IntroductionIntroduction| 00:04 | Hi! I'm George Maestri, and welcome to
Character Animation Fundamentals in Maya.
| | 00:09 | Character animation is a very deep subject.
| | 00:11 | In this course, we'll get you up to
speed to animate characters in Maya.
| | 00:16 | We'll start off with the basics of
putting characters in motion and then explore
| | 00:20 | pose to pose animation.
| | 00:22 | In doing that, we'll also look at some
of the principles of animation, such as
| | 00:25 | creating weight, forces, overlap,
follow through, and secondary motion.
| | 00:31 | After that, we'll animate a basic
character walk by breaking it down joint by joint.
| | 00:36 | This basic walk will then be
modified to add lots of character.
| | 00:41 | Once you're familiar with walking,
we'll take our character for a run and learn
| | 00:45 | how to cycle that run.
| | 00:47 | Facial animation is also an
important task for any animator to master.
| | 00:52 | We'll take a look at animating
dialog, as well as head turns and
| | 00:56 | facial expressions.
| | 00:57 | Finally, we'll put all of this together and
animate a scene complete with acting and dialog.
| | 01:04 | So, without further ado, let's
get started with Character Animation
| | 01:08 | Fundamentals in Maya.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you have a premium lynda.com subscription,
you'll have access to the exercise files.
| | 00:07 | If you want to follow along with me
using the exact same files that I'm using,
| | 00:11 | go ahead and download those now,
and then just drag the folder to the Desktop.
| | 00:16 | And that folder is called Exercise Files,
and if you double-click on it, you'll
| | 00:20 | see that we have one folder per chapter.
| | 00:24 | So go ahead and download that
now if you'd like to follow along.
| | 00:29 | If you have downloaded the exercise
files, then you'll also need to do one
| | 00:34 | additional thing within Maya.
| | 00:36 | At the start of every chapter, I want
you to go ahead to File > Project and
| | 00:42 | make sure you set your
project to the proper chapter.
| | 00:46 | Now all I have to do is go to my Desktop
and in exercise files we can now find
| | 00:52 | the chapter that we're working on.
| | 00:53 | Right now, we're in the introductory
chapter, which is Chapter 0, so go
| | 00:58 | ahead and set that now.
| | 01:00 | And please remember to do that at
the start of each chapter, so that way
| | 01:05 | the files match up.
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| Character rig overview: Simple character| 00:00 | Along with the exercise files,
we've given you two basic rigs.
| | 00:05 | Let me show you the first of those.
| | 00:06 | We're going to go File > Open,
and we should be in our Chapter 0/scenes
| | 00:11 | directory because we've set our project.
| | 00:14 | And we have two characters.
| | 00:15 | One is called Full Character;
one is called Simple Character.
| | 00:19 | So let's go ahead and open up the Simple
Character and we'll show you that one first.
| | 00:24 | As you can see, it's a
very, very basic character.
| | 00:27 | And what I really wanted to do with
this is just to give you a nice, light,
| | 00:30 | easy-to-animate character that can be
used just to get the hang of animation.
| | 00:35 | If we go through this, we can see
that we have basically a number of
| | 00:41 | controls for the character.
| | 00:43 | If you grab on any one of these
curves, you can see that we can actually
| | 00:49 | manipulate the character.
| | 00:50 | So for example, if I grab this one here,
this star shaped one, you can see here
| | 00:54 | that this is called the HIPS,
and it controls the hips.
| | 00:58 | So if I hit W for Move, I can move the hips.
| | 01:03 | Now we also have a number of other ones here.
| | 01:05 | The one I want to show you first off
are these knee controls and these can
| | 01:10 | get a little bit tricky, but what
they do is they can just control the
| | 01:13 | direction of the knee.
| | 01:15 | So the knee basically points at these objects.
| | 01:21 | Now the feet are basically done with
what's called Inverse Kinematics, which
| | 01:27 | means that you can move the feet
and the hips will stay in place.
| | 01:35 | Going up the character,
we have three spine controls.
| | 01:39 | And typically, I select those by going
into my Select tool or by hitting Q and
| | 01:46 | then Shift+Selecting, I can Shift+
Select one, two, three of these, or I can
| | 01:50 | select them individually.
| | 01:51 | And you'll notice they're named SPINE_0,
SPINE_1, and SPINE_2, for a total of three.
| | 01:59 | And typically what I do is when I
manipulate the character I will select all
| | 02:04 | of them, so I will Shift+Select all of
these and then these will typically only
| | 02:09 | rotate, so you can rotate these
to rotate the character's spine.
| | 02:14 | And I'm going to go ahead and undo that.
| | 02:16 | Moving further up, we can
take a look at the arms.
| | 02:19 | The arms are by default set to what's
called Forward Kinematics, which means
| | 02:24 | you're rotating the arms.
| | 02:28 | So I can basically just rotate any
one of these joints however I want.
| | 02:34 | Now I didn't put any limits on these,
so you have to be careful particularly
| | 02:37 | with the elbow that you don't
move it this way or this way.
| | 02:43 | I typically tend to move it along the Y
axis, but I left the other two axes open
| | 02:49 | just in case you needed that room to animate.
| | 02:52 | And then the hands are very simple.
| | 02:53 | They're actually more like mittens
and they also have controls for each of the joints.
| | 02:59 | Now moving up a little bit
further, we also have this switch.
| | 03:05 | It has an F on it right now
and that stands for Forward Kinematics.
| | 03:10 | In other words, that will switch the
character from the arm being Forward
| | 03:14 | Kinematics, which is Rotations, to
Inverse Kinematics, which is Position.
| | 03:20 | So in order to switch between Forward
and Inverse Kinematics, go ahead and
| | 03:24 | select this arrow, hit the Move tool,
and then move it from left to right to
| | 03:30 | switch between F and I.
| | 03:31 | F is Forward Kinematics. I is Inverse.
| | 03:36 | So in Forward Kinematics, I'm rotating the arm.
| | 03:39 | In Inverse Kinematics, I'm positioning the arm.
| | 03:42 | Now notice how this changes a little bit.
| | 03:45 | We go from having these basically these
little spheres on each joint, to having
| | 03:53 | a hand control and then a direction
control and this is very much like the feet.
| | 03:57 | So I have hand controls here and then
this, very much like the knees, controls
| | 04:06 | the angle of that elbow.
| | 04:08 | So I can switch between
those just by animating this.
| | 04:13 | And finally we have head and neck controls.
| | 04:16 | And again, those are rotational, so
you can just rotate the character's head.
| | 04:23 | Now one more control I want to show
you is basically, the main node, which is
| | 04:27 | called Character Root.
| | 04:29 | And what this is is just
the root of the character.
| | 04:32 | It allows you to position the
character anywhere in the scene.
| | 04:37 | So all motions of the character are
going to be relative to this node.
| | 04:42 | If we take a look at this in the
Outliner, you can see that under the CHARACTER ROOT
| | 04:47 | we have all of the
controls for the character.
| | 04:50 | Now there are some additional
directories. One is for the Skeleton of the
| | 04:54 | character and the other
one is for the Geometry.
| | 04:56 | Now we're not going to touch those.
| | 04:58 | All the controls we need to
manipulate the character are under the
| | 05:01 | CHARACTER ROOT node.
| | 05:03 | Now if we go over to the Channel box,
you'll see below it we also have the
| | 05:08 | Layer Editor and this character is
divided up into a number of layers.
| | 05:13 | Now we may be turning these
on and off during the course.
| | 05:16 | The top ones are basically for Geometry.
So I can turn off the Eyes, the Head,
| | 05:22 | the Upper part of the body,
and the Lower part of the body.
| | 05:25 | So I can turn on and off any
one of these pieces of geometry.
| | 05:29 | These are set to R, which means that
they'll render but you can't select them.
| | 05:35 | So I can't select that Head.
| | 05:37 | If I want to be able select it, I can
turn that off and select it directly.
| | 05:43 | But again, this is Geometry.
| | 05:44 | We really want to control the head
using these spline controls, so I'm going to
| | 05:48 | go ahead and set that back to R.
| | 05:56 | We also have controls for the Upper and
Lower part of the character as well, so
| | 06:01 | I can turn on and off
different types of controls.
| | 06:05 | And also the skeleton of the
character is actually hidden.
| | 06:09 | So that's a brief
overview of this character rig.
| | 06:12 | As we start animating, you'll start to
get the hang of how to manipulate this
| | 06:16 | rig and how to work the character.
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| Character rig overview: Full character| 00:00 | Now let's take a look at the full character rig.
| | 00:03 | I'm going to open a scene called Full
Char.ma, which is our full character.
| | 00:10 | Now as you can see, this character is very
close to the other character that we had.
| | 00:15 | In fact, it's just a more complex version.
| | 00:18 | As you can see, the character has full geometry.
| | 00:22 | In other words, his geometry deforms.
| | 00:24 | So for example, if I select the foot here,
you can see that his geometry deforms.
| | 00:31 | The character also has full hands.
| | 00:34 | So instead of those mitten hands,
we have a three-fingered hand.
| | 00:39 | So for example, we could select the
index fingers here and rotate them.
| | 00:46 | So this gives you a lot more control
over hand gestures and that sort of thing.
| | 00:51 | Now the most important change to this
character is in the facial controls.
| | 00:56 | I've given him a full face
with full control over that face.
| | 01:02 | So if you want to move the head,
it's still pretty much the same.
| | 01:05 | So you just select this ring and you
can rotate it and you notice this HEAD
| | 01:11 | control rotates with the character.
| | 01:14 | The controls themselves
manipulate various portions of the face.
| | 01:19 | So the lower part of face, in other words,
the mouth is the lower part of the controls.
| | 01:24 | The upper part is the eyes.
| | 01:26 | So let's start with the Mouth controls.
| | 01:28 | All of these controls are translations,
so if you select this, all you have to
| | 01:33 | do is hit W or select your Move
tool in order to manipulate these.
| | 01:38 | Now these all manipulate in X
or Y or in a single dimension.
| | 01:44 | So if I select the jaw control, which
is labeled here as jaw, you can see how
| | 01:49 | if I move this up or down
it opens and closes his jaw.
| | 01:53 | If I move it left and right, you can see
how it actually biases that so you can
| | 01:59 | get some left-right jaw motion.
| | 02:01 | So if you wanted him to chew for
example, you can do left-right type motion.
| | 02:05 | I'm going to go ahead and undo that.
| | 02:07 | Let's move over to the next one
called Dial and that's short for Dialogue.
| | 02:12 | And now these are most of the
phoneme shapes that we used for lip sync.
| | 02:16 | Now this will be used in combination
with the jaw as well as some other controls.
| | 02:21 | But let's take a look how this works.
| | 02:23 | If you move this control to the right,
you can see he goes into an 'oh' sound.
| | 02:28 | If you move it to the right and all
the way into the bottom, that 'oh'
| | 02:32 | closes down to an 'ooh'.
| | 02:33 | If you move it straight up,
it kind of just neutralizes.
| | 02:39 | Now the other side of this starts with the
consonant sound or CH, kind of that smile.
| | 02:46 | And then as you move down, those lips
close and it kind of tightens up, so you
| | 02:52 | can get like an M or B or P.
| | 02:55 | So simply by moving this through two
dimensions, you can get probably about 80%
| | 03:02 | of the dialogue controls that you want.
| | 03:05 | If you can see these move from
-1 to +1 as we go along this.
| | 03:12 | And now if we want to center this out,
all we have to do is select both of these,
| | 03:15 | type 0, and that centers it out.
| | 03:18 | The next one is the Smile control,
and this is pretty straightforward.
| | 03:22 | If you move it straight up, he smiles;
| | 03:25 | move it straight down, he frowns.
| | 03:27 | And then we can control that.
| | 03:29 | If you move it up to the left, he kind
of gives a half grin on either side or a
| | 03:34 | half frown on either side.
| | 03:36 | And again, the center of this is 0.
So if I select these two translations, I
| | 03:41 | can set those to 0.
| | 03:44 | Now along the bottom are two special phonemes.
| | 03:47 | one is F, basically F or V, and that's
where the lip is tucked underneath the
| | 03:55 | top teeth, so for the F or the V sound.
| | 03:59 | Now another cute little trick is if you
move that in the opposite direction, he
| | 04:03 | kind of gives a little
pall, which could be useful.
| | 04:06 | And again, the center of this is 0,
so I'm just going to 0 that out.
| | 04:09 | The Shhh sound is basically just
kind of, well, it's this shape here.
| | 04:15 | Now this is a pretty strong shape.
| | 04:18 | You may not use this too much,
but it's there in case you need it.
| | 04:24 | Now the next ones are Sneer and Grrr,
and they kind of do the opposite on the
| | 04:30 | top and bottom lips.
| | 04:31 | So the Sneer kind of controls the
muscles around the nose that lift up the
| | 04:37 | lips into a sneer, so you can do left sneer,
right sneer, or you can go in the middle.
| | 04:43 | And again, the center of that is 0.
| | 04:47 | Grrr actually activates what are called
the corrugators, which kind of give you
| | 04:52 | that fear or kind of that concern,
fear, anxiety type of emotion.
| | 04:58 | And again, that biases to left and right.
| | 05:01 | Now along the top we have the eye controls.
| | 05:06 | Now the first one here is these big
circles with what are basically the eyelids.
| | 05:12 | So I can select one or both of these.
So let's select one and you can see I can
| | 05:17 | lower that eye, but it
doesn't go all the way down.
| | 05:21 | In order to do a full blink, you have
to grab the one on the bottom and pull
| | 05:26 | that up to give a full blink.
| | 05:27 | Now if you want to, you can just grab
both of these and pull them down and grab
| | 05:33 | both of these and pull them up for a full blink.
| | 05:36 | Or you can do any combination of
these to give kind of some cockeyed look.
| | 05:41 | So if you want him to kind of do one up,
one down, that sort of thing, you have
| | 05:45 | the control to do that.
| | 05:47 | Now in the center of this is the pupil control.
| | 05:50 | So I'm going to go ahead and Shift+
Select both of these and then move those.
| | 05:55 | And as you can see, it just gives him
left, right, up, down, and just gives him
| | 06:00 | eye direction control.
| | 06:01 | And again, you can do these
separately if you want or you can select them
| | 06:06 | and do them together.
| | 06:09 | Now the one here is just called Eyes_
Wide and that kind of gives him that
| | 06:13 | surprised look. So if you're going to just do a
surprise type of action, you can do that there.
| | 06:19 | And then the last one are the Brow
controls and these are very similar to the
| | 06:23 | dialogue and the smile control.
| | 06:25 | In that, each corner is a different
type of-- So if you want him to lift his
| | 06:31 | brow, make a worry brow is here, an
angry brow is here, and these actually work
| | 06:40 | in opposite. So if you want to do both
worry, you have to kind of select them
| | 06:44 | separately and put them down, so that
way you get anger or if you want to out
| | 06:47 | them out to the side, then
you can get worry, and so on.
| | 06:51 | But again, all of these bias back to 0.
| | 06:55 | So all I have to do is just
type 0 to get them back to center.
| | 07:00 | So those are the basic
controls of the full character.
| | 07:04 | Now we're not going to be using this
character until a little bit later in the course.
| | 07:07 | I am kind of saving him for when we actually
do dialog and lip sync and facial animation.
| | 07:14 | For the first part of the course, we're
mostly going to be working with the simple rig.
| | 07:18 | But if you want, you can use
this rig instead of the other rig.
| | 07:22 | The control names are all the same
and really the only difference for those
| | 07:26 | exercises are going to be the
way that you pose the hands.
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| Using other rigs| 00:00 | If you want, you can use
your own rigs with this course.
| | 00:04 | I'm not doing anything that's out of
the ordinary with the rigs and you should
| | 00:08 | be able to apply it to just
about any good character rig.
| | 00:12 | Now you can get these from your
production company, you can build them
| | 00:15 | yourself, or if you want, you can also
just do a quick Google search for Maya
| | 00:21 | character rig, and that will come up with a
whole bunch of different rigs that you can use.
| | 00:27 | Now when you use a different type of
rig, the controls will be different.
| | 00:31 | So here are some ones that I've downloaded.
| | 00:35 | Every single one is a little bit
different, it has a little bit different
| | 00:39 | controls, but if you want to use them,
you're more than welcome and they will
| | 00:45 | work with this course.
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| Using screen drawing tools for Windows| 00:00 | Now when I started animating way back in the
90's, screens were actually made out of glass.
| | 00:06 | Usually you had a Trinitron tube, you had
a 20-inch monitor or something like that.
| | 00:11 | And one of the tricks that I learned
way, way back was to draw on the screen.
| | 00:17 | All I'd have to do was to reach for a
dry erase marker and I could draw over my
| | 00:23 | characters on the screen.
| | 00:24 | Because the screen was made
of glass, it was very easy.
| | 00:28 | You just draw on the screen.
| | 00:29 | When you're done, you just
wipe it off with a cloth.
| | 00:32 | In the past couple of years,
flat screens have really taken over.
| | 00:36 | Now a lot of those screens are made of
plastic, which makes them not really that
| | 00:41 | compatible with dry-erase markers.
| | 00:44 | So I adapted my original technique
to a more virtual technique which will
| | 00:49 | actually help this course.
| | 00:51 | For the PC, I use a program
called LinktivityPresenter.
| | 00:56 | Now what this does is it simply
allows me to draw over Maya on the screen.
| | 01:02 | Now this can come in very handy when
you're trying to tweak a pose, get an
| | 01:06 | animation path, do a number of different
things, and you want it look good in 2D,
| | 01:12 | but you're animating it or
posing the character in 3D.
| | 01:16 | This particular program has a
number of different functions.
| | 01:20 | I really only use three of them.
| | 01:22 | One is a Pen tool, the other one is the
Cursor tool, and then there is an Erase tool.
| | 01:28 | Now if you select the Pen tool, you can
select whatever color you want and then
| | 01:34 | you can draw over the screen.
| | 01:39 | So if you use a pen, you can
actually get more accurate.
| | 01:43 | I'm actually using a mouse right now.
| | 01:45 | But you can actually draw over your
character to get poses to draw a line of
| | 01:49 | action, to draw motion paths.
| | 01:52 | Really whatever you want to draw.
| | 01:54 | And then once you've drawn over the
screen, all you have to do is go to what's
| | 01:59 | called Cursor mode, and then you can
manipulate your character and the drawings
| | 02:04 | will stay on the screen.
| | 02:05 | So for example, I can move his arm or
his head or move the character around and
| | 02:11 | I could still have that drawing on the screen.
| | 02:14 | So now I have a reference where his
head was, to where it's going to be, and
| | 02:18 | that gives me a little bit
of an easier way to animate.
| | 02:22 | Now you can do some of this with the
ghosting feature in Maya, but sometimes I
| | 02:26 | find this a lot more interactive
and particularly good when posing characters.
| | 02:31 | Now once you're done with all of this,
all you have to do is just hit the Erase
| | 02:35 | All button and it goes away.
| | 02:38 | So again, just to reiterate, you can
find Linktivity just by doing a Google
| | 02:43 | search for LinktivityPresenter, and it's
pretty much the first thing that comes up.
| | 02:49 | Now this is one of many
programs that can do this.
| | 02:52 | When I recorded this, this is a free
download. I can't guarantee that this
| | 02:57 | will be free forever.
| | 02:58 | Hopefully, it will be, but if not, there
are other programs that will do similar
| | 03:03 | things and they can come in
very handy when animating in 3D.
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| Using screen drawing tools for the Mac| 00:00 | For those of you who are using OS X on
the Macintosh platform, there is a screen
| | 00:06 | draw tool that you can use as well.
| | 00:08 | I did some searching on I found one
called Magic Pen, which should work.
| | 00:12 | And the way that you find it is
basically just go on Google, type magic pen for
| | 00:20 | the Mac, and you should find it.
| | 00:22 | Now I found it on CNET, but you may find it in
other places as well, and it's a free download.
| | 00:29 | It's a free piece of software, so
you should be good to go with that.
| | 00:32 | So let me go ahead and close my browser here.
| | 00:35 | Now once you install Magic Pen, it
should show up either in the Applications
| | 00:39 | folder and I've dragged it here to my
dock. So you can just double-click on it.
| | 00:44 | And when you do, what happens is this
little icon comes up and once this icon
| | 00:49 | is here, we have a number of options.
| | 00:52 | One is we can choose our color
and then we can actually just draw.
| | 00:58 | So you can just draw on the screen here.
| | 01:01 | Now we have some menu options here
and the most important one is Clear Pad.
| | 01:05 | This software actually does support
what are called multiple pads, so you can
| | 01:09 | actually draw in multiple layers.
| | 01:12 | We're really not going to go that deep into it,
so you can pretty much just draw and clear.
| | 01:18 | That's basically all you need to do, so
we can just draw something and clear it.
| | 01:24 | If you're going to be using this in Maya,
you will need to switch applications.
| | 01:28 | So for example, if I'm in Maya right now, I
can pretty much just use Maya the way it is.
| | 01:34 | But if I want to draw over it to
illustrate a pose or something like that,
| | 01:39 | I will have to go down to my dock and open
up Magic Pen, and then I can draw over Maya.
| | 01:48 | Then once I go back into Maya, I can
operate Maya as I want, and the drawing
| | 01:55 | will still be over that.
| | 01:56 | I can always go back into Magic
Pen and then Clear and so on.
| | 02:02 | So really what you're doing is
you're switching between the applications.
| | 02:06 | So this should work for most OS X users.
| | 02:10 | So with that in mind, let's go
ahead and get going with the course.
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|
|
1. Posing Digital CharactersCreating strong poses| 00:00 | When you first start animating
characters one of the first things you'll need to
| | 00:04 | 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.
| | 00:12 | Now the first thing that you need to be
aware of is what's called 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 will have a line. The
character will follow a line of action and
| | 00:30 | this will lead the audience's eye to the
character and it will be pleasing to the eye.
| | 00:36 | It may draw attention to something.
