way up the body--we get the spine
| | 04:49 | as well as the arms.
| | 04:51 | So that should be a good guide
to animating just about any run.
| | 04:56 | So let's go ahead and take
one more quick look at this.
| | 04:59 | So there you have it, a very
simple run for a character.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
7. Facial Animation and Dialogue Animating blinks| 00:00 | Up until this point, we've done
mostly animation of the character's body.
| | 00:05 | So let's go ahead and take a
look at some facial animation.
| | 00:09 | In this video, we're going
to take a look at blinks.
| | 00:13 | Now blinks really shouldn't be discounted.
| | 00:15 | They're very important and can make a
character that much more expressive.
| | 00:20 | They can draw attention to the eyes,
they can indicate mood, the speed of
| | 00:24 | a blink can also indicate how fast or aware a
character is, versus how dull a character is.
| | 00:32 | So let's go ahead and do
some very simple blinks.
| | 00:35 | Now I have this character here, and
we've got the full character rig with our
| | 00:40 | facial rig, and I've got some blink controls.
| | 00:43 | So if you want, you can
take a look at how they work.
| | 00:46 | They basically just move up
and down and blink the eyes.
| | 00:50 | So let's go ahead and start animating these.
| | 00:54 | Ctrl-select both the upper and lower
lids in this control panel and set some
| | 01:00 | keyframes at frame 0 just to lock them open.
| | 01:03 | Then I'm going to go ahead and move
forward just a little bit so that we can
| | 01:08 | start the blink after maybe
about half a second of animation.
| | 01:12 | So I'm going to just go out here to
frame 12, which is a half-second in and
| | 01:16 | just set another key.
| | 01:18 | So now I have the eyes basically just
open for the first half second of the
| | 01:24 | animation or the first 12 frames.
| | 01:26 | Now probably the most important thing
to understand with blinks is how fast the
| | 01:31 | character is blinking.
| | 01:32 | The speed of a blink will
indicate a lot about a character.
| | 01:36 | Fast, hyper characters will
blink more quickly than slow or
| | 01:40 | dimwitted characters.
| | 01:42 | If a character isn't quite getting
something internally in his head, he may
| | 01:47 | blink a little slower.
| | 01:48 | And blinks really are kind of a
connection to the character's brain, so it can
| | 01:53 | kind of tell you a little bit
about what's going on in his head.
| | 01:57 | So let's go ahead and just do a normal blink.
| | 01:59 | Now a normal blink is usually about
six frames long. So I'm starting here
| | 02:03 | at frame 12. So I'm going to go six
frames ahead of that to frame 18 and
| | 02:07 | let's close those eyes.
| | 02:08 | I'm going to do upper lids first, drop
those all the way down, and then bring up
| | 02:14 | the lower lid, so we
have completely closed eyes.
| | 02:17 | Now you can see the eyes are closed,
and now let's open those and we can open
| | 02:23 | those at the same rate. So I'm going
to go to 24, which is another six frames
| | 02:27 | in, and we can Ctrl-select
both the upper and lower eye.
| | 02:32 | And if we want, we can move these, or
because we already have keyframes for
| | 02:36 | this, I'm just going to go ahead and
rubber-band select this keyframe at 12,
| | 02:40 | hold down the Shift key, and drag it
over so that now we have a basic eye open.
| | 02:47 | So let's play this and see what it looks
like, so it's just a really simple blink.
| | 02:54 | Now if we want, we can affect
the speed of the blink very easily.
| | 02:58 | All we have to do is really
just move these keyframes around.
| | 03:01 | So if we wanted to make this a slower
blink, we could move these forward. So I'm
| | 03:06 | going to go ahead and move these forward
say four frames here, so that makes the
| | 03:11 | close of the eyes slower. And if I
play that, you can see he closes slower,
| | 03:17 | opens a little bit more quickly.
| | 03:19 | And if I space out the open of the eye
another four frames, we're going to have
| | 03:24 | basically a very slow blink.
| | 03:27 | And you can see how that can give a
different move than a faster blink.
| | 03:31 | Now it could be mean that the character
is slow or dimwitted, or he is slow
| | 03:35 | to realize something.
| | 03:37 | Really it just depends on the
context of the scene and the character.
| | 03:41 | Now if we want we can make this
blink happen a lot more quickly.
| | 03:45 | So I'm going to go ahead and move this
first one back to frame 18, so we still
| | 03:52 | have six down, but I'm going
to open it a lot more quickly.
| | 03:57 | Now you don't have to close and
open the eyes at the same rate.
| | 04:02 | One of the things I've learned is
that opening the eyes a little bit faster
| | 04:06 | makes the character seem
a little bit more alert.
| | 04:09 | So instead of over six frames, I'm
going to open it over three. So I'm going to
| | 04:13 | move this frame to 21.
| | 04:14 | So let's take a look at that.
| | 04:17 | So you can see that gives a lot more life.
| | 04:20 | It makes them feel a lot more alert, and
this is one of those ones that I really
| | 04:24 | like to do is to open the eyes a
little bit more quickly, particularly in
| | 04:29 | cartoony characters.
| | 04:31 | Now I'm going to go ahead and just move
this back to a six close and six open.
| | 04:36 | Now with any of these, really all we
did was affect the eyes of the character.
| | 04:42 | We haven't animated anything else,
so the character looks a little dull.
| | 04:48 | So let's go ahead and add a little bit
more life by adding some head motion.
| | 04:53 | Now a lot of times when we blink, we
unconsciously dip our chin just a little bit.
| | 04:59 | Now we can do it subtly or a little
bit more exaggerated, just depending upon
| | 05:05 | what we want out of the character.
| | 05:07 | So I'm going to go ahead and select
this head control. And let's go ahead and
| | 05:11 | just set a key here at 0, move forward
at 12, and set another key, so we've kind
| | 05:17 | of locked down that first pose here.
| | 05:20 | And then as the character blinks, we're
going to blink to frame 18. So I'm going
| | 05:24 | to drop that head just a little bit.
| | 05:28 | And then I'm going to select that
initial key, and I'm going to drag that out
| | 05:33 | to frame 24 so that way we have just a
little bit of a head dip as the character blinks.
| | 05:39 | And as you can see, it does add a
little bit more life to the character.
| | 05:43 | That subtle motion of the head helps
to sell with the blink and makes the
| | 05:48 | character seem a lot more alive.
| | 05:51 | Now if we want, we can
certainly accentuate this.
| | 05:54 | If I want, I can dip this head a lot more.
I can twist it or turn it just a bit
| | 06:01 | to get rid of that symmetry
that we have going on.
| | 06:05 | And as you can see, it gives a lot more force.
| | 06:08 | So the motion of the head
kind of amplifies the blink.
| | 06:13 | So if you have no motion,
the blink kind of is unnoticed.
| | 06:17 | If you have a lot more motion, then
it just adds on top of that blink.
| | 06:23 | So those are some of the basics of how
to work with blinks, and go ahead and use
| | 06:29 | some of these tricks in
your character animation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating changes in eye direction| 00:00 | Many times in animation, you'll need
to shift your character's eyes from one
| | 00:05 | point in the room to another.
| | 00:07 | Characters are always changing their
focus or their area of interest, and a lot
| | 00:11 | of that is indicated by eye direction.
| | 00:15 | So changing eye direction is a very common task.
| | 00:20 | Let's go ahead and work
with that in this lesson.
| | 00:23 | Now for this particular character, we
have an eye rig where we have two pupils
| | 00:28 | in these little circles here.
| | 00:30 | So if I Ctrl-select these and just go
ahead and move them, you can see I can
| | 00:34 | move both eyes at once, or I
can move them individually.
| | 00:39 | Now some rigs have an external eye control.
| | 00:43 | In other words, they have a dummy
object or a null object that the character
| | 00:47 | is looking at and you place that
object in the room and the character will
| | 00:51 | look at that object.
| | 00:53 | Regardless of how you position your
eyes, the theory we're going to discuss
| | 00:56 | is basically the same.
| | 00:58 | So let's go ahead and just start
animating this character's eyes.
| | 01:02 | So we're going to start with him
just looking in one direction here.
| | 01:06 | So I'm going to Ctrl-select both of these,
and let's just make him look off to his right.
| | 01:13 | And I'm going to go ahead and turn on
Auto Key and set a keyframe for that,
| | 01:18 | and then I'm going to go about a half-second
in to frame 12 and set another keyframe.
| | 01:22 | So basically we've just locked him down,
looking one direction at the beginning.
| | 01:27 | And let's make him look over to the
opposite side to his left side over,
| | 01:32 | let's say, another half a second
or another 12 frames.
| | 01:36 | So with these two selected, I'm just
going to go ahead and move those over to
| | 01:39 | the other side, and we have
a bit of an animation here.
| | 01:44 | In fact, I can move this a
little bit more. There we go!
| | 01:47 | Okay, so now I should have the eyes
going from one direction to another.
| | 01:53 | And if I play that you can see, well,
the eyes are shifting direction.
| | 01:58 | But if you had this in the scene, you
would think that the eyes are kind of
| | 02:02 | floating a bit in the eye socket.
| | 02:06 | Now it depends on the scene. It
depends on what the character is doing.
| | 02:10 | But a lot of times when you have the
eyes change direction just by themselves,
| | 02:16 | it can appear slightly unnatural.
| | 02:19 | So a lot of times, we like to cover
a change in eye direction with a blink.
| | 02:25 | It kind of adds a little bit
of an exclamation point
| | 02:28 | to that eye blink and draws attention
to it so that the audience is looking at
| | 02:33 | that change in eye direction. Because
typically when you change a character's
| | 02:38 | focus, it's for a reason, and so you
kind of want to draw attention to that.
| | 02:43 | So let's go ahead and add a blink.
| | 02:45 | So we did this in the last lesson.
Let's Ctrl-select both the upper and lower
| | 02:50 | lids, set a keyframe for that. And let's
go halfway in--six frames in. I'm going
| | 02:57 | to drop the upper lids and then
select the lower lids and bring those up.
| | 03:02 | So now he is kind of covering that with
a blink. And then I can make sure I have
| | 03:08 | both of those selected, Ctrl-select
the upper and lower lids, and then just
| | 03:14 | select that keyframe at frame 12, hold
down the Shift key and drag it, and that
| | 03:19 | basically just copies that
key where the eyes are open.
| | 03:23 | So now that we have that, we
should have a bit of a blink.
| | 03:28 | As you can see, when he blinks it
really does change the way you perceive that
| | 03:35 | shift in eye direction.
| | 03:37 | It definitely draws your attention to
the eye, but also in addition to that it
| | 03:42 | covers up that floatiness of the eye.
| | 03:47 | You can see the eye is starting to move,
but then we cover it up and then reveal
| | 03:53 | it, so it's almost like we mute the
floatiness of the eye while drawing
| | 03:58 | attention to that blink.
| | 04:00 | Again, just like with the eye blink though,
we don't want just a blink on the character.
| | 04:06 | We'd like to get the body and the head
of the character involved in the action,
| | 04:13 | so we can add in some additional head motion.
| | 04:17 | So I'm going to frame 12 and set a key,
and let's rotate that head down so when
| | 04:22 | we go to the bottom of that blink,
I'm just going to subtly--not too much--
| | 04:27 | just kind of drop that chin just a bit,
and then go to frame 24. And let's go
| | 04:33 | ahead and rubber-band select the key at frame 12,
hold down that Shift key, and drag it over.
| | 04:42 | As you can see, it just adds a
little bit more life to that blink.
| | 04:48 | We can certainly add a little bit more to this.
| | 04:52 | Now when a character is shifting eye
direction, a lot of times it'll also
| | 04:57 | shift his head direction.
| | 04:58 | So if you're looking from left to
right, you don't just move your eyes, you
| | 05:03 | move your head as well.
| | 05:05 | So let's go ahead and set him up so he is
looking a little bit more to his right.
| | 05:11 | So I'm just going to rotate
that head just a little bit.
| | 05:14 | And then as he blinks, obviously, we
already have a key there to center it, and
| | 05:19 | then as he opens his eyes, let's
rotate him in the opposite direction.
| | 05:24 | So now we should have a pretty good
realistic blink, and as you can see, he's got
| | 05:30 | a much better sense of motion.
| | 05:33 | We've got a lot more life in this character.
| | 05:37 | So, even something as simple as
shifting eye direction involves the whole
| | 05:42 | character, and that's probably one
of the biggest points of this lesson.
| | 05:46 | So, not only do you shift eye
direction, you can cover it with a blink,
| | 05:51 | and that's only if the scene wants it.
| | 05:53 | And we can also shift the head direction
slightly to amplify the motion of the eyes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a head turn| 00:00 | Head turns are another very
important thing to understand in animation.
| | 00:05 | Now head turns may seem simple, but
there are actually a number of subtle layers
| | 00:10 | to a head turn that will
add believability to that.
| | 00:14 | So let's do some simple
head turns on this character.
| | 00:17 | So I am going to select my character's
head controller here. And let's turn on
| | 00:22 | Auto Key and a let's rotate his head
at the very beginning here. And let's
| | 00:26 | just kind of rotate him about 15 degrees
or so to one side and make sure we
| | 00:32 | have a keyframe there.
| | 00:34 | And then let's go ahead and just
hold that for about half a second.
| | 00:38 | So I am going to go to frame 12
here, and then let's turn his head.
| | 00:43 | Now of course, how fast you turn the
head will depend on the scene, but let's go
| | 00:47 | ahead and just do this over about a half second.
| | 00:50 | So I am going to go another 12 frames
forward to frame 24, and I am going to
| | 00:56 | rotate it back and then another
15 or so degrees to the other side.
| | 01:03 | So now we should have a basic head turn.
| | 01:08 | Now when we play this back, you can
see it's pretty mechanical-looking.
| | 01:11 | It looks almost like the character
is just on a mechanical pivot.
| | 01:17 | And that's because heads don't turn this way.
| | 01:21 | They don't just turn left and right.
| | 01:23 | We have a lot of anatomy going on, and
one of the things is that when we turn
| | 01:28 | our heads, we tend to dip the chin as we turn.
| | 01:33 | So it's not really just a straight
across animation, there's actually a bit of a
| | 01:38 | dip to that animation.
| | 01:40 | So let's go halfway through this, six
frames in, so to frame 18. And let's just
| | 01:47 | dip his head just a little bit.
| | 01:49 | So when we play that back, you can see
how even with just that one additional
| | 01:55 | keyframe, it gives a lot more realism,
and it makes the animation feel better.
| | 02:02 | Now, we can add even more layers to this
by working with the face of the character.
| | 02:09 | Typically, when we turn our head, we're
doing that because we want to see something.
| | 02:15 | So we want to lead that head turn with the eyes.
| | 02:19 | So we can do some animation of the pupils here.
| | 02:23 | So I am going to go ahead and Ctrl-select
both of these pupils, set a keyframe
| | 02:28 | here, and then again, as he starts to
turn his head--say maybe even only about
| | 02:35 | 4 frames in--I am going to turn those eyes
just slightly in the direction that he is looking.
| | 02:43 | And then at the end of the head turn, I
want to go ahead and copy the keyframes
| | 02:49 | for those so that he is on target.
| | 02:52 | Now one of the things I am noticing
here is that his eyes will typically lead
| | 02:59 | the animation just a little bit.
| | 03:01 | So I am going to go ahead and select
these eyes, and I am going to move them back
| | 03:04 | just a couple of frames.
| | 03:06 | So that way the eyes start
and then the head follows.
| | 03:09 | So notice how the eyes are just slightly
leading the head, and that will give it
| | 03:13 | just a hair bit more realism.
| | 03:15 | Now just like with any change in eye direction,
a lot of times it makes sense to add a blink in.
| | 03:24 | Now you don't have to, but a lot
of times it's actually a nice little
| | 03:29 | punctuation point to that animation.
| | 03:33 | So let's just animate another blink.
So I am going to go ahead and select my
| | 03:36 | upper lids, set a key here, go in
about six frames here, so somewhere around
| | 03:43 | frame 16, close those up, and then
let's open those a little bit more quickly.
| | 03:50 | I am going to go to frame 20 here and
then rubber-band select the open eye
| | 03:55 | key here and then just open them. And then
we can do the same thing for the lower lids.
| | 04:00 | Select those lower lids, set a key,
frame 16, close it up, frame 20, select the
| | 04:10 | keys at frame 10 and copy them.
| | 04:12 | Okay. And again, I am just holding down
the Shift key and dragging those keys.
| | 04:17 | So now you've got a lot more realism.
| | 04:22 | You can see that by adding all of
these layers, each one of them adds
| | 04:27 | a little bit of realism.
| | 04:28 | So we've turned the head, then we added
the layer to dip the chin, then we led
| | 04:35 | with the eyes, and then we added
the blink over the top of that.
| | 04:39 | So as you can see, even something as
simple as the head turn has a couple of
| | 04:43 | different layers, and each layer
adds just one more layer of realism.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with audio| 00:00 | Now let's start working with the mouth.