But a good line of action is really
| | 00:40 | important for a good pose.
| | 00:42 | Here's another character.
| | 00:44 | You can see the line of action is downward.
| | 00:46 | You see the character is a little bit
sad. And then we can also have line of
| | 00:51 | action that help with describing actions.
| | 00:54 | So for example, this
character is going to toss a ball.
| | 00:57 | This isn't 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'll have a much
| | 01:06 | stronger animation, so when he throws
the ball that line of action actually will
| | 01:12 | 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
| | 01:23 | you can see it in the silhouette.
This is because the audience's eyes tend to
| | 01:29 | draw out the outline of the character
first and then look at what's inside.
| | 01:35 | Here is that exact same pose at a
different angle. So all I did was I moved that
| | 01:41 | camera a bit, and if you look at this
it looks confusing, even compared to the
| | 01:45 | silhouette, and if you look at this in
silhouette you don't even really know
| | 01:49 | what's going 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 turned a
little bit. This doesn't read.
| | 02:12 | You don't really know what the
character is doing here. Here you do.
| | 02:16 | Last thing I want to talk
about is weight and balance.
| | 02:19 | Any pose that 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,
| | 02:29 | like this, and this isn't really
what I will call a balanced pose.
| | 02:33 | It's very symmetrical.
| | 02:35 | 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 that the character's
| | 02:56 | weight is balanced, so that he is 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.
| | 03:07 | It's not going to be pleasing to the eyes.
| | 03:09 | We are just going to say,
wait, something is wrong here.
| | 03:12 | So when you create poses, you want to make
sure that the poses have good line of action,
| | 03:16 | 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 for animation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating custom MEL scripts to help pose characters| 00:00 | Before we actually get into posing and
keyframing our characters I'd like to
| | 00:05 | actually set up some custom
functions that will help me along with this
| | 00:09 | particular character.
| | 00:11 | Now we're working with the simple
character, but this will work really with any
| | 00:15 | type of character you want.
| | 00:17 | Maya is really great in that it
allows you to create custom functions.
| | 00:21 | You're probably already using them and
these are just the standard shelves, and
| | 00:25 | these are just actually custom buttons
that Maya provides, and we can actually
| | 00:30 | create our own by using a
little bit of MEL scripting.
| | 00:34 | First of all, let's go into General
Editors and go into what's called the Script
| | 00:39 | Editor. And I'm going to go ahead
and push this guy over so we can get
| | 00:43 | everything here on the screen.
| | 00:45 | This is a very tight screen here.
| | 00:46 | What you can see is every time you do
something in the character it shows up in this window.
| | 00:52 | So for example if I select the root
node of the character, it will say select HIPS.
| | 00:57 | So what I can do is I can take
all of these and make them into a button.
| | 01:02 | So the first button that I want to create is
one that selects all the parts of the character.
| | 01:08 | So all I'm going to do is just go
into Select mode, and that's hitting the Q
| | 01:13 | button, and then I'm just going to go
through and select all of the various
| | 01:18 | parts of the character.
| | 01:19 | You can see how as I select them
they show up here in the window.
| | 01:23 | So I just want to go through and select
each of the spines and the arms on both
| | 01:30 | sides, the neck, the head, and then I
also want to get the thumbs and the hands.
| | 01:40 | So I can just Shift+Select, rubber
band select, all of these hands and all of
| | 01:46 | these thumbs. Let's see if I can
get this on the other side here.
| | 01:50 | Now I'm not going to select the forward
inverse kinematics at this point, so I
| | 01:55 | don't really need to keyframe that.
| | 01:57 | So now that I have all of these
selected you can see I've got basically a list
| | 02:03 | of what I've selected.
| | 02:04 | This is where I'd deselected right
before I started selecting everything and all
| | 02:07 | of these are the selections
of everything in the character.
| | 02:12 | So all I have to do is click and drag
and highlight all of those commands.
| | 02:19 | Then all I have to do is hit this button
here. It says Save Script to Shelf, so
| | 02:24 | I click on that and then
I can just give it a name.
| | 02:28 | Well, let's just call it Select All,
and when I do that it gives me this.
| | 02:34 | Do you want save it as a Python or MEL script?
| | 02:37 | I'm going to choose MEL script and there we go.
| | 02:40 | Now we have a button that will
select everything in the character.
| | 02:44 | So if I deselect this,
now I can select everything.
| | 02:48 | Another nice little command that we
can do is something that keyframes
| | 02:53 | everything in the character.
| | 02:55 | So all I have to do at this point
is just hit the S key or if you go in
| | 03:00 | Animation you just go Animation > Set Key.
| | 03:03 | So I'm just going to ahead and
set a key and watch what happens.
| | 03:07 | It says it gives me a few little error
messages, but this is the command that I want,
| | 03:12 | setKeyframe, and it has
keyframes for all of these things, and if you
| | 03:19 | notice all of this is the names
of everything that I had selected.
| | 03:23 | So I'm going to do the same thing.
| | 03:25 | I'm going to Save Script to Shelf,
and then I'm just going to call this one Key All.
| | 03:32 | So this creates a keyframe for all of
the major components of the character and
| | 03:38 | we're going to save that as a MEL Script.
| | 03:40 | So now I have two scripts here and
these can be very, very handy. One selects
| | 03:46 | everything in the character, the other
keyframes everything in the character.
| | 03:51 | So for example if I go out here and say
frame 12 and I hit Key All and select
| | 03:56 | something, you'll see that now I have--
In fact let's go ahead and Select All a
| | 04:00 | keyframe here where I started and at frame 12.
| | 04:04 | Now this is very handy when you start
creating stock poses or you want to lock
| | 04:12 | in a character's pose.
| | 04:14 | So we can refine this a little further.
| | 04:16 | You can obviously create
buttons for parts of the character.
| | 04:19 | You can have one for the arms or one
for the spine or the feet or whatever.
| | 04:23 | We can also extend this in more
complex characters to keyframe everything in
| | 04:29 | the face for example.
| | 04:31 | So create some custom shelves for your
character and that will help you in the
| | 04:36 | future when you're keyframing that character.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using layers to select characters| 00:00 | There is another way to select objects
within a character that doesn't involve
| | 00:05 | creating custom shelves and custom
buttons, and that's to simply use layers.
| | 00:11 | So for example with this character we
do have a custom button that allows us to
| | 00:14 | select everything, but if we want
we can also use our layers option.
| | 00:20 | So we go into that by going into our
Channel Box and then just pulling open our
| | 00:25 | Layers palette, and then if I want I
can select any part of character just by
| | 00:31 | highlighting the layer and
going Layer > Select Objects.
| | 00:36 | So if I want to, I can select every
object in the upper body or the lower body.
| | 00:43 | If you create a rig that has
really good layering, this can be a good
| | 00:48 | alternative to using custom buttons.
| | 00:51 | Now the one thing about this is that
the layers are pretty fixed. With a custom
| | 00:56 | shelf and a custom button you
can select anything you want.
| | 00:59 | With layers, you're pretty much
restricted to what's in that specific layer.
| | 01:04 | But if this is more comfortable for
you, then go ahead and use this method.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Learning the basics of posing characters| 00:00 | Let's go ahead and start
posing and keyframing our character.
| | 00:04 | I am going to block out several poses,
and really this is just about the process
| | 00:09 | of creating the pose for a character.
| | 00:12 | Typically when you start with a
character you are going to get him in a neutral
| | 00:15 | pose, something like this,
and this really isn't a natural pose.
| | 00:20 | So let's go ahead and make
it a little more natural.
| | 00:23 | Before I do that I'm
actually going to lock this pose in.
| | 00:28 | I kind of like this pose for one reason
and that's because it's a neutral pose
| | 00:33 | and I can always come back to this
if I want to unwind the character.
| | 00:38 | For the sake of this I am just going to
go ahead and keyframe this at frame 1.
| | 00:42 | So I want to just take everything in
the character and just hit that Key All
| | 00:46 | button that I created in my custom shelf.
| | 00:49 | You should create one for your shelf as well.
| | 00:52 | Now I have this pose locked in in frame 1.
| | 00:55 | Now typically what we'll do is we'll
take that neutral pose and we will move it
| | 00:59 | before the start of the animation, so
we'll move it to frame 0 or frame -1, so at
| | 01:04 | least we have it, but it
doesn't show up in the animation.
| | 01:07 | For the sake of this we can leave it at frame 1.
| | 01:10 | Let's go a few frames forward.
| | 01:11 | Let's go to frame 3 and let's kind
of relax this pose a little bit more.
| | 01:15 | Now with a character like this the
first thing we see is the arms and they're
| | 01:21 | definitely not relaxed.
| | 01:23 | So I am going to go ahead and select
the shoulders and we are using forward
| | 01:26 | kinematics here and I'm
just going to rotate these down.
| | 01:32 | So now that I have that in place,
well, it's a little bit more relaxed.
| | 01:37 | But it's by no means natural.
| | 01:40 | I mean it looks like the guy is
standing at attention and unless you're
| | 01:43 | animating him in a military lineup,
it's really not going to be a good pose.
| | 01:48 | But I'm going to go ahead and save
this anyways. So I am going to hit Key
| | 01:51 | All just so we have it.
| | 01:52 | So now I have a pose at
frame 1 and a pose at frame 3.
| | 01:58 | Now let's go ahead and make a much
more naturalistic pose for this character.
| | 02:03 | Let's go ahead and start
playing with the weight.
| | 02:06 | Now the first thing you want to do with
a pose is understand where the weight of
| | 02:12 | the character is and how the line of
the character is going to be moving.
| | 02:17 | Typically with a pose I start with the
hips and the feet, because that's the
| | 02:21 | center of weight distribution for the character.
| | 02:23 | The weight of the character is
being pulled down by gravity and what's
| | 02:29 | supporting it, what's
counteracting that, is the force of the legs
| | 02:34 | supporting that weight.
| | 02:36 | So this is the area where most of the
weight distribution of the character is
| | 02:41 | transferred to the ground, so we want
to make sure that we get the hips and
| | 02:44 | the feet done right.
| | 02:46 | So I am going to start with the hips.
| | 02:48 | Well, the first thing I want to do is I
want to come and get him down a little bit.
| | 02:51 | So let's go ahead and make
this kind of a meek pose.
| | 02:53 | Let's start with making
him kind of a shy character.
| | 02:56 | So I am going to move the hips down a
little bit, get some bend in those knees,
| | 03:01 | and then I'm going to actually
rotate the hips back just a bit.
| | 03:06 | And what this is doing is I'm trying
to give him kind of a curved spine.
| | 03:12 | So the first thing I want to do is
rotate the hips back, so that way I can
| | 03:16 | rotate all of these spine nodes forward.
| | 03:19 | So I am selecting all of the spine and
I am going to rotate that forward just a
| | 03:24 | little bit and you can notice how
once I start to get that, you can see how
| | 03:29 | it's kind of a bit of a sad sack.
Almost gives him a potbelly sort of look and
| | 03:34 | even just doing that is much
better than what we had here.
| | 03:40 | So this is my pose and then just by
shifting his weight a little bit, we get a
| | 03:45 | much better line of action really.
| | 03:48 | And so we can also play a little
bit more with things like his feet.
| | 03:52 | So I'm going to go ahead and turn his
feet in maybe just a little bit, kind of
| | 03:56 | make him a little pigeon-toed.
| | 03:58 | And again I am just kind of playing with
this character. Each character that you
| | 04:02 | have will have a specific way of
standing and a specific way of acting.
| | 04:07 | So I can also play with the arms a
little bit. Maybe his arms are a little bit
| | 04:12 | out and turned in a little bit.
And also once I've rotated that back, notice
| | 04:19 | how this arm is kind of going at an angle
and I really want it to be straight up and down.
| | 04:24 | So I'm going to rotate this
and kind of straighten it out.
| | 04:30 | Straight arms like that,
they are kind unnatural.
| | 04:33 | So I am going to go to the elbow and
give it more of a natural bend and what
| | 04:38 | this will do is actually it will
almost mirror the line of action that I'm
| | 04:43 | starting to develop here, so I am
kind of starting to get this kind of
| | 04:46 | S-shape with the character.
| | 04:48 | And so if the arms are kind of in that, then
it just kind of supports that line of action.
| | 04:54 | It gives it a much stronger pose.
| | 04:58 | And if I want, again, he is kind of
turning everything in. So maybe I can
| | 05:02 | even turn the wrists.
| | 05:04 | They are kind of a little square and
again I've got very straight hands, so
| | 05:09 | maybe give some curve to that and
we can do the same on the other arm.
| | 05:15 | Now I don't have to do the exact same
thing on both sides, because symmetry we
| | 05:21 | don't really want the
character to be too symmetrical.
| | 05:24 | So for this particular pose, you know
he is kind of just standing there, but
| | 05:31 | again, I don't want a ton of symmetry.
Maybe I can even lean him a little bit to
| | 05:36 | one side or the other, just to kind
of give him a little bit of variation.
| | 05:40 | And again I can play with the head
and sometimes if he is kind of a sad
| | 05:44 | character he may also be looking down,
and again that will support this kind of
| | 05:49 | S-shape that we're getting.
| | 05:51 | So just by kind of understanding how
gravity is pulling the character down and a
| | 05:56 | little bit about the attitude of the
character we've got a much stronger pose,
| | 06:01 | even just for a default pose.
So we went from this to this to this.
| | 06:07 | So you can see how we've got kind of a
nice character pose here, and in fact I
| | 06:13 | am going to go ahead and key
everything, just so we have it.
| | 06:17 | And now I want to go-ahead and maybe do
one more pose and let's kind of pose him
| | 06:22 | in the opposite direction.
| | 06:24 | So one of the things I am actually going to
do is I am just going to copy some keyframes.
| | 06:27 | I am going to select everything in the
character and if you notice we've got
| | 06:32 | three sets of keyframes, 1, 2, 3.
| | 06:36 | But what I want to do is actually put
him back to that neutral pose, or actually
| | 06:41 | let's go back to this pose.
| | 06:42 | So what I can do is I can right-click,
copy, and that copies all the keyframes
| | 06:47 | because I hit Select All, and then just paste.
| | 06:51 | So now I have a neutral
starting place to do another pose.
| | 06:56 | So this time instead of rotating him
back, let's go ahead and move him forward,
| | 07:00 | make him a little bit more assertive.
| | 07:02 | So I'm going to actually move his
weight forward and maybe even rotate the hips
| | 07:07 | forward, because I want him
to be almost like a character.
| | 07:10 | That's in your face.
| | 07:12 | And so that means I want him to start
kind of getting into your space a little bit.
| | 07:17 | And then what I can do is then again
play with the spine, because he is going to
| | 07:21 | be a little bit more proud. He is
going to have a little bit more spine here.
| | 07:26 | Now one thing I notice is that these
knees, again they are little straight here.
| | 07:30 | So I like having a little
bit of bend in the knee.
| | 07:33 | It shows that there is tension there.
| | 07:35 | If they are completely straight, it's
not very natural. And also you want to
| | 07:39 | make sure that the weight of the
character is over the center of the feet.
| | 07:44 | So once we do that, you can see how
we're starting to get a little bit of a
| | 07:49 | different pose because he's actually
kind of moving forward. And again because
| | 07:54 | he is being kind of more big and
boastful you want to make him bigger, almost
| | 07:59 | like how a bird or a butterfly will
open its wings to scare off predators.
| | 08:04 | People do the same thing.
| | 08:06 | So I want to kind of make him give more
space. Basically I want to make him take
| | 08:12 | up more visual room
because he is a tough character.
| | 08:17 | And so maybe complete those into
fists and then kind of put his arms out a
| | 08:26 | little bit more here and again bend his arms.
| | 08:31 | What I'm trying to do here is again I
want to give him so that he is occupying
| | 08:36 | more space and again just kind of
rotate those and just by doing something
| | 08:42 | like this, even maybe tilting that down
a little bit. Because what I'm really
| | 08:48 | trying to do is get him more aggressive.
In fact I can even push him forward
| | 08:57 | just a little bit more.
| | 09:03 | So as I push him forward though,
you notice how his head is turning back.
| | 09:06 | I want to make sure that
his head is looking forward.
| | 09:12 | So there, so now we have a pose.
| | 09:15 | We've gone from totally straight to kind
of meek to a little bit more assertive,
| | 09:22 | and all we really did was just
change the pose of that character.
| | 09:28 | Even just putting the feet out a
little bit more will also give him a wider
| | 09:32 | stance to make him appear stronger.
| | 09:35 | So as you can see posing a character is
really pretty simple. All you need to do
| | 09:40 | is start with the hips, make sure that
the character has a good strong base, and
| | 09:45 | then understand the mood of the
character and where you want the character to be,
| | 09:51 | and then just pose him into
place by moving the joints.
| | 09:54 | And one of the things I like to do is
when I have major poses like this, I like
| | 09:58 | to keyframe everything just
to make sure I've locked them in.
| | 10:02 | So go ahead and pose
your character and have fun.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating stock poses| 00:00 | When you work with the same
character in many scenes, a lot of times that
| | 00:04 | character will be adopting similar or
the same poses across multiple scenes, so
| | 00:10 | sometimes it's easier to create a
library of poses that you can use as raw
| | 00:16 | material to construct other poses.
| | 00:18 | Now what I have done here is I have
created a file called ManyPoses, and it has
| | 00:23 | about 10 or 12 poses in here.
| | 00:25 | I've got a real simple pose with his
arms at his side, his hands on his hips,
| | 00:30 | and kind of showing his palms on both
hands, and then that slouchy pose,
| | 00:36 | the proud pose that we did before,
and then a couple of more specific poses.
| | 00:41 | Now these can be any pose you want,
they could be any number of different poses, but
| | 00:46 | let me show you the technique that I use for
mixing and matching poses to create new ones.
| | 00:53 | If I select everything in the character,
you'll notice that I have one major
| | 00:57 | pose every two frames.
| | 01:01 | When I animate a scene typically I'll
start at frame 1 or somewhere in that range,
| | 01:06 | but I want to be able to hang on
to these poses to use in another scene.
| | 01:11 | So one of the easiest ways to do this
is to just slide these frames into the
| | 01:16 | negative frame numbers.
| | 01:18 | So right now this animation is
starting at frame 1, but if I just type in -20
| | 01:25 | into the start time of the animation,
you can see how all of a sudden I've got
| | 01:30 | some space here and if I click on the
slider here and move it over, you'll see
| | 01:35 | that I can actually
keyframe into the negative frames.
| | 01:39 | So what I can do is I can actually
take these frames and just select them.
| | 01:43 | I am Shift+Selecting them on the
Timeline, and then I can just drag them back.
| | 01:49 | By doing that, these poses
are now in the negative frames.
| | 01:55 | Now I have my default pose here at -18.
One of the things I'd like to do is get
| | 02:00 | that maybe to 0. So I am going
to go ahead and just copy that.
| | 02:04 | Now remember, I still have
everything selected. And put it at frame 0.
| | 02:10 | So now I have basically the character at 0
at frame 0, but I have all these other poses.
| | 02:15 | So as I go into the animation, let's say
I want to start him at a specific pose.
| | 02:20 | Let's say I want to start him with
this pose. So what I can do is Select All,
| | 02:24 | find that keyframe, and since I have
everything selected all I have to do is
| | 02:29 | copy and paste that. So let's go ahead
and start that at frame 1, which is going
| | 02:35 | to be start of our animation.
| | 02:36 | So now we start there and then I
can go into any other type of pose.
| | 02:41 | So let's say I want him to go into that
pose there, the one at -4. So I can go
| | 02:47 | ahead again and copy, and then I
can just slide this wherever I want.
| | 02:51 | Let's go ahead here maybe to frame 6, go paste.
| | 02:55 | So now he is going from frame-to-frame.
| | 02:59 | Obviously, we'll need to in-between them.
| | 03:00 | We'll get into that later.
| | 03:02 | But you can see how now I'm taking my
poses from my kind of stored poses here
| | 03:08 | and using them as raw material.
| | 03:11 | So if I want him to stand straight up or
if I want him straighten out his spine,
| | 03:15 | all I have to do is select those spine
nodes and find a place where its spine is
| | 03:20 | straight. Copy and Paste.
| | 03:25 | So now what I'm doing is I am combining
poses, so I am taking the spine from a
| | 03:31 | different pose and putting it on this other one.
| | 03:34 | Let's say I want his hands on his hips.
All I have to do is select the hand
| | 03:39 | along with the fingers, and then find
one of those poses where his hands are on
| | 03:43 | his hips right there.
| | 03:44 | There's one right there, frame 14, so I
just copy that, come back out here, and
| | 03:50 | now when I paste, all I am pasting is that
arm and now I've got his hand on his hip.
| | 03:56 | Rather than try and unwind this pose
and undo this pose and put it into
| | 04:01 | another one, all I have to do is copy and paste.
| | 04:04 | So this method makes posing much more modular.
| | 04:08 | So if you create a nice library of
stock poses and gestures, store them in the
| | 04:14 | negative keyframe. You'll have a lot
of raw material to pose your characters
| | 04:19 | with later and posing
will go a lot more quickly.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. Animating Characters in MotionUnderstanding forces and character motion| 00:00 | One of the most important things
you need to understand when animating a
| | 00:03 | character is the concept of force.
| | 00:06 | Forces act upon a character and then
the character responds to those forces.
| | 00:11 | Forces can fall into two basic categories.
| | 00:14 | One is external forces, those
forces which are outside the character.
| | 00:19 | These can be gravity, wind, another
character pushing your character around, and so on.
| | 00:25 | The other type of force acting upon a
character are internal forces, in other
| | 00:29 | words the forces that the
character creates himself.
| | 00:32 | The muscles acting against gravity to
keep the character standing up, for example.
| | 00:37 | So I have a simple scene here that we
can use to illustrate forces, in other
| | 00:42 | words, use to illustrate external
versus internal force, and this scene is
| | 00:47 | called MovingPlatform and it's
basically just the character moving on a
| | 00:52 | platform. In other words, it's
basically just the platform moving.
| | 00:56 | So the first thing we want to do is
attach the character to the platform, and
| | 01:00 | then we'll go ahead and animate all of
the External Forces on the character and
| | 01:05 | then have the character come
to life and resist those forces.
| | 01:11 | So the first thing we want to do is
just very simple and that's attach the
| | 01:14 | character to the platform.
| | 01:16 | The easiest way to do that is to go
into the Outliner. So I am going to go
| | 01:20 | Window > Outliner, and we've got
just a couple of objects in the scene.
| | 01:24 | Now the platform is basically
just a cube, and it's called pCube1.
| | 01:28 | And you can see that it's
got a couple of keyframes.
| | 01:31 | It's got a keyframe at frame
1, frame 25, and at frame 48.
| | 01:37 | So in order to get the character onto
this platform, I need to do a hierarchy.
| | 01:42 | So the easiest way to do that is to
select the Character Root, which
| | 01:46 | is that node which allows me to move
the character around, middle click in the
| | 01:51 | Outliner, and drag over the cube.
| | 01:54 | So now you can see I've created a hierarchy.
| | 01:56 | I've got the cube and then
the character is beneath that.
| | 02:00 | And now when I press Play,
the cube is controlling the character.
| | 02:06 | Okay, so now that we have this set up,
let's go ahead in the next lesson and
| | 02:10 | start working with the forces.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding drag| 00:00 | At this point we have the
character on the platform and moving.
| | 00:04 | Obviously, there's nothing happening other
than the platform and the character moving.
| | 00:09 | Now the character is going to be
affected by the motion of the platform. He is
| | 00:15 | also going to be affected by gravity so
let's go ahead and work on those forces.
| | 00:21 | So the first thing we
have is we have two forces.
| | 00:24 | We have gravity, which is pulling this character down,
| | 00:28 | and then we have the actual motion of
the platform which is actually moving
| | 00:33 | him right at the feet.
| | 00:35 | Now when we have this forward motion
we have what's called drag, which is
| | 00:41 | basically the main mass of
the character, is right up here.
| | 00:46 | That will not want to move.
| | 00:48 | Go back to the laws of motion.
Abody at rest will want to stay at rest.
| | 00:53 | So that part of him will want to hang back.
| | 00:57 | It doesn't want to move forward.
| | 00:59 | So as this moves forward, from an
animation perspective it will appear as though
| | 01:05 | a force is pushing him in the chest.
| | 01:08 | When in reality it really is just the
body itself wants to stay where it's at.
| | 01:12 | So we can animate this by doing some keyframing.
| | 01:15 | The first thing I want to do is go
ahead and just drop those arms to his side.
| | 01:20 | Just want to give him a
little bit more of a relaxed pose.
| | 01:22 | We will play with the arms and the
rest of the body a little bit later, but
| | 01:26 | I just want to start with the
center of mass of the character which is
| | 01:30 | centered around the hips.
| | 01:31 | Now when we pose characters we
typically pose starting with the hips and when
| | 01:36 | we are working with these sorts of
force problems we also a lot of times will
| | 01:41 | start with the hips.
| | 01:42 | So I am going to go ahead and
set a keyframe here at frame 1.
| | 01:45 | Now I am going to move forward a
little bit, maybe a couple frames, maybe
| | 01:50 | three or four frames.
| | 01:51 | Let's go to frame 5 and let's give
the impression that that body wants to
| | 01:56 | stay in place, so I am going to go ahead and
rotate it back a little bit and move it back.
| | 02:01 | So right there I want to
basically drag him back.
| | 02:06 | And you can see even right now it
feels like he's got a little bit of
| | 02:12 | force acting upon him.
| | 02:13 | It's starting to understand the
flexibility of this character.
| | 02:18 | But he is not going to stay back the
whole time because this is moving at a
| | 02:21 | pretty constant rate, so again
he will tend to straighten up.
| | 02:27 | So I am going to go back to frame 1 and
copy that keyframe and then we're going
| | 02:32 | to go to forward say about 10 frames or
so, to frame 15, and I am just going to
| | 02:37 | paste that keyframe.
| | 02:39 | So now he goes backwards and
now he kind of straightens up.
| | 02:44 | And then at frame 25, where he starts to
move back, I want to straighten him up again.
| | 02:50 | And then we can do with the opposite.
| | 02:52 | We can go another couple of frames in,
say about five frames again, and this
| | 02:57 | time his body wants to keep going in
that direction. So I am going to move him
| | 03:02 | forward and then also rotate that a
bit and make sure that his heels are not
| | 03:08 | off the ground there.
| | 03:10 | And again at frame 40, I want to go
ahead and copy this and just straighten him
| | 03:19 | up again and then go back to the very
beginning and let's make sure that we've
| | 03:23 | got a keyframe there.
| | 03:24 | So now what we've got is he's
going backwards and forwards.
| | 03:29 | So you can see that even right now we've got a
much better sense of motion for the character.
| | 03:36 | We've got a sense of force acting upon his body.
| | 03:39 | Now one thing I'm noticing here is that we
have a little bit of a bounce in the animation.
| | 03:45 | Sometimes you have to be real careful
in looking at these and you can kind of
| | 03:48 | catch it, but notice how that as he
comes past here he actually overshoots this
| | 03:54 | a little bit. So right here he feels
like he is a little bit far-forward and
| | 03:59 | then he comes back a little bit.
| | 04:00 | It looks almost like he is
kind of more of a spring.
| | 04:03 | He has kind of got this
kind of back and forth motion.
| | 04:07 | Now this may actually be a problem
that we can diagnose in the Graph Editor.
| | 04:12 | So I am going to go into Window >
Animation Editors > Graph Editor,and let's
| | 04:17 | take a look at this.
| | 04:18 | So I am going to go ahead and select
his hips and let's take a look at the
| | 04:21 | rotation curves for the hips.
| | 04:24 | Specifically I'm rotating him along
the X axis, so I am rotating him back and forth.
| | 04:30 | So if I select the Rotate X
curve immediately, let me go ahead and
| | 04:35 | frame this by hitting F. Now what we
have is he starts at 0, he goes down a
| | 04:40 | little bit, he comes back up and the next
keyframe is at 0, as is this frame and this frame.
| | 04:49 | But what I've got is I've got this
curve it is kind of overshooting right
| | 04:53 | here and then it undershoots, and that's
what's giving me that kind of wobble in his motion.
| | 04:59 | In fact, let me go ahead and highlight
this and you can see how the wobble and
| | 05:03 | the curve kind of match up.
| | 05:07 | Now that we can see what the
problem is it's very easy to fix it.
| | 05:11 | One way would be to just to select
these curves and unwind them, but the easier way
| | 05:15 | is to select all the keys that are
0 and then all we have to do is hit what
| | 05:21 | are called Plateau tangents.
| | 05:23 | What that does is that make sure that
all of those are 0. So particularly here
| | 05:28 | where it goes from a 0 to a 0, you want to
make sure that these two sections are flat.
| | 05:33 | Now once we've done that, you can play it
back and now we have a very smooth motion.
| | 05:39 | So this really is just the motion of
the platform affecting the character.
| | 05:43 | This is one of several forces
that we are going to deal with.
| | 05:46 | So let's go ahead and refine this
a little more in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with secondary motion| 00:00 | At this point we have just the
main mass of the character animating.
| | 00:05 | We've got the platform moving
forward and then the torso of the character
| | 00:09 | reacting to that motion.
| | 00:12 | But the character is made of many joints.
| | 00:14 | The spine has several joints, the arms
also, and the head, all have joints that
| | 00:21 | will be affected by these forces, so
the character himself will move in stages.
| | 00:27 | In other words, the feet move forward
first and then the hips start moving
| | 00:32 | forward a little bit later, then the
shoulders, and then once the shoulders
| | 00:38 | start moving forward, the hands will
start moving forward, because everything
| | 00:42 | wants to stay in place.
| | 00:44 | So in other words, this force will
start at the feet, then go to the hips, then
| | 00:48 | the shoulders, then the arm and the hand.
| | 00:52 | So each of these will drag behind what
it's connected to by a few frames because
| | 00:58 | it takes a while to get everything going.
| | 01:01 | Now in animation terms this is
typically called secondary motion, but it also
| | 01:06 | can be known as drag as well.
| | 01:08 | So let's go ahead and start doing a
little bit more realistic animation.
| | 01:12 | First thing I want to do is go ahead
and just select the three joints of the
| | 01:16 | spine, set a keyframe for those,
and then as it moves forward I want to rotate
| | 01:21 | that spine back just a little bit.
| | 01:24 | Again, just to understand that the
character has flexibility in his spine.
| | 01:30 | And then as he comes forward here he's
going to straighten up. So again we could
| | 01:35 | actually animate those to 0.
| | 01:36 | I can just type that in here.
| | 01:38 | That should straighten him up.
| | 01:40 | So now he gets a little bit of bend
in his spine and the same this way.
| | 01:45 | Now remember, the spine bends a little
bit more forward than it does back so we
| | 01:49 | can give him a little bit
more extension this way.
| | 01:53 | And then again, he's going to
straighten up, but let's just go to frame 40 and
| | 01:57 | straighten him up and I'm
going to type 0 for his rotation.
| | 02:02 | So now I've got a little bit more rotation here.
| | 02:09 | Now one of the things I forgot to do is
I forgot to animate it to 0 at frame 25.
| | 02:13 | I want him to kind of stay
vertical until he moves forward again.
| | 02:19 | So now once I have this, you can
see it's a little bit more flexible.
| | 02:24 | But again this force which is
transmitting down the spine gets to the shoulders
| | 02:28 | a little bit later and the
hands will also drag behind.
| | 02:32 | So let's go ahead and just animate one arm.
| | 02:34 | I am going to select the left shoulder,
and then as that character bends back,
| | 02:39 | you can see he kind of bends back
around frame 5, but let's go a little bit
| | 02:43 | further out and then rotate the arms back,
and again they're kind of be dragging
| | 02:48 | behind, so about frame 8 I
want those to drag behind.
| | 02:52 | And you can see how it's kind of going
behind and then again I want that to
| | 02:58 | kind of settle out somewhere for the
beginning here, say somewhere around maybe frame 20.
| | 03:02 | I am going to rotate those back to 0.
| | 03:06 | And again, set a keyframe at 25,
and then again we're going to go in say about
| | 03:12 | 7 or 8 frames. So 25+7 is around frame 32.
Rotate that forward, go back a little
| | 03:23 | bit say around frame 42-43, bring that
back to 0, and then go ahead and set a
| | 03:30 | keyframe for that as well at 48.
| | 03:32 | So now you can see how again we're getting
a lot more flexibility with this character.
| | 03:40 | The force of being pulled along that
platform is now being transmitted through
| | 03:46 | almost the entire body.
| | 03:47 | So let's go ahead and do
the right shoulder as well.
| | 03:49 | I am going to go ahead
and set a keyframe at 1, 8.
| | 03:53 | We're going to go ahead and move that
arm back, kind of 0 it out around frame
| | 03:59 | 20, another keyframe at frame 25, frame
32, he is forward, 42, it goes to 0, and
| | 04:12 | then at 48 I am just going to set a
keyframe again just to get that locked in.
| | 04:16 | You can see now we've got a lot more
flexibility. He's starting to look more realistic.
| | 04:21 | But again, these are just external forces.
| | 04:24 | These are just the forces
acting upon the character.
| | 04:27 | Now I've got one more to worry about
here and that's the head, and again the
| | 04:32 | head is going to drag behind as well.
So again, I am going to do this around
| | 04:35 | frame 8, just rotate his head just a
little bit back, straighten him out, and
| | 04:41 | again 0 is neutral. 0 him out at 20, 25.
| | 04:44 | I am going to pretty much
do what I did with the arms.
| | 04:48 | 32, bend him forward just a little bit.
42, 0 him out and then another keyframe at 48.
| | 04:58 | So I've got this pretty much
on the same timing as the arms.
| | 05:02 | So now once I have all of this,
you can see how flexible he is.
| | 05:07 | Now the thing is is that well, at
this point all he is is a rag doll.
| | 05:13 | There's no motion that he is
providing to counteract any of these forces.
| | 05:20 | So this is just the effect of
external forces on our character.
| | 05:25 | So in the next lesson let's go ahead
and start giving him a little bit more
| | 05:29 | control over his body and a
little bit more character.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Bringing the character to life| 00:00 | Now we've animated all of the
external forces acting upon the character.
| | 00:05 | And as you can see, he definitely
looks like he's in motion, but there's
| | 00:09 | really no intention from the
character himself. He is kind of being pushed
| | 00:13 | around like a rag doll.
| | 00:15 | So let's first of all
analyze this scene a little bit.
| | 00:18 | What is the character's intention?
| | 00:20 | Well, my thought was that the
character doesn't want to be pushed around.
| | 00:24 | He wants to stay stable.
| | 00:27 | So the first thing we want to do is try
and get him to force himself to instead
| | 00:31 | of being pushed back so
far, to try and resist that.
| | 00:35 | So we can do that by
starting with some hip motion.
| | 00:38 | So I am going to go ahead
and again select the hips.
| | 00:41 | Now in order for him to actually push
against the force, he needs some leverage.
| | 00:47 | And with his feet straight like this or
with his knees straight like this, he's
| | 00:52 | not going to be able to get the
leverage he needs to act against the force
| | 00:57 | that's dragging him back.
| | 00:58 | So at frame 5 I want to move him down
and forward a little bit and what that's
| | 01:05 | going to do is give the impression that
he is consciously dropping his weight to
| | 01:11 | get a little bit more leverage.
| | 01:13 | So now he's got that and now I can
rotate him forward at frame 8 to try and get
| | 01:19 | him into that position.
| | 01:22 | So now it gives a little
bit more sense of motion.
| | 01:27 | Let's try that again.
| | 01:29 | That feels like it has a lot more
intention than the one that's pushing him back.
| | 01:34 | So we can do the same thing on the other side.
| | 01:36 | So as he moves back, again, he needs
to get leverage so that he can act upon it,
| | 01:42 | which means he's going to drop his
hips, and then a few frames past that he
| | 01:48 | is going to try and rotate himself up a little
bit, so he has a little bit more sense of balance.
| | 01:59 | So even with that it gives a
little bit more of a sense of motion.
| | 02:05 | But we can also give a little bit more
intention, say for example when he's moving back.
| | 02:11 | So when he's going back this way, I know
that if I'm being pulled back I want to
| | 02:16 | see where I am going.
| | 02:18 | I don't want to just be pulled back and not
look over my shoulder to see where I'm going.
| | 02:23 | So at this point I am also going to
start rotating his hip. So I am going to
| | 02:27 | back at frame 30, rotate his hips, and
then at frame 33 rotate them a little bit
| | 02:33 | more, maybe even lift him up a little bit.
| | 02:36 | So again, I want him to be looking over
his shoulders. And now even at frame 40
| | 02:41 | I am going to kind of
turn the hips a little bit.
| | 02:44 | Now again, I'm just playing with the hips.
| | 02:47 | We will move up the spine to kind
of rotate his shoulders as we go.
| | 02:51 | Again, I just want to work with the hips a
little bit. So let's see what that looks like.
| | 02:55 | That gives him a little bit more intention.
| | 02:59 | So let's go ahead and keep playing with this.
| | 03:01 | I am going to select the spine and then
we're going to do is some more rotation.
| | 03:06 | So as he rotates forward, I actually
want to kind of rotate his shoulders a
| | 03:15 | little bit so then as he comes up I
want him to straighten up. In fact, I am
| | 03:19 | just going to snag a straight spine
from frame 1. So I am going to go ahead
| | 03:22 | and copy and paste that spine at say around
frame 33 or 34 and then rotate him a little bit.
| | 03:30 | I'm not worrying about the arms at
this point. And then I want him to again
| | 03:39 | be straightened up.
| | 03:40 | So let's take a look at what this looks like.
| | 03:42 | So now he is getting a bit of a sense of,
okay, I am looking over my shoulder.
| | 03:48 | Well, let's go ahead and actually
make him look over his shoulder.
| | 03:52 | So as he comes back I want to rotate
that head and kind of cock it, and again I
| | 03:57 | want to try and get a nice line of
action here, so what I'm looking here at this
| | 04:02 | kind of almost like an S-shape here.
And that will kind of give me a little bit
| | 04:06 | stronger sense of motion here.
| | 04:08 | So then as he looks over his shoulder,
again I want to straighten out that head.
| | 04:12 | Now I don't have anything
happening with the arms.
| | 04:16 | Again, we have to also give action to
the arms, but let's go ahead and play with
| | 04:19 | that in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Refining the animation| 00:00 | At this point we have
about half the animation done.
| | 00:03 | We've animated the body and the head of the
character resisting that motion of the platform.
| | 00:09 | So let's see where we are at.
| | 00:12 | You can see that as the platform moves
forward, he kind of bends into it and
| | 00:16 | then as it moves backwards he
looks over his shoulder, very simple.
| | 00:20 | But you can also notice that the
arms are still swinging like pendulums.
| | 00:24 | They are very limp.
| | 00:25 | They have absolutely no motor control.
| | 00:27 | So let's go ahead and add
the control of the character.
| | 00:30 | Now before we do anything we need to
pause and consider what the acting point is
| | 00:36 | at this part of the story.
| | 00:38 | So at this part of the story, I think the
character simply wants to balance himself.
| | 00:43 | So as this moves forward, he's going
to put his all arms out to the side a
| | 00:48 | little bit, almost like a tightrope
walker who's trying to keep his balance.
| | 00:52 | So this will be our first pose and then
as he moves back, we can use the arms to
| | 00:57 | accentuate that looking over the shoulder.
| | 01:00 | So let's go ahead
through the first half of this.
| | 01:03 | We are going to working with the left
arm, so I am going to select the left
| | 01:06 | shoulder, zoom in a little bit here, and then
Shift+Select the left elbow and the left wrist.
| | 01:14 | I want to make sure that I have a
keyframe for all of those at Frame 1, so we
| | 01:18 | are going to start keyframing.
| | 01:19 | So as we start rotating these joints,
the keyframes will naturally come up.
| | 01:25 | So as he moves forward like this,
again, this arm is back like a pendulum.
| | 01:31 | We wanted out like he's
trying to keep his balance.
| | 01:35 | So let's just go ahead and pose that in.
| | 01:37 | I am going to start with the shoulder
and just work my way down the arms. I am
| | 01:40 | going to go ahead and move his shoulder
out from the body and then I'm going to
| | 01:46 | bend the elbow a little bit.
| | 01:48 | Now this is actually pretty important,
because when the elbow is stiff that
| | 01:52 | means that the only force acting upon it
is the force of drag. When he bends it,
| | 02:00 | that's the indication to the audience
that he is under control, okay. So that
| | 02:04 | gives a really good symbol that
the character is controlling his arm.
| | 02:08 | And then we can also play
with the wrist a little bit.
| | 02:11 | We can actually maybe rotate it around
to get a nice little kind of arc there.
| | 02:15 | So now we've got a much stronger pose.
So let's go ahead and take a look at that.
| | 02:23 | So that first part of it,
it looks like he is under control.
| | 02:26 | Now contrast this to the other arm
which we haven't dealt with yet and you can
| | 02:31 | see that at that point this
arm still looks pretty limp.
| | 02:35 | So let's go ahead and affect this.
| | 02:37 | I am going to go ahead and select my
shoulder, my elbow, and my wrist on the right arm.
| | 02:43 | S to set a key and let's go forward to
Frame 8 and we will go ahead and pose him again.
| | 02:49 | So I'm going to rotate that shoulder
out and then bend this elbow a little bit
| | 02:58 | and then maybe even bend
this wrist a little bit.
| | 03:00 | So again, I am getting kind of a
sense that he is catching his balance.
| | 03:04 | So you can kind of see that
in this pose a little bit.
| | 03:07 | So again, I'm just trying
to get a good solid pose.
| | 03:11 | Now I am not going to worry so much
about the hands or the fingers at this point.
| | 03:14 | Let's just go ahead and just
work with the main joints of the arm.
| | 03:18 | So now at this point he is getting a
good sense of balance. Things aren't
| | 03:22 | working because we never keyframe the
elbow and the rest of the arms throughout
| | 03:26 | the rest of the animation.
| | 03:27 | So we need to kind of do that.
| | 03:29 | So I am going to go ahead
and select the shoulder.
| | 03:31 | And you can see what's happening here
is that that arm is wanting to go kind of
| | 03:36 | back to its normal position, but I don't
really want that. In fact, I'm going to
| | 03:40 | go ahead and just select both shoulders
and we are just going to keyframe them
| | 03:45 | forward from this point forward, so I am
going to select both shoulders and then
| | 03:49 | there's keyframes from 20 on.
| | 03:52 | So I am going to delete everything,
but frame 48, which is my loop point, and I
| | 03:57 | want to make sure I keep that.
| | 03:58 | So I am going to go ahead
and delete those keyframes.
| | 04:00 | So now he comes out and then I can
determine at Frame 25, which is where he
| | 04:06 | starts moving back, where
those joints are going to be.
| | 04:10 | So first thing I want to do is just kind
of rotate it down. He is going to relax
| | 04:13 | just a little bit, so I am going to
rotate that left shoulder down, maybe a
| | 04:18 | little bit forward, and then
also relax that elbow just a bit.
| | 04:26 | Same on the other side.
| | 04:27 | Let's go ahead and just relax that a
little bit and bring that down and relax
| | 04:33 | that elbow just a hair as
well as this wrist. There we go.
| | 04:39 | So now he's kind of going wow!
| | 04:43 | And then he is kind of relaxing
just a little bit and then we get
| | 04:47 | this backwards motion.
| | 04:48 | So right there as he is looking
over his shoulder we have a really good
| | 04:53 | opportunity for a strong pose.
| | 04:55 | So I'm going to move that arm out and
back. He is looking over his shoulder.
| | 05:01 | Kind of like that. And then do the same
on the right shoulder, just kind of move
| | 05:07 | it out a little bit.
| | 05:08 | You know, again, he is looking over his
shoulder. And also his spine is turning,
| | 05:15 | so this arm is going to want to stay a
little bit in front of him, okay. So now
| | 05:22 | he's doing this and it should
actually give him much stronger pose.
| | 05:28 | Yeah, so, now that looks like he's
really looking over shoulder. The shoulders and
| | 05:34 | the arms really help with that animation.
| | 05:38 | So now here at Frame 48 we need to
kind of unwind that, so we can cycle it.
| | 05:44 | So what I want to do is just go ahead
and hold that arm motion in a little bit
| | 05:49 | longer, so maybe until about Frame 40,
and then kind of relax it just a little bit,
| | 05:55 | move that down and again relax that
elbow just a bit, and then I want to cycle it.
| | 06:07 | So I want to copy the
keyframes from Frame 1 to Frame 48.
| | 06:12 | So to do that I need to select all the
arms, so this actually is one reason why
| | 06:17 | I might want to create a button on my
timeline, just to select the arms. Not too
| | 06:21 | hard to select them at this point, so
I am not going to go ahead and do that,
| | 06:24 | and then just do paste, so
now we are back at the arms.
| | 06:28 | So now we have a reasonably good cycle.
| | 06:30 | Let's go ahead and play what we have.
| | 06:37 | So we can tweak this a little bit more,
but as you can see, we have added the
| | 06:42 | character into this equation.
| | 06:44 | When we started, he was just
being pushed around like a rag doll.
| | 06:48 | Now his motor control is resisting those
forces and it gives him a little bit of
| | 06:53 | a sense of character.
| | 06:55 | Let's go ahead and play this one more time.
| | 06:57 | So you can see that he's got
motion that he is creating.
| | 07:04 | That really is the key to character
animation. What sort of motion is the
| | 07:07 | character creating, in other words,
what sort of animation does the character create?