And typically when we animate the mouth,
| | 00:05 | we're animating dialog.
| | 00:07 | So in order to animate dialog, we need
to know how to import sound into 3ds Max.
| | 00:14 | This lesson will be just a basic
refresher course in how to import sound into Max.
| | 00:21 | Now sound is imported using Track View.
| | 00:24 | We can do it under Editors > Track View,
either the Curve Editor or the Dope Sheet--
| | 00:29 | or if we want, we can just hit this
icon here and bring up a Track View.
| | 00:35 | Now sound is what's called a global
track, and you'll see this on the left-hand
| | 00:41 | side of this window.
| | 00:42 | If you don't see it, we can go into
Display > Filters and make sure we have
| | 00:49 | Global Tracks enabled, and hit OK.
| | 00:52 | And when you do that,
you'll see we have a Sound icon.
| | 00:56 | All we have to do is double left-click
on that, and it brings up the ProSound
| | 01:01 | import module. And this is where we can add
sounds and also affect how they play back.
| | 01:08 | So all we have to do is hit the Add button
here, and in the Chap07 folder,
| | 01:14 | I have a number of different audio files.
| | 01:16 | The one we're going to select
here is called Vowels.wav.
| | 01:20 | Once you bring it in, you'll see
we have a number of options here.
| | 01:25 | In fact, we can load multiple
audio files if we want.
| | 01:28 | We're just going to work with one right now.
| | 01:31 | But we can see details
about the file, how long it is.
| | 01:35 | It is 190 frames long, or 6.3 seconds.
| | 01:40 | We can turn on playback,
which allows this to be played.
| | 01:44 | We can play it once if we want,
we can Permit Backwards Scrubbing.
| | 01:49 | There are a number of options here.
| | 01:51 | And also a render option, and what that
does is it allows that audio file to go
| | 01:57 | into a render--and that's only if we render
something like a QuickTime or an AVI movie,
| | 02:02 | something that can contain a soundtrack.
| | 02:04 | So I am going to hit Close here, and
let's go ahead and close out our Track View
| | 02:10 | as well, and if I hit Play--
(Character speaking: A, E.)
| | 02:14 | You can hear the soundtrack, but we
can't see the soundtrack, and we can
| | 02:19 | change that on the timeline here by
going into Configure > Show Soundtrack, and
| | 02:24 | there is our soundtrack.
| | 02:25 | It's a little bit small, but
we can see the waveform here.
| | 02:30 | (Character speaking: A, E.)
| | 02:32 | Now this is really just the vowels,
so we can animate to those vowels.
| | 02:37 | Like the Play Module said,
this is 190 frames long.
| | 02:40 | So we can go into our Time Configuration
here and change our End Time to 190,
| | 02:47 | and that should bring it all up.
| | 02:49 | Now if we want, we can also look at
the waveform either in Track View here,
| | 02:56 | so we can go into the Curve Editor.
| | 02:58 | And if you look here, we've got all of
the sounds that we've loaded, and the one
| | 03:01 | we're looking at here is called Vowels,
and we can definitely see the soundtrack here.
| | 03:06 | Or another way to do it is to open
the Mini Curve Editor on the timeline.
| | 03:14 | And again, exact same interface, just
open up Vowels and select the Waveform, and
| | 03:19 | we can see it a little bit more clearly here.
| | 03:22 | I am going to go ahead and hit Close.
| | 03:25 | So now we've loaded an audio file
into 3ds Max, and we can now work with
| | 03:31 | sound when we animate.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Overview of the mouth controls| 00:00 | Now before we actually animate to a
soundtrack, let's go ahead and do a quick
| | 00:05 | review of the facial
controls for this character.
| | 00:09 | Now I have most of the facial controls
for this character in the bottom-half of
| | 00:14 | this Control panel here.
| | 00:16 | The first one is a Jaw Control and that
basically just opens the jaw, moves it
| | 00:22 | left and right, and if you want, you
can get a little bit of a closed mouth
| | 00:26 | here, and that will basically
open and close the mouth.
| | 00:30 | The next one here is called Dial, and
this is a dialog control, so you can see
| | 00:34 | that we get a number of different
shapes wherever you move it.
| | 00:38 | So if we move to the top-right
corner, you get oo.
| | 00:42 | Move it along that, you get oh.
| | 00:46 | As you move down, you get a smile, or
C-H type of pose. And then we can go into
| | 00:53 | more of a closed mouth, or an M type of pose.
| | 00:58 | So I am going to go ahead
and undo my way out of that.
| | 01:01 | Now in addition to that, for
dialog we have two additional controls.
| | 01:06 | This one here does F, which basically
tucks that bottom lip under the teeth.
| | 01:12 | We also have S-H, which is another very
specific shape that you may or may not need.
| | 01:18 | Now the rest of these controls
really just add emotion and have
| | 01:23 | additional facial shapes. So we have Smile.
| | 01:27 | If you bring it straight up or
left/right, you can control smiles.
| | 01:31 | Go in the opposite direction, you have frowns.
| | 01:34 | We have this one called Sneer, and that
does the muscles along the side of the
| | 01:39 | nose to kind of sneer him.
| | 01:41 | And then we have this one called the
Corrugator, so I call it Grrr, but it works
| | 01:45 | those corrugators along the bottom of the lip.
| | 01:49 | So those are the basic controls for
the mouth, and now that we understand how
| | 01:54 | they work, we can actually use
them to start animating dialog.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating vowels: A, E, and I| 00:00 | Now let's go ahead and start
animating the character's mouth and start
| | 00:04 | doing some lip sync.
| | 00:05 | We're going to start with the vowels.
| | 00:07 | And basically the plan here is to
show you how to animate each individual
| | 00:12 | phoneme, and then we'll put all of
that knowledge together at the end and
| | 00:17 | animate some dialog.
| | 00:18 | So we're going to start off with
a couple of the basic vowel sounds
| | 00:23 | Now, the file that we have loaded should
have the audio soundtrack loaded as well.
| | 00:29 | So if I play this--
(Character speaking: A, E, I, O, U, Y.)
| | 00:37 | It should have 6 vowels in it,
A, E, I, O, U, and Y.
| | 00:42 | And these are pretty representative
of the vowels you get in the English language.
| | 00:47 | And if you can get these, you should be
able to get most other types of vowel sounds.
| | 00:51 | So let's go ahead and start
with the first half of this.
| | 00:54 | We're going to go A, E, and I, and then
in the next lesson we'll do O, U, and Y.
| | 00:59 | Now, first thing I want to do
is get my soundtrack visible.
| | 01:05 | Now, if you don't already
have it, we can try and do
| | 01:08 | a Configure > Show Soundtrack.
| | 01:11 | In this case, it's not showing with this
particular piece of dialog, so when I
| | 01:16 | scrub through this, I really can't see it.
| | 01:18 | Now, if I zoom in, I might be
able to see it a little bit better.
| | 01:21 | So I can certainly hold down Ctrl and Alt,
and then right-click to zoom in, and
| | 01:28 | you can see a little bit of that
soundtrack there but not a whole lot.
| | 01:32 | Probably the easiest way to see
this is to open up the Curve Editor.
| | 01:36 | Either we can do that here and
open up the Mini Curve Editor.
| | 01:40 | But actually, I like to float that
window, so I am going to go up here and open
| | 01:44 | the Curve Editor as a floating window.
| | 01:46 | Now, we can find the soundtrack here
under Sound, and open up Vowels.wav and
| | 01:54 | look at the waveform and you can see
here we've got that first vowel,
| | 01:56 | in fact, we can play it.
(Character speaking: A.)
| | 02:00 | Okay, so that's the vowel A.
But because this is floating, and I
| | 02:04 | have a fairly tight screen,
it's hard to see the character.
| | 02:07 | So I am going to have to rearrange
the windows just a little bit so we can
| | 02:10 | see everything at once.
| | 02:12 | So let's go ahead and put this up
towards the corner of the interface here and
| | 02:17 | get my character zoomed in
so I can see him fairly well.
| | 02:22 | Okay, so now let's go ahead and start animating.
| | 02:25 | Now, the first thing I want
to do is set some neutral keys.
| | 02:30 | The character right now is
at a neutral position here.
| | 02:35 | So I am just going to go ahead and
select all of these controls here on the
| | 02:39 | bottom half of the Control panel, and
these are all my mouth positions, and then
| | 02:44 | I am just going to go ahead
and hit a Set key for those.
| | 02:47 | Let's go ahead and turn on Auto Key as
well, so when we start animating we can
| | 02:52 | get the keyframes in.
| | 02:54 | So now as I scrub--
(Character speaking: A.)
| | 02:59 | You can see it here in
the Curve Editor that it
| | 03:04 | starts right at around frame 6 or frame 7.
(Character speaking: A.)
| | 03:12 | And then tapers off around
frame 18 or frame 19.
| | 03:16 | Now A is a very common vowel, and one
of the things with vowels is that they
| | 03:21 | usually open the mouth quickly, and
close it slowly, and you can even see
| | 03:25 | that here on the graph.
| | 03:27 | You can see how the graph kind of goes
up in volume fairly quickly and then at
| | 03:31 | the end it tapers off.
| | 03:33 | So that's kind of how we want to animate this.
| | 03:36 | We want to animate that mouth
opening quickly, and then gently closing.
| | 03:40 | So we're going to start
this animation at frame 6.
| | 03:43 | So we can either set a key here while
the mouth is neutral--that might be an
| | 03:48 | easiest way to do it--or if we want, we
can just right-click and highlight that
| | 03:52 | neutral key we created at 0
and then just drag that in.
| | 03:56 | Either way will work.
| | 03:58 | So now that I have that, we want to find
out where that sound comes in and gets
| | 04:04 | to maximum volume.
(Character speaking: A.)
| | 04:07 | And you can actually see it
right here on the Timeline.
| | 04:09 | You can see that when I am at frame 8,
we have that maximum volume at frame 8.
| | 04:14 | So really it opens only over a
couple of frames--over two frames.
| | 04:20 | So let's go ahead and open the mouth.
| | 04:21 | So I am going to select my jaw slider
here. And let's move that down to drop the
| | 04:27 | draw, and say A. So I am going to go
ahead and drop that jaw just a bit.
| | 04:31 | So here we go.
(Character speaking: A.)
| | 04:36 | And then he needs to close
the mouth over the rest of that.
| | 04:41 | So we can close it here, or if we
want to get an exact neutral position, I
| | 04:45 | can certainly highlight that initial
keyframe that I set and drag it, so
| | 04:50 | that's about the same.
(Character speaking: A.)
| | 04:53 | So once we do that, let's take a look
at the lip sync.
| | 04:57 | (Character speaking: A, A.)
| | 04:59 | So that's okay, but it doesn't
really have a lot of character.
| | 05:03 | Now, if you think about it, "A," if you
say it, there's always a little bit of a
| | 05:09 | smile that kind of fades in to that vowel.
| | 05:13 | So we go, "A," and your mouth just
naturally comes into a little bit of smile.
| | 05:17 | And we can add a little bit more to
this animation by just fading in a smile
| | 05:22 | over the course of this.
| | 05:24 | So as he opens his mouth.
(Character speaking: A, A.)
| | 05:28 | I can start smiling the character.
| | 05:31 | Now, if I want, I can smile at frame
8, which is basically where I have that
| | 05:37 | other keyframe for the jaw, but if I
want a little bit of overlap, a little bit
| | 05:42 | of variation, it's best to
push that in just a little bit.
| | 05:47 | So I am going to go ahead and push that
to frame 10 and then just kind of smile
| | 05:52 | his mouth a little bit.
| | 05:53 | So now.
(Character speaking: A.)
| | 05:58 | Now he's kind of smiling as
he talks, and that gives just another
| | 06:03 | little level of animation here.
| | 06:06 | So I am going to keep that keyframe
smile right at around 15, and then kind of
| | 06:12 | fade it out to 0 by frame 19.
| | 06:15 | And again, if I want, I can take that
neutral key and just Shift-drag it to
| | 06:20 | make sure it's perfect.
| | 06:22 | So let's go ahead and play this.
(Character speaking: A, A.)
| | 06:26 | So that gives a little bit
more life than just opening the jaw.
| | 06:30 | Again, with lip sync, you do want to mix
your mouth shapes to give a little bit
| | 06:35 | of life, a little bit of
flexibility to the face. Okay.
| | 06:39 | So that's A. Let's go through to the
next vowel, E. So I am going to go ahead and
| | 06:44 | hold down Ctrl+Alt and then
just move my timeline over.
| | 06:49 | And again, I just want to get it
so that I have my next vowel here.
| | 06:54 | And I can see it here, I can see--
(Character speaking: E.)
| | 06:58 | It starts at around frame 30
and is somewhere in the mid 40s.
| | 07:01 | So again, I am going to hold down Ctrl+Alt
and just drag my Timeline. So maybe
| | 07:06 | my first frame is frame 28, and then
right-click to drag the other side of the
| | 07:10 | Timeline so that I have about a frame 45 or so.
| | 07:14 | And you can see that here as I right-click
and drag, I am dragging the right
| | 07:19 | side of this window, left-click and
drag, I am dragging the left side--and
| | 07:24 | remember, I'm holding down Ctrl+Alt.
| | 07:27 | So let's take a look at E.
(Character speaking: E, E.)
| | 07:31 | Okay. So E starts somewhere
between 29 and 30.
| | 07:36 | Let's start from that neutral position,
so at frame 29 I am going to go ahead
| | 07:41 | and just hit a Set key, so that
way I have a neutral position.
| | 07:47 | Now let's go ahead and animate E. Now, E
is kind of more of a wide mouth, and if
| | 07:53 | you say it, "E," your mouth tends
to go wide and you show your teeth.
| | 07:59 | So let's go ahead and try and get that
pose in as the mouth creates that sound.
| | 08:05 | (Character speaking: E, E.)
| | 08:07 | So somewhere around 31 or 32. You can
see from the volume graph here that this
| | 08:13 | is less of an open quickly close slowly.
This is a little more steady state.
| | 08:19 | So I am going to go to frame 32 here,
and then I want to get a wide mouth.
| | 08:24 | So I can use this Dial slider here, and
if I move it down towards the corner, you
| | 08:31 | can see I'm getting kind of a consonant shape.
| | 08:33 | So if move it down to the very corner
there, I get the teeth that I need, and it
| | 08:38 | also widens up the mouth.
| | 08:39 | But I still need to open the
mouth because it's a vowel.
| | 08:42 | So I am also going to drop the jaw here.
(Character speaking: E-E-E-E-E-E-E.)
| | 08:49 | And again I can close that down
towards the end here, which is at, say, frame 41.
| | 08:55 | So again, I can select all of my controls,
highlight that neutral one at 29, drag it to 41.
| | 09:01 | So now he goes.
(Character speaking: E.)
| | 09:04 | So let's go ahead and play that.
(Character speaking: E, E, E.)
| | 09:08 | So one of the things I want to do is I
actually want to open that mouth and keep
| | 09:12 | that mouth open a little bit more.
| | 09:14 | So I am going to go ahead and select
the Jaw and the dialog slider and just
| | 09:18 | Shift-drag that key, so I am
basically copying the key from 32 to about 36.
| | 09:25 | So let's take a look at that.
(Character speaking: E, E, E.)
| | 09:29 | So if I want, I can do that, or if I
want I can open it up just a little bit
| | 09:34 | more at the beginning to give
it a little bit more variation.
| | 09:38 | Let's try that again.
(Character speaking: E, E, E.)
| | 09:42 | Okay, so that looks pretty good.
| | 09:44 | Remember, E has the mouth
wide and the teeth showing.
| | 09:50 | Okay, so let's move on to the next one
here, and if I look at my waveform here
| | 09:55 | from the time slider, you see it starts
somewhere between 50 and 55 and ends at around 70.
| | 10:01 | So again, we can use our Ctrl+Alt and left-click
to move the left side, right-click
| | 10:09 | to move the right side.
| | 10:10 | Move it in so we have 70 as our
endpoint, and then left-click so that my
| | 10:17 | starting point is somewhere around 50 or so.
| | 10:20 | I should have this next vowel.
(Character speaking: I, I.)
| | 10:24 | Which is the letter I.
| | 10:26 | So let's go ahead and start breaking this down.
| | 10:28 | Now, if I scrub into this, you'll see
somewhere between 53 and 54 it starts,
| | 10:39 | and then it fades out somewhere around 68.
| | 10:43 | So we're going to start
here at 53 and fade out by 68.
| | 10:50 | So again, at 53, let's just
start with a neutral position.
| | 10:54 | So I am going to go ahead and
select all of these, set a key.
| | 10:58 | Now I is very similar to A in that
it opens the mouth fairly quickly,
| | 11:06 | and then closes it slowly.
| | 11:08 | But the thing about I is it's more
like I-E. It's kind of more like A-Y-E.
| | 11:14 | So it starts in, in an A, but it
ends in an E, so we go, "aa-ee." Aa-ee.
| | 11:22 | We start with an aa, an A, and end with an E.
| | 11:26 | And since we've already done those
vowels, we should understand how to do them.
| | 11:30 | So I am going to go to frame 55, and
let's go ahead and just open that jaw up.
| | 11:38 | So now.
(Character speaking: I, I.)
| | 11:41 | Let's go ahead and
close down that jaw as well.
| | 11:44 | So we wanted to have that
closed somewhere around 67, 68.
| | 11:48 | So again, I can just select this neutral
pose at 53, hold down the Shift key and drag.
| | 11:54 | So now I should have an A.
(Character speaking: I.)
| | 11:58 | But we don't have that I-E, and we can do
| | 12:01 | that again with this dialog slider, but
we're going to fade that in a little bit later.
| | 12:06 | I am just going to kind of guesstimate
this, and I am going to say around 58 or
| | 12:09 | 59, a little bit past that initial open
of the mouth, and then I'm going to make
| | 12:16 | that E sound come in.
| | 12:18 | So now we should have this:
(Character speaking: I, I, I.)
| | 12:22 | Which is good.
| | 12:25 | It's starting to look better. It
starts to look a little bit more like an I.
| | 12:29 | But we still need to close down that--
that mouth there, so at frame 68 which
| | 12:36 | is kind of where it ends, I'm going to
go ahead and again left-click and drag,
| | 12:40 | select the key at 53, which is our
neutral key, hold down the Shift key, drag,
| | 12:45 | and drag that to 68.
(Character speaking: I, I, I, I, I.)
| | 12:52 | So that looks pretty good.
Each vowel has its own unique character.
| | 12:57 | But if you sound them out in your
mouth and speak it out, you can very easily
| | 13:03 | understand what's going on with the
character's mouth, and by looking at the
| | 13:07 | waveform, you can understand the timing.
| | 13:10 | So now that we understand a little bit
about vowels, let's go ahead and do some
| | 13:13 | more in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating vowels: O, U, and Y| 00:00 | Now that we understand how to animate a
few vowels, let's go ahead and animate
| | 00:04 | the rest of the vowels.
| | 00:05 | We are going to animate O, U, and Y.