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Creating Pose to Pose AnimationKeyframing initial poses| 00:00 | Now let's go ahead and start the
process of creating pose to pose animation.
| | 00:05 | The first thing I do when creating
this sort of animation is I try to line up
| | 00:10 | all the major poses that I think the
character will hit, and sometimes this
| | 00:15 | will actually make me have to create new
poses. It makes me cycle poses, that sort of thing.
| | 00:21 | So let's go through some of the process here.
| | 00:24 | In this case I've already created a
couple of poses just to speed things along.
| | 00:28 | If we take a look at this character,
he has poses every two frames and this
| | 00:34 | is just so I can see them a little bit easier
and copy and paste them a little bit more quickly.
| | 00:39 | Now I have a pose at Frame 1, which
is him standing back and just kind of
| | 00:44 | crossing his arms across his
chest, and then he reacts and waves.
| | 00:50 | So I have two poses for the wave.
| | 00:52 | When I start going through this, I need
to start kind of mentally thinking the
| | 00:58 | animation through and I want to get
the major poses lined up or sequenced.
| | 01:03 | I'm going to worry about the
exact timing a little bit later.
| | 01:07 | So in this case I really would
like him to wave more than once.
| | 01:11 | At this point I've just got this,
I have got one at 3 and one at 5.
| | 01:16 | Well, I actually want more.
So let's have him wave three times.
| | 01:21 | So one of the things we can do is we
can select everything in the character,
| | 01:25 | make sure you have all the nodes
selected, then just right-click over the
| | 01:29 | timeline, copy, and then
you can just paste poses.
| | 01:34 | This is one reason why I have created
these malscripts that allow me to select
| | 01:40 | everything in the character and these
were discussed earlier in the lessons.
| | 01:44 | I can do the same thing here at Frame 5,
which is copy and paste it again, say at Frame 9.
| | 01:53 | Now if I want, I can copy and paste
multiple keyframes just by holding down the
| | 01:58 | Shift key and dragging over
the frames that I want to copy.
| | 02:02 | So in this case I want to copy Frame 7 through
9, copy, and then maybe paste them at Frame 11.
| | 02:10 | So now I have got the character
going from here to here and then you can
| | 02:14 | even almost, as we scroll through it, you can
kind of actually see the wave that we have.
| | 02:20 | The one thing that I would like to
do also is I think I need to add in
| | 02:25 | an additional pose.
| | 02:27 | If he's going to go from here to here,
notice how he's shifting his weight and
| | 02:33 | typically when a character shifts
his weight, he drops his hips and he
| | 02:38 | compresses a little bit and I want to
give this animation a little bit more of
| | 02:41 | a dynamic quality.
| | 02:43 | So I want to create an in-between pose.
| | 02:45 | A pose between this one at
Frame 1 and this one at Frame 3.
| | 02:50 | Well, the first thing I want to
do is I need to create some room.
| | 02:53 | So I'm going to select all my keyframes
and I'm going to Shift+Drag all the way
| | 02:58 | down to Frame 3 and just
move those back two frames.
| | 03:02 | So that way I have a little bit
of a space to put in another pose.
| | 03:07 | I don't really have time to go through
all the mechanics of actually posing this
| | 03:11 | character and we've done
that for another chapter.
| | 03:14 | So actually I have a pose that I
have already created and it's going to
| | 03:17 | hiding here at Frame 46.
| | 03:20 | So I'm just going to go and cut
that out and then right-click again and
| | 03:25 | paste that to Frame 3.
| | 03:28 | So now I've got one additional pose.
So instead of going from here to here, I'm
| | 03:35 | going from here to here to here.
| | 03:39 | Just even by scrubbing this through a
few frames you can see how that's got a
| | 03:43 | lot more dynamic quality to it.
| | 03:46 | So what I have done in this frame,
I've dropped the hips, so I have
| | 03:50 | actually dropped his weight.
| | 03:51 | You can see his weight going down and
then he rises back up into this position.
| | 03:57 | This is basically squash and stretch.
So he is squashing and then he's
| | 04:02 | stretching and this gives a lot
more dynamic quality to the animation.
| | 04:07 | So to sum up, what we've done is
we've sequenced the poses that we want our
| | 04:12 | character to take and the next step is
to actually time out those poses so that
| | 04:17 | they read well as a rough animation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating the blocking pass| 00:00 | Once we have the basic poses in sequence,
we can start to timeout the animation.
| | 00:06 | So let's going ahead and
do that. Now let's refresh.
| | 00:09 | I've got a couple poses here. He goes from
folder arms, squashes, comes up and waves.
| | 00:18 | Now if we were to play this in real time,
it would actually go by really quick.
| | 00:22 | I am going to go and click my
Preferences here. Make sure I have this set to
| | 00:27 | Realtime. We are animating
at 24 frames per second.
| | 00:31 | And let's just go ahead and play this.
| | 00:33 | When I play it in realtime you can see
obviously everything is two frames apart,
| | 00:40 | so it's going to be very, very fast.
| | 00:42 | So let's go ahead and start spreading out
these keys and start building the animation.
| | 00:48 | Now the first thing I want is I want
to make sure that he's holding at the
| | 00:53 | beginning of the sequence.
| | 00:55 | I am going to hold him for a
little bit less than a second.
| | 00:57 | Maybe about 20 frames or so.
| | 01:00 | Now in order to do that,
I need to copy another keyframe.
| | 01:04 | So let's go ahead and select our
character and first thing I want to do is start
| | 01:09 | to move these keyframes back. So I am
going to Shift+Select everything up to
| | 01:15 | but not including that first keyframe.
| | 01:18 | So down to Frame 3, and then I am
going to grab here and just push those back.
| | 01:22 | In fact, I am going to push back
to about 24, which will give me enough
| | 01:27 | room to put in that hold.
| | 01:29 | So I am going to go ahead do that first frame
at Frame 1, copy it, and paste that at Frame 20.
| | 01:40 | If I scrub this, you may get some weird
sort of in between like this, and if you do,
| | 01:46 | let's go ahead over to our Graph
Editor, which we will be playing with, and
| | 01:51 | let's take a look at what we have here.
| | 01:54 | Now if the Graph Editor comes in a
little bit too tight, all you have to do is
| | 02:01 | hit the F key for Frame and
that will go ahead and frame it.
| | 02:05 | If you notice here, it's automatically
in betweening all of these joints right
| | 02:10 | there. You can see it's kind of got
just a weird little in-between there.
| | 02:13 | Now what I would like to do when I
start to work with these keyframes, as
| | 02:18 | I select them all. I want to make sure
that all my nodes in my character is selected.
| | 02:22 | Then you select all the
keyframes of all those nodes.
| | 02:26 | And then I start off with Step
tngents, and what that does is it makes him
| | 02:32 | jump from pose to pose.
| | 02:34 | Let me show you how this works.
| | 02:35 | I am just going to make this a little
bit smaller so that you can see how
| | 02:38 | this works against this.
| | 02:39 | So as he scrolls through, he is going
to jump 1, 2, 3, so he is basically just
| | 02:47 | jumping from pose to pose, which
actually can be very handy, because then you
| | 02:51 | can kind of see where everything goes
and you can get basically the rough timing in,
| | 02:57 | and once we get that,
then we can release the curves.
| | 03:00 | The next thing I want to do is to make him
go from here to the squash and then back up.
| | 03:08 | So again, I am going to select all of
my parts of my character and then I'm
| | 03:13 | going to give myself some timing here.
| | 03:16 | As he comes down and comes up, I am
wondering if it works best four frames
| | 03:21 | down and four frames up or six frames
down and six frames up. This is one of
| | 03:25 | the places where you can start to play around
with the timing and just get what feels right.
| | 03:30 | I am going to start with four frames in
between each of these major keyframes.
| | 03:35 | And then I'm going to go ahead and push that
first wave back by maybe about six frames or so.
| | 03:41 | That's what my instinct is telling me.
| | 03:42 | I am going to go ahead
and close this window here.
| | 03:45 | Let's just play this and see what it looks like.
| | 03:50 | Obviously, the wave is too fast,
but really what we are looking at is that
| | 03:53 | squash and that kind of coming up,
and I am wondering if that's enough.
| | 03:58 | I think maybe I want to give a
little bit more space to that.
| | 04:02 | So I am going to go ahead and select him
again and let's just go ahead and push
| | 04:06 | back the second key here by about two
frames, because what's happening here is
| | 04:13 | this is actually closer to this and
he has to move a lot further to get up.
| | 04:18 | So I think I am going to squash him
pretty quickly so it's four frames to this pose,
| | 04:22 | but six frames here.
| | 04:25 | And what this does is it gives
him a little more time to move up.
| | 04:30 | So let's see how that plays.
| | 04:31 | Yeah, that feels a little bit better.
| | 04:36 | Now a lot of times when you're doing
this, you are stepping from pose to pose.
| | 04:40 | So this is again just rough timing.
| | 04:42 | As we get further into the animation,
we may have to adjust these poses again.
| | 04:47 | Now the next thing I need
to do is to time the wave.
| | 04:52 | For this I'm thinking maybe couple of
waves per seconds, so about four waves per
| | 04:57 | second, which means every six
frames at 24 frames per second.
| | 05:02 | So in order to do that, I actually have
more poses than timeline, so I need to
| | 05:07 | extend my timeline a little bit.
| | 05:09 | So let's go ahead and bring this out to 60.
| | 05:10 | It gives me a little bit more space.
And then I am going to zoom in here so we
| | 05:14 | can just work on this last half here.
| | 05:17 | So from here to here I have got six
frames, so from this pose to this pose.
| | 05:23 | So all I really need to do is to
basically space out the rest of these poses.
| | 05:28 | So this one, I need to go 1, 2, 3, 4, 36 to 42.
| | 05:33 | That's 6 frames.
| | 05:34 | So remember, these are two frames
apart, so in order to make them 6 frames
| | 05:38 | apart I just have to slide them by 4.
| | 05:42 | So again what I'm doing here is I am
just Shift+Selecting the keyframes on
| | 05:49 | the timeline and then I am grabbing
this little glyph here and I am just
| | 05:52 | moving it over, so 48 to 54. That's another 6.
| | 05:56 | And then we should be able to end this at
60, so I can just select that and go to 60.
| | 06:02 | Now I am just going to go ahead
grab here, drag my timeline so I have
| | 06:08 | everything on the screen, and let's
go ahead and do a quick play through.
| | 06:17 | So that's pretty good.
| | 06:20 | I think that's good rough timing.
| | 06:22 | Now there's one more thing that we can do.
| | 06:23 | We've done our blocking pass,
and this is something you may want to show to
| | 06:28 | a client or give to a director just so that
they understand where you're going with it.
| | 06:33 | But the next step is to do what I
call releasing the curves, in other words
| | 06:37 | going from step curves back to
interpolated curves and that will give even a
| | 06:43 | better idea as to how that animates.
| | 06:46 | So again I am going to select my
character, and this time we need to go into our
| | 06:51 | Graph Editor and I am going to frame
this, hit F to frame it, select all of my
| | 06:59 | keyframes. Let me expand
this a little bit. Here we go.
| | 07:05 | What I want to see is this one here is
Plateau tangents, and that's what I want
| | 07:09 | to hit, and what this will do is if he
is holding, such as this first section,
| | 07:14 | it will go ahead and just
make all the tangents flat.
| | 07:17 | So you don't get that crazy
in-between that we had before.
| | 07:21 | So let's go ahead and play this.
| | 07:25 | So this is a pretty good first pass.
| | 07:28 | So from here we need to do a number of
different things. One is he is holding,
| | 07:33 | so we need to kind of do what's
called the moving hold, and then we need to
| | 07:36 | finesse the rest of this to
make it a lot more realistic.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Moving holds| 00:00 | So now we have the rough animation blocked out.
| | 00:03 | We've got our basic timing.
| | 00:05 | We've got our major poses.
| | 00:06 | The next step is to go through it
a section at a time and make the
| | 00:10 | animation more complete.
| | 00:12 | So let's play what we have right now.
| | 00:17 | So we've got this character standing
with his arms crossed, and then he waves.
| | 00:23 | Now the first thing I notice is at the
very beginning of the scene, if you look
| | 00:28 | at this, he's really, he kind of dies.
He is not really alive at this point.
| | 00:33 | That's because when people stand
still they don't exactly stand still.
| | 00:38 | They move a little bit.
| | 00:40 | Gravity is pulling them down.
| | 00:42 | They're shifting their weight.
| | 00:43 | There's always a little bit of motion
when somebody is supposedly standing still.
| | 00:49 | So we can create what's called a
moving hold to bring more life into this
| | 00:54 | character as he is standing still.
| | 00:57 | Now there are times where you want a
character to stand rock-solid, perhaps for
| | 01:01 | comic effect, but typically if you have
a character holding a pose for more than
| | 01:06 | a few frames, you want to
make that into a moving hold.
| | 01:10 | So let's go ahead and do that.
| | 01:11 | First thing I want to do is
just zoom in on my timeline.
| | 01:14 | We have basically this dead spot is
from Frame 1 to Frame 20, so I am going to
| | 01:20 | go ahead and zoom in so I'm
little bit tighter on this timeline.
| | 01:24 | So we can see how we are
working a little bit better.
| | 01:27 | So I am going to go ahead and select
all my keys on my character and let's
| | 01:30 | take a look at him.
| | 01:32 | So we've got a keyframe here at
20 and then he starts to move down.
| | 01:36 | The first thing we need to do is
understand what's going on in this character's mind.
| | 01:41 | What is he doing?
| | 01:42 | Right now, his pose is one o -- when
your arms are crossed you afe kind of not
| | 01:47 | wanting to participate.
| | 01:49 | Let's go ahead and kind of move
him back. He's not really wanting to
| | 01:52 | participate so let's kind of make
this move a little bit away from the
| | 01:57 | audience just to kind
of give that sort of feel.
| | 02:00 | So the first thing I want to do
is start to work with the hips.
| | 02:04 | So I've got basically the hips are
in the exact same place here and here.
| | 02:09 | But let's go ahead and move them.
| | 02:12 | So I am going to hit W to go into my Move tool.
| | 02:15 | And I am just going to go ahead
and move him back just a hair.
| | 02:19 | So I am just going from here to here.
| | 02:21 | Now let's go ahead and play this back.
| | 02:24 | That actually brings a little bit
more life to the scene, but it's still
| | 02:27 | not quite realistic.
| | 02:29 | Let's go ahead and move up the body.
| | 02:32 | We've just done the hips and the legs.
| | 02:34 | Let's do the rest of the body.
| | 02:36 | So we can do that just by
playing with the spine a little bit.
| | 02:39 | I am going to go ahead and Shift-
select just these 2 spine joints here.
| | 02:45 | And now I am going to go ahead and just
rotate him back just a little bit, maybe
| | 02:49 | back and a little bit over.
| | 02:54 | So as you can see he is kind of moving
back a little bit and then-- which is
| | 02:58 | actually good, because it kind of
compliments that big forward motion as he goes
| | 03:03 | into that little squash
before he comes up for the wave.
| | 03:06 | So let's go ahead and play
this and just see how this feels.
| | 03:10 | Okay, I think we can add a little bit more.
| | 03:14 | I am going to go ahead and select the head a
little bit and let's go ahead and move that.
| | 03:19 | Again, I am going to move in that
same direction and let's see how that works.
| | 03:25 | That's better.
| | 03:27 | So now we've got this basic pose.
| | 03:30 | Now if we want, we could also go ahead
and add a little bit more into this, just
| | 03:36 | to give him a little bit more life.
| | 03:37 | This probably would be sufficient, but let's
kind of play with this just a little bit more.
| | 03:42 | Now one of the things that you think I
want to do is let's go ahead and just
| | 03:45 | make him a little bit more impatient.
So I am going to select his left toe and
| | 03:50 | we are going to tap his toe.
| | 03:51 | So I am going to just give myself a
few frames in, so let's go into Frame 2.
| | 03:56 | And I'm just going to set another keyframe,
which basically just sets everything at 0.
| | 04:00 | So I am going to go move forward about
4 frames, and then just move his toe up
| | 04:05 | like he's tapping it.
| | 04:07 | And then at Frame 10, which is another
4 frames in, I'm just going to go ahead
| | 04:11 | and bring that back down to 0.
| | 04:14 | Let's go ahead and see how that feels.
| | 04:16 | That looks good, but I think it will
have more emphasis if we did it one more time,
| | 04:20 | if I add one more tap on his foot.
| | 04:22 | So again, I am going to go
ahead and select that toe.
| | 04:24 | And so he taps here and let's go ahead
and start another tap at Frame 12.
| | 04:33 | Frame 16 let's rotate that up just a little bit.
| | 04:37 | And then Frame 20, it's actually
going to come back down naturally.
| | 04:41 | So let's see how that works.
| | 04:42 | Okay, I think I need to bring this one
up at 16 just a little bit more, so let's see.
| | 04:48 | At Frame 6 I have this at 15.
| | 04:51 | Okay, so let's go ahead and have this
at negative 15 like we have on the other
| | 04:57 | frame and make this a little bit more even.
| | 05:01 | So now what we have here is we have a
moving hold, so his hips and his spine are
| | 05:06 | just readjusting slightly to
give him the illusion of life.
| | 05:11 | And then in addition to that we added
one more little thing, which was tapping
| | 05:14 | his toe, just to give a little bit more
character, a little bit more life, to the scene.
| | 05:19 | So as you can see, a moving
hold brings your character to life.
| | 05:23 | Let's go ahead and move on
to the rest of the scene.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating weight shift| 00:00 | We have the basic moving hold in place.
| | 00:03 | The next step is to animate the
transition, the shifting of weight from the
| | 00:08 | character from one foot to the other.
| | 00:11 | Let's take a look at
where we are in our animation.
| | 00:14 | So we've got this moving hold and
then he does a transition to that wave.
| | 00:19 | So we are going to work on this transition.
| | 00:22 | So the first thing I want to do is
let's just take a look at what the hips are
| | 00:25 | doing in this transition.
| | 00:27 | So I am going to go over to my Layer
Editor and then I am going to hit this V,
| | 00:31 | which turns off the visibility of the
upper body of the head and the eyes.
| | 00:35 | And let's just take a look
at what the hips are doing.
| | 00:39 | So the first thing we need to
understand is how the character is
| | 00:42 | transferring weight.
| | 00:43 | I am going to go ahead and zoom in a
little bit here on the timeline so we can
| | 00:47 | see what we're doing.
| | 00:48 | Let's just take a look at these hips.
| | 00:51 | At frame 20, the hips are in that
standard pose and what's happening here is
| | 00:57 | that the weight of the
character is going down the right foot.
| | 01:03 | So that right leg is supporting the character.
| | 01:09 | What happens is he shifts weight, so
over the course of 10 frames to frame 30
| | 01:16 | he shifts his weight so that now the
weight of the body is being transmitted to
| | 01:21 | the ground through the left foot.
| | 01:24 | In order to do that, we have
to have this transitional pose.
| | 01:28 | I am going to go ahead and turn off
these upper controls, so we can see this even
| | 01:32 | a little better here.
| | 01:34 | So what happens is when the character shifts
his weight, the hips drop. Now why is that?
| | 01:43 | Well, gravity.
| | 01:44 | What's happening here is that he's
taken the weight off of this foot and he
| | 01:49 | hasn't put it exactly on to this foot either.
| | 01:53 | So what's happening is that the
hips are unsupported, so gravity is
| | 01:58 | pulling those down.
| | 02:00 | And when he moves up into that position,
then what's happening is he's pushing
| | 02:07 | up to counteract the force of gravity and
now we have another reasonably stable pose.
| | 02:14 | So, the point of this is that as he
moves from pose to pose, he's typically
| | 02:20 | shifting his weight from 1 foot to the
other and as the character shifts his weight,
| | 02:25 | the hips will typically drop
and so this is the major point here, is as
| | 02:30 | a character moves from pose to pose the
hips typically drop and this is because
| | 02:36 | when you go from pose to pose, you're shifting
the character's weight from 1 foot to the other.
| | 02:41 | When you block out your poses, one of
the things you need to understand is how
| | 02:44 | the character is shifting his weight.
| | 02:46 | You kind of want to have him go from 1 foot
to the other as he goes from pose to pose.
| | 02:51 | So that way you have a good weight transfer.
| | 02:55 | Now there's also one other
thing in this little animation here.
| | 02:59 | And that is the right foot.
| | 03:01 | If you notice here, the right foot is
actually moving as he shifts his weight.
| | 03:09 | So one of the things we can do with
this is actually add in a little bit more
| | 03:13 | animation to make it look
like he's taking a step.
| | 03:16 | So we can do this by going here to this
first pose here at frame 24 and doing a
| | 03:24 | little bit of a move so we're
going to lift his foot at the heel.
| | 03:27 | So I am going to lift his foot up, and then
I am going to rotate that foot just a bit.
| | 03:33 | So basically what's happening is he's
lifting it at the heel and then let's
| | 03:37 | move halfway between 24 and 30 which
will be 27, and then let's just rotate
| | 03:43 | that foot up a little bit.
| | 03:45 | And then at 30, it's
going to naturally set down.
| | 03:49 | So let's take a look at this again.
| | 03:51 | So now we've got a little bit of a
step, so let's take a look at this.
| | 03:59 | So this is just the hips.
| | 04:00 | This is just the transfer of weight.
| | 04:02 | We still have a lot of
work to do on the upper body.
| | 04:06 | So let's go ahead and take a
look at where we're at right now.
| | 04:09 | So you can see that that foot change is
pretty good, but we still have some work
| | 04:14 | to do with this upper body.
| | 04:15 | So let's go ahead and finish
this up in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating pose to pose transitions| 00:00 | Once we have the weight of the
character moving from 1 foot to the other, we
| | 00:04 | still need to work on the rest of the body.
| | 00:07 | At this point we have the computer in
betweening these poses and the computer in-between
| | 00:13 | isn't quite exactly what we want.
| | 00:15 | So let's go ahead and fine-tune and
tweak these in-betweens to make this a
| | 00:20 | really strong transition.
| | 00:23 | So let's go through this a frame at a time.
| | 00:25 | It starts at frame 20 and at frame 22 already
| | 00:29 | I am noticing a little bit of problem.
Right here there is some interpenetration
| | 00:33 | between the hand and the forearm here
and as he goes into this other pose, I am
| | 00:40 | noticing this is kind of a weak transition here.
| | 00:43 | So we need to cover work on this arm as well.
| | 00:46 | So let's go through this a step at a time.
| | 00:48 | The first thing I am going to do is
let's just focus on this outside arm, the
| | 00:52 | right arm because that's the
one that's going to move first.
| | 00:55 | It's kind of blocking
this left hand from moving.
| | 00:58 | So let's go ahead and just animate that
first and then we'll go through the other arm.
| | 01:03 | So thing I am noticing is
that we have a little bit of this
| | 01:06 | interpenetration here.
| | 01:08 | So the easiest way to get rid of that
is to just grab the elbow on the right arm
| | 01:13 | and just rotate that a
little bit out of the way.
| | 01:17 | In fact, let's just
rotate that down quite a bit.
| | 01:20 | Now the other thing is that as this arm
rotates down the hand is going to drag,
| | 01:27 | because what we have here is we have
this force is moving the forearm in this
| | 01:33 | direction, but the hand also has a
joint and it kind of wants to stay put.
| | 01:37 | This is again what we call drag.
| | 01:39 | Now what's going to happen here is
that this wrist is going to bend back and
| | 01:45 | actually we can use this to our
advantage because what we can do is we can
| | 01:49 | actually make a nice arc.
| | 01:52 | As we go through these sorts of
transitions here, we want to make sure that we
| | 01:57 | have kind of nice poses here. His arm
is kind of moving in the nice arc and this
| | 02:03 | gives the audience of visual
representation of where it's moving.
| | 02:08 | So if I see an arm in that position, I
know that the force is coming from here
| | 02:12 | and that it's moving
generally in that direction.
| | 02:17 | So let's go ahead and continue this.
| | 02:19 | We are going to move this
arm out again at Frame 24.
| | 02:25 | This arc that we created here
is kind of broken at this pose.
| | 02:29 | So let's go ahead and put that back in.
So I am going to rotate that arm out
| | 02:34 | just a little bit more, and again I am
going to rotate this hand and again I
| | 02:40 | want to try and create a nice arc here.
| | 02:42 | So now you can see how that's coming
out and now as this comes in, let's go
| | 02:48 | ahead and continue this arc a little bit
and kind of bring it back and then just
| | 02:53 | kind of straiten it out.
| | 02:54 | So really what we're getting here is we
are getting almost kind of a whip action.
| | 03:00 | So almost looks like we've got kind of
a whip action happening here and here
| | 03:06 | we can kind of just tweak this a little bit, and
make sure that this hand is in a decent position.
| | 03:12 | So now the right arm is
definitely moving a lot better.
| | 03:18 | So let's go ahead and focus a
little more on the left arm.
| | 03:21 | So let's take a look at this.
| | 03:22 | So as this arm is moving,
we have a very similar situation.
| | 03:28 | I am going to have another drag
that's happening on this wrist.
| | 03:31 | So as we go to say Frame 24, I'm going
to move that in and now the arm is coming
| | 03:40 | up and right here we have
an kind of an awkward pose.
| | 03:44 | This is really where
silhouetting can help you with animation.
| | 03:48 | If I were to silhouette this, you can
kind of see this shape here. It really is
| | 03:54 | kind of an awkward shape.
| | 03:55 | We can make that a lot smoother and a lot
more elegant just by reposing this a little bit.
| | 04:01 | So I am going to go ahead and move
this arm out a little bit and then just
| | 04:06 | drag that wrist back.
| | 04:07 | So by doing just that little thing,
what happens is we get a nice arch.
| | 04:14 | Again we're getting this kind of whip action
and in fact we are getting it here in both arms.
| | 04:18 | This is a very strong silhouette and
this will actually tell the audience
| | 04:23 | how this is moving.
| | 04:24 | So as he brings that arm out you
can see what direction it's moving in.
| | 04:31 | It's a much stronger sense of that motion.
| | 04:34 | Now we have got one more
little thing to tweak here.
| | 04:37 | We have got one more major joint that we
haven't really touched and that's the head.
| | 04:43 | So let's take a look at
what we can do with this.
| | 04:45 | So the first thing is he's moving
forward. As he moves forward, again he
| | 04:52 | moves forward from the hips so the head is
going to be the last thing that moves forward.
| | 04:57 | One of things I want to do is maybe
just start repositioning these keyframes.
| | 05:02 | So I positioned this as kind of my
master pose, but I don't have to keep this
| | 05:08 | pose exactly the way that I have.
| | 05:11 | So one of things I can do is to just
move that keyframe over just a little bit.
| | 05:17 | So now as he comes in, his head is
going to rotate down a little bit later.
| | 05:23 | In fact I can rotate that down a little
bit more and then as he comes up into this
| | 05:29 | pose, the head will be the last thing
because again it starts at the hips, moves
| | 05:34 | through the spine, and the head will be
the last thing that moves into position.
| | 05:38 | So I am going to grab the keyframe for
the head at frame 30 and move it back
| | 05:44 | two frames to frame 32.
| | 05:45 | Now what this does is it gives me a
little bit of overlap. Everything in his
| | 05:52 | body is not all moving at once.
| | 05:54 | It kind of gives you a much more fluid effect.
| | 05:57 | So let's go ahead and take a look at this.
| | 05:59 | I have got this up to about frame 36, so
let's just take a look at where we are at now.
| | 06:03 | So you can see that that
pose is looking pretty good.
| | 06:10 | One of things I'm noticing is that I'm
getting a little bit of a flop here on this arm.
| | 06:16 | So as he comes in,
he kind of just freezes there.
| | 06:21 | So one of things I can do is just
move some of these keyframes back.
| | 06:26 | So I am going to go ahead and
select all the keyframes in the arm and
| | 06:29 | Shift+Select and select the right
arm's shoulder, elbow, and wrist and just go
| | 06:36 | ahead and move those back as well.
| | 06:42 | So now at this point we are actually
into the part of the animation where
| | 06:46 | the character starts to wave and we are
going to go ahead and do that in the next lesson.
| | 06:52 | So for this lesson, let's just go
ahead and recap what we have done.
| | 06:56 | We've gone through the automatic
in-betweening that Maya has done for these poses
| | 07:02 | and we've fine tuned it so that it's stronger.
| | 07:05 | A lot of this involves making sure that
parts of character don't overlap, that
| | 07:10 | we have strong silhouettes, and that
when the character's body parts move,
| | 07:15 | particularly the arms, that they move
with drag and that they give kind of a whip
| | 07:20 | action to that motion.
| | 07:22 | And then also we've added in a little
bit of delay in the joints such as the
| | 07:28 | head to give the sense that the body
is not moving all at the same time.
| | 07:33 | So keep these things in mind as you
start to tweak your pose to pose animation.
| | 07:40 | And they can make it a lot stronger
and make your transitions a lot more effective.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a wave| 00:00 | So let's go ahead and animate the
last part of this animation, which is
| | 00:03 | the character waving.
| | 00:06 | A wave is a really good
example of secondary motion.
| | 00:09 | It's a good example of drag and so
you are going to learn a lot of these
| | 00:12 | principles as we animate this.
| | 00:15 | So let's go ahead and play what we have.
| | 00:17 | So you can see the beginning. It looks
pretty fluid and then when it gets to that
| | 00:22 | wave, well the arm is pretty stiff.
| | 00:25 | So starting at about frame 30, the
last half of this animation that arm looks
| | 00:30 | like it's just stuck in place.
| | 00:33 | And the reason is is because well, the
arm is actually composed of three joints.
| | 00:38 | It has the shoulder, the elbow, and
the wrist and each one of these will be
| | 00:45 | affected by the motion of the other.
| | 00:47 | So in this case, the shoulder is
the thing that's driving the motion of
| | 00:51 | everything else and typically
in arm motion, that's the case.
| | 00:55 | So as this character moves down, you
can see that what's happening is that the
| | 01:03 | shoulder is pulling that arm in
that direction. It's rotating.
| | 01:08 | Now we have two other joints here.
| | 01:10 | We have the elbow and the wrist and
now they want to stay where they are.
| | 01:17 | This is Newton's law of motion.
| | 01:19 | An object at rest wants to stay at rest.
| | 01:22 | So let's take a look at this animation
here and actually let's go ahead and make
| | 01:26 | sure that we have frame 28 open here
and you can see what's happening is that
| | 01:30 | the wrist is kind of coming over
the top and then going into that wave.
| | 01:36 | So what we need to do is make sure
that we have that as part of the motion.
| | 01:42 | Because what's happening is that it's
being pulled up and so at this point it's
| | 01:47 | still going to be rotated a little bit forward.
| | 01:51 | This is because of drag.
| | 01:53 | So I am going to go ahead and
rotate that a little bit forward.
| | 01:55 | I am not going to worry too much about fingers.
| | 01:58 | I am going to curl those over just a
little bit and then as he comes over into
| | 02:06 | that I am going to go ahead and
straighten those up, but as he goes into this
| | 02:12 | wave what's happening is again the
shoulder is pulling everything down, but
| | 02:17 | these things want to stay up.
| | 02:19 | So I am going to go three frames
into this first part of the cycle.
| | 02:24 | Now remember the shoulder starts moving at 30.
| | 02:27 | It's down at 36, back up 6 frames later at 42.
| | 02:32 | So every 6 frames, we
have a change of direction.
| | 02:35 | So as that change of direction happens the
elbow and the wrist are going to drag behind.
| | 02:43 | So I can animate this, by going
about halfway through that cycle.
| | 02:47 | So at frame 33 or 3 frames in, I am
going to go ahead and bend the elbow.
| | 02:54 | I am going to go ahead and straighten
out that wrist a little bit so we have
| | 02:57 | that fully to the camera,
but I'm going to bend it.
| | 03:01 | What I have done here is have
created a pretty strong silhouette.
| | 03:05 | I've also created a nice arc.
| | 03:09 | So you can see I have got a really
strong arch there and again that's going to
| | 03:13 | convey information to the audience
about where this joint is moving.
| | 03:17 | So as we come over the top
it's going to start coming down.
| | 03:24 | At the next point, which is three
frames later, frame 36, this is where the
| | 03:30 | shoulder starts moving
in the opposite direction.
| | 03:32 | It starts moving everything up.
| | 03:35 | But one of the things we have is we
still are going to have this elbow and the
| | 03:40 | wrist dragging behind
the motion of the shoulder.
| | 03:45 | So I am going to ahead and grab the
elbow, move it back, and again just kind arc
| | 03:51 | that wrist back and again we
wanted just kind of get a nice arc here.
| | 03:55 | So it now goes that way and when the
shoulder starts moving back, again we
| | 04:01 | have the same situation.
| | 04:03 | The shoulder is moving, the bicep and
everything this way, but these are still
| | 04:09 | moving in the opposite direction.
So they want to stay where they are.
| | 04:13 | They want to keep going in the
direction that they're going.
| | 04:16 | So we can again do the same thing.
| | 04:20 | We can move them in the opposite direction.
| | 04:22 | In this case I am not going to go 3 frames up.
| | 04:25 | I am just going to go 2 frames up
because this actually will walk out a
| | 04:29 | little bit more quickly, going in the
up direction, and then I'm going to
| | 04:35 | rotate that wrist as well.
| | 04:36 | So what I've done is I have
rotated the elbow until it's straight.
| | 04:40 | Now remember the elbow only goes so
far before you're going to break it.
| | 04:45 | You could probably animate it a little
bit past straight, but if you go to too
| | 04:50 | much past, its going to look a little
odd, and then I'm going to tilt that
| | 04:54 | wrist a little bit over.
| | 04:55 | But now we have got it coming
like that and that looks pretty good.
| | 05:00 | But again we have that same situation when we
come up to the next cycle, which is at frame 42.
| | 05:07 | This is going to be moving back, the
elbow, it's still going to be a little bit
| | 05:12 | locked, and this wrist is
still going to be dragging behind.
| | 05:16 | So we have got a kind of straightened
out here, so now comes over the top and
| | 05:21 | now it comes up and now it's
where it's going to bend down.
| | 05:25 | So it's straight at 42 and
now it's going to drag behind.
| | 05:31 | But at this point we actually have
the pose that we want, because this pose
| | 05:36 | here at 45 is going to be exactly the
same as the pose we had at 33, so we can
| | 05:43 | actually copy that.
| | 05:45 | So I am going to go ahead and Shift+
Select the elbow and the wrist of the
| | 05:50 | left-hand, go to frame 33,
copy, paste at frame 45.
| | 05:57 | Now the reason it's at 45 is that it
reframes in from that start of the cycle.
| | 06:02 | And again, we can do the same
for the rest of the animation.
| | 06:06 | In fact we can actually
start to cycle the whole thing.
| | 06:10 | So I could actually Copy what I had at
36 and paste it at 48 and we can actually
| | 06:16 | do this cycle over again. In fact
I could do the whole thing just by
| | 06:20 | Shift+Dragging 36 through 45,
copy, go to 48 and paste.
| | 06:31 | So what I've done is I have just
copied the rest of those and we should have
| | 06:35 | a pretty good wave. So there we go!
| | 06:41 | Another thing I am noticing is that the
right arm isn't really moving naturally.
| | 06:46 | Let's take a look at this
arm here, the right arm.
| | 06:49 | You can see it's really not hanging naturally.
| | 06:51 | This is supposed to be a relaxed arm, so
let's go ahead and just do a few little
| | 06:55 | keyframes, just to kind of get it to relax here.
| | 06:59 | So as he comes up into this pose, we
can start to relax and so and in fact one
| | 07:05 | of things I want to do is maybe Shift+
Select all of these joints, make sure I
| | 07:11 | have the wrist, the shoulder, and the
elbow selected, and I am actually going to
| | 07:17 | go ahead and delete the
keyframe that I had at frame 32.
| | 07:23 | What this does is it gives the
computer more time to in-between into this pose
| | 07:28 | here at frame 36, which will actually
give it a much more gentle transition, so
| | 07:33 | what I've done is I've just kind of
deleted a few keyframes to give a much more
| | 07:39 | gentle transition into this pose.
| | 07:42 | Now at frame 42, if you look at this,
it feels kind of like it's going like this.
| | 07:48 | So let's go ahead and just kind of
soften that up a little and I can do that
| | 07:53 | just by rotating that wrist and just
letting that wrist hang a little bit more
| | 07:58 | naturally, and again we can do that
again at frame 48 and again I want to kind
| | 08:08 | of let that arm hang just a little
bit, a little bit more, and again I am
| | 08:19 | getting this kind of break in the wrist
so I am just going to kind of straighten
| | 08:23 | that out juts a little bit.
| | 08:24 | On both of these frames, 54 and at 60.
| | 08:30 | So that should clean it up a little bit.
| | 08:31 | Let's just take a quick look at it.
| | 08:33 | So let's take a look at the whole animation.
| | 08:38 | Now we could go over this with a
fine-tooth comb and really make sure that
| | 08:43 | everything is in place.
| | 08:44 | But by now you kind of get the idea of what the
process is for animating a pose to pose animation.
| | 08:51 | So let's take a look at where we
are at and see what this looks like.
| | 08:56 | Seems pretty good. So let's go ahead
and recap what the process is for
| | 09:02 | animating pose to pose animation.
| | 09:04 | First thing you need to do is you need
to create your poses. Don't worry so much
| | 09:08 | about timing; just get the
poses in the order that you want.
| | 09:12 | Next step is to block out those poses
to make sure that the timing is right.
| | 09:19 | Then after that you release the curves,
and then you go through and you start
| | 09:23 | tweaking the animation a section at a time.
| | 09:27 | And with animation, it really is
what we call an iterative process.
| | 09:31 | You go over it once, then you go over
it again, and then you go over it again,
| | 09:35 | and then every time you take a pass
at it, it gets a little bit cleaner, a
| | 09:39 | little bit better, a little bit more lively.
| | 09:42 | So if you want, go ahead and take
another pass and just clean up any rough
| | 09:46 | spots you see, but the basic process of
pose to pose animation should be clear
| | 09:51 | to you by now.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Animating WalksAnalyzing a walk| 00:00 | In this chapter we're going
to animate a simple walk cycle.
| | 00:04 | Now before we actually get into
animating this walk, let's go ahead and
| | 00:08 | analyze a simple walk and show you what makes
a character walk, what makes a successful walk.
| | 00:16 | So I have this file open here and if we
want, we can simply play it and you can
| | 00:20 | see it's just a very generic walk.
| | 00:24 | So let's go over to our Perspective view and
I'm going to actually show you a few things.
| | 00:28 | Now let's take a look at what a walk is.
Well the walk starts-- it depends on
| | 00:36 | what frame you want to start with,
but typically how a walk happens is a
| | 00:40 | character shifts his weight from foot to
foot. So he puts his weight on his left foot,
| | 00:46 | then shifts his weight to his
right foot, and each time he does that,
| | 00:54 | he pulls himself forward.
| | 00:55 | So he drops his foot down,
pulls himself forward, and so on.
| | 00:58 | Now in doing this a number of
anatomical things have to happen.
| | 01:04 | Well, first of all, when he puts his
foot out here, he has to put it in front of
| | 01:12 | the body, which means that the
hips have to rotate to meet that.
| | 01:17 | So let's take a look at this, so this
hip is actually forward and the other hip
| | 01:23 | is actually back. But in order to
maintain his balance, this shoulder has to
| | 01:28 | rotate in the opposite direction.
| | 01:31 | So this is one of the key things in
a walk is that when the left foot is
| | 01:36 | forward, the left shoulder will be back.
| | 01:41 | So let's take a look at that again
and let's just watch the shoulders.
| | 01:45 | So what happens is as this foot
moves back, the shoulder moves forward.
| | 01:51 | So what we have is a
twisting motion of the spine.
| | 01:54 | Now when he moves his foot forward,
one of the things he does is he also puts
| | 02:00 | himself out of balance.
| | 02:03 | So right here, he's actually
falling forward just a little bit.
| | 02:09 | So his weight is actually going to
fall forward just a little bit and what
| | 02:13 | happens is he's going to
catch his weight with this foot.
| | 02:19 | So when we do that what happens
is-- let's take a look at this.
| | 02:25 | So when he catches his weight with his
foot, he starts with a straight leg and
| | 02:29 | now that will need bends because what
we're doing is we're shifting weight.
| | 02:34 | We're shifting weight from this foot,
the left foot, to the right foot, and the
| | 02:39 | same thing happens on the other side.
| | 02:41 | So he puts his foot down, puts his
weight on the foot which causes the knee to bend,
| | 02:46 | and then he straightens that up
as he lift himself up, allows that foot
| | 02:51 | to come through, catches the ground,
cushions, extends, and then takes another step.
| | 03:01 | Now if we want, we can actually take
a look at this a couple of other ways.
| | 03:06 | So I've got all of these geometries
on layers, so I'm going to go ahead and
| | 03:11 | turn off the upper body.
| | 03:15 | So we can see how the legs move.
| | 03:18 | So if you just see this, you can see
how the hips are rotating left and right.
| | 03:26 | So as this character moves forward,
these hips rotate this way and then when
| | 03:35 | he steps the other way the hips rotate in
the opposite direction, in that direction.
| | 03:45 | So let's go ahead and
turn on the rest of the body.
| | 03:47 | Now another thing you want to take a
look at is there's also a forward and back
| | 03:56 | motion of the spine, so as he catches
his weight here, the spine is going to
| | 04:05 | arch forward just a little bit.
| | 04:07 | What that does is because he's catching
his weight on that foot, so as soon as
| | 04:12 | he catches the weight on the foot,
the body kind of leans forward, then it
| | 04:16 | straightens up, then it catches
again, and then it leans forward again.
| | 04:23 | Now one more thing I want to
show you is the walk from the front.
| | 04:30 | Let's take a look at how the spine works.
| | 04:33 | So when he puts his weight on one foot
here, we've got all of the weight of the
| | 04:42 | character coming down onto that foot.
| | 04:46 | And what this does is this creates a
large weight on this side here which
| | 04:53 | rotates the spine here, because we've
got this giant weight, which is basically
| | 04:58 | of character's foot, pulling this down.
| | 05:01 | And so in order to compensate for
this, the spine has to arch from the
| | 05:06 | front this way, okay.