Now a lot of these vowels have the
| | 00:12 | purse-lipped mouths, and so these are
all kind of related to one another.
| | 00:18 | Now I have my Curve Editor already set
up so I can see my waveform, and I have
| | 00:24 | my timeline set up so that
I have my first vowel up.
| | 00:28 | So let's go ahead and play that.
(Character speaking: O, O, O.)
| | 00:32 | So that's the letter O. So
O is pretty straightforward.
| | 00:37 | We are going to use an O shape here on
the dialog slider, and we also need to
| | 00:43 | open the jaw just a little bit.
| | 00:45 | But before we do that, we
should set a neutral position.
| | 00:49 | So let's understand where this
actually starts. It starts at 80.
| | 00:55 | So I am going to go back to 79,
and let's set our neutral positions.
| | 00:59 | Select all the lower half of the face,
and let's just do a Set Key there, so now
| | 01:04 | I've got a neutral position
locked in. So let's do O.
| | 01:09 | (Character speaking: O.)
| | 01:10 | O, a lot of times you can just start
with the wide O shape here. So you can do--
| | 01:17 | (Character speaking: O.)
And this tails off right around 93 or 94.
| | 01:23 | So if I want, I can highlight that neutral
pose there and just go ahead and drag that in.
| | 01:28 | But if we just do that--
(Character speaking: O.)
| | 01:32 | It doesn't really have much oomph.
And now when you do an ow sound, a lot of
| | 01:39 | times you actually open the jaw a
little bit more to get some more volume.
| | 01:43 | So let's go ahead and add that in.
| | 01:44 | I am going to go to frame 81 where we
have that big key there, and I am going to
| | 01:49 | select my Jaw slider and just go
ahead and stretch it out just a bit.
| | 01:53 | So now he has a little bit more
open mouth, a little bit more volume.
| | 02:00 | (Character speaking: O.)
| | 02:02 | But as he closes down, I also need
to kind of shut down that jaw as well.
| | 02:07 | So I am going to--not exactly to
the end--but somewhere before there.
| | 02:11 | Let's try frame 89 and go ahead and
just kind of close that at that point.
| | 02:17 | So let's see how that works.
(Character speaking: O, O.)
| | 02:20 | That's looking better.
| | 02:21 | It has a little bit more oomph
at the beginning.
| | 02:24 | But if you think about it, O actually ends
with more of an oo sound than a closed mouth.
| | 02:33 | So let's add one more little layer in here.
| | 02:35 | So I am going to go ahead and grab that
Dialog slider here, and if you notice--
| | 02:39 | (Character speaking: O.)
It just kind of goes back to neutral.
| | 02:44 | But if we want we can go to more of
an oo sound here--so at frame 89 I am
| | 02:50 | actually going to pull it up to the
top right corner of the slider, and it's
| | 02:55 | going to go to oo and then to neutral.
| | 02:59 | So 81, it's top left corner, which is
the O sound. Top right corner at 89
| | 03:07 | which is the oo sound.
| | 03:09 | The two are very closely related,
and then it tapers off to zero.
| | 03:13 | (Character speaking: O, O, O.)
| | 03:16 | So that looks a lot better,
and that's a lot more realistic.
| | 03:19 | So remember with the oo sound, you can
open the jaw to give the voice a little
| | 03:25 | more volume, and then at the end, you
can fade to an oo sound if you have enough
| | 03:30 | time, and that will also
add to the believability.
| | 03:34 | So let's go ahead to the next one.
| | 03:35 | I am going to again Ctrl+Alt+Right-click.
And let's go onto our next sound here,
| | 03:42 | and that ends somewhere around 120.
| | 03:44 | So I want to make sure I have 120
visible, and then I am going to go ahead and
| | 03:50 | make my Start frame somewhere around 100.
| | 03:53 | Okay, and this next one should be U.
(Character speaking: U.)
| | 03:58 | Now if you notice, this actually has kind
of a tapered beginning and a tapered end.
| | 04:03 | So it's not like A or I, which I
would call hard vowels where the mouth
| | 04:07 | opens really quickly.
| | 04:09 | But this one, the mouth
kind of fades in and fades out.
| | 04:13 | So this is a softer vowel than an A or
an I. So let's go ahead and play this one
| | 04:18 | more time and understand
what the vowel is doing.
| | 04:20 | (Character speaking: U, U.)
So it's going ee-oo, okay? So ee-yoo.
| | 04:26 | So it's going to actually start off with
more of an E sound and end with an oo sound.
| | 04:32 | So this starts right around 103, so
let's go one frame back to 102, set a
| | 04:41 | neutral key, and then
let's go ahead and set an E.
| | 04:46 | (Character speaking: U.)
| | 04:48 | You can see how this is
gaining volume to about 108.
| | 04:51 | Somewhere between 108 and
110, it's building in volume.
| | 04:55 | So when it's built up its volume, we can
put in our first phoneme shape, and that
| | 05:02 | would be an E sound.
| | 05:04 | So let's go ahead here and give it teeth
here, E, and open up the jaw there.
| | 05:12 | (Character speaking: U.)
And then it goes pretty quickly to an oo sound.
| | 05:17 | So we can go over here to kind of an
O here, and I want to go ahead and close
| | 05:23 | down that jaw pretty quickly here.
(Character speaking: U.)
| | 05:28 | Now one of the things I'm finding
here is that this particular slider, it's
| | 05:33 | crossing over a zero point right about here.
| | 05:37 | You can see here it's kind
of crossing over a zero point.
| | 05:40 | So I might want to add in another key just
to get it across a little bit more quickly.
| | 05:46 | (Character speaking: U.)
| | 05:53 | So I may also want to move this one back in.
(Character speaking: U.)
| | 05:58 | And then let's go ahead
and fade that out to zero here.
| | 06:01 | So let's see what we have here.
Let's go ahead and play that.
| | 06:04 | (Character speaking: U, U, U, U.)
It's a little harsh on the transition here.
| | 06:10 | (Character speaking: U.)
Right there.
| | 06:13 | Okay, so what I need to do is--
there we go! That's better.
| | 06:18 | So I want to make sure that I
have kind of a start of an oo here.
| | 06:23 | (Character speaking: U.)
| | 06:25 | That's a little bit less of a
snap between those two frames.
| | 06:27 | (Character speaking: U, U, U, U, U.)
Okay so that's U.
| | 06:34 | Now remember, U is kind more like an
ee-oo, so you might want to start with a
| | 06:39 | wider mouth, fade it in, and
then fade out on the oo sound.
| | 06:45 | Now we have one more vowel to do, and
that's going to be Y. So let's go ahead
| | 06:51 | and set our End frame to somewhere
around 150 and our Start frame to let's say
| | 07:00 | 124-125 and listen to Y.
(Character speaking: Y, Y.)
| | 07:07 | So Y is another soft vowel. It's a lot
like U. You can see it builds slowly and
| | 07:14 | then fades slowly as well. Oo-I.
| | 07:18 | So oo-I actually starts with an oo,
and then it goes to an I sound.
| | 07:23 | So it's oo-I, oo-I.
| | 07:27 | So let's find the start of this.
| | 07:29 | So 126 is actually its start, so it's
actually starting pretty quickly here.
| | 07:36 | So I am going to go ahead to 125, the
frame before where I hear that sound
| | 07:40 | coming in, set a neutral key.
| | 07:43 | (Character speaking: Y.)
So we can hear.
| | 07:46 | The I is coming in around 130.
| | 07:51 | So 128 or so I want to have
that oo sound here. So now--
| | 07:58 | (Character speaking: Y.)
| | 08:00 | Okay, and then 130-131 I want to have
the I. Okay, now remember, I is aa-ee.
| | 08:08 | So let's go ahead and zero out of the oo,
Shift-select that keyframe, drop it in
| | 08:15 | so it zeroes out, select
the jaw, and open that up.
| | 08:20 | Now one of the things you're going to
notice here is that I only have two keys.
| | 08:25 | I have a key for the jaw here
at 125, and then again at 131.
| | 08:29 | (Character speaking: Y.)
| | 08:31 | And you can see that it actually adds a
little bit of a disconnect here because the
| | 08:35 | mouth is opening over that oo, and it's
really stretching it right there and we
| | 08:40 | really don't want that to happen.
| | 08:41 | So again, I am going to go ahead and Shift-select
and copy that neutral key to 128.
| | 08:48 | (Character speaking: Y.)
| | 08:50 | So that way the jaw doesn't start opening
until I have a good oo sound, and then I-ee.
| | 08:58 | So I am going to keep that mouth
open and fade it into an E sound.
| | 09:01 | So I am going to go up to about 135,
kind of drop my mouth closed a little bit,
| | 09:08 | and then on that dialog slider, again
I want to go ahead and just let those
| | 09:13 | teeth be shown here.
| | 09:16 | (Character speaking: Y.)
| | 09:19 | And then, of course, we want to fade out,
which is again, Shift-selecting and
| | 09:23 | copying those neutral keys.
| | 09:29 | So let's take a look at Y.
| | 09:32 | (Character speaking: Y, Y.)
| | 09:34 | So remember, for Y it starts with oo,
goes to aa, and then goes to ee, oo-aa-ee, Y
| | 09:43 | This really shows you how you can actually
break down vowels into even sub-vowels,
| | 09:49 | in other words, subcomponents.
| | 09:51 | Y is not just one shape.
| | 09:53 | It's a combination of different shapes,
and this kind of sets us up a little bit
| | 09:58 | more for a more complex facial animation.
| | 10:02 | But remember, with any vowel just try
and sound it out and understand the shape
| | 10:08 | that the character is trying to make.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating consonants: B, D, and G| 00:00 | Now that we understand how to make vowel
shapes, let's go ahead and move on to consonants.
| | 00:06 | Now at first, we are going to do
consonants that start at the beginning.
| | 00:11 | So we are going to do B, D, and G, and
this will give you kind of a feel for how
| | 00:16 | to do consonants that start a word, and
then in the next lesson we will do ones
| | 00:21 | that where consonants end a
word and some special consonants.
| | 00:25 | So let's go ahead and work with these.
| | 00:28 | So I have my soundtrack loaded.
| | 00:30 | It should be called consonants.wav, and
let's just play the first part of this.
| | 00:35 | (Character speaking: B, D, G.)
| | 00:38 | Okay. So B, D, G. Now they all have
the same ending which is an E sound,
| | 00:46 | but the beginning is different.
| | 00:49 | So by doing this, we can understand how
different consonants give different effects.
| | 00:55 | So before we get started, let's go
ahead and actually get my character set up
| | 01:00 | here with a graph editor, or a curve
editor, so that way I can see my sound which
| | 01:07 | is called consonants.wav. And I
just want to see that waveform.
| | 01:11 | I am going to go ahead and shrink this
down so it fits on my screen here so
| | 01:16 | I can see everything.
| | 01:17 | Now first thing I want to do is just
go ahead and limit this so that I only
| | 01:21 | see that first phoneme.
| | 01:24 | So I am going to set my timeline to about 20.
| | 01:27 | Now I can do this by either holding
down Ctrl and Alt and right-clicking, and
| | 01:33 | that would just go ahead and drag that timeline.
| | 01:36 | Or if I want, I can just go into my
time configuration and make the length
| | 01:41 | somewhere around 24 or 25.
| | 01:43 | So now I should just have that one consonant.
(Character speaking: B, B.)
| | 01:48 | So the letter B.
| | 01:50 | The first thing we need to do
is figure out where it starts.
| | 01:54 | So let's go ahead and listen to this.
(Character speaking: B--)
| | 01:56 | So you can hear the mmm,
the buh sound even at frame 1.
| | 02:03 | (Character speaking: B--)
And it opens up into the vowel at frame 3.
| | 02:08 | So we need to go ahead and
start animating those right off.
| | 02:12 | Now just like we did with the vowels,
I want to go ahead and set a neutral
| | 02:16 | position at the very beginning.
| | 02:18 | So I am going to go ahead and select the
lower part of the face, and Set Key for
| | 02:23 | those, and then I am going to turn on Auto Key.
| | 02:26 | Now for this first frame I
want to get a B shape here.
| | 02:30 | So let me zoom in just a little bit.
| | 02:33 | So for B, it really is just the mouth
closed, but if you want you can accentuate
| | 02:39 | the closing of the mouth, you can
tighten up the lips of the character.
| | 02:42 | We can do that on this rig by using this
dialog slider and sliding it over to right and down.
| | 02:49 | And if we want, we might also want to
add in a little bit of jaw if we want.
| | 02:54 | But you could see how his lips
tighten up and accentuate that B.
| | 03:00 | And then it starts opening at frame 3.
| | 03:04 | So what I want to do here is, again,
just set another key for that at frame 2.
| | 03:11 | So I have locked this down, and then
over the next two frames--from frame 2 to
| | 03:17 | frame 4--I will go ahead and
open this in to the E sound.
| | 03:20 | (Character speaking: bee-eee.)
So I am going to go ahead to an E sound here.
| | 03:26 | So that means I am going to animate
this dialog slider over so that the teeth
| | 03:31 | are showing and then also open
up the jaw a little bit.
| | 03:35 | So we have an open mouth.
| | 03:37 | Now one of the things with the jaw is that I
didn't set any additional keyframes for this.
| | 03:42 | So it's going to open over frame 0 to
frame 4, and that doesn't look quite realistic.
| | 03:50 | So I want to make sure it's shut down at
frame 2 and just opens up over two frames.
| | 03:55 | I am just going to go ahead and dial
that down that down just a little bit here,
| | 03:58 | and now--
(Character speaking: bee-eee.)
| | 04:01 | We can start animating
the rest of that vowel.
| | 04:06 | So I am going to go ahead
and close out the mouth.
| | 04:10 | Select that neutral keyframe at frame 0,
hold down the Shift key, and drag.
| | 04:15 | So now what we have here is--
(Character speaking: B, B, B.)
| | 04:19 | And then, of course, I also
need to close the mouth down as well.
| | 04:23 | So I am going to go ahead and take that
dialog slider, select my Neutral key at
| | 04:27 | frame 0, hold down the Shift key and
drag, and then I'll copy that keyframe.
| | 04:33 | So we should have something reasonable here.
(Character speaking: B, B, B, B.)
| | 04:39 | Now if I want, I can hold that mouth
open just a little bit longer and give it
| | 04:44 | more of that E shape.
| | 04:46 | So I am going to go a little bit in
here to, say, around frame 8 and make those
| | 04:51 | teeth a little more visible.
| | 04:53 | That will lengthen vowel just a hair.
(Character speaking: B, B, B, B.)
| | 05:00 | So there is a B.
| | 05:02 | Now remember, you want to
get the consonant first.
| | 05:05 | To make sure that consonant
holds for a few frames--
| | 05:08 | usually two frames minimum--
then open the mouth in the vowel.
| | 05:13 | So let's go on to the next consonant,
and that's going to be this one over here.
| | 05:18 | So if you look at my timeline here,
anywhere from frame 25 to a little after frame 50.
| | 05:25 | So in fact, let's just do
this in Time Configuration.
| | 05:27 | We will do our start frame as frame 25.
| | 05:30 | End Time, let's say, 54, OK,
and that should be good.
| | 05:36 | So now we have--
(Character speaking: D, D.)
| | 05:38 | The letter D.
Now D is a little bit different.
| | 05:43 | Now if you sounded out with your mouth,
you will see that D has the tongue against
| | 05:50 | the back of the teeth,
and the teeth are visible.
| | 05:53 | So it's very similar to the E sound in
that the teeth are visible, but the mouth
| | 05:59 | is actually closed and
just the teeth are showing.
| | 06:01 | So let's find the start of this
and start animating that consonant.
| | 06:06 | (Character speaking: D-- D--)
| | 06:08 | You can see it starts right
around 32, and then it opens up.
| | 06:13 | So I am going to actually start here at 30,
and let's go ahead and lock down the mouth here.
| | 06:20 | I am going to set my neutral key here
at 30, and then at 32 I want to get
| | 06:25 | that consonant shape.
(Character speaking: D-- D--)
| | 06:30 | And make sure I set another key here at 33,
and then we can go ahead and open the mouth.
| | 06:37 | And again, the same thing applies to the jaw.
| | 06:41 | We want to make sure that the jaw
is closed during that consonant.
| | 06:45 | So I am going to go back to frame 33, select
the neutral key at 30 and then copy that.
| | 06:53 | (Character speaking: D.)
| | 06:55 | And then I am going to go ahead
and open the mouth for the E sound.
| | 07:00 | So let's see what we have.
(Character speaking: D.)
| | 07:04 | So again, we want to close that down.
(Character speaking: D.)
| | 07:08 | So it ends around 46.
| | 07:10 | So I am going to go ahead and close
down the jaw right at around 41 or so.
| | 07:17 | In fact, again I can just copy that
first key there and get that in, and then
| | 07:22 | just like it did with the other one,
I want to keep those teeth bared for a
| | 07:26 | little bit during this E sound.
| | 07:29 | So I am going to set a key at 37 and then go
ahead and fade that back out to 0 around frame 44.
| | 07:39 | So let's take the look at this.
(Character speaking: D, D, D.)
| | 07:43 | Okay, so that's pretty good.
| | 07:45 | I can actually open my mouth a little bit more.
(Character speaking: D-D-D.)
| | 07:49 | So let's go ahead and into my jaw
slider here and pop that mouth open just a
| | 07:54 | little bit more, give it
a little bit more oomph.
| | 07:57 | (Character speaking: D, D.)
Okay, so that's a D sound.
| | 08:03 | Now let's go ahead and move on to the
last one here. And let's take a look at
| | 08:07 | this audio file here.
| | 08:09 | You can see it starts somewhere after
about 60 and maybe ends somewhere past 85.
| | 08:16 | So let's go ahead and just do
this in the Time Configuration.
| | 08:19 | So I am going to start at somewhere around
60, and then End Time is going to be 87.
| | 08:27 | And I just want make sure that I get this
sound in my timeline so I can work with it.
| | 08:31 | Let's go ahead and play this.
(Character speaking: G, G.)
| | 08:35 | Okay, so I probably need a few
more frames beforehand.
| | 08:38 | So I am going to make my Start Time 57.
So we are going to from 57 to 87 here.
| | 08:44 | (Character speaking: G, G.)
| | 08:48 | So, let's go ahead and find
that G sound right around 62.
| | 08:56 | Then it rises up into the E. You can
see it here also in the timeline here, you
| | 09:01 | can see that waveform.
| | 09:03 | It's going up into the E by around 67.
| | 09:08 | So the G starts around 60-61, and then
by 66-67 it's at maximum volume.
| | 09:16 | So let's go ahead to 60,
select those, and neutralize those.
| | 09:22 | Now let's go ahead and dial in our G sound.
| | 09:25 | Again, make the sound with your mouth, G.
You will notice that your lips kind of
| | 09:30 | come together and they purse a little bit.
| | 09:33 | So we can take this S-H slider--and you
can see you're getting that sort of shape,
| | 09:39 | and I don't want to go all the way with that.
| | 09:41 | I just want to kind of purse the lips
a little bit, but I also want to show
| | 09:46 | the teeth a little bit.
| | 09:47 | So I am going to go this Dial slider
here and maybe smile it just a little bit.
| | 09:53 | So now one more time, and just add a
little bit of a keyframe there and then
| | 10:01 | another keyframe for that S-H, just add
some variation, and then we are going to
| | 10:06 | go ahead and pop open the mouth.
(Character speaking: G.)
| | 10:09 | So G. And now this is where we open up the jaw.
| | 10:12 | But again, remember we have keep
the jaw closed before we open it.
| | 10:17 | So I am going to go ahead and set a
keyframe there and then open it, and as I
| | 10:24 | open, I am going to go ahead
and dial back this S-H shape.
| | 10:27 | In fact, it I want I can copy that neutral key.
| | 10:30 | This is one reason why I am always
doing that, and then I can also make it more
| | 10:34 | of an E sound by putting up that Dialog slider.
(Character speaking: G.)
| | 10:40 | Okay, so maybe I have my mouth open a
little too much. There we go.
| | 10:44 | (Character speaking: G.)
| | 10:46 | Let me go ahead and start closing that
down to make sure that this jaw still has
| | 10:51 | the teeth bared. And let's see how this works.
(Character speaking: G.)
| | 10:55 | And let's go ahead and end this.
| | 10:57 | So I am going to go to my jaw, select
that and again, copy my neutral key to
| | 11:04 | frame 78, do the same for the dialog here.
| | 11:08 | We are going to go ahead and
copy that and close down that mouth.
| | 11:11 | So let's see what this looks like.
(Character speaking: G, G, G.)
| | 11:16 | Again, I can pop this open a little bit more.
I am being little conservative on
| | 11:21 | this mouth open here.
| | 11:22 | So let's go ahead and open that a little more.
And let's see how this works now.
| | 11:27 | (Character speaking: G, G, G.)
Okay, so this is the G sound.
| | 11:33 | So as you can see, each individual
consonant has its own shape, and even though we
| | 11:39 | go into that same vowel afterwards,
the shape that you have beforehand does
| | 11:44 | affect your perception of the dialog.
| | 11:47 | So let's go ahead and play all of these at once.
| | 11:49 | I am going to go in my Time Configuration here.
We are going to start at frame 0,
| | 11:53 | go to frame 87. And let's go ahead and play this.
(Character speaking: B, D, G. B, D, G.)
| | 12:04 | So as you can see, each one is subtly different.
| | 12:08 | Remember, each consonant must be on
for a minimum of about two frames in
| | 12:13 | order for it to read.
| | 12:15 | Otherwise, it will look like it's popping,
and it will appear as though it's jittery.
| | 12:19 | So you want to keep a little bit of
time for your consonants and then move
| | 12:23 | into your vowels.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating consonants: F, M, and S| 00:00 | Let's take a look at some other
consonants as well, and these are consonants
| | 00:04 | that are softer and also preceded by vowels.
| | 00:09 | So let's go ahead and play the consonants
we'll be working with in this lesson.
| | 00:13 | (Character speaking: F, M, so. F, M, so.)
| | 00:19 | So F and M. Both start with a vowel,
and then so is the letter S, which is also
| | 00:27 | a nice consonant to know how to animate.
| | 00:30 | So first thing I want to do is
isolate that first constant here.
| | 00:35 | It's starting right around frame 88
and ends somewhere around 108.
| | 00:41 | So let's do 88 to 108 in our Time Scale here,
and let's go ahead and see how this works.
| | 00:52 | So it goes.
(Character speaking: F.)
| | 00:57 | You can hear the F sound
comes in later. It goes--
| | 01:01 | Right around 96.
The eh sound starts around 90-91.
| | 01:08 | So let's go ahead to frame 90 and set
our neutral key, and then at 92 let's go
| | 01:14 | ahead and open the mouth for the F.
| | 01:17 | So this is going to be
almost just a jaw open here.
| | 01:20 | We could add a little bit of wide
mouth, but it's not an E, it's an uh.
| | 01:26 | So let's just go ahead and open up the mouth.
(Character speaking: F.)
| | 01:33 | And so as that jaw closes, it's
going to go into the F sound.
| | 01:38 | Now if you look here on our Control panel
here, you can see we have our Ffff slider here.
| | 01:45 | So I am going to go ahead and start to
dial that in, but before I do I need to
| | 01:50 | zero it out because we need to have it
at zero while the mouth opens up into that F.
| | 01:56 | It's already at 0.
| | 01:58 | So I am just going to go
ahead and set a key there
| | 02:01 | and then just start dialing
it in as I close that mouth.
| | 02:09 | In fact, if I want to close that
mouth completely, I can just, again, copy
| | 02:13 | my neutral key here. And let's go ahead to
my Ffff slider and just maximize that out.
| | 02:19 | So let's see how that looks.
(Character speaking: F, F--)
| | 02:24 | Notice here, it feels a little fast.
(Character speaking: F, F, F.)
| | 02:26 | So if I want, I can actually fade
that in over a longer period of time.
| | 02:33 | So I am going to start at frame
94 instead of 95 for the F sound.
| | 02:38 | (Character speaking: F, F, F.)
Then we need to fade out the F as well.
| | 02:45 | So we hear it fades out
somewhere around 102-103.
| | 02:49 | So again I am going to copy that 0 key
to 102. And let's see what this looks like.
| | 02:53 | (Character speaking: F, F, F, F.)
That looks pretty good.
| | 02:59 | Now one of the things about sounds like F or
M is that they can go on for a very long time.
| | 03:06 | You can go fff, you can actually
keep that consonant going for a while.
| | 03:12 | So unlike the hard consonants like B
or P or T--which are usually just very
| | 03:19 | short like two or three frames--longer
consonants such as M or F can stretch out
| | 03:26 | over multiple frames.
| | 03:28 | So let's go ahead and actually
animate an M. And let's do the next one.
| | 03:32 | So let's start this at 108. And let's go
to about 132 or so, and that should give
| | 03:41 | us a nice amount of space to animate this M.
| | 03:44 | (Character speaking: M, M, M.)
Now let's listen to this.
| | 03:49 | It goes, eh-mm-uh.
| | 03:53 | There is a little bit of a
secondary vowel at the end here.
| | 03:57 | (Character speaking: M, M, M.)
| | 04:00 | You can see when he lets go of that M, he
gives an exhale and that gives kind of an uh sound.
| | 04:05 | So we need to make sure to animate that as well.
| | 04:08 | So again we're going to need to go
with an eh sound, and that starts at 115.
| | 04:14 | So we go one frame back to 114, set
some keys for that. And let's go ahead
| | 04:21 | and open up that mouth.
| | 04:24 | So I am going to grab the
jaw slider and pull it down.
| | 04:28 | (Character speaking: M.)
| | 04:30 | Now an M is very similar to B in
that it's just the mouth closed.
| | 04:35 | So if I wanted to, I could very
quickly open and close the mouth.
| | 04:39 | But it's not going to look
as good. Let me show you.
| | 04:43 | (Character speaking: M, M.)
| | 04:45 | If you want to really accentuate
that M, you should tighten the lips.
| | 04:49 | So at frame 120 I should have those
lips kind of tightened up into a pose.
| | 04:55 | So we can do that by using this Dialog
slider, and we can bring that down and to
| | 05:02 | the right to get that
kind of tight lip for the M.
| | 05:06 | But again, we need to make sure that we
zero that out so we only fade that in
| | 05:12 | over a small amount of frames
rather than from the beginning.
| | 05:15 | So I am going to go ahead and select
my neutral key at 114 and put it to 118.
| | 05:21 | So I am going to zero it out at 118, so it
fades in over two frames. So you can see M.
| | 05:30 | And then at frame 124-125,
we have that uh sound.
| | 05:37 | So what I want to do is hold that M
until about 124 and then open the mouse
| | 05:42 | slightly to give that uh sound.
| | 05:46 | So again, I am just going to create
another key and maybe even tighten the lips a
| | 05:50 | little bit more, again just give it a
little bit of variation and then at 26, I
| | 05:57 | am going to zero out the M and open up that jaw.
| | 06:02 | Now again we need to make sure that
the jaw is zeroed before we open it.
| | 06:06 | So I am going to copy a 0 key to 124, and
then at 126 I am just going to pop-open
| | 06:12 | the mouth just a little bit and
then close it up again right there.
| | 06:18 | So let's see what we've got.
(Character speaking: M, M, M, M, M.)
| | 06:25 | So that looks pretty good.
| | 06:26 | Remember, even within consonants, you
can get slight inhales or exhales, and
| | 06:31 | those will show up as vowels or open
mouth sounds, and that's what we saw here.
| | 06:37 | Now we've got one more.
| | 06:39 | So I've got somewhere from around
frame 130 to a little bit past 160.
| | 06:45 | So let's go ahead and do our Start Time
at 130. End Time, let's make that 160.
| | 06:52 | And let's go ahead and play this last one.
(Character speaking: So, so.)
| | 06:58 | So this one starts with a consonant,
but it's a soft consonant.
| | 07:02 | It's the letter S. And again. just like the
letter M, you can have a very long S sound.
| | 07:10 | It can expand multiple, multiple frames.
| | 07:13 | So we need to find out
where that starts and animate it.
| | 07:20 | You can hear it right at 138,
and then the O starts at 144.
| | 07:29 | So from 138 to 144 is that S sound.
| | 07:35 | So I am going to go one frame before
to 137. And let's go ahead and just set
| | 07:41 | our neutral key, and then two frames forward
into 139, I want to get that S sound.
| | 07:47 | And what is S?
| | 07:49 | It's very much like D in
that it's just a closed mouth.
| | 07:53 | And this is kind of our universal
consonant sound. If you don't quite know
| | 07:57 | what to do, just kind of bear the teeth a
little bit and that will give us a good consonant.
| | 08:02 | But for S, this is perfect here.
| | 08:07 | So right around there. We want to keep that.
| | 08:09 | So I am just going to set another keyframe here.
| | 08:14 | So it goes into an O at maybe 145.
| | 08:18 | Actually, I am going to do this
at 145, and I am going to go ahead and
| | 08:22 | zero out my S sound.
| | 08:23 | So I am going to select that neutral key,
copy it over, drop open the jaw, but I
| | 08:32 | also need an O. Now before I do that,
notice how the jaw is opening from 137 to
| | 08:38 | 145, and I need to make sure that it
stays closed here to about 142 or so.
| | 08:47 | (Character speaking: So.)
| | 08:50 | And so, once it goes up there we need to make
sure that we also go into an O sound.
| | 08:54 | So I am going to select my Dialog
slider and kind of dial it in there.
| | 09:00 | (Character speaking: So.)
Now O always kind of fades out into oo.
| | 09:06 | So I am going to go ahead and move my
Dialog slider to the right and also
| | 09:10 | close out that jaw.
| | 09:12 | So I am going to copy a neutral
key to about 148-149 here.
| | 09:16 | (Character speaking: So.)
| | 09:20 | And then let's go ahead and close this
mouth by copying that neutral key here.
| | 09:26 | So now we should have this.
(Character speaking: So, so, so.)
| | 09:33 | So you can see we start with the S
sound and then go into the O, which again is
| | 09:38 | a combination of multiple sounds.
| | 09:40 | So we actually were animating
mostly the dialog and the jaw slider.
| | 09:45 | Now if we wanted to, we could add in a
little bit of this S-H here to give it a
| | 09:50 | little bit more, but again,
that's for more of a sh than a ss.
| | 09:54 | But if you want, you can dial that and give a
little bit more of a purse of a lip, if you want.
| | 09:59 | So those are some of the basic consonants.
And remember, consonants each have
| | 10:04 | their own shape, some consonants
may be longer than others--minimum of two
| | 10:09 | frames for a consonant.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating lip sync: assigning phonemes| 00:00 | Now that we've had some practice
with animating phonemes--both vowels and
| | 00:04 | consonants--let's go ahead and put
that knowledge together and actually
| | 00:07 | animate a line of dialog.
| | 00:09 | Now I have a simple two-part line of
dialog here. And let's go ahead and play it.
| | 00:14 | (Character speaking: I've sworn off pancakes.
I'm having French Toast instead.)
| | 00:23 | So let's animate the first half of this,
and to show you some of the process
| | 00:28 | for animating dialog.
| | 00:30 | Now the first thing I am going
to do is zoom in on my timeline.
| | 00:33 | I am going to hold down Ctrl and Alt
and then right-click to make my end frame
| | 00:39 | somewhere around frame 46. And if I want,
I could actually do this as well in the
| | 00:44 | Time Configuration dialog.
| | 00:46 | So first thing I want to
do is get a neutral frame.
| | 00:49 | Now depending upon the scene, your
character may have a facial expression on its face.
| | 00:55 | In this case, we are going to start with
neutral just to make it a little bit easier.
| | 00:58 | So I am going to select all my lower
part of my face and go ahead and just set a
| | 01:04 | keyframe for that. And let's
make sure Auto Key is turned on.
| | 01:08 | So let's go ahead and scrub
through the track and see what we have.
| | 01:11 | So as you can see, that frame 1 has
nothing, and it really starts at frame 2.
| | 01:19 | So if I leave everything selected, hold
down my Shift key and drag, you'll see I
| | 01:24 | am just going to go ahead and zero
everything out again at frame 2 so that way
| | 01:28 | we have a neutral position from which to start.
| | 01:31 | So that first vowel is I,
| | 01:32 | I've, I, and then a V. So
let's go ahead and do the I first.
| | 01:39 | (Character speaking: I--)
So I am going to go two frames into frame 4.
| | 01:43 | And basically, all we need to do for this one
is to grab that jaw slider and open it up.
| | 01:51 | So I am going to go ahead and just open that up.
| | 01:53 | I can put it to the right or left a
little bit, just to give it some variation,
| | 01:57 | but basically, it's going to go.
(Character speaking: I--I--I've--)
| | 02:00 | Then next phoneme is V, and that's very
similar to an F. So we can use that slider there.
| | 02:06 | So I am going to go ahead
and close down my mouth.
| | 02:09 | In fact, if I want, I can select that
neutral that I had at 0, copy that in, and
| | 02:15 | then I want to dial in my F or V sound.
| | 02:19 | Now one of the things you'll notice here
is that I have a 0 frame here at 2, but
| | 02:25 | when I go to 6 where I want to dial
that in, I don't have any in-between.
| | 02:31 | So if I bring this in here, you'll see
that when I've got no in-between here
| | 02:38 | that it's going to start getting that
F shape while the mouth is open, and
| | 02:42 | that's not what I want.
| | 02:44 | So I am going to go ahead again and select
that neutral key and copy it into frame 4.
| | 02:50 | (Character speaking: I've.)
| | 02:52 | So I've sworn, okay. So now
we need to get an S sound.
| | 02:56 | (Character speaking: I've s--)
| | 02:59 | You can see the S sound is
pretty much here by frame 8.
| | 03:03 | So I want to zero out the F. So again,
I can just select any one of those 0
| | 03:08 | keys there, and then let's go ahead and
select the Dialog slider here and slide
| | 03:14 | in an S. But again, we have the exact
same problem we have with F. I don't have
| | 03:18 | a key on this beforehand.
| | 03:20 | I only have a key at frame 2.
| | 03:23 | So I need to go ahead and select a neutral key
and just slide it in about two frames before.
| | 03:29 | So I am going to go ahead and copy
that to frame 6 and then get my S sound.
| | 03:35 | (Character speaking: I've s--)
Now go sworn, so it goes to an oo sound.
| | 03:41 | (Character speaking: I've s--)
So we've got the oo completely in by frame 11.
| | 03:47 | So oo is over here.
| | 03:50 | So we are basically going from bottom-left
to top-right on this slider here, and
| | 03:56 | this may create a little
bit of an inconsistency.
| | 03:59 | Let's see how this plays.
(Character speaking: I've swo--swor--)
| | 04:03 | You can see I've got the S there,
but it's in-betweening way too fast.
| | 04:07 | I want to see that S a little bit longer.
| | 04:09 | So I am going to go ahead and push that
back and do that another keyframe at frame 9.
| | 04:15 | And then here, again, the mouth is closed.
| | 04:18 | I want it to kind of be transitioning
from the S sound to the oo.
| | 04:23 | So I am going to go ahead
and just get this shape.
| | 04:26 | So basically I am just
single-framing this.
| | 04:28 | (Character speaking: I've swo--)
Okay, so now sworn.
| | 04:31 | So it's going to open up into an O. So
I am going to go ahead and slide this
| | 04:37 | over and then maybe open
up the jaw a little bit.
| | 04:41 | Again, remember, if you haven't set
a key for something, you need to make
| | 04:45 | sure you have a blocking key to make
sure that it remains at that same value
| | 04:51 | until you need it again.
| | 04:52 | So I am going to go ahead and copy my
last key here to frame 11, which is two
| | 04:59 | before where I need it.
| | 05:00 | Just drop that jaw open
just a little bit here
| | 05:03 | (Character speaking: I've sworn--)
Great!
| | 05:06 | I've sworn, and then we go back into
an N sound, which kind of has the teeth
| | 05:13 | bared, almost like a D or T
in that it's showing the teeth.
| | 05:17 | (Character speaking: Orn-- orn--)
So about 16 I want to get it into that N sound.
| | 05:24 | So I am going to go ahead and drop my
dialog to this and then just go ahead and
| | 05:30 | adjust my jaw slider so that
it gives me what I want here.
| | 05:34 | (Character speaking: I've sworn--)
| | 05:36 | I've sworn off, and again we are going back
to an O or an uh. Kind of ah-off, we can go uff.
| | 05:48 | Okay, so there's ah. And then with this Dialog
slider, I am going to go ahead and start
| | 05:55 | getting this back to 0.
| | 05:56 | In fact, I am going to go ahead and
make it 0 here, and we are at frame 18 now.
| | 06:00 | (Character speaking: Sworn off--)
| | 06:02 | Ah-fff, and then we go back to an F.