| | 05:09 | So that is in the middle of the walk
cycle, which we call the passing position,
| | 05:14 | where the foot passes the opposite leg.
| | 05:18 | So when he does that we're going to have
a little bit of a spine twist that way.
| | 05:22 | So those are some of the basics of a
walk, just some general guidelines, and
| | 05:27 | we'll be going over these
again as we animate the walk.
| | 05:31 | So I just wanted to show you a few key
pointers to a walk, how the hips, the spine,
| | 05:37 | and the shoulders move to
make a character walk successfully.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting up a character for a basic walk| 00:00 | Now that we understand the mechanics
of a walk, let's go ahead and animate
| | 00:04 | a simple walk cycle.
| | 00:07 | Now I'm going to animate this walk in sections.
| | 00:10 | I'm going to concentrate on the lower
part of the character, more specifically
| | 00:15 | the hips and the feet.
| | 00:17 | Now once I get this firm foundation,
I'll go ahead and move up to the upper
| | 00:23 | part of the character.
| | 00:25 | Now to make this as clear as possible,
let's go ahead and turn off that upper
| | 00:29 | part of the character.
| | 00:30 | I'm going to go ahead and turn off the
head as well as the upper geometry and
| | 00:35 | the controls for the
upper part of the character.
| | 00:38 | And now all I have left is
this lower part of the character.
| | 00:42 | Now before we actually animate the
walk we need to make a decision as to how
| | 00:48 | fast the character will walk.
| | 00:51 | For this exercise, I've decided we're
going to animate at 16 frames per step.
| | 00:56 | Now that means a total of 32
frames for two steps or one cycle.
| | 01:02 | So as you can see, we're starting at
frame one, which means we need to go
| | 01:06 | 32 frames past 1 to 33, so we're going to
animate from 1 to 33 for a total of 32 frames.
| | 01:15 | Now once we have that set up, we can
go ahead and start animating the walk.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a walk: The feet| 00:00 | Now that we have all preliminaries in
place, let's go ahead and start blocking
| | 00:03 | out the footsteps of the walk.
| | 00:05 | All we want to do at this point is just
get the spacing and timing of the feet right.
| | 00:11 | Now we're going to start
with the extended position.
| | 00:14 | This is where the feet are furthest apart.
| | 00:16 | Now you can start with any one of the
four positions you want, but I find the
| | 00:20 | extended position is probably the best way
for the beginner to start animating a walk.
| | 00:26 | So I'm going to go ahead
and select one of the feet.
| | 00:28 | In this case I'm selecting the right
foot and I'm going to move it forward.
| | 00:33 | Now how far forward depends
on the character of the walk.
| | 00:37 | We can move it forward just a
little bit for small tiny steps.
| | 00:41 | We can move it forward quite a bit for
big broad steps, but I'm just going to go
| | 00:46 | somewhere in the middle.
| | 00:47 | Somewhere around here, so where this
foot is just ahead of the opposite foot.
| | 00:51 | So I'm going to go ahead and
move it forward about 16 units.
| | 00:56 | Now when we do this, notice how that
foot here is pointing towards the goal, but
| | 01:02 | it's not really own the ground.
| | 01:04 | This is because the hips
still haven't put in place.
| | 01:07 | So what I need to do is take the hips
and move them forward and just kind of get
| | 01:13 | them pretty much right in
the middle of the two feet.
| | 01:18 | Now, when I do this notice how
these are kind of becoming knock-kneed,
| | 01:22 | and that's because I've got
these two targets in the way.
| | 01:25 | So let me go ahead and select these two
knee direction targets and move those forward.
| | 01:34 | These two objects are what the knees
point at, so if you move these in any
| | 01:38 | direction you can see how the
knees actually point at these objects.
| | 01:42 | So we just want to make sure that
those are in front of the character.
| | 01:45 | Now once we have those kind of moved
out of the way, we can do the final
| | 01:50 | position of the hips.
| | 01:52 | Now what I want to do is I want to get
those hips kind of halfway between the feet.
| | 01:57 | Well, I know if I moved 1 foot forward to
16 then halfway would be half of 16 or 8.
| | 02:03 | So I am going to move that forward
eight units and then I'm going to go ahead
| | 02:09 | and move that up, but before I do that,
remember that the hips are actually
| | 02:14 | rotating side-to-side, so they're kind
of twisting around the vertical axis.
| | 02:20 | So as that right foot moves forward,
the right hip will also rotate forward so
| | 02:28 | we need to incorporate
that into our walk as well.
| | 02:30 | So I'm going to rotate this forward
about 15 degrees and now that I have those in place,
| | 02:36 | the final step is to just move
these hips up or down to kind of get a
| | 02:42 | good first position.
| | 02:43 | Now if I move it too high up, you'll
notice that these knees kind of lock and
| | 02:47 | we don't want that.
| | 02:48 | So I'm going to go ahead and just move
those so that the knees are slightly bent
| | 02:52 | and we have a nice extension.
| | 02:54 | So now that we have those in place
let's go ahead and make sure we've set
| | 02:58 | keyframes for the hips and both of the feet.
| | 03:02 | Now we have that first pose blocked out.
| | 03:06 | Now we can go ahead and move the
time slider forward out to frame 17, so
| | 03:12 | remember this is a 16-frame cycle.
| | 03:14 | So our next extended position will
happen at frame 17, which is 16 ahead of 1.
| | 03:21 | So let's go ahead and select
that left foot and move it forward.
| | 03:24 | We're going to move it forward, well, 16
to make it even, plus another 16 for 32.
| | 03:32 | Now this will go ahead and put the foot exactly
in the same place, except on the opposite side.
| | 03:37 | So now that we have this in place, let's
go ahead and select the other foot.
| | 03:42 | Make sure we have a keyframe set for that.
| | 03:45 | So again we're going to move the hips
forward another 16 units for a total of 24.
| | 03:51 | Now if you notice, the hips are actually
kind of rotated in the wrong direction.
| | 03:58 | This is one of the legs are overextended.
| | 04:01 | So if I want remember again that the hips
rotate along the vertical axis, left-right.
| | 04:06 | So I want to make sure that I rotate
these hips forward about 15 units, or
| | 04:11 | actually -15 units, and get those in place.
| | 04:16 | So once I do that, let's make sure I
have all of my keyframes set and then we
| | 04:21 | can see I've got my first footstep blocked out.
| | 04:25 | Now this isn't really the full foot step.
| | 04:27 | It's just getting the placement.
| | 04:29 | So let's go ahead and do this one more time
for the right foot to finish off the cycle.
| | 04:36 | So again I'm going to go all the way
to the end of my timescale, at frame 33.
| | 04:41 | And we're going to go ahead and
move that right foot forward again.
| | 04:44 | Now it's at 16. 16+16+16 puts it to about 48.
| | 04:50 | Let's go ahead and type in 48,
and again the hips are needed to move forward
| | 04:55 | as well, another 16.
| | 04:57 | So let's go ahead and move those
forward. So 24+16 is 40 and we also need to
| | 05:06 | untwist it and rotate the hips in the
other direction. So again we're going to
| | 05:11 | go to 15 on this side.
| | 05:13 | So once I have that in place, let's make
sure we set all of our keyframes and we
| | 05:18 | should have the timing and
spacing of the feet blocked down.
| | 05:22 | Now let's go ahead and just scrub through this.
| | 05:24 | You can see now this is the basic timing
of the footsteps, so let's go ahead and
| | 05:30 | do a quick run-through and you
can see that that works pretty well.
| | 05:37 | Now obviously, we've got to kind of
finish this off by animating the feet lifting
| | 05:41 | and all that, but we'll
do that in the next lesson.
| | 05:44 | So now that we have the timing and
spacing of the feet blocked out, we can go
| | 05:47 | ahead and finish off the hips and feet
portion of the walk, and we're going to
| | 05:52 | go ahead and do that in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a walk: The lower body| 00:00 | So at this point we have just the
footsteps and the timing laid out.
| | 00:04 | So let's just go ahead and
play the walk that we have.
| | 00:09 | Basically we have the feet sliding
along, but the footsteps are in place so
| | 00:12 | let's go ahead and turn
this into a lower body walk.
| | 00:16 | I am going to ahead and scroll back to one here.
| | 00:19 | And let's go ahead and take a
quick look at what's happening.
| | 00:23 | So what I have got here is I have
got a transfer of weight happening.
| | 00:27 | Right now, the weight is on this foot,
but we are going to transfer that weight
| | 00:33 | over to the other foot here.
| | 00:37 | So basically the character's weight is
going to be pressing down on this foot,
| | 00:42 | the foot that has just planted down.
| | 00:45 | So in visual sense basically what's
going to happen is this foot is going to
| | 00:50 | lift off the ground.
| | 00:51 | Remember the foot is going to transfer
its weight from the heel to the toe and
| | 00:57 | then once the toe is airborne, all of
the weight would be on this right foot.
| | 01:02 | So let's go ahead and start animating this.
| | 01:05 | Now first I want to do is I kind of
want to lift the heel, so I am going to go
| | 01:10 | ahead and grab this control here which
is the heel control. At some point, I'm
| | 01:15 | going to go ahead and rotate
that up so we get that heel lift.
| | 01:19 | So in order to do that and make it look
convincing, I need to go ahead and set a
| | 01:24 | key for the foot itself,
which is this control here.
| | 01:30 | In fact, I will go ahead
and delete that one here.
| | 01:33 | So if you notice here, the
translations are all zero. So what I want to do is
| | 01:37 | set another key where everything is
zero. So we are going to ahead and change
| | 01:41 | everything back to zero and make sure I
set a key. And what that does is it locks
| | 01:48 | that foot at zero. But if you notice
here we are getting a bit of a lift of that
| | 01:53 | heel because the hips are moving forward.
| | 01:55 | So in order to lift that heel, I am
going to select it, set a key at one and
| | 02:01 | then move forward a little bit.
| | 02:03 | In fact, I am going to move forward to frame
3 and then just go ahead and rotate that up.
| | 02:09 | In fact, I know how high I want to rotate it.
| | 02:13 | Let's go ahead and rotate it about 30.
| | 02:14 | What that does is it gives
us a really nice heel lift.
| | 02:17 | So what happens here is the heel is
lifting before anything else and that gives
| | 02:23 | us a much more anatomically correct walk.
| | 02:28 | So then as this heel lifts, the
weight of the character is going to be set
| | 02:33 | down on this right foot.
| | 02:36 | So I am going to go ahead and move
forward a few more frames to frame 5 which is
| | 02:40 | 4 frames into those 16 frame walk and
I am going to go ahead and move this
| | 02:45 | character down and a little bit forward.
| | 02:51 | Now what happens is that's going to
give you the feeling that he's kind of
| | 02:54 | falling forward and that's really what
he's doing. He is falling and then he's
| | 02:59 | going to lift himself up as
this foot passes underneath.
| | 03:03 | So as he falls forward, he is also
going to rotate forward a little bit, so I
| | 03:08 | am going to rotate him just a little
bit in X, just to give him a little bit
| | 03:12 | more forward momentum.
| | 03:14 | And then as he steps up this
body itself is going to lift.
| | 03:19 | So I am going to go ahead and lift up
the body and the foot itself will go ahead
| | 03:27 | and move up under the body as well.
| | 03:31 | So what I'm basically
doing is I am getting this.
| | 03:33 | So you can see, he's falling forward
and now that all the weight is on this
| | 03:41 | right foot, he presses up and then at
the middle section which is 8 frames in or
| | 03:47 | at frame 9, this is the passing position.
| | 03:50 | This is where this foot passes the other foot.
| | 03:54 | So at this point, the heel
lift needs to be eliminated.
| | 03:59 | So I'm going to go to frame 9 and
rotate that heel back to zero, but now once I
| | 04:06 | have that, you'll notice that well that
foot is a little bit too flat. So what I
| | 04:09 | need to do is rotate that.
| | 04:11 | Now remember we've got a little bit of
a dead weight here, so this is going to
| | 04:16 | tend to hang forward.
| | 04:18 | That's actually the more natural position.
| | 04:21 | So I am going to go ahead and rotate
that forward just a little bit and then
| | 04:25 | move this into place. So
it's pretty much halfway there.
| | 04:30 | So now I've got that. So weight falls
forward, character moves up, and now all we
| | 04:40 | need to do is finish the step.
| | 04:41 | In fact, this looks reasonably good,
but I'm going to give it a little bit more
| | 04:46 | flair here. So we can do that
simply by rotating that foot forward.
| | 04:52 | So now, I have got that foot kind
of flipping up before it sets down.
| | 04:56 | So it comes in, naturally
flips up, and then sets down.
| | 05:02 | But if you notice here, this
is coming in a little fast.
| | 05:06 | So what I need to do here is also in
addition to this is move this a little
| | 05:11 | bit forward and down.
| | 05:13 | So now we have got kind of more of a
gentle set-down, so now this goes like that.
| | 05:18 | Okay, now we have got one more little
thing to fix on this and that's the toe.
| | 05:25 | So this toe also is going
to flap just a little bit.
| | 05:29 | So I am going to go back to frame 1
and just make sure I had set a keyframe
| | 05:33 | for that, and then as it pulls up this
first half of the walk is really just
| | 05:40 | the heel lifting, so I am really not
going to touch the toe at this point and
| | 05:44 | then at frame 9, which is halfway in,
I am going to set another keyframe, just
| | 05:49 | to kind of lock it down.
| | 05:51 | Now as this kind of comes up, what's
going to happen is momentum is going to
| | 05:56 | pull this down just a little bit and
then right before it hits, it's going to
| | 06:03 | flip up, so it's going to go ahead
and flip up and then as it sets down its
| | 06:09 | going to go back to 0.
| | 06:11 | So now let's take a look at this.
| | 06:13 | So as it comes in, we are basically
getting secondary or dragging motion for
| | 06:20 | that toe and that gives it
a much more natural look.
| | 06:24 | So let's go ahead and take a look at this.
| | 06:28 | So that's a really good first step.
| | 06:31 | Now let's go ahead and take a
look a little bit more at the body.
| | 06:35 | There's merely one more thing
that I want to correct on this walk.
| | 06:39 | So as this comes up in the middle of
this step here, at the passing position,
| | 06:46 | we have got this giant leg pulling down,
so I have got a force coming straight down
| | 06:51 | here that's pulling those hip out of center.
| | 06:55 | So what I am going to do at this point
is at the passing position I am going to
| | 07:00 | rotate the hips a little bit towards
the free leg and then what that does
| | 07:06 | though is that kind of straightens out
that leg. So I am just going to go ahead
| | 07:09 | and push him down just a little bit so
I get a slight bend in that planted foot.
| | 07:15 | So now that I have this, I've
got a really good first step.
| | 07:23 | So now we have the first step.
| | 07:25 | Now the second step really is just the
exact same thing on the opposite side.
| | 07:30 | So we don't really have time to do
that, but let's go ahead and just open a
| | 07:34 | scene here and we've got a basic walk.
| | 07:38 | Now we have got both legs going
and it's really just the mirror image.
| | 07:43 | So now once I have this basic walk, I've got
a good foundation for the rest of the body.
| | 07:51 | Now when you animate a walk, it's
kind of good to get the hips and the feet
| | 07:55 | moving first, because that's really
where all the weight is going to happen and
| | 07:59 | then worry about the upper body.
| | 08:02 | So as you can see this walk looks pretty good.
| | 08:05 | Now if we wanted to, we could
experiment with footsteps, with timing, with foot
| | 08:09 | positions and really just have a lot of
fun with just these three parts of the
| | 08:14 | body, the hips and both of the feet.
| | 08:16 | But at this point I think we are going
to go ahead and move up the body and I'll
| | 08:20 | finish off the walk.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a walk: Making the cycle symmetrical| 00:00 | Now that we have the lower part of a
character walking, we can move on to the upper body.
| | 00:06 | But before we do that I'm actually
going to do a little trick that will get the
| | 00:09 | character to be walking in place and
this will actually help us down the road
| | 00:14 | when we're tweaking the character
to make sure that he is symmetrical.
| | 00:19 | So if you notice, this character has
this big circle here and this is called the
| | 00:23 | character root and what this does
is really just allows us to place the
| | 00:27 | character wherever we want.
| | 00:29 | So if I want him over here or wherever,
we can actually move him in two position.
| | 00:35 | Now we can also animate this master
node in order to get him to walk in place.
| | 00:42 | So as he walks forward, we are going
to take this and move it backward.
| | 00:48 | So we are actually going to kind of
create a treadmill effect. So what I'm going
| | 00:52 | to do is I'm going to go frame 1, make
sure all of my translate values are zero
| | 00:58 | for character root, and just set a keyframe.
| | 01:01 | He is going to start walking forward,
but we want to pull him back to zero.
| | 01:07 | So we know that the character is taking 16
frames per step and he has taken two steps.
| | 01:13 | So all we need to do is move
him back and an equivalent amount.
| | 01:17 | So 16 times 2 is 32.
| | 01:19 | So we move him back 32 or -32 units and
we make sure we set a keyframe for that
| | 01:27 | so now he walks in place.
| | 01:31 | Now the reason to do this is to get that
symmetry between the right and left side.
| | 01:37 | Another reason is if you do want to
actually cycle him, you can do that.
| | 01:42 | Now one reason to do this is to actually
check the symmetry of your character's walk.
| | 01:49 | So let's go ahead and
actually go into another viewport.
| | 01:52 | I'm going to go into the right
viewport here and we can check our symmetry.
| | 01:58 | So I am going to go ahead and scrub this.
| | 02:00 | Let's go to the recoil position where the
character moves down and recoils into the walk.
| | 02:06 | Now what I can do is I can actually take my
screen drawing tool and I can check my angle.
| | 02:14 | So all have to do is
draw that angle of each leg.
| | 02:20 | Now I know that four frames into
the first half of the walk, those are
| | 02:26 | the angles of the legs.
| | 02:27 | Now if I scroll forward, the
middle of the walk is 17 plus 4 is 21.
| | 02:34 | So if you notice here, I've got
a little bit of a discrepancy.
| | 02:38 | So the walk isn't exactly symmetrical.
| | 02:42 | So what I can do is I can take
the hips, move them into place.
| | 02:46 | I can also take the heel and move that
up so that the angles are actually equal.
| | 02:52 | So now I've got a lot more symmetry in the walk.
| | 02:58 | So I'm going to go ahead and erase this.
| | 03:00 | Now as you can see this can really be
helpful for checking symmetry of your character.
| | 03:06 | Now let's go ahead and
move on to the upper body.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a walk: Working with the spine| 00:00 | Now let's go ahead and start
animating the upper part of the character.
| | 00:03 | We are going to start with the spine
and then later we're going to go ahead and
| | 00:07 | work on the arms and the head.
| | 00:10 | But for this one we will
just focus on the spine.
| | 00:13 | So let's go ahead and turn on
the upper part of the character.
| | 00:17 | I'm going to turn on the upper controls
and these are just layers, so I am going
| | 00:20 | to turn on the Controls Upper layers
as well as the Upper Geometry layer.
| | 00:25 | So now let's go ahead and
just scrub through what we have.
| | 00:28 | So I'm going to go ahead and just play.
| | 00:31 | As you can see, that spine is totally
stiff. That's really not bending or flexing
| | 00:36 | at all so let's go ahead and correct
that by doing a series of rotations.
| | 00:41 | So I'm going to scroll
to frame 1 and in frame 1
| | 00:47 | we have the passing position, so we have
the right hip forward the left hip back.
| | 00:54 | Remember the shoulders of the
character counter rotate to match the hips.
| | 00:58 | So I'm going to go ahead and select 1,
2, 3 spine controls here and the first
| | 01:06 | thing I am going to do is rotate that
spine so that it basically is opposite
| | 01:12 | of what the hips are.
| | 01:13 | So I'm going to go ahead and rotate
this in Y so that when the right leg is
| | 01:20 | forward the left shoulder is forward,
and in fact I'm going to rotate this about
| | 01:25 | negative 9 degrees per spine
to get this kind of rotation.
| | 01:31 | You can see this is one of the reasons
why I turned off the head, so I could
| | 01:35 | see this angle here, and this is really
what I'm kind of looking a,t is how does
| | 01:40 | that match to the legs.
| | 01:44 | So once I have this then all I
need to do is go ahead and match that.
| | 01:48 | Let's go ahead and set a keyframe and
then scroll forward to frame 17, which is
| | 01:55 | the next extended position.
| | 01:56 | Then instead of negative 9 we are just
going to rotate each one of these 9, and
| | 02:02 | again set a keyframe.
| | 02:03 | So now you can see that his
shoulders are pretty much-- now he's kind of
| | 02:08 | tending to face forward more and again
we can do the exact opposite at the very
| | 02:14 | last frame and go to negative 9.
| | 02:18 | So just by doing that you can see
when I play you get a little bit more
| | 02:24 | flexibility to the spine and that
actually gives him a little bit more life.
| | 02:30 | So now we're going to go ahead and
focus on how he looks from the side.
| | 02:35 | We are going to focus on basically the
x-rotation which does the forward/back motion.
| | 02:44 | So what we've got here is we
have got some forces happening.
| | 02:47 | So as he goes forward, he is falling.
| | 02:52 | So when he falls forward, he's
going to also bend forward a little bit.
| | 02:56 | We can exaggerate like this, but really
we want to do it just enough so that it
| | 03:01 | looks natural, somewhere around?