So the F comes in right around frame 22.
| | 06:09 | The last key I have for this is right
around frame 8, but I need to make sure
| | 06:13 | that I lock in that 0 value
before I start animating it.
| | 06:18 | So I am going to go ahead and select
that key and copy it to frame 20 and then
| | 06:22 | dial in my F and close my jaw so it looks good.
(Character speaking: Sworn off--)
| | 06:32 | Okay, I want to make sure that I keep that
jaw open for the off.
| | 06:36 | (Character speaking: Sworn off. I've sworn off.)
There we go.
| | 06:41 | I've sworn off.
| | 06:43 | So now I've got that
first stream of dialog there.
| | 06:46 | (Character speaking: I've sworn off.)
Now we've got to go to pancakes.
| | 06:50 | Now at that point, the mouth is going
to be closed and we want that tight lip.
| | 06:56 | So the first thing I want to do is take
my F sound and kind of get rid of that
| | 07:02 | and then also make sure
my jaw is completely closed.
| | 07:05 | So I am going to go ahead and select
that 0 frame there and make sure that
| | 07:09 | that's closed, and now I
want to dial in a P sound.
| | 07:14 | Now the P is going to be that tight-lipped
sound, and again, remember just before
| | 07:18 | you set a key, look to see where your
last key was, and if it's pretty far back,
| | 07:25 | go ahead and just hold down the Shift key
and drag that to about two frames before.
| | 07:31 | So that way it's not in-betweening
over the rest of the dialog.
| | 07:35 | So I am going to go ahead
and just tighten up those lips.
| | 07:37 | (Character speaking: Off p-p-pan--)
Then we go to pancakes.
| | 07:42 | And pancake is an A sound.
| | 07:44 | So again, we just want to go ahead and zero
out that Dialog slider and drop open the jaw.
| | 07:49 | Now with the jaw, I notice we
already have a closed frame at 26.
| | 07:54 | So when I open it up at 28, we should be okay.
| | 07:58 | (Character speaking: Off pan-n-n-n--)
| | 08:01 | Pan, nn, N sound, we just want
to get a little bit of teeth in there.
| | 08:07 | Now remember, I am playing with this Dialog
slider, and I haven't had a key in a while.
| | 08:11 | So I want to make sure I get a
blocking key right before that.
| | 08:16 | (Character speaking: Panca--)
| | 08:18 | And then C. We can just emphasize that a
little bit, and then A, we can open up that
| | 08:27 | jaw again, and then we can
start zeroing out this slider here.
| | 08:33 | So again, I just want to select the 0
key for that.
| | 08:36 | (Character speaking: Ancakes--)
| | 08:38 | Okay, and then we want to make sure we
get that to 0, the jaw slider.
| | 08:43 | Then we have an S. So I want
to make sure I get that S shape.
| | 08:47 | (Character speaking: Ncakes--)
| | 08:50 | Now once we have all of this done, we
should have a neutral expression there.
| | 08:55 | So let's just go ahead and finish
this out by copying 0 keys to 46.
| | 09:00 | So this should be good rough pass of this.
| | 09:03 | Now this might not be perfect, but it should
be close for this first half of this dialog.
| | 09:08 | Let's go ahead and play it.
(Character speaking: I've sworn off pancakes.)
| | 09:11 | (I've sworn off pancakes.
I've sworn off pancakes.)
| | 09:15 | Okay, so that looks pretty good.
| | 09:17 | I am sure there are a few places where
I can tweak it and adjust keyframes to
| | 09:21 | get it popping a little bit better.
| | 09:23 | But that's the first half.
| | 09:25 | So go ahead and use this workflow to
animate the second half of the lip sync.
| | 09:33 | Now remember to pay attention to where
your last in-between was for a slider.
| | 09:38 | Make sure that you put in a keyframe
two frames before so that way you've
| | 09:44 | blocked out that pose for however
long you haven't used that slider.
| | 09:50 | Also, remember that consonant
should be a minimum of two frames.
| | 09:54 | If you have dialog that's going
faster than one phoneme per frame, then you
| | 09:59 | have to approximate.
| | 10:02 | So go ahead and animate the last half
of this, and then we'll circle back and do
| | 10:07 | the rest of the animation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating lip sync: head motion| 00:00 | At this point, we have the phonemes of
the dialog animated, and so let's take a
| | 00:05 | look at what I animated and you
can compare that to what you did.
| | 00:10 | (Character speaking: I've sworn off pancakes.
I'm having French Toast instead.)
| | 00:15 | So yours may be similar and may be a
little bit different, but remember, with lip
| | 00:20 | sync it really is kind of a combination
between technical and artistic.
| | 00:26 | So if it looks good, then it usually is good.
| | 00:29 | So just make sure that you have a
lip sync that pretty much matches the
| | 00:33 | dialog and looks good.
| | 00:35 | So now that we have that in place, we
really only have the mouth animating, we
| | 00:40 | need to animate the entire character,
which means the head, the body, the mouth,
| | 00:45 | the eye blinks, and all of that.
| | 00:47 | So let's go ahead and just focus
with this lesson on head motion.
| | 00:52 | So first thing I am going to do is kind
of get a little bit of acting in there.
| | 00:57 | Now let's go ahead and play this one more time.
| | 00:59 | (Character speaking: I've sworn off pancakes.
I'm having French Toast instead.)
| | 01:04 | So I want to do a little bit of
acting with the head as he says,
| | 01:08 | "I have sworn off pancakes."
| | 01:10 | Now the words sworn off means he is saying no.
He is refusing the pancakes.
| | 01:16 | So we can accentuate that with a little bit of
a head shake to indicate that he is saying no.
| | 01:22 | So let's go ahead and grab that had
Head slider. And let's go ahead and turn on
| | 01:26 | Auto Key. And let's set a
keyframe for that at zero.
| | 01:30 | Now we need to understand, where
he is going to shake his head no.
| | 01:35 | So let's scrub through this dialog--
| | 01:37 | (Character speaking: I've sw--)
| | 01:39 | So the sworn off comes in right around 9 or 10.
| | 01:43 | (Character speaking: Sworn off--)
| | 01:45 | So sworn off somewhere between 10 and 20.
Somewhere in that range he's saying no.
| | 01:52 | So I want to go ahead and just kind of
walk down the initial pose at frame six.
| | 01:59 | So I am just going to go ahead and kind
of just jog the head just a little bit
| | 02:03 | so it moves but just perceptively.
| | 02:07 | Just so it has a little bit of motion, so
that the character starts coming to life.
| | 02:13 | Again, just a subtle difference
between frames can bring life to a character.
| | 02:19 | But now what he wants to do is he wants
to cock his head so that he can say no.
| | 02:25 | So on frame 10, we need
that first part of that shake.
| | 02:31 | So I am going to go ahead and rotate
his head and tilt it a little bit, because
| | 02:36 | as you rotate your head,
usually it will tilt just a bit.
| | 02:41 | And then we need to have the final
pose which would be at frame 20, so I
| | 02:45 | am going to go ahead and rotate the head
around and then tilt it the other direction here.
| | 02:50 | So now we've got--
(Character speaking: I've sworn off--)
| | 02:54 | But remember this is a head turn.
| | 02:57 | So we need to go to frame 15,
halfway between 10 and 20 and dip the chin.
| | 03:03 | Remember when a head turns, it will dip.
| | 03:07 | (Character speaking: I've sworn off--)
So that gives a good sense of motion here.
| | 03:12 | So now what we want to do is cushion
the end of this head turn, so I am going
| | 03:16 | to just keep him at this position but
just kind of straighten his head out,
| | 03:20 | just a little bit--
(Character speaking: I've sworn off pan--)
| | 03:24 | And then as he says pancakes, I
want to bring him back to center.
| | 03:30 | So somewhere around frame 32, I can
actually copy my initial pose and get him
| | 03:36 | centered again, and then
maybe just adjust it a bit.
| | 03:40 | Now remember also--
(Character speaking: Off pan--)
| | 03:43 | When he says large vowel such as the A
in pancakes, he may also tilt his head
| | 03:49 | back, and that's another little component
with animation, you need to understand
| | 03:54 | how the dialog is moving to understand
how the head is moving as well.
| | 03:58 | So when he says a large vowel, like the A
in pancakes, his head will tilt back a bit.
| | 04:06 | So here you could actually tilt his
head back a lot, and you can see how it
| | 04:11 | almost looks like he is
singing to open up the throat.
| | 04:14 | But we want to just make
that a lot more subtle here.
| | 04:17 | So I am just going to go ahead
and just bring it up just slightly.
| | 04:21 | In fact, I am going to go ahead and
delete this keyframe to see where I was at
| | 04:25 | and then just notch it back a few.
(Character speaking: Sworn off panc--)
| | 04:30 | So you see how when he says pancakes,
the head tilts back a little bit.
| | 04:34 | Let's look at that one more time.
(Character speaking: Off pancakes--)
| | 04:40 | And then we can adjust that in.
| | 04:42 | Now that second A in pancakes is a lot
more subtle, so we don't need to hit every
| | 04:47 | single one of those.
| | 04:48 | That will make it look a little
less natural. So let's try this.
| | 04:51 | Let's just play this first part.
(Character speaking: I've sworn off pancakes.)
| | 04:56 | So now that we've got that first part,
we can go through the rest of the dialog.
| | 05:02 | Now for the rest of this, I don't think
we are going to do much acting with the
| | 05:05 | head, so let's just go ahead and
understand how the mouth is moving and how the
| | 05:10 | volume of the dialog is affecting
the position of the head.
| | 05:13 | So as he is saying large vowels, I want to
tilt head back just a little bit. So again,
| | 05:22 | that's a big vowel there at 50, so I am
going to go a few frames before that and
| | 05:27 | just kind of tilt the head down just a
little bit in anticipation of that and
| | 05:33 | then drop the head back, and maybe
just to give it some variation, maybe tilt
| | 05:38 | the head just slightly--
| | 05:40 | (Character speaking: Ancakes. I'm having--off pancakes--
pancakes--I'm having--I'm having F--)
| | 05:49 | Now again, what I want to do is as he
says, "I am having," I want to go ahead and
| | 05:51 | kind of just settle him back down.
| | 05:53 | So I am going to copy that keyframe at
40, and again, adjust it just a little bit.
| | 06:00 | (Character speaking: --akes. I'm having French--)
Having Fr--)
| | 06:04 | French, okay, that's another big vowel,
so let's go ahead and drop the head just
| | 06:08 | a little bit on the R.
(Character speaking: Fren--)
| | 06:13 | And then as he says, "French," I am
going to go ahead and tilt it back.
| | 06:16 | Now I am doing this a little
bit more extreme than realism.
| | 06:21 | And again, this is a stylized character,
so we are going to be a little more
| | 06:24 | extreme with the animation for this.
| | 06:26 | (Character speaking: I'm having French--)
Okay, and then again--
| | 06:33 | (Character speaking: Toast--)
Toast, so now we have got--
| | 06:43 | (Character speaking: Having French Toast inst--)
And then S and then ed.
| | 06:49 | As we get that a larger value, he is
going to tilt his head back just a bit to
| | 06:52 | open up his throat, and then we
can settle him out at the end.
| | 06:56 | I am just going to copy that
very first frame to the last here.
| | 07:01 | So now we have got:
| | 07:02 | (Character speaking: I've sworn off pancakes.
I'm having French Toast instead.)
| | 07:06 | So that just gives a little
bit more life to the character.
| | 07:10 | Now we still need to add in blinks and
do some body motion as well, and we will
| | 07:15 | follow along with that.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating lip sync: the eyes| 00:00 | Now let's go ahead and continue
with some additional animation.
| | 00:04 | We are going to go ahead and work with the eyes.
| | 00:06 | We are going to add in some blinks and
some eye motion in order to bring the
| | 00:10 | character more to life.
| | 00:12 | So let's go ahead and see where we are at.
I am just going to go and play this animation.
| | 00:15 | (Character speaking: I've sworn off pancakes.
I'm having French Toast instead.)
| | 00:20 | So the head is kind of alive, and we have
little bit more motion and a little bit
| | 00:24 | more life in the head, but we
still don't have any life in the eyes.
| | 00:29 | So let's go ahead and
start adding some of that in.
| | 00:32 | Now the first thing you want to
do is a couple of blinks here.
| | 00:35 | So the first thing I'm noticing is
that, well, he's got a head turn right
| | 00:39 | here between 10 and 20.
(Character speaking: I've sworn off--)
| | 00:43 | Usually when a character does a
head turn, he will blink his eyes.
| | 00:48 | So I am going to go ahead
and start animating that.
| | 00:51 | I'm going to go to frame 0. And let's go
ahead and just set some keyframes for the eyes.
| | 00:57 | I am going to select both the upper and
lower lids and go ahead and set keys and
| | 01:00 | make sure we have Auto Key turned on,
and let's go ahead and set some keyframes
| | 01:05 | here for those lids.
| | 01:08 | Then I want to go ahead and understand
where exactly he's going to blink his eyes.
| | 01:14 | Well, he starts his head
turn right around frame 10.
| | 01:20 | So I want him to start blinking
maybe even a little bit before that.
| | 01:25 | So I want to go maybe two frames
before that, and again, just lock down those
| | 01:31 | keyframes at frame 8, and then as he
starts to move, I want to blink him.
| | 01:38 | So his blink is at the bottom at frame 14.
| | 01:41 | So I am going to go ahead and drop
those upper eyelids, select the lower
| | 01:46 | eyelids, and lift those to
close the eyes here.
| | 01:49 | Here we go.
(Character speaking: I've sworn off--)
| | 01:54 | So now I want to actually keep
the lids closed for a little bit.
| | 01:58 | I want to keep them closed
throughout that head turn.
| | 02:02 | So again, I want to make sure I select
both of these lids. And let's just copy
| | 02:07 | that down key to frame 18.
| | 02:09 | Now one of the cool things about blinks is
that typically you just have open and closed keys.
| | 02:14 | So if you remember where your open and
closed keys are at the timeline, you can
| | 02:19 | quickly copy and paste
them to get very fast blinks.
| | 02:22 | So now I have a closed frame at 18,
and I want to open his eyes up again.
| | 02:28 | So that means I have to
go four and six frames out.
| | 02:32 | So probably frame 24 I want them be open.
| | 02:35 | So I know I have an open key here at frame 6.
| | 02:38 | So I just make sure all of these are
selected, select that key on the timeline,
| | 02:43 | hold down the Shift key, and
drag it so now his eye is open.
| | 02:46 | So let's see how that works.
| | 02:48 | (Character speaking: I've sworn off pancakes--)
There we go!
| | 02:55 | Now we have a nice break in the dialog
between pancakes and I'm. So let's see.
| | 03:01 | (Character speaking: --ancakes. I'm having--)
| | 03:03 | So right here between 40 and 50 or
so there is a nice little break.
| | 03:07 | So let's go ahead and add in some blinks there.
| | 03:10 | So I am going to go to 42, and again
just to add in an open eye key here at 42,
| | 03:17 | go another six frames to 48, and
that's where I want to it be closed.
| | 03:22 | So if I look at my timeline, I knew
that it was closed between 14 and 18.
| | 03:26 | So I am going to grab the keys at 18 and
close his eyes, and then I want his eyes
| | 03:32 | to open a little bit more quickly.
| | 03:34 | So let's open them at four
frames in rather than six.
| | 03:39 | So I am going to go four frames
from 48 to 52, and copy and the open.
| | 03:46 | So let's see how that works.
(Character speaking: I've sworn off pancakes. I'm having--)
| | 03:51 | Beautiful!
| | 03:52 | So let's play this again.
| | 03:54 | (Character speaking: I've sworn off pancakes.
I'm having French Toast instead.)
| | 03:59 | So I also want to add one more
blink just to keep him alive.
| | 04:02 | So where he says, "I'm having French
Toast instead," let's go ahead and add in
| | 04:07 | a blink there as well.
(Character speaking: Toast--)
| | 04:09 | So he is starting to say
"instead" somewhere around 76.
| | 04:15 | So let's go ahead and
select all of these keyframes.
| | 04:18 | Here you see we actually have an
open, closed, and open keyframe.
| | 04:22 | So all we have to do is select
all of those and drag entire blinks.
| | 04:27 | So that makes my workflow a lot faster.
| | 04:29 | So now I have added in another blink
towards the end where he says instead.
| | 04:34 | (Character speaking: I've sworn off pancakes.
I'm having French Toast instead.)
| | 04:39 | So another thing we could do
is play with eye direction.
| | 04:42 | So as the character is moving his
head, his eyes will not just stay fixed.
| | 04:46 | So I am going to go ahead and select
both of these pupils, and again, I just want
| | 04:51 | to start him off with a neutral key.
| | 04:54 | So I am going to add in a key there.