I'm figuring between 2 1/2 and 3 degrees or so.
| | 03:07 | So now he bends forward and then as he
comes up and falls forward we're going to
| | 03:17 | arch his spine just a little bit.
| | 03:19 | So I'm going to go here to about frame 11
and just arch his back just a little bit.
| | 03:28 | So now I've got that.
| | 03:31 | Let's go ahead and repeat
this on the opposite side.
| | 03:33 | So I am going to the next passing
position, which is at 21, and again I'm going to
| | 03:38 | rotate him forward, somewhere between 2
and a half and three, and let's just go
| | 03:46 | 2.75 and then let's go ahead and go a
little bit past that extended position
| | 03:55 | there and rotate him back.
| | 04:01 | So from the side you can see we're getting
this sense of weight, so when he falls
| | 04:06 | forward we're getting a little bit
more of an arch to the spine. We kind of
| | 04:09 | get the sense that he is falling
forward and then when he stands up, I want
| | 04:15 | him to be pretty straight.
| | 04:16 | So we are going almost from a compressed
to an exaggerated, extended position here.
| | 04:22 | So now there is one more thing that
we need to take into consideration and
| | 04:27 | that's the spine bend from the front.
| | 04:30 | Now when he is in the extended position here,
his spine is pretty much going to be vertical.
| | 04:38 | So when we get to the passing position
the hips are going to be pulled down by
| | 04:45 | gravity and it's going
to pull them out of center.
| | 04:48 | So basically, everything is pulled to the right.
| | 04:53 | So what we can do is we can actually
rotate the shoulders a little bit in the
| | 04:58 | opposite direction to counteract for that.
| | 05:06 | So now we've got, it goes like that,
and then we can do the same thing at the
| | 05:11 | next passing position and just rotate
them slightly in the opposite direction.
| | 05:16 | So now when we play that, we get a
pretty good cycle, but notice there is a
| | 05:25 | little bit of pop at the end of that and
that's because I need to rotate those out.
| | 05:29 | So I need to go ahead and zero
out X and Z for all of those.
| | 05:34 | So now once we have that, we can take
a look at the spine. So let's go and take a
| | 05:40 | look at the cycle here.
| | 05:41 | You can see we have a lot
more flexibility in the spine.
| | 05:49 | So now that we have the spine in place,
we have the guides also in place to work
| | 05:55 | on the arms as well as the rest of the body.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a walk: Arm motion| 00:00 | So now that I have the spine animated,
I want to go ahead and animate the arms.
| | 00:05 | We are working our way up the body.
| | 00:08 | So in order to do that, we need to kind
of get those arms into place first of all.
| | 00:12 | So first thing I am going to do is
just go ahead and select the shoulders and
| | 00:16 | I'm going to go ahead and rotate each
shoulder down, somewhere around, in this
| | 00:21 | particular case around 80 degrees.
| | 00:23 | So what I'm doing here is I am just
kind of positioning the shoulder so that
| | 00:27 | they kind of just hang naturally.
| | 00:29 | Now once I do that, you can see I have a
quick playback and those arms, they are
| | 00:36 | in a natural position, but they're
certainly not moving in a natural way.
| | 00:40 | So we can correct that by putting in some poses.
| | 00:45 | So the first thing I am going to
do is just focus on this left arm.
| | 00:48 | So let's go ahead and just get the
motion for that and then we can worry about
| | 00:52 | the right arm later.
| | 00:54 | So at Frame 1 we have the extended position.
| | 00:58 | That means that the left foot is back,
which means that the left shoulder and
| | 01:04 | the left arm are going to be forward.
| | 01:07 | So I'm going to go ahead and
rotate that shoulder forward.
| | 01:11 | I am going to go ahead and
move that elbow forward as well.
| | 01:16 | I want kind of a natural bend here,
and then also I want to make sure that we
| | 01:22 | get that hand and the elbow in front
of the body just a little bit. In fact,
| | 01:28 | I am going to go ahead and take this
wrist and bend it just a little bit as well.
| | 01:33 | I want to make sure that I set
keyframes for the elbow and the wrist and just
| | 01:38 | select the joints of the hand and go
ahead and just rotate those into kind of
| | 01:46 | just a natural position.
| | 01:48 | So that's my first position of the walk,
and again I want to kind of just get
| | 01:55 | that hand in a nice place here.
| | 01:57 | So make sure I set keyframes for the
wrist and the elbow and then let's go
| | 02:02 | ahead to the other side, which is opposite
extended position. In this case it's at Frame 17.
| | 02:09 | And now I am going to go ahead
and rotate everything into place.
| | 02:12 | So first thing I am going to do is
rotate that shoulder back and then rotate
| | 02:18 | the elbow back as well.
| | 02:19 | Now I don't want to rotate
this elbow so that it's straight.
| | 02:23 | I want to make sure that I
have a little bit of a bend to it.
| | 02:25 | In this case I want to make sure that
that hand and the elbow is almost beyond
| | 02:31 | the back of the body.
| | 02:32 | Now this is just kind of a nice visual cue.
| | 02:35 | When you have the hand here, you
don't really have much of a silhouette.
| | 02:39 | If you push it out, you are going
to get a much better silhouette.
| | 02:41 | So I am kind of just wanting to get a
little bit of space there so that we have
| | 02:47 | some sort of silhouette.
| | 02:48 | I don't want that elbow to bend too much.
| | 02:50 | I want to make sure I have
a little of a bend there.
| | 02:53 | So now I should have keyframes for
everything there and now I've got this
| | 02:58 | first half of the walk.
| | 03:00 | But again he takes another step and he
moves forward, which means that I have
| | 03:05 | to duplicate the pose of
Frame 1 at the end, at Frame 33.
| | 03:10 | So all I have to do for that,
| | 03:12 | I have to select the shoulder, the
elbow and the wrist, just go to that first frame,
| | 03:18 | copy those keyframes, and paste them.
| | 03:23 | So now I should have a little bit
more flexibility in the character.
| | 03:28 | Now this doesn't look too bad,
but the elbow definitely looks frozen.
| | 03:36 | So what we can do is give
some secondary motion there.
| | 03:40 | And what's happening is that
the shoulder is rotating back.
| | 03:46 | Now the hand is a pretty big mass
and it wants to stay in position.
| | 03:51 | So to counteract this backward
rotation, we're going to actually rotate the
| | 03:58 | elbow in the opposite direction and
hopefully that will kind of give us the
| | 04:02 | impression that we have a
little bit more weight in the hand.
| | 04:06 | So I am going to go ahead and select
this elbow and we are going to go in
| | 04:13 | to this recall position, somewhere Frame 5,
and I'm going to rotate the elbow forward.
| | 04:21 | Now again, what I'm doing is I am
increasing this angle and what this does is it
| | 04:28 | gives a little bit of drag to that hand.
| | 04:31 | Now one thing I want to make sure about is
that the hand actually does move a little bit.
| | 04:38 | If I rotate this too much, the angle
of this hand or actually the position of
| | 04:45 | this hand is not going to change
enough to give me a sense that it's moving.
| | 04:52 | So if I rotate this elbow too much,
this hand will actually appear like
| | 04:57 | it's moving backwards.
| | 04:58 | I want to make sure that I get that
hand constantly moving in a direction, so
| | 05:04 | the hand is moving just a little bit
more slowly at first. Then it's straightens out
| | 05:11 | and now we've got
almost the opposite situation.
| | 05:17 | So from this second extended position,
as that arm moves forward, again we are
| | 05:24 | going to get a little bit of drag.
| | 05:26 | So I've got this shoulder moving forward.
The hand kind of wants to stay where it was,
| | 05:34 | which means that the elbow needs
to rotate in the opposite direction as well.
| | 05:42 | So what we can do is just as we
goes into the second recall position,
| | 05:47 | I am just going to go ahead and
rotate that elbow out just a little bit,
| | 05:51 | straighten it out.
| | 05:52 | Now this should give us a pretty decent motion.
| | 05:57 | So that gives us a little bit more
flexibility with the elbow and the hand.
| | 06:04 | Now if I want, I can go through one
more time and actually play with the wrist.
| | 06:10 | So as it passes the body, I want to
make sure that that wrist doesn't kind of
| | 06:15 | cut through or the hand doesn't cut
through. Okay, it looks good and then if I
| | 06:19 | want I could also do a little bit more
secondary motion with this wrist, so as
| | 06:24 | it comes through, I can kind of curve
this a little bit, just to kind of give
| | 06:30 | a little bit more of kind of a curve
here, and then I will need to make sure I
| | 06:37 | straighten that out, and then as it moves
forward I can kind of drag that back just a little bit.
| | 06:43 | Again, you don't want to break that
wrist, because wrist really doesn't
| | 06:46 | move that far back. And there we go.
| | 06:48 | Let's go ahead and play that again.
| | 06:52 | And that looks pretty good.
| | 06:54 | So all we have to do now is do the exact same
thing on the opposite side for the other arm.
| | 07:01 | Now I don't want to bore you with
animating that second arm, because it's really
| | 07:05 | is just the same procedure,
just mirrored on the opposite side.
| | 07:10 | So let's go ahead and just take a look at that.
| | 07:12 | I have gone ahead and animated the
right arm and it's pretty much the same.
| | 07:16 | So now we've got both sides of the
character animating and we've got most of
| | 07:22 | the walk done, except for the head.
| | 07:25 | So let's go ahead and move on to that.
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| Animating a walk: The head| 00:00 | So now let's take a quick look where we're at.
| | 00:03 | I've got this character pretty
much animating. He looks pretty good.
| | 00:08 | Well, we've got one more
thing to do and that's the head.
| | 00:11 | So let's go ahead and scroll back to
Frame 1 and I'm going to go ahead and turn
| | 00:14 | on the head as well as the character's eyes.
| | 00:19 | Now the control that I'm going to use
is one called Head and basically it's
| | 00:23 | going to be rotation.
| | 00:24 | Let's go ahead and play
this to see how it's working.
| | 00:30 | As you can see, his head is kind of
bobbing a little bit, kind of like a pigeon.
| | 00:35 | It's very stiff from the shoulders up.
| | 00:38 | So again, we need to create some sort
of secondary motion for the head to give
| | 00:42 | it a little bit more life.
| | 00:46 | So right here at the front if you notice,
he's kind of looking off to the side.
| | 00:51 | He's kind of just moving with the shoulders.
| | 00:55 | So when the shoulders are facing to the
right, his eyes are facing to the right
| | 01:00 | and to the left, and so on.
| | 01:01 | So go ahead and select the head
control and then use the Rotate tool to
| | 01:08 | actually adjust the head.
| | 01:10 | So what we want to do is kind of just
get him into a position where he is kind
| | 01:13 | of looking where he is going.
| | 01:15 | Now we could animate the head to, you know,
he is looking at something else, but in this
| | 01:21 | case let's just go ahead and
animate him looking forward.
| | 01:24 | So I'm going to go ahead and just
rotate the head so that the eyes look like
| | 01:27 | they're looking forward.
| | 01:28 | I'm going to go ahead and set a keyframe.
| | 01:31 | I'm going to go halfway in to Frame 17
and balance that out, so now we've got
| | 01:39 | him kind of
pretty much looking forward.
| | 01:43 | I'm going to go ahead and copy the keys
on Frame 1 and paste them at Frame 33.
| | 01:51 | So now we've got this.
| | 01:52 | Now that looks pretty good, but from
the side you still got that kind of
| | 01:57 | stiffness, that pigeon head that you
can really notice from the side here.
| | 02:03 | So right here you can see that he
didn't have much flexibility, but when that
| | 02:08 | body mass goes down, his head is kind
of wanting to stay where it is at, so
| | 02:15 | that neck is going to bend back a little bit
and he's still going to be looking forward.
| | 02:19 | So that gets a little bit more flexibility.
| | 02:23 | Then as he goes up, it's going to go
back in the opposite direction and we can
| | 02:31 | do the same on the other side.
| | 02:33 | So when he is down at this point, I'm
going to go ahead and move the head up
| | 02:43 | and then do the opposite on the other side.
| | 02:46 | Again, just trying to
straighten it out a little bit.
| | 02:51 | So this will give us a little bit
more flexibility in the character.
| | 02:54 | So let's take a look at those eyes. So
those are fine, but right here we get a
| | 02:58 | little bit of a bounce, so if you
notice those eyes going down and then they
| | 03:05 | are going back up again.
| | 03:07 | So what I want to do is make sure that right
there that he doesn't rotate too far forward.
| | 03:15 | So I am going to kind of
lift this head up a little bit.
| | 03:20 | So this way and again I've got that
a little bit more exaggerated version
| | 03:28 | of that problem here.
| | 03:29 | So I want to make sure that his head is
not to tipping too much. And that kind
| | 03:35 | of smoothes it out just a
little bit. It looks pretty good.
| | 03:40 | So those are some of the basics
of how to animate a simple walk.
| | 03:46 | Now this is really just a very generic
kind of boring walk, but it gives you the
| | 03:51 | mechanics of how to animate a walk, as
well as how to get the character moving.
| | 03:57 | Now we're going to go ahead and look
at some more exaggerated walks, but
| | 04:01 | they are all kind of based on the principles
that we've learned in the past few lessons.
| | 04:06 | So go ahead and practice animating a
walk like this and then we'll go ahead and
| | 04:11 | move on to stuff that's a
little bit more exaggerated.
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|
|
5. Adding Character to a WalkThe importance of the passing position| 00:00 | In the last chapter,
we animated a very basic walk;
| | 00:04 | in fact, this is a walk that we animated.
| | 00:08 | And as you can see, it has all the
mechanics you need to create a walk, but not
| | 00:12 | a whole lot of character;
| | 00:13 | it's kind of just a dull, boring walk.
| | 00:16 | So in this chapter, we're going to
give this walk some more life.
| | 00:19 | One of the first ways that we can do
this is just by affecting specific poses of
| | 00:25 | the walk, and what I'm going to
focus on right now is the passing position.
| | 00:30 | So let's start by creating a different
passing position, so in this particular
| | 00:35 | walk its 16 frames per cycle,
| | 00:38 | so the passing position is
right here around frame 9.
| | 00:42 | So I'm just going to scrub forward to
Frame 9, and let's just go ahead and create
| | 00:49 | a new passing position.
| | 00:50 | I'm just going to go ahead and
move--let's start with the hips.
| | 00:53 | I'm going to go ahead and move those
hips forward a little bit and maybe
| | 00:57 | rotate the character.
| | 00:58 | So let's say I'm going
rotate him really far back.
| | 01:03 | So when I do that, it already gives you
kind of a different feel to that walk.
| | 01:09 | Now if I want to, I can take this a
little bit further, and let's say I can take
| | 01:14 | that foot and maybe I'm going to rotate
it and move it way up, so he's kind of
| | 01:19 | almost kicking up like this.
| | 01:22 | And again, it kind of gives you almost
like a silly walk kind of thing, but it's
| | 01:27 | actually, gives it a lot more character.
| | 01:30 | So just by changing that one position--
this is all we did, was change the
| | 01:35 | passing position--and by doing that,
we've actually created a much different
| | 01:42 | walks than what we had before.
| | 01:43 | So this is the second step of that
walk, which is pretty boring, but the first
| | 01:48 | step has a little bit more character to it.
| | 01:50 | So let's go ahead and do that
same thing on the other side.
| | 01:52 | So I'm going to move these hips
forward just a little bit and then rotate him
| | 02:00 | back, almost like he's leaning back.
And then let's go ahead and push that foot
| | 02:06 | down, rotate it down, and then
just move that up like this.
| | 02:10 | So now I've got--in fact, I can probably
rotate that a little bit more to a match it up.
| | 02:17 | Let's see what we have got.
| | 02:21 | So now I have a basic walk, and I can
start to play with it a little bit more.
| | 02:27 | So let's go ahead and take this foot,
and let's maybe rotate it out a little bit.
| | 02:32 | And because he is so out of balance,
let's go ahead and move him off to the side
| | 02:37 | and then maybe rotate his
body a little bit off as well.
| | 02:43 | And as he comes over there, we're
going to have to move these arms out just a
| | 02:47 | little bit to give him a
little bit more clearance, like that.
| | 02:51 | So that gives a little bit more flair.
But also let's go ahead and play with
| | 02:56 | the set-down of the foot. Right now
he kind of puts his foot right there.
| | 03:04 | We could actually have a lot
more fun with that as well.
| | 03:07 | So what we can do is we can maybe
rotate that foot up right before he sets down,
| | 03:16 | and maybe give him a little bit more
of a sense of a slam down for that foot.
| | 03:21 | I'm going to actually take that
frame from 15 and move it back to 14.
| | 03:26 | So now I've got this sort of action,
and that works pretty well. And now that
| | 03:33 | I've got this going, maybe what we can
do is play a little bit with that cushion
| | 03:39 | position, where he kind of moves down.
| | 03:41 | So right at this point, he's moving
down a little bit in terms of his weight.
| | 03:46 | Let's go ahead and exaggerate that.
| | 03:48 | I am going to push him way
down and rotate him forward.
| | 03:50 | Okay, so all I'm doing now is
affecting another position of the walk.
| | 03:56 | So we have a standard position.
Then he squashes down, comes up, and settles.
| | 04:02 | So let's do that again. He is going to
rotate really far down, move down like
| | 04:07 | this. So he is going to rotate forward,
he comes up, and then right before he
| | 04:15 | sets down, I want to put that foot, again,
pretty far up, so it slams down a little bit harder.
| | 04:24 | So now, let's play it.
| | 04:28 | So really, all we did was we changed
the passing position and this cushion
| | 04:33 | position, and we've completely
changed the character of this walk.
| | 04:38 | Let's play this through one more time.
| | 04:41 | So what this shows you is that just by
taking this simple walk, you can push the
| | 04:47 | poses a little bit further and get
much more character out of your walk.
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| Working with foot placement| 00:00 | Another way to affect the character of
the walk is to adjust the foot placement.
| | 00:06 | So, in this walk, which is
our standard 16-frame walk,
| | 00:10 | if I make the character's feet touch
down in different places relative to the
| | 00:15 | hips, it will affect the way
that the walk works mechanically.
| | 00:20 | So let's go ahead and do a basic catwalk--
in other words, the type of walk that
| | 00:25 | models do on the runway.
| | 00:28 | So what they typically do is they walk
with their feet right in front of each other.
| | 00:33 | So in this case I'm going to use this
centerline here on the grid, and I am going
| | 00:39 | to use that as kind of my guide.
And I'm just going to rough this in;
| | 00:42 | I am not going to be exactly right on,
but I am going to try and keep it
| | 00:46 | as close as possible.
| | 00:48 | So on this first step, I am going to
select the left and right foot and just
| | 00:53 | move them in, so that we have the feet
right in front and behind each other.
| | 00:59 | Then I'm going to keep this right
foot selected. And one of things I am
| | 01:05 | getting here is I am getting this
kind of a little bit of a jump here
| | 01:08 | because I have this keyframe here,
| | 01:09 | so I am going right-click over this and delete
this keyframe at frame 2, for the right foot.
| | 01:16 | So what happens now is with the feet in
front of each other, if you notice, his
| | 01:23 | foot is almost passing through the other foot,
| | 01:26 | so in order for this to actually
mechanically get around, it has to move
| | 01:31 | out just a little bit.
| | 01:34 | So it has to move on the outside of
the other foot. So instead of moving
| | 01:39 | straightforward, it has to swing around.
| | 01:43 | So what that does is that creates an imbalance.
| | 01:47 | If you notice here, the
character is slightly out of balance,
| | 01:51 | so what we want to do is
rebalance the character.
| | 01:55 | So what I have to do is I have to
push that weight to the right, so that it
| | 02:00 | stays centered over both of the feet.
| | 02:03 | So, as you can see, those hips move
to the right before centering again.
| | 02:10 | Now let's go ahead and do
this second step the same way.
| | 02:14 | So I am going to, again, grab the right
foot and center it, grab that left foot
| | 02:21 | and center it behind it. Then I am
going to move one frame forward where I have
| | 02:25 | a keyframe already set for
this and delete that keyframe.
| | 02:29 | And now as that foot comes forward, again,
I'm going to move it out to the side.
| | 02:36 | In fact I am going to
delete this keyframe as well.
| | 02:43 | And when I do that, it puts
the character out of balance.
| | 02:48 | So in this case, I have to move a
character in the opposite direction.
| | 02:51 | I have to move him a little
bit to his left to compensate.
| | 02:59 | And then--in fact, I am going to
go ahead and extend this to 33 here, and
| | 03:05 | then when I get to that last frame,
again, I want to put those feet right in
| | 03:09 | front of each other, and what this
does is it creates a classic catwalk.
| | 03:15 | So it goes 1, 2, and notice how his hips
are just naturally swaying, and this is
| | 03:20 | why models on the runway walk this way,
so that their hips move and the clothes
| | 03:28 | that they are wearing also move.
| | 03:30 | Now, just by changing this character's
foot position, we've again changed the
| | 03:36 | character of the walk.
| | 03:38 | So what I'm showing you here are just
different types of techniques to affect
| | 03:44 | the character of your walk. Again, the
mechanics are basically the same, just
| | 03:48 | the foot place is different.
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| Adding character to a walk: Contact position| 00:00 | I've showed you a couple of strategies
for affecting the character of a walk.
| | 00:05 | Another way to affect the character of the
walk is to be very specific about the poses.
| | 00:11 | And so by doing that, you have a little
bit more control over the whole walk.
| | 00:17 | So, let's do a pose-by-pose walk as well.
| | 00:21 | Now, I'm going to start with a walk
that's a little bit faster than the one
| | 00:24 | we've been working with.
| | 00:25 | This is a 12-frame walk. In fact, let's
go ahead and play this. And as you can
| | 00:32 | see, it's also a little bit longer steps.
| | 00:36 | So he takes slightly longer steps and
he's taking slightly faster steps, because
| | 00:42 | it's only 12 frames per step rather than 16.
| | 00:46 | So what we are going to do is take this
walk and exaggerate it a bit, by going
| | 00:51 | through the walk a pose at a time.
| | 00:54 | So I'm going to start at
the beginning of the walk.
| | 00:56 | Let's just start at the contact position.
| | 01:00 | As you can see, this character is
pretty much straight up and down.
| | 01:04 | Let's give him a little bit more
determination about where he's walking.
| | 01:09 | So I'm going to push him forward a
bit and kind of push him into that walk.
| | 01:15 | Now, I am going to start doing this by
going into my side view, so I have kind of
| | 01:19 | an orthographic view of my character,
and I am going to start with the hips.
| | 01:23 | So I am going to select the hips,
and then I'm going to rotate them
| | 01:27 | forward, quite a bit, maybe about 12 degrees
or so, and then, push that character forward.
| | 01:33 | I want to get him really into that walk,
almost to the point where I am kind of
| | 01:38 | pulling up his heel.
| | 01:39 | So once I get that, then I can lift
the heel to make it match those hips.
| | 01:49 | I can even rotate those hips
a little bit further forward.
| | 01:53 | Now, when I rotate the hips forward, he
kind of feels out of balance, so let's go
| | 01:57 | ahead and straighten him out.
| | 01:58 | I am going to hit the Q key just to do
select. So I am going to select one, and
| | 02:02 | then Shift+Select, two, three.
| | 02:06 | So I have selected all three spine
joints, and then I'm going to hit Rotate, so
| | 02:12 | he's reasonably vertical.
| | 02:13 | Now I am going to exaggerate this a
little bit more by giving him more
| | 02:17 | determined arm swing as well.
| | 02:19 | So I am going to go ahead and snag the
left shoulder and push that back.
| | 02:24 | His arms are really going to swing on this,
and let me see if I can get the right shoulder.
| | 02:27 | Yes, let's snag the right shoulder.
| | 02:29 | Now, typically, I would have to jump out
or maybe grab it in another viewport,
| | 02:33 | but it seems like I got it here.