(Character speaking: I've sworn off--)
| | 04:59 | So as he starts to move his head here, I
want to start animating those eye positions.
| | 05:06 | So again, I want to make sure I am in
Local mode so I get exact eye position.
| | 05:10 | So I just want to push the eyes
a little bit to the side here.
| | 05:15 | But notice how they're also
moving here between 0 and 6.
| | 05:20 | So I want to select the ones at 0,
copy them to 6 just to lock that down, and
| | 05:28 | then as he turns his head, he typically
looks in the direction that he's moving.
| | 05:33 | So again, I want to push those eyes
over a little bit past center, right as he
| | 05:39 | opens his eyes, so
somewhere around frame 20 or 21.
| | 05:42 | (Character speaking: I've sworn off pancakes--)
| | 05:47 | And then I want to recenter his eyes
again, and I can do that just by selecting
| | 05:52 | that center position at 0 and then that
should give his eyes a little more life.
| | 05:58 | (Character speaking: I've sworn off--)
| | 06:01 | Then as he says, "I am," you can
almost imagine him thinking.
| | 06:05 | So again, eyes can really indicate
what's going on in the character's head.
| | 06:10 | So what I want to do here is as these
eyes are closed at frame 48, I want to go
| | 06:16 | ahead and just keep them centered, and
then as he opens his eyes, I want his
| | 06:21 | eyes to be in a different direction.
| | 06:25 | So we can go ahead and just put them up
like this, almost like he's thinking.
| | 06:29 | He is kind of searching his memory banks here.
(Character speaking: I'm having French Toast--)
| | 06:36 | Then as he closes his eyes, I am
going to go ahead and recenter them.
| | 06:41 | So I want to set a keyframe here at
frame, say, 80 as he closes his eyes, and then
| | 06:49 | I want to go ahead and put them back to center.
| | 06:51 | So I am going to go ahead and grab
that first key and drop it in just so that
| | 06:55 | the eyes return to center on the blink.
| | 06:59 | Let's see how this works.
| | 07:00 | (Character speaking: I've sworn off pancakes.
I'm having French Toast instead.)
| | 07:09 | Okay, so as you can see, playing with
blinks and eye direction can add a lot
| | 07:15 | more life to the face.
| | 07:16 | Eyes really are the mirror to the
soul, or the mirror to the brain.
| | 07:20 | It kind of lets you know what
the character is thinking.
| | 07:23 | So go ahead and play with blinks and
eye direction and make your character
| | 07:29 | look like he's thinking.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating lip sync: the body| 00:00 | Now let's go ahead and finish up the
animation with a little bit of body animation.
| | 00:04 | Now at this point, we've animated the
mouth, the head, and the eyes, and this
| | 00:10 | actually does give the
character a lot more life.
| | 00:12 | Let's go and play and see what we have.
| | 00:14 | (Character speaking: I've sworn off pancakes.
I'm having French Toast instead.)
| | 00:18 | So each one of those layers that we've
added adds a little bit more life, but the
| | 00:24 | character still is a little bit dead. He
doesn't have a sense that his body is alive.
| | 00:29 | Now I've gone ahead and just set up my
safe frames for this window here, and I'm
| | 00:35 | just animating in a perspective window,
but I still have my safe frames up.
| | 00:39 | So that way I know what my framing is
for my character, and I am always going to
| | 00:43 | animate to that shot.
| | 00:46 | So in this head and shoulders shot,
most of the character is unseen.
| | 00:50 | So I don't need to animate the feet of
the character, but I do need to animate
| | 00:55 | the shoulders and the body of the
character--at least the torso--so you
| | 00:59 | understand that the character has weight
and that he is connected to the ground.
| | 01:05 | So let's go ahead and start animating this.
| | 01:07 | So, I am going to go out to a four
view here, and I'm just going to select my
| | 01:13 | hips, because that's really where I am
going to do most of this animation.
| | 01:17 | And I want to make sure Auto Key is turned on
and I want to set keyframes for those hips.
| | 01:23 | So the first major motion of this
character's head is when he shakes his
| | 01:27 | head, so when he goes:
(Character speaking: I've sworn off--)
| | 01:32 | So when he says, "I've sworn off pancakes,"
we want to get the body into that animation.
| | 01:38 | What I want to do is I want to dip
the character as he says sworn off.
| | 01:44 | Before I do that, I want to
go ahead and anticipate that.
| | 01:50 | So I'm going to go to frame 5, which is
just before he starts moving and just
| | 01:57 | lift his hips up just slightly,
almost like in anticipation.
| | 02:03 | I can probably lift him up just
a little bit more. Here we go.
| | 02:15 | I think I'm gonna readjust that
back down just a little bit.
| | 02:17 | (Character speaking: I've sworn--)
| | 02:20 | So now I am going to go towards the
middle of that head turn and just drop the
| | 02:24 | body a little bit. And I am even
going to rotate that body forward a bit.
| | 02:29 | Now I want to make sure I
have a rotation key here.
| | 02:34 | At frame 5, so maybe even just tilt him
back a little bit or just nudge that, so
| | 02:39 | I have a rotation key.
(Character speaking: I've sworn off--)
| | 02:43 | And then at frame 14, let me go ahead
and just tilt him forward just a bit.
| | 02:47 | (Character speaking: I've sworn off--)
| | 02:51 | And then a little bit past that head turn,
I want to settle him back in. So I am
| | 02:55 | going to go ahead and just select that
initial keyframe at 0 and drop that in.
| | 03:01 | So now we've got--
(Character speaking: I've sworn off pan--sworn--)
| | 03:06 | And I can even drop that body a little
bit more, and what this does is it gives it
| | 03:11 | much more life. So let's try this.
(Character speaking: I've sworn off pancakes--)
| | 03:17 | So you can see that just adding a little
bit of body motion can really help sell
| | 03:22 | that the character is alive.
| | 03:24 | So let's just do one more of these
and give it just a little bit more life
| | 03:28 | towards the end here, and when he says
"I'm having French toast instead," let's go
| | 03:32 | ahead and punch that with a
little bit of body motion as well.
| | 03:37 | (Character speaking: Toast instead--)
| | 03:40 | So when he says toast instead,
that's somewhere between 75.
| | 03:44 | (Character speaking: Instead--)
| | 03:46 | So he says instead right in the early
80s, around 82 or 83, so I want to make
| | 03:51 | sure that I anticipate that.
| | 03:53 | So I am going to go to frame 78 here,
and I want to go ahead and copy the
| | 03:59 | keyframe that I had before, so just
kind of keep the body still to about frame
| | 04:03 | 75 or 74. Actually, let's make it 74 and
then use a four-frame anticipation here
| | 04:11 | to just kind of drop him just a little bit.
(Character speaking: Toast instead--)
| | 04:18 | When he says, "in," I want him down. So
at 82, I want to keep him down, and then
| | 04:23 | when he says stead--
(Character speaking: stead--)
| | 04:26 | I want to pop him up.
| | 04:29 | I'm gonna go ahead and pop him up,
maybe even rotate him back a little bit.
| | 04:33 | So right here at 82, I am just
going to nudge him forward just a bit.
| | 04:39 | And then rotate him back at 87.
(Character speaking: French Toast instead--)
| | 04:47 | And then when we need to settle him
back to a more normal position somewhere
| | 04:51 | after that. So I am going to go ahead
to frame--let's say 92, and again, just
| | 04:56 | copy that first frame in.
| | 04:58 | So now we should have a pretty good
body animation. So let's take at look at
| | 05:02 | this, if I am going to go
ahead and maximize this--
| | 05:05 | (Character speaking: I've sworn off pancakes.
I'm having French Toast instead.)
| | 05:13 | So you can see how just adding in
the body can add a lot of life to the
| | 05:19 | animation, even in a head
and shoulder shot like this.
| | 05:23 | So no matter what the framing of your
character is, always consider the entire
| | 05:29 | character, even the parts of
the character that are off screen.
| | 05:32 | So hopefully this exercise gave
you some insight in ways to animate
| | 05:38 | lip-synch, and we will follow on a
little bit more in the next chapter with
| | 05:43 | a full-body dialog animation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
8. Animating a Scene Creating the main poses| 00:00 | In this chapter, we are going to
animate a full line of dialog and also
| | 00:05 | animate the full character.
| | 00:07 | Now we've been working up to this.
We've done pose to pose animation.
| | 00:10 | We've done basically head and shoulders
animation in the last chapter. And let's go
| | 00:16 | ahead and just combine this all to do a
post to pose animation against dialog
| | 00:20 | with facial animation.
| | 00:22 | Now the first thing I need to
do is choose a piece of dialog.
| | 00:27 | Now in this case I've chosen a fairly
broad piece of dialog that's a little
| | 00:31 | bit over the top. And let's
go ahead and listen to that.
| | 00:34 | (Character speaking: Ha! It worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 00:42 | As you can see, this is a little over
the top, a little cartoony, but this
| | 00:45 | will be fun because you can exaggerate the
animation a bit and have some fun with it.
| | 00:50 | So first thing I need to do is understand
exactly what I want the character to do.
| | 00:56 | So how I do it is I listen to the
dialog a few times and just imagine
| | 01:02 | what's going on with the character,
and then as I do that, I may thumbnail
| | 01:07 | some sketches and just kind of get some
reference for what I want the character to do.
| | 01:14 | Now here are the thumbnails that I
created, and they are not incredibly well
| | 01:18 | drawn, but they tell me what
I want the character to do.
| | 01:22 | Now, the first thing that the character
is doing is actually what he was doing
| | 01:26 | in the frame before. And in acting
this is called the Moment Before.
| | 01:30 | What was the character doing the
moment before the scene started?
| | 01:34 | What is the mood of the character
at the start of the scene?
| | 01:37 | So in this case, because he's reacting
to something when he says, "Ha!" he needs
| | 01:42 | to be observing something.
| | 01:43 | So we have him observing something and
then he says, "Ha!" and then he gets kind
| | 01:48 | of proud of himself. He goes, "It--" and
that's a bit of an anticipation-- "worked!"
| | 01:52 | Then he has his hands up to his chest,
then he gets even more proud. He says,
| | 01:57 | "Prepare to meet your doom!" and then he
kind of raises up his index finger and
| | 02:01 | points it at whatever it
is that is meeting its doom.
| | 02:05 | So let's go ahead and take a
look at some of these poses.
| | 02:09 | Now, we've been through the process of
posing characters before, so we don't
| | 02:14 | want to repeat that process.
| | 02:15 | So I have already posed the character
into those poses, and I went ahead and
| | 02:21 | stored them in the negative frames.
| | 02:24 | So we can get to those either through
our time configuration here. We can just
| | 02:29 | make our start time -20. Or I can hold
down Ctrl+Alt and then left-click and
| | 02:35 | just reveal up to about frame -20.
| | 02:38 | And if I select all of the objects here,
using my Selection Set, you can see
| | 02:44 | that I have keyframes here.
| | 02:46 | So you can see I've got that first
pose where he's looking off screen, his
| | 02:52 | reaction, that anticipation, "It worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!" Okay.
| | 03:03 | Then I have a neutral pose, which I like to keep
in the scene, just to have as reference.
| | 03:08 | So now that we have these poses, let's
go ahead and drag them into the timeline,
| | 03:13 | so that we can start animating.
| | 03:14 | So I am going to go ahead and make sure
everything is selected, left-click and
| | 03:18 | drag and drag everything but that
keyframe at zero, and then just left-click and
| | 03:23 | drag them out to frame 2--which will be 16
frames up--and then I am going to go ahead
| | 03:29 | and select everything and
push it back two frames.
| | 03:34 | So now I have my neutral pose in the
negative frames, and then my first pose is
| | 03:38 | the first pose of that animation.
| | 03:41 | So again, I am going to hold Ctrl+Alt
and make my first frame 0, and if go into
| | 03:46 | Time Configuration, you can see we
have it from 0 to 110, which should cover
| | 03:51 | everything--and we are going to be
animating at 30 frames per second.
| | 03:55 | So now we have this in place, we can start
blocking out our animation to our dialog.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Blocking poses to dialogue| 00:00 | Once you have your poses blocked out, it's
time to do the blocking pass of your animation.
| | 00:07 | Now we've done this before in Chapter 3--
in pose to pose animation--but in this
| | 00:12 | case we are actually going to
be doing it to a soundtrack.
| | 00:14 | Now this can actually be more helpful
because you have the dialog as a timing reference.
| | 00:20 | But regardless, let's go ahead and
start blocking out this character.
| | 00:24 | Now the first thing I want to do is
select everything in the character, so I am
| | 00:28 | going to use my Selection sets to do a
Select All, and then I'm going to go into
| | 00:32 | my Curve Editor. And let's go
ahead and zoom in on these keys here.
| | 00:37 | And as you can see, these keys are
in-betweening. We've got curves between them.
| | 00:43 | So let's go ahead and set
them to stepped tangents.
| | 00:48 | And that will go ahead and just
make him hop from one pose to another.
| | 00:53 | So now that we have this, we can
start blocking out the animation.
| | 00:58 | So first thing I want to do is just
keep that first post here, and then let's go
| | 01:03 | ahead--I am just going to push all
these poses back a bit, maybe to frame 60, so
| | 01:07 | that way I can just drag them forward
rather than having them over the dialog
| | 01:12 | that I am scrubbing.
| | 01:13 | So let's listen to the dialog here.
(Character speaking: Ha!)
| | 01:16 | So that's "Ha!" So I want that
first pose to be on "Ha!" So now--
| | 01:25 | (Character speaking: Ha! It worked!)
So it worked.
| | 01:30 | We have got two poses here. So, "It worked!"
| | 01:34 | So let's go ahead and select
these two poses and drag them in.
| | 01:41 | So I am going to go ahead and drag
that first pose where it's at to frame 20.
| | 01:48 | And then 26 I want to have "It worked!"
Let's see.
| | 01:53 | (Character speaking: Ha! It worked! Pre--)
Prepare.
| | 02:03 | So 46 or so is where "prepare" comes, so
let's go ahead and drag that pose in.
| | 02:08 | (Character speaking: It worked! Prepare to--)
Okay, so somewhere around 66 or so.
| | 02:20 | (Character speaking: Prepare to meet--)
Meet your.
| | 02:23 | (Character speaking: meet your doom--)
| | 02:28 | "Meet your doom." And actually this one
here at six that I had put at 66 needs
| | 02:32 | to go back a lot further, because it's
really the one that happens before the word doom.
| | 02:37 | So now I have doom at 88, so let's go ahead
and put it at 84, about four frames before,
| | 02:45 | just to see how that works.
(Character speaking: --your doom!)
| | 02:50 | So now that I've got this, I should be
able to play it in real-time, but if not,
| | 02:54 | I can also just do a quick animation test.
| | 02:57 | (Character speaking: Ha! It worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 03:01 | So that "Prepare to meet your doom!" I think
I need to push those back a little bit here.
| | 03:06 | So I am going to take the word doom,
which is that last pose, and let's push it
| | 03:10 | back to 90, see how that works.
| | 03:13 | (Character speaking: Ha! It worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 03:20 | So that looks pretty good.
| | 03:22 | So now that I have these in place, I should
also start copying keys to create my moving holds.
| | 03:30 | So, for example, before he says "Ha!"
I want to hold that first pose.
| | 03:36 | So I want to make sure that I still
have everything selected here, and then I'm
| | 03:41 | going to grab that first pose and just
drag it back maybe about four frames.
| | 03:47 | So now I've kind of held that pose
| | 03:51 | And then when it comes in, it should in-between.
(Character speaking: Ha! It worked!)
| | 04:00 | And this other one, "It worked!" Again,
it's something that I want to hold for
| | 04:04 | a while. So I'm going to select that pose,
hold down the Shift key and copy it back.
| | 04:11 | (Character speaking: Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 04:16 | So now this "Prepare to meet your doom!"
| | 04:20 | Again, I want to hold this pose--or kind
of keep that pose in place--so I am going
| | 04:24 | to select this pose and copy it
somewhere maybe to about frame 80.
| | 04:30 | So now that I have all this, I've got my
initial poses plus the poses that need to be held.
| | 04:36 | Now this isn't going to look any
different on the Timeline because we still have
| | 04:40 | stepped tangents, but if I select all of
these, go back into my Curve Editor, you
| | 04:48 | can see that once I have all these
selected, I could turn them back to Auto
| | 04:51 | Tangent and we should get a slight
in-betweening, so let's see what we've got here.
| | 04:57 | (Character speaking: Ha! It worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 05:01 | Okay, so now that is a good first pass.
| | 05:04 | So we did our blocking pass with Stepped
Tangents just to make sure that we had good timing.
| | 05:11 | Then we copied the held poses so that
we had basically two poses on either
| | 05:18 | side of the hold, and then we released the
curves by setting them from Stepped to Auto.
| | 05:25 | And now once we have this, we can
go on to fine tuning and tweaking the
| | 05:29 | animation some more.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating moving holds| 00:00 | Once you have your blocking pass done, you
should start working on refining the animation.
| | 00:06 | Now I usually start with the moving
holds, but you can do the in-betweens the
| | 00:12 | major poses if you want, it just
really depends on how you like to work.
| | 00:17 | So let's go ahead and just play what we
have, and then we will go ahead and start
| | 00:20 | going through the moving
holds and making them work.
| | 00:23 | (Character speaking: Ha! It worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 00:31 | Okay, so we have got a couple of
moving holds here, and I want to be able to
| | 00:34 | scrub through this without listening to
the soundtrack the whole time, so I am
| | 00:38 | going to just open my Curve Editor, go
under Sound, double-click on doom and
| | 00:43 | make sure that's selected and click off Active.
| | 00:47 | And that will turn off that sound for
now, and we can always reactivate it
| | 00:50 | when we want to hear it.
| | 00:51 | So now I also have scrub through here,
you can see he's kind of got this first
| | 00:56 | pose here, he's got just a small hold,
and then comes up and then this is a
| | 01:04 | long moving hold as well as this one, and
then at the end he has a moving hold as well.
| | 01:11 | So let's just work through
these and see what we've got here.
| | 01:14 | So I am going to go ahead and just do a
Select All so we can see what we have
| | 01:17 | on the Timeline here.
| | 01:19 | So basically, I have a moving hold from
zero to four, so let's go to frame four
| | 01:25 | and start making this a
bit more of a moving hold.
| | 01:29 | Now remember, he's looking at something.
| | 01:31 | So let's go ahead and just kind of lean
him forward a bit, drop the hips just a
| | 01:37 | little bit--and this could be just very
subtle--rotate him forward just a hair.
| | 01:42 | Okay, because there's really not a lot of
time here, so we don't want to move him that much.
| | 01:48 | You just want to kind of see him just
leaning forward, and then he comes up.
| | 01:53 | So we are going to worry
about this in-between later.
| | 01:56 | But as he comes up, I actually do
want to add in another moving hold.
| | 02:01 | So I want to make sure I select all,
and let's go ahead and just drag that
| | 02:05 | forward maybe about six frames.
| | 02:11 | So again, he's going to come up, and
then I think what I want to do is
| | 02:16 | over-accentuate the up and then have him settle.
| | 02:19 | So actually, I am going to make this
moving hold a little bit different.
| | 02:23 | Instead of affecting the end pose, I am
going to affect the beginning pose here.
| | 02:27 | So I am just going to go ahead, push
him up a little bit more, and rotate
| | 02:32 | those arms down so it looks like he's coming up
a little bit more strongly. And now let's see.
| | 02:41 | And now it kind of comes down, and
then he goes into that anticipation.
| | 02:46 | So that gives a much stronger pose.
| | 02:49 | But let's go ahead and do a little bit
more here. I want to go ahead and rotate
| | 02:53 | those wrists down a little bit.
Let's get those in place.
| | 02:57 | I just want to straighten him out as
much as possible and then relax him into
| | 03:02 | that, and then he does this anticipation,
and he comes into this pose, and this is
| | 03:08 | where we have a very long moving hold here.
| | 03:12 | So again, let's just think about this.
He's kind of coming in, and I feel like
| | 03:17 | he's almost a little out of balance here.
| | 03:20 | I feel like his weight is a little
far forward. So I'm going to go ahead
| | 03:24 | and just push him back a little bit, kind of
just get him a little bit more over those feet.
| | 03:33 | And then also maybe
straighten him up just a bit here.
| | 03:38 | Now remember, he's going into this
kind of back arch because he's proud, but
| | 03:42 | again he's going to relax that.
| | 03:44 | That's a very tense pose.
| | 03:45 | So typically, as you hold a pose
you tend to relax a little bit more.
| | 03:50 | And then we can even maybe relax the
arms a little bit. I am going to grab that
| | 03:54 | shoulder, just push that back just a
little bit, grab this shoulder as well,
| | 04:00 | maybe even this elbow, and that's good.
| | 04:06 | So now it looks almost like
he's breathing. So it goes, "Ha!"
| | 04:10 | So that really gives a good
emphasis to that "Ha! It worked.
| | 04:19 | Prepare to meet your doom."
| | 04:22 | Okay so at 80, again I
want to relax him just a bit.
| | 04:28 | Now remember, you usually kind of
over-extend the pose, and then you relax the
| | 04:33 | character a bit, so I am just
going to drop his arm a little bit.
| | 04:35 | But I want to keep that hand almost vertical.
| | 04:39 | So the weight of the hand is kind of
pushing the arm down, but we are still
| | 04:43 | keeping the finger up as much as possible.
| | 04:49 | Okay, so there we go. That's a
little bit of a moving hold.
| | 04:52 | We could probably do a little
bit more with weight here.
| | 04:55 | I am going to drop the hips just a hair,
maybe move them over his foot, try and
| | 05:02 | keep that leg straight.
| | 05:06 | Okay, so "doom." And then again, as he
has his arm out like that, that arm is
| | 05:13 | really fairly heavy.
| | 05:15 | So I don't have a final keyframe for this.
| | 05:18 | But let's go to frame 110 here, Select All,
and then just do a Set key there so
| | 05:26 | that we have that pose.
| | 05:28 | And then I'm going to drop the hand
just a bit and, again, rotate that elbow and
| | 05:38 | then rotate him forward a bit
and drop his hips slightly.
| | 05:45 | So again, he's just moving in that pose.
| | 05:49 | Okay. And again, I could probably
even do a little bit with the head.
| | 05:51 | A lot of the head animation is going
to be changing as he talks because we're
| | 05:56 | going to be moving the head to match the
jaw, so we don't have to worry too much
| | 06:02 | about the character.
| | 06:03 | And again, it just looks like he's got
this kind of breathing going on here.
| | 06:07 | Now I am thinking a little bit more
with this hand here. I don't like it, so I
| | 06:11 | am just going to copy the keyframe from 90
and maybe just rotate it, rather than drop it.
| | 06:18 | Okay, so now let's just play
without sound and see how it looks.
| | 06:26 | Okay, so again it's just very subtle motion,
and it just brings that character to life.
| | 06:33 | Now you can go more subtle or less subtle,
it just depends on how you want to
| | 06:37 | animate and what your style is.
| | 06:40 | And so I am kind of just showing you
some techniques for creating moving holds.
| | 06:44 | Now once you have those in place,
you can start doing your in-betweens
| | 06:48 | between your major poses.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating weight| 00:00 | Once you have your moving holds in place,
it's time to worry about places where
| | 00:04 | the character shifts his weight.
| | 00:06 | In other words, the places
between the moving holds.
| | 00:10 | And this is where the character takes
a step, shifts weight from one foot to
| | 00:13 | the other, and so on.
| | 00:14 | Let's take a look where we're at.
| | 00:16 | We're going to play this once through.
| | 00:18 | (Character speaking: Ha! It worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 00:22 | So there's a number of places where
the character is shifting his weight.
| | 00:26 | Now before we do anything, I am
going to go into my Curve Editor here, go
| | 00:29 | into Sound. And let's go ahead and make sure
Doom is selected and turn it off. Hit Close.
| | 00:38 | So now I can just scrub this through.
We can just look at the animation by
| | 00:42 | itself without having to
listen to the soundtrack.
| | 00:45 | So there are a number of places where the
character is really shifting his weight.
| | 00:49 | Now right here he is basically just
kind of coming up and his weight is
| | 00:54 | still over the feet.
| | 00:55 | So the next one, right here. This is really
where the character is shifting his weight.
| | 01:02 | So let's take a look at this.
| | 01:03 | So what the character does is he squashes
down, and then he comes up and sets his foot down.
| | 01:11 | Now this is almost like pushing
off on his left foot and basically
| | 01:18 | pushing himself up.
| | 01:19 | So this is almost like he's tossing
himself, so we can actually do a little bit
| | 01:23 | of weight shift here.
| | 01:25 | So I am going to select the hips here,
make sure that Auto Key is turned on, and
| | 01:31 | let's go ahead and just push
those hips down just a bit.
| | 01:34 | I am going to go back into Local mode
here and then as he comes up, I want to
| | 01:40 | straighten this out. I want
to straighten out that leg.
| | 01:44 | It's almost like he is stretching.
We're going to do a squash and a stretch.
| | 01:49 | And then when he sets that foot down,
I want to make it a little bit stronger.
| | 01:55 | So I am going to go ahead and squash
him here, but before I do that I am going
| | 02:00 | to take this key at 26 and copy it to 30.
| | 02:05 | So that way when I squash him at 26,
he kind of squashes down and then comes
| | 02:14 | back up into that pose, and I don't
want to squash him down that much.
| | 02:18 | But let's just go ahead and get that over here.
| | 02:21 | So what we're doing here is
we're squashing right here.
| | 02:25 | In fact, we can squash him even more.
| | 02:27 | I'm going to go into View mode here
just so I can push him straight down, and
| | 02:31 | then he pushes himself up and lands.
| | 02:35 | So when he pushes himself up, we can
even accentuate that a little bit more by
| | 02:40 | maybe rotating that foot
and flipping it up just a bit.
| | 02:44 | So again, when he comes down here, maybe
even push his weight a little bit to the side.
| | 02:49 | There we go!
| | 02:50 | So now that's a much better shift of weight.
| | 02:53 | You can see he is basically gaining
all this potential energy in his leg,
| | 02:58 | pushing himself up, catching himself,
and then bouncing a little bit.
| | 03:02 | Now the next shift of weight
here happens between 40 and 46.
| | 03:09 | And again, what he is doing
is he is shifting his weight.
| | 03:12 | Right now his weight is on his right
foot. He is shifting it to his left.
| | 03:18 | So let's go halfway in between
and do that weight shift.
| | 03:22 | Now again, when the character shifts
his weight, he has got to bend his knee so
| | 03:26 | he has time to basically
push himself up into that pose.
| | 03:31 | So I am going to go ahead and bend
his knee a bit and maybe even lean him
| | 03:34 | forward just a bit in this pose.
| | 03:37 | And then as this foot moves forward,
it's going to basically lift up.
| | 03:43 | He is actually taking a step.
| | 03:46 | So I am going to go ahead and just
rotate that foot out so we get a better
| | 03:49 | sense of motion here.
| | 03:56 | So I am going to go ahead and make sure
that foot is lifted up at the heel and
| | 04:01 | then I can just go ahead and just
rotate that toe down just a bit.
| | 04:07 | So as you can see, just
even that gives a better pose.
| | 04:11 | In fact, if we want, we can even squash
him a little bit more, so I am going to
| | 04:15 | go ahead and just rotate him down a little bit.
| | 04:19 | So again, he goes down and then up.
| | 04:22 | We can overshoot this a little bit.
| | 04:24 | This is just weight transfer, so I am
going to go ahead and select the key at 46
| | 04:29 | and push it back a few frames to frame 50
or so, and then just go ahead and push
| | 04:34 | him up just slightly, maybe just a hair.
| | 04:39 | And that way he settles down into that pose.
| | 04:45 | So now again, he has got a little
bit more of a bounciness to him.
| | 04:51 | So let's go ahead and play that first hop.
| | 04:55 | So again, this is fairly quick but
it's still a much better in-between.
| | 05:00 | So the next one is where he kind
of rises up and then comes down.
| | 05:06 | So with this one I kind of
want to hold him at the top here.
| | 05:10 | So let's go ahead and just
create a quick moving hold.
| | 05:14 | I am going to select the keys at 84
and just copy them back two frames so we
| | 05:19 | have a moving hold here so that he is
kind of in this position for a while,
| | 05:24 | and maybe just move him back a
little bit and rotate him back.
| | 05:29 | Again, I want to get as
much stretch as possible there.
| | 05:32 | But we're having a shift of weight.
| | 05:36 | So I am going to go ahead and push him
down, rotate him a little bit. Again, I
| | 05:42 | want to squash him a little bit as he
is coming up. And right here we can just
| | 05:49 | straighten him out so that way he bends
back into that pose and then comes into
| | 05:54 | that large shift of weight there.
| | 05:57 | So then as he comes forward, again, he is
pushing with this foot--the left foot that's down.
| | 06:04 | So he is going to be stretched out as
much as possible, so I am going to go
| | 06:08 | ahead and grab those hips and
again just straighten out that leg.
| | 06:16 | And then once he gets into that pose again,
we want to give a little bit of a cushion.
| | 06:21 | So I am going to go one, two, three
frames forward and just set a keyframe here.
| | 06:28 | And then for those hips, I am just
going to go ahead and drop them just a bit,
| | 06:32 | so that way he goes down and then comes back up.
| | 06:35 | In fact, I can probably
accentuate that a little bit.
| | 06:37 | So now he comes down and then comes up into
that pose and then relaxes in that moving hold.
| | 06:45 | So now we should have some good shifts of
weight, so let's go ahead and take a look at this.
| | 06:54 | It looks good.
| | 06:55 | Okay, let's go ahead and play it
against the soundtrack just to check.
| | 06:58 | Make sure it sounds good.
| | 06:59 | So I am going to go ahead and go into my
Track view, into Sound, double-click on
| | 07:04 | Doom. And let's make it
active. Go ahead and play.
| | 07:10 | (Character speaking: Ha! It worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 07:14 | And there we go!
| | 07:15 | Okay, so that is our next step which
is getting our weight shift in place.
| | 07:21 | Now once we have this, we're starting
to wind up this animation in terms of
| | 07:25 | animation of the body.
| | 07:27 | And let's go ahead and finish that up and
add some secondary motion in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding secondary motion | 00:00 | Now we have the character's weight
shifting properly, and now let's go ahead and
| | 00:05 | start moving out from the torso of the
character to the extremities and get some
| | 00:09 | secondary motion of the character.
| | 00:12 | Again, smooth out the animation, and
we're just going over this animation step by
| | 00:16 | step and just refining it.
| | 00:19 | So let's see where we're at, play it.
| | 00:22 | (Character speaking: Ha! It worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 00:26 | And that looks pretty good.
| | 00:28 | So let's go ahead and turn off the
sound so we can scrub this fairly quickly.
| | 00:33 | So I'm going to go ahead and select Doom.wav
and just make that inactive, Close.
| | 00:39 | And let's go ahead and
play this once more. Okay.
| | 00:44 | Now let's start doing secondary action,
which is basically as the character
| | 00:49 | moves, things are going to drag behind.
| | 00:52 | Now this first pose, we might be
able to do some secondary motion.
| | 00:55 | But I think really this broad motion
here is going to demand it, so let's go
| | 01:01 | ahead and start working on that.
| | 01:02 | I'm going to start with this left arm
here, and as that character moves back,
| | 01:07 | we want to drag the joints.
| | 01:10 | So turn on Auto Key here. And let's go
ahead and start dragging those joints,
| | 01:16 | so that way you can see that
the joints have flexibility.
| | 01:19 | Again, I'm looking for a nice curve here,
so then--so as he kind of cocks his
| | 01:26 | body back, that's going to drag behind.
| | 01:31 | And then as he moves forward
again it will drag behind.
| | 01:34 | But in this case, that elbow will be
a little bit more stiff, and the hand
| | 01:40 | will drag behind here.
| | 01:42 | As he comes in, you can see
how it comes into that pose.
| | 01:47 | Now for this arm we can also make this
arm come in a little bit later, because
| | 01:51 | right now we've got if we do a Select
All here, you see that almost everything
| | 01:57 | in that arm basically just kind of
stops right when it comes into that pose.
| | 02:02 | So let's go ahead and select this left
arm. I have a selection set here for the
| | 02:06 | arm. And let's just drag that final
pose there at 26, let's go ahead and drag
| | 02:12 | that back two frames, so that way
it comes in just a little bit later.
| | 02:16 | You can see it comes in after that
body hits. This kind of follows along and
| | 02:24 | drags behind, and this gives a nice sense of
motion, and we can do the same for the other arm.
| | 02:30 | So let's go through the right arm.
| | 02:32 | So again, that first part is okay, and
then as he comes into this pose, we can
| | 02:38 | make him come into this pose a little bit later.
| | 02:41 | So I'm going to select my right arm, and
I'm going to select both of these keys.
| | 02:46 | And let's just push those
back two frames as well.
| | 02:49 | So now it comes in late, and then this
arm here seems like he is almost giving
| | 02:54 | like a cha-cha here.
| | 02:55 | So I don't want to do that. So I'm
actually going to select this one at 28 and
| | 03:00 | move it back to 26 here and
just have that left arm come in.
| | 03:05 | And then for this right arm here, we
can also drop that elbow just a bit there.
| | 03:10 | There we go.
| | 03:14 | And then as this right arm comes up,
you can see this hand will drag behind.
| | 03:22 | So let's go ahead and select the wrist
of this hand. So we want this to kind of
| | 03:30 | pop up a little bit later.
| | 03:32 | So again, we have this one at 46.
| | 03:35 | Let me drop it back so that that
hand comes up a little bit later.
| | 03:39 | In fact, we can do the same with the
elbow, and we could take that key for the
| | 03:43 | elbow, push it back.
| | 03:45 | So now basically his pose is delayed
a few frames, and that just gives it a
| | 03:52 | little bit more of a sense of secondary motion.
| | 03:56 | Now here in the middle, we can also
make that a little bit stronger by rotating
| | 04:02 | this and giving it a little bit more of an arc,
so you can kind of almost see it coming up.
| | 04:08 | So now it's popping up a little bit more,
and lets take a look at this left arm here.
| | 04:15 | And then as that left arm comes out,
that's actually pretty simple here.
| | 04:19 | But let's go ahead and add a
little bit of a curve to this.
| | 04:22 | Again, what I'm doing here is just
wanting to get a nice arc as these move in.
| | 04:28 | And then we can also delay this a few
frames, give it a little bit of drag.
| | 04:34 | So this is the left wrist.
| | 04:38 | And then as that character is in that
pose, we should probably relax that arm a
| | 04:42 | bit, just kind of drop it a bit, just
so that it feels like he is relaxing.
| | 04:49 | And now as he comes into this pose,
we definitely need a little bit more
| | 04:58 | secondary motion on this arm here.
| | 05:00 | So this is a really big motion.
| | 05:04 | I'm going to go ahead and select
this arm, bend it at the elbow.
| | 05:15 | And again, let's get that hand.
| | 05:20 | And then as he throws that forward, this
arm is going to completely stretch out.
| | 05:28 | And again, I'm just trying to
understand the physics of this character, how he
| | 05:32 | is moving, and then it comes in fairly
quickly here, so all of this left arm can
| | 05:39 | come in a little bit late.
| | 05:40 | So I'm going to select those keys at 90
and drop them back about two or three frames.
| | 05:46 | Maybe that's a little bit too much.
Let's drop it back to 92.
| | 05:53 | And let's go ahead and just do
it in-between there. There we go.
| | 05:57 | Now that's kind of settling in.
| | 06:04 | So again, what I'm doing is just
secondary motion of that character.
| | 06:08 | And now this hand on the right arm, this
is going to be a pretty intense one here.
| | 06:13 | So we want to go ahead and bend that arm,
he is going to start with the shoulder.
| | 06:21 | This is going to drag behind.
This is going to drag behind.
| | 06:25 | So as he comes in--and then this will
also come in later. So I'm going to go
| | 06:32 | ahead and select my right arm, and
let's go ahead and push that final key
| | 06:36 | back about two frames.
| | 06:41 | So as you can see, it gives a little bit more.
| | 06:44 | And if we want, we can even overshoot that.
| | 06:47 | So I want to make sure that this is
completely straight and then just relax it just a bit.
| | 06:53 | So I'm going to rotate this shoulder
down, rotate up the elbow, and then just
| | 06:58 | turn out that hand just a bit.
| | 07:01 | So now I should have some
secondary motion for my character.
| | 07:04 | Now I've done this fairly quickly. I
can probably go over this one or two more
| | 07:07 | passes just to really fine tune it, but
let's just take a look at what we have.
| | 07:12 | Now the character comes up. Okay.
| | 07:23 | So as he comes down here, I feel like he still
doesn't have as much secondary on this left arm.
| | 07:31 | So I'm going to go ahead and select
everything below the elbow. And let's go
| | 07:36 | ahead and delete both of these keys here.
| | 07:39 | And then let's do one in-between
here that's a little bit stronger.
| | 07:43 | So again, I'm just using my intuition,
what I see as it plays. And okay, so now I
| | 07:49 | actually have some keys here for that
shoulder as well, which I adjusted.
| | 07:52 | So let's go ahead and delete those.
| | 08:00 | I am going to rotate up that
shoulder a little bit more. There we go.
| | 08:03 | Okay, so that looks a little bit better.
| | 08:05 | Okay, so let's take a look at this.
| | 08:11 | So again, this is just the acting of
the character to the dialog without
| | 08:16 | any facial animation.
| | 08:17 | But let's just see how it plays.
| | 08:19 | So again, I'm going to go ahead and
go into my Track View, double-click on
| | 08:24 | Doom.wav. And let's go ahead and make that
active. And let's play and see what we've got.
| | 08:30 | (Character speaking: Ha! It worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 08:35 | So now we've actually gone through and
posed the character to the soundtrack and
| | 08:40 | actually animated a lot of that
character, and we haven't even done lip sync, but
| | 08:45 | the character does act to that dialog.
| | 08:49 | So basically, he is minding to that dialog.
| | 08:51 | So the next step after this is
to actually animate the dialog.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating dialogue| 00:00 | Once you have your basic animation in
place, you can start animating dialog.
| | 00:06 | Now this is just one way to do it.
| | 00:07 | I usually like to get the body
posed first and then do the dialog.
| | 00:13 | That way, I kind of know where the
head is oriented, and I can better pose the
| | 00:18 | facial animation and the mouth to the dialog.
| | 00:23 | But some people like to do the facial
animation first and then do the body.
| | 00:28 | It works both ways, and
this is just one way to do it.
| | 00:31 | So let's go ahead and play through what we have.
| | 00:34 | (Character speaking: Ha! It worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 00:38 | Now if you notice, I've added in one
additional thing, and that's this camera.
| | 00:43 | Now what I've done is I've created a
camera called FaceCam, and I've locked it to
| | 00:47 | the character's head.
| | 00:49 | Now wherever the character goes,
that FaceCam will follow his head.
| | 00:54 | So let's go ahead and make that our main camera.
| | 00:57 | So I am going to go into Cameras > FaceCam,
and now as you can see--
| | 01:02 | (Character speaking: Ha! It worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 01:07 | So because I've locked it to this head
control, it will move with the head, which
| | 01:13 | makes it very easy for me to animate the face.
| | 01:16 | So let's go ahead and scrub through this
animation and start blocking in the lip sync.
| | 01:20 | So "Ha!" comes in right around 5.
| | 01:24 | So if I want, I can select this Jaw
slider here, and I can actually zoom in a
| | 01:30 | little bit on this FaceCam so I can
see this a little bit better, and then I
| | 01:36 | want to make sure I turn on Auto Key.
| | 01:38 | So let's go ahead and set
some keyframes here for jaw.
| | 01:43 | And in fact, let's go ahead here.
| | 01:45 | This is going to be our neutral position, so
go ahead and select everything in the Face.
| | 01:48 | Now I also have a Face selection set
here, so let's go ahead and do that and
| | 01:53 | just go ahead and set keys for
everything in the face here at 5.
| | 01:58 | So now he is saying "Ha!" so I am going to go
ahead and open his mouth and then close it.
| | 02:07 | Now he is pretty happy.
| | 02:09 | He has actually succeeded in something,
so let's go ahead and also dial in
| | 02:13 | a Smile control here.
| | 02:15 | So now he has gone-
(Character speaking: Ha!)
| | 02:19 | So now he is going to say, "It worked."
| | 02:22 | Well, I want to go ahead and zero out
that smile. And let's go ahead and start
| | 02:28 | making him say, "It worked."
| | 02:30 | So again, I have my Jaw at 0, and
let's go ahead and also select dialog.
| | 02:36 | Make that 0 as well.
| | 02:38 | (Character speaking: It--)
So it.
| | 02:43 | (Character speaking: It--It--)
Okay, so that's "It" and then "worked!"
| | 02:50 | We want to start getting
this in towards the U sounds.
| | 02:53 | So there we want oo, but I want to
make sure jaw is kind of all the way down.
| | 03:05 | (Character speaking: It worked--)
| | 03:07 | Okay, so wehr, and then open up that jaw again.
| | 03:13 | (Character speaking: It worked!)
| | 03:15 | Okay, worked. So let's go
ahead and get that to an E sound.
| | 03:22 | (Character speaking: It worked!)
So he is kind of happy.
| | 03:25 | Now let's check this
against my regular camera here.
| | 03:28 | So let's see how it looks.
| | 03:29 | (Character speaking: Ha! It worked!)
That looks good!
| | 03:34 | (Character speaking: Ha! It worked!)
| | 03:36 | Okay, so as you can see, it's just a matter of
going through and assigning the phonemes here.
| | 03:43 | So let's go through a little bit more
here. So we want to get to a P sound.
| | 03:47 | So here he's kind of smiling, so let's
go ahead and just set another keyframe
| | 03:52 | for this, maybe kind of start to
close that jaw just a bit. And now we need
| | 03:57 | to get to a P sound.
| | 04:00 | So right there at 44, we need to
get the mouth into a P sound.
| | 04:05 | So I want to go ahead and make sure that
jaw is completely closed, so I am going
| | 04:08 | to grab my neutral frame here, grab
this and kind of tighten up those lips.
| | 04:16 | (Character speaking: --worked! Pre-)
Pre--
| | 04:23 | (Character speaking: Pre-)
| | 04:24 | Pre--let's go ahead and kind of put
this down to about halfway and just drop
| | 04:36 | the jaw a little bit.
| | 04:39 | (Character speaking: Pre--Pre--Pre--)
There we go!
| | 04:48 | (Character speaking: Pre--Pre--Pre--)
| | 04:50 | If we select both of these, we should
have a P somewhere right around here.
| | 04:56 | (Character speaking: Prepare--)
| | 04:58 | And then ehr, A, and then I want to go
ahead and zero out that dialog slider there.
| | 05:04 | Prepare.
| | 05:08 | (Character speaking: Prepare--)
| | 05:10 | And again, I've got that P here, so I
am selecting dialog and Jaw, and I want
| | 05:17 | this to go into almost
like an oo sound for prepare.
| | 05:25 | (Character speaking: Prepare--)
So ehr.
| | 05:32 | So as you can see, we've got
the dialog pretty much animated.
| | 05:37 | So now I've gone ahead and finished out
the lip sync. So let's go ahead and play this.
| | 05:42 | (Character speaking: Ha! It worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 05:46 | Okay, now that's just the face.
| | 05:48 | So let's go ahead and see this on the
body itself. And let's go ahead and play this.
| | 05:54 | (Character speaking: Ha! It worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 06:02 | So now we've got a pretty good
first pass for the lip sync as well.
| | 06:06 | So we're almost into the home stretch.
| | 06:09 | We still need to work a little bit
with the character's head and probably
| | 06:13 | finesse the animation just a bit.
| | 06:16 | But just remember, when you animate
dialog--particularly after you've
| | 06:20 | animated the character--it's always a
good idea to create a camera locked to
| | 06:25 | the character's head.
| | 06:27 | And then just go head through, animate
the lip sync, make sure it matches the
| | 06:32 | body in terms of where the mouth
positions are, and then you can go through
| | 06:37 | and do your final pass.
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| Adjusting head motion| 00:00 | At this point, we've animated the body
as well as a lip sync, but we still have
| | 00:06 | a few layers to go.
| | 00:07 | Let's go ahead and play what we have.
| | 00:09 | (Character speaking: Ha! It worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 00:13 | We can still animate the character's head a bit.
| | 00:15 | We want to get some secondary motion
on the head and just make sure the
| | 00:20 | character is in place, and we also
should probably add in a few blinks.
| | 00:25 | So first thing we want to do is let's
just go ahead and turn off the dialog for
| | 00:29 | now so we can just get that
secondary motion on the head.
| | 00:31 | So I am going to go into my Track View
and just double-click on Doom and make
| | 00:37 | that inactive, and now let's work on the head.
| | 00:42 | So, as that character comes up,
one of the things I want to do
| | 00:47 | is dip that character's head.
| | 00:48 | So I want to turn on Auto Key,
and then just rotate that head down.
| | 00:55 | So as he comes up into that, "Ha!"
actually I'm going to delay that head a bit.
| | 01:01 | So I'm going to select the
keyframe at 8, push it back to 10.
| | 01:08 | Maybe even rotate it up just a little bit
more a tid, because again his mouth is open.
| | 01:14 | You want his throat to be open as well.
| | 01:18 | You can see that gives a much better pop.
And now as he comes down here, again
| | 01:25 | that head is going to drag just a bit.
| | 01:27 | So I'm going to go ahead and just lift
that head up, and then as he comes up--
| | 01:33 | again, we've got secondary motion.
| | 01:35 | So that head is going to drag and
maybe even push the head back at 26 to 28.
| | 01:46 | See how that smoothes it out, and when it
goes into that "worked," that's where the
| | 01:52 | mouth is really open.
| | 01:54 | So we can also just push that head
back a little bit, and then we can kind of
| | 02:03 | tilt it forward a little bit as he smiles.
| | 02:06 | So now, now I'm doing this without
dialog because I just want to see the poses.
| | 02:13 | I don't have that dialog scrubbing
for one thing, because it's a little noisy,
| | 02:18 | and then also it makes it a lot
easier to see where the character is going.
| | 02:24 | So now he's coming down again. And again
that head is going to drag back a little bit.
| | 02:29 | So we're going to have little bit
secondary motion here. And then as he comes
| | 02:35 | up, again, that head is going
to tilt down before it comes up.
| | 02:40 | So we're going to take this keyframe
here at 46 and drop it back a little bit
| | 02:45 | and then tilt down that head.
| | 02:47 | So again, the head is dragging behind.
| | 02:53 | And now we can do a little bit of dialog here.
| | 02:56 | I want to make sure that the throat is
open as the character is speaking, then
| | 03:06 | again, just kind of drop it back.
| | 03:07 | So as that throat opens, I want
the head to kind of come back up.
| | 03:15 | To 51 I want to keep it down a little bit.
| | 03:23 | I'm going to put this at 56
here, but maybe not so much.
| | 03:28 | Okay, so now he has a big broad motion again.
| | 03:33 | His mouth is open here.
| | 03:34 | So I'm going to go ahead
and lift this head back.
| | 03:38 | Then as he comes down here, I
want that head to rotate forward.
| | 03:44 | So I have a keyframe at 84.
| | 03:45 | I'm going to move that to 83 and just
kind of straighten out that head and then
| | 03:53 | again push that back.
| | 03:56 | So again, this is going to drag behind.
| | 03:58 | So I had my main pose at 90.
| | 04:00 | I want to drag this back to 92, and
then if we want, we can also just kind of
| | 04:07 | adjust his head a little bit. And then
at the end here, I'm going to delete this
| | 04:13 | key and, again, just kind of follow
through on that initial motion that we had.
| | 04:19 | So now that should work.
| | 04:21 | I'm going to play this
without sound so we can see it.
| | 04:30 | Okay, so that looks good.
| | 04:30 | Let's go ahead and turn on the
Sound and just play the whole thing.
| | 04:37 | So I'm going to go ahead and make that active
again. And let's just go ahead and play this.
| | 04:41 | Now you don't have to keep turning it on
and off in terms of active or inactive.
| | 04:45 | You can certainly just turn down
the volume on your computer as well.
| | 04:49 | So that's another way to do this.
| | 04:51 | Let's go ahead and play this.
| | 04:51 | (Character speaking: Ha! It worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 04:59 | Okay, so that looks really good.
| | 05:01 | We should probably add in just a few
more blinks to finalize out the animation.
| | 05:07 | So let's go ahead and do
that in the next lesson.
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| Adding blinks| 00:00 | Now the last thing I want to do is add
in some blinks for the character--and as
| | 00:04 | well as work with eye motion. And
so let's just scrub through this.
| | 00:08 | I've turned off the Sound here.
| | 00:11 | So where do we want blinks?
| | 00:13 | Well, right there where he kind of
comes up would be the great place for a blink.
| | 00:19 | Again, right there as he comes
up into that. And then again,
| | 00:25 | I like having blinks when he kind
of does this a little shift here.
| | 00:29 | So each shift should
have a bit of a blink on it.
| | 00:33 | So let's go ahead and put in one
blink and then start animating there.
| | 00:37 | I am actually going to go into my FaceCam here
| | 00:40 | so I can see this a little bit better.
And let's go ahead and select these here.
| | 00:44 | So I've got some keyframes here at frame 5.
| | 00:47 | So let's just start with
those and do a quick blink.
| | 00:50 | So I'm going to do a 6-frame blink.
| | 00:53 | So I'm going to go to frame 11, move this
down, grab the bottom ones, and move them up.
| | 01:00 | Let's make sure we're also in
Auto Key here, and then 11+6 is 17.
| | 01:09 | So basically what I'm doing here
is I'm just blocking in the blink.
| | 01:12 | I don't know if the timing is exactly
right, but let's just block it in, and then
| | 01:17 | when I go back out to my main view
I can see if the timing is right.
| | 01:21 | So there is a quick blink.
| | 01:23 | So now that I've animated
one blink, I can just copy it.
| | 01:26 | So now I've got that blink in place.
| | 01:28 | Let's go back to our main camera
here, and let's see if this works.
| | 01:32 | Obviously, this blink is late.
| | 01:35 | So I'm going to go ahead and select these.
| | 01:37 | I'm going to select that bottom and the
top lids, and really I want him to start
| | 01:42 | blinking almost immediately, say at frame 2.
| | 01:45 | So I want to go ahead to frame 2--1, 2, 3,
4, 5, 6, move that to, say, frame 8, and
| | 01:55 | then move this one--say, let's open it a
little bit more quickly at frame 12, and
| | 01:59 | also now that I have these selected.
| | 02:01 | I'm just going to type in another Selection Set.
| | 02:04 | I'm going to call this Lids
and make it much easier to select.
| | 02:07 | So now--actually I'm going
to make this a very quick blink.
| | 02:11 | I want to move this. I want to do 4 down, 4 up.
| | 02:15 | Because I want him to open as he's
coming up, and then as he comes down, I want
| | 02:22 | to start closing the eyes.
| | 02:23 | So 16, I want to create a keyframe for that.
And then by 22 I want his eyes to be closed.
| | 02:33 | So again, I'm remembering which
one is my open and close key here.
| | 02:38 | So now he comes up, and maybe keep him
even closed for a little bit, and then
| | 02:44 | open them up here by frame 30.
| | 02:50 | So he closes over the course of 6 frames
here at 22, keeps them closed 'til 24, and
| | 02:59 | then opens him as his head comes back.
| | 03:02 | That gives a much better emphasis to it.
| | 03:06 | Then again, we've got a nice--a nice
motion here that we can cover with a blink.
| | 03:12 | So I'm going to copy that keyframe
at frame 29, and then copy that closed
| | 03:20 | keyframe and then open it back up.
| | 03:26 | And again, I'm just kind of roughly
moving these here, just so it looks
| | 03:31 | good with the animation.
| | 03:35 | So right there we can probably use another
blink somewhere in there, just to keep him alive.
| | 03:39 | So I can select all of these and just do that.
| | 03:45 | So again, I'm just holding down
the Shift key to copy those frames.
| | 03:51 | Okay, now right there we
probably could have another blink.
| | 03:55 | So again, I'm just going to select all of these.
| | 03:57 | I want to make sure that he's blinked there.
| | 04:00 | Probably want to hold him
closed a little bit more.
| | 04:02 | So we're going to select this last one
here, and then copy that middle one so
| | 04:07 | that he opens as he comes down.
| | 04:10 | So he goes up, and then as he
comes down he opens his eyes.
| | 04:18 | So I'm going to actually push
that up to 92. So there we go.
| | 04:25 | So now let's take a look at
this silent. Okay, looks good.
| | 04:35 | So let's go ahead in Tour Graph Editor
here, or Track View, and turn on Doom.wav
| | 04:41 | and make that active, and
let's play the final animation.
| | 04:45 | So now that we have our head motion,
our blinks, and everything in, we're pretty
| | 04:50 | close to having this animation finalized.
| | 04:53 | We can certainly go through a few more
passes and really fine tune it, but it
| | 04:57 | looks like we're pretty close.
| | 04:59 | We're almost all the way there.
| | 05:00 | (Character speaking: Ha! It worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 05:04 | So that looks pretty good.
| | 05:06 | If you've noticed, the
process is fairly straightforward.
| | 05:10 | First thing we need to do is listen
to the track, understand what poses
| | 05:14 | we're going to use, put those poses
into 3ds Max, create our blocking pass,
| | 05:20 | release the curves and then start
doing things such as moving holds, weight
| | 05:24 | shifts, secondary motion.
| | 05:27 | Then do the lip sync and the dialog,
head motion, blinks, and then we're done.
| | 05:32 | So a number of different steps, but
in each one we're just adding one more
| | 05:36 | layer of animation, and
that's really how this works.
| | 05:40 | We just continually refine this
until we like it and it works.
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ConclusionGoodbye| 00:00 | So that's it for Character
Animation Fundamentals in 3ds Max.
| | 00:05 | I hope this gave you a good overview of
the character animation process in 3ds Max.
| | 00:12 | So use these techniques on your own
characters and create some really cool animation.
| | 00:18 | Until next time, this is
George Maestri for lynda.com.
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