And then I am going to push that arm forward as
| | 02:38 | well. And again, I'm just
playing with the standard walk.
| | 02:41 | So now, I've got a really strong first pose.
| | 02:46 | So this is basically what I started with,
and then I pushed that pose to give me
| | 02:50 | a much stronger sense of action.
| | 02:53 | Now, if we take a look at this, you can see
that I've got a really strong line of action.
| | 02:59 | I've kind of got this line going all
the way down, and this makes for a much
| | 03:04 | stronger visual, a much stronger silhouette.
| | 03:08 | So I'm going to go to the opposite frame,
to frame 13, and I want to make sure I
| | 03:11 | duplicate that pose.
| | 03:13 | So let's go ahead and use
our little Drawing tool here.
| | 03:15 | I'm going to just sketch out that torso.
| | 03:20 | I want to make sure I get the position of
the hips as well, as the bend of the spine.
| | 03:25 | I want to make sure I get my arms in
approximately at the same position on
| | 03:30 | both sides, and then I want to make
sure I get that leg, and I always like to
| | 03:37 | mark out the back of that heel and make
sure that I get the angle about right.
| | 03:41 | And I can always just mark this out as well.
| | 03:44 | So now once I have that, I am going
to go ahead and move this off here.
| | 03:47 | Then all I have to do is match that on
the other side, and you can see how much
| | 03:51 | difference I've created
just by pushing this one pose.
| | 03:54 | So let's go ahead and start by pushing
the hips to where we want it to be.
| | 03:58 | I am going to rotate those hips
forward, and I'm going to rotate it so his
| | 04:04 | chest is actually in front of that
line, because I am going to rotate the
| | 04:07 | spine back to meet that line.
| | 04:09 | So I am going to go ahead and select one,
Shift+Select, two, three spine joints, and
| | 04:15 | then hit Rotate, and then I
am going to arch that back.
| | 04:19 | And again, see how easily
that matches what I had before.
| | 04:23 | Then I am going to go down to this
heel and make sure I lift that up, and then
| | 04:28 | let's go ahead and get the arms.
| | 04:29 | I am going to go ahead and move this arm
up and out just a little bit, and then
| | 04:33 | let me see if I can get this right shoulder.
| | 04:35 | Let's go ahead into Wireframe mode.
| | 04:38 | I might be able to get it in
Wireframe. There it is, okay.
| | 04:41 | So I have got that right shoulder, and
I am going to go ahead and move that
| | 04:44 | back, so that the hand is about the same position.
And I've got it pretty much approximate there,
| | 04:49 | so I am going to go ahead
and erase my guidelines.
| | 04:51 | So now, I have a pretty good starting position.
| | 04:56 | So you can see here, even with just
those two poses changed, I've already got a
| | 05:02 | stronger walk. But we can
go even further with this,
| | 05:06 | so let's go ahead and add some
more poses in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding character to a walk: Passing position| 00:00 | Let's go a little bit
further with our exaggerated walk.
| | 00:03 | Now at this point, I've just exaggerated
that first pose, which is the contact position.
| | 00:09 | So I have done that at frames 1 and 13,
and then I've kind of mirrored that on frame 25.
| | 00:15 | So this is what we have so far.
| | 00:17 | It looks good, but we can even go a lot further.
| | 00:20 | Now, the next pose we're going to
work with is the passing position.
| | 00:24 | Again, we're going to go through this
pretty much how we go through the walk,
| | 00:27 | which is, we're going to block out
the contact positions, then the passing
| | 00:31 | positions, and then the ones in between those.
| | 00:34 | So in this case, this is a
12-frame-per-step walk, which means I'm going to go
| | 00:40 | halfway through the first step to frame
7, which is 1+6, or half of 12, and we're
| | 00:46 | going got take a look at this passing position.
| | 00:48 | There's really no line of action to
this particular pose, so let's give it
| | 00:53 | some more strength.
| | 00:55 | So I am going to start with the hips,
which is usually where we start, and I'm
| | 01:00 | going to move him up.
| | 01:02 | And in this case, this walk is almost
always happening ahead of the feet, so I
| | 01:07 | want to move those hips
ahead of the feet a little bit.
| | 01:11 | And I am pushing this up almost far enough,
so where that heel lifts off the ground.
| | 01:16 | So I really want to bring him up high.
| | 01:19 | I want to exaggerate that passing
position by popping him up, so I am also going
| | 01:24 | to go ahead and rotate that heel,
just so that that leg bends naturally;
| | 01:29 | otherwise, it's going to
kind of go backwards there.
| | 01:31 | So I just want to give a little,
slight forward bend to that leg.
| | 01:34 | And now let's see what we've got.
| | 01:36 | Yeah, he's got a nice pose.
| | 01:38 | Look at that. He's got a nice strong walk.
| | 01:40 | We can make that even stronger
by doing something with this foot.
| | 01:44 | Again, what we want is we want nice strong
line of action that's almost vertical here,
| | 01:50 | and this foot is really interfering with that.
| | 01:54 | So what we can do is we can take this
foot and rotate it so that it's almost
| | 02:01 | the same angle as that leg and then
move it up right around the knee so
| | 02:07 | that it's almost the same angle
as that leg, which accentuates that
| | 02:12 | verticalness of this walk.
| | 02:15 | So when we do that, see
how it gives a much more pop.
| | 02:18 | It just pops him up, and then he comes down.
| | 02:22 | I am not going to worry so much
about the in-betweens at this point.
| | 02:26 | Let's just go ahead and
mirror this on the other side.
| | 02:29 | So let's go ahead and repeat the steps.
| | 02:31 | And I'm not going to try and get this
exact, but let's just go ahead through
| | 02:34 | this, to the point where
that heel lifts off the ground.
| | 02:38 | Then I'm going to rotate the heel, so
that the leg follows a natural bend.
| | 02:45 | Again, what I am looking for
here is this nice natural bend.
| | 02:48 | And then I'm going to take this foot
and rotate it so that it almost matches
| | 02:54 | the angle of the leg, and then position
that so that that ankle is right around
| | 02:58 | the same place as the knee.
| | 03:00 | So once I have done that, the walk will
be stronger, so let's take a look at this.
| | 03:04 | Yeah, he is popping up a little bit more.
| | 03:08 | So now, by adding one more strong
pose, we've given the walk even a little
| | 03:14 | bit more exaggeration.
| | 03:16 | So let's go ahead and go through
the next pose in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding character to a walk: Finalizing| 00:00 | At this point, we've got one extreme contact
position and another extreme passing position.
| | 00:08 | So by making these two poses extreme, we've
actually made this walk all lot more extreme.
| | 00:15 | But we can do a little bit more.
| | 00:18 | Another pose we can play with is a
cushion position, where the character puts
| | 00:23 | his weight on his foot. So we've got that.
| | 00:26 | It's going to be three frames in--
remember, we have a 12-frame cycle, so half
| | 00:32 | will be six frames in, a fourth is three
frames. So we're going to go from frame
| | 00:36 | 1, 1, 2, 3 to frame 4, and now we are
going to get a much stronger cushion
| | 00:43 | position, and that's where the
character's weight comes down on his foot.
| | 00:47 | So the first thing we are going to do
is we are going to take the hips of the
| | 00:50 | character and move them down, pretty far.
| | 00:54 | And just by doing that, you'll see that
he kind of cushions in and then pops up.
| | 01:01 | So by bringing him down further this
way, he pops up further when he goes to
| | 01:07 | that passing position.
| | 01:09 | So let's contrast this.
| | 01:11 | Let's take one more look at
it. He goes down and then up.
| | 01:14 | So the other side is the old way,
which is really not much, and it's really
| | 01:20 | not that exaggerated.
| | 01:21 | So just by moving him down, we
give a lot more spring to that step.
| | 01:26 | But we can push this even a little bit further.
| | 01:30 | One of the things I'm noticing here is
that this heel is kind of lifting off
| | 01:34 | the ground, so the first thing I want to do
is select that left heel and make sure
| | 01:38 | it's at 0, so he's got a really nice
flat foot on the ground, and then as he
| | 01:43 | pops up, it lifts up.
| | 01:44 | I want that really flat on the ground.
| | 01:47 | And then I am just going to go ahead
and take those hips and rotate them
| | 01:51 | forward again, trying to get a squash.
| | 01:54 | So as he moves forward, if I get
more of a squash going this way, if this
| | 02:00 | head comes down further, it means it
comes further up when he stretches up into
| | 02:06 | that passing position.
| | 02:07 | Again, I am doing squash and stretch here,
| | 02:09 | so squash, stretch.
| | 02:12 | But let's also play with the spine,
because really want to do is we want to
| | 02:16 | squash that spine as well.
| | 02:18 | So I am going to select his spine.
| | 02:20 | I am going to Shift+Select one, two, three spine
joints, and then rotate those forward as well.
| | 02:29 | So now his spine is flexing forward, and
then as he pops up, we get a lot more spring.
| | 02:36 | Now we can play with this pose
even more by working with his foot.
| | 02:41 | Now we want to get this
character as compact as possible.
| | 02:45 | When this foot is out here, it doesn't
make him as compact as if it's in here.
| | 02:51 | So I am going to move this foot in a little bit.
| | 02:54 | Now, one thing I'm noticing here is
that this heel is still lifted off of that
| | 02:58 | foot, so like I did with the other side,
I am going to make that 0, and then
| | 03:03 | rotate that foot around and make sure
it's off the ground and kind of tuck
| | 03:09 | it in a little bit.
| | 03:11 | So now you can see he's much more compact at
this point, and then he pops up. Much better!
| | 03:21 | So, on the other side, well, we
don't have much on the other side.
| | 03:25 | We've kind of got this and then the
other side is pretty much the same.
| | 03:29 | So let's go ahead and do this
exact same thing on the other side.
| | 03:32 | Now, I am going to do this in my side viewport,
so that way I get a much cleaner duplicate.
| | 03:38 | So, what I am going to do is I am
going to go ahead and bring in my Screen
| | 03:41 | Drawing tool, and I want to make sure
that I get that position of the body
| | 03:46 | pretty close, as well as the position
of that foot, and let's make sure the
| | 03:53 | keens are also in that same position.
| | 03:55 | Now I haven't touched the arms at all,
so I am not going to worry about those.
| | 03:59 | And now let's go ahead from
frame 4 to the next cushion position.
| | 04:03 | So it's 13+3, which will be 16.
| | 04:06 | So let's go ahead and move his
hips down, rotate them forward.
| | 04:13 | Now, I'm going to get the spine into
place, so I am going to Shift+Select each
| | 04:17 | spine. So I go into Select mode
to select the spine and then back into
| | 04:22 | Rotate mode to rotate them,
and let me readjust this a little bit.
| | 04:27 | I am going to select that heel, zero it out,
so I can play with the foot, and then
| | 04:33 | rotate that foot and try and put
it into position here. Pretty close.
| | 04:43 | So, and again, those hips to move back
just a little bit. So I am going to go
| | 04:47 | ahead and erase that.
| | 04:48 | Let's move that off here.
| | 04:50 | So now, pretty cool!
| | 04:55 | Okay, so that looks pretty good.
| | 04:57 | So let's take a look at this.
| | 04:58 | Let's just play this in perspective,
so we can see what it looks like.
| | 05:03 | Okay, so we've got a few
more things that we can tweak.
| | 05:06 | I am just going to go through some of these
very quickly, and then we'll see the final result.
| | 05:10 | One is the head.
| | 05:12 | As he comes down, he still kind of
needs to be looking where he's going,
| | 05:17 | so I am going to push that head back
a little bit, so he is kind of still
| | 05:22 | looking forward, and that will give it
a little bit more of a natural look.
| | 05:26 | It will give his head a little bit more
flexibility as well as his neck, and that
| | 05:31 | will kind of make him work a lot better.
| | 05:35 | And I seem to have no gotten that, so
I am going to go ahead and copy this
| | 05:39 | pose and paste it at 25.
| | 05:43 | So now I have a decent cycle,
so let's take a look at that.
| | 05:50 | Okay, so some final tweaks.
| | 05:52 | We can add some drag and some
secondary motion to the arms,
| | 05:56 | but I am not going to go through that.
| | 05:57 | Let's just go ahead and take
a look at the final product.
| | 06:00 | So I am going to go ahead and open the
scene called Exaggerated_Walk_Final, and
| | 06:05 | this is my final version.
| | 06:06 | So you can see I've put a little a
bit more drag on the hands and kind of
| | 06:11 | tweaked it just a little bit more.
| | 06:14 | But this is the exact same walk that we did.
| | 06:17 | We started with a basic 12-frame walk,
and then we exaggerated every single pose.
| | 06:23 | Once we did that, we have now a much
stronger and more exaggerated character walk.
| | 06:31 | So by really modifying the poses, you
can give your walks a lot more character.
| | 06:36 | Now this doesn't have to be
this exaggerated type of walk.
| | 06:40 | You can do these for a sad walk.
| | 06:43 | You can do it for a proud walk.
| | 06:46 | You can do it for a
John Wayne or a Charlie Chaplin walk.
| | 06:49 | But what we're doing here is basically
just going a pose at a time through the
| | 06:54 | walk and adding in the character's
personality and poses, and that will make
| | 07:01 | your walks a lot better.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. Animating RunsA run in four poses| 00:00 | In this chapter, we're going to animate a run.
| | 00:04 | Now, before we actually get in to
keyframing that run, let's go ahead and do a
| | 00:07 | quick analysis of what makes a run
a little bit different than a walk.
| | 00:12 | Now, a run is actually similar to a
walk in that the character is shifting his
| | 00:16 | weight from foot to foot and those
feet are pulling the character forward.
| | 00:21 | So let's go ahead and play this run.
| | 00:23 | We can see it very quickly here.
| | 00:24 | So this is playing.
| | 00:28 | It's a fairly fast run.
| | 00:30 | Let's go ahead and see this a little
bit closer. I am going to bring up this
| | 00:32 | Perspective window here.
| | 00:37 | So, that's actually a pretty fast run,
and that's actually the first difference
| | 00:40 | between a walk and a run.
| | 00:42 | Typically, a run happens faster.
| | 00:45 | Whereas a walk may take a half a
second per step, a run may only take a
| | 00:50 | quarter of a second.
| | 00:51 | Also, another thing about the run is that
the character moves further with each step.
| | 00:57 | That's because the
character is actually taking a leap.
| | 01:00 | He's jumping from footstep to footstep.
| | 01:04 | So here in the run, on our first frame we
have this character set to take off in a leap.
| | 01:10 | So he actually leaps in the air,
both feet are airborne here, and then
| | 01:16 | he catches himself on his foot.
And very much like the walk, the
| | 01:21 | character's cushions--
In other words his weight--gets absorbed.
| | 01:26 | So the weight goes down, and the
character's knees bend to absorb the shock.
| | 01:32 | Then the character pushes off again
into another leap and grabs himself, and
| | 01:40 | the cycle continues.
| | 01:42 | Now, another thing I want to show you
about a run is that it's very similar to a
| | 01:47 | walk in the motion of the
shoulders and the spine.
| | 01:51 | So for example, when this left foot is
forward, the left hip is forward, and then
| | 01:59 | the left shoulder is back.
| | 02:02 | So that's the same sort of motion.
We have that same twisting of the spine in a
| | 02:07 | run that we would have in a walk as well.
| | 02:09 | A run is definitely more exaggerated.
| | 02:14 | Now, these arms will go further back.
| | 02:16 | They'll swing further
forward, swing further back.
| | 02:20 | The character can and will pump
his arms to help with the motion.
| | 02:26 | So generally, the run is basically faster,
longer steps, and more exaggerated.
| | 02:33 | So let's go ahead and go through the
process of animating a run, so you can
| | 02:38 | get the hang of it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a run: The first pose| 00:00 | So now, let's go ahead and animate a simple run.
| | 00:04 | Now, we are going to animate this very
similar to how we animated the walk.
| | 00:08 | We are going to start with the hips
and the feet and do one pass, and then
| | 00:12 | we're going to do the
upper body on the second pass.
| | 00:17 | Now, I'm working with my simple
character rig, and before we get started, we need
| | 00:22 | to do a little bit of housekeeping here.
| | 00:24 | The first thing I need to do is I need to
set my timeline to the proper length.
| | 00:29 | Now for this run, I've decided to do
8 frames per step for a total of 16
| | 00:35 | frames for the cycle.
| | 00:37 | In other words, two steps are
going to be 16 frames at 8 each.
| | 00:42 | So we're starting this at frame one.
| | 00:45 | So in order to allow for 16 frames,
we need to go 1 plus 16 for total of 17
| | 00:52 | frames, and I am going to
type that number right in here.
| | 00:55 | Now I have my timeline to
the proper length of 16 frames.
| | 01:02 | Now, the other thing I need to do is
go ahead and select both of these knee
| | 01:05 | locators and make sure that I pull
those forward, so that way the knees are
| | 01:11 | always pointing forward.
| | 01:13 | Otherwise, the knees will kind of flop
around, and we don't want that to happen.
| | 01:16 | So now let's get started on this first pose.
| | 01:19 | Now the first pose I am going to do is
actually the passing position, which is
| | 01:25 | actually kind of the
opposite for how we did the walk.
| | 01:28 | In the walk, we usually start with the
contact position; in the run we are going
| | 01:33 | to start with the passing position--
that'll make it a little bit easier.
| | 01:36 | So I'm going to start by selecting
the left foot, and I want to make sure
| | 01:41 | that all the translations are at 0, and I am
going to go ahead and hit S to set a keyframe.
| | 01:47 | Then I am going to move up to the hips.
| | 01:50 | I'm going to go ahead and grab
those and move those forward.
| | 01:54 | Now, what I'm trying to do here is I'm
trying to get a good extension to that leg.
| | 02:00 | In fact, what I'm doing is I am
pulling this so far forward that the heels of
| | 02:04 | the character actually
are lifting off the ground.
| | 02:07 | I actually want that, because I want
a really good extension of the legs,
| | 02:12 | so I am going to pull it
so it's about like this.
| | 02:15 | Then I am going to do one more thing,
which is rotate the body forward.
| | 02:19 | He really has to lean into the run
in order to make it look realistic.
| | 02:25 | So somewhere around between 16
and 17, I am actually going to put this at
| | 02:30 | 16 rotation in X and just make sure that
I've got a pretty good extension there.
| | 02:37 | Now because I've lifted the heels up
off the ground, I want to actually make
| | 02:42 | that a little bit more realistic,
| | 02:43 | so I am going to grab this little
circle around the ankle, which is my heel
| | 02:48 | lifter, and I am going to lift that heel
up just so it kind of unbends that knee.
| | 02:54 | So if this was down, that knee is
totally straight, which we don't want. We want
| | 02:59 | the knee to be slightly bent, which
is somewhere around 14 or 15 degrees.
| | 03:04 | I am going to go ahead and put that at 14,
| | 03:07 | make sure I set a keyframe for that,
and then all I have to do is do the other
| | 03:14 | foot, which is the right foot.
| | 03:16 | Now, this foot is getting ready to leap.
| | 03:20 | So basically, we are at the start of a leap.
| | 03:23 | What that means is that this leg is
going to be up and forward, but also, that
| | 03:30 | foot is going to be rotated down a bit.
| | 03:32 | So I am going to go ahead and rotate
that foot somewhere around there, and then
| | 03:36 | I am going to use my position to
position that leg as far up as I can without it
| | 03:43 | being anatomically incorrect.
| | 03:45 | So let's push that leg as far up as we
can and make sure it still looks realistic,
| | 03:50 | so something like that.
| | 03:53 | So now once we have this in the proper
place, I am going to go ahead and hit S
| | 03:58 | again to set a keyframe.
| | 04:01 | Now, before I move on to the next pose, I
want to lock in all of my elements here,
| | 04:05 | so I am going to go ahead and select
the right heel, make sure I set a keyframe
| | 04:08 | for that, the right toe, and the left toe.
| | 04:13 | So what I've got now is I've got
keyframes for everything on the right and left
| | 04:17 | foot, as well as the hips.
| | 04:20 | I want to make sure I set a
keyframe for those as well.
| | 04:23 | So now once I have all of these
keyframes set, I can move on to the next pose.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a run: The second pose| 00:00 | So now that we have the first pose in
place for our run, let's go ahead and move
| | 00:05 | on to our second pose, which will be a
contact position--and this is where the
| | 00:10 | right foot swings forward
and contacts the ground.
| | 00:15 | So we're going to start by
moving the time slider to frame 5.
| | 00:20 | It's eight frames per step,
| | 00:22 | so we're going to go halfway through that first
step, which is four frames forward to frame 5.
| | 00:28 | The next thing we need to do
is to move the foot forward.
| | 00:31 | So I am going to go ahead and grab this
right foot, and the first thing I need to
| | 00:37 | do is to kind of unwind it and
first of all, unrotate it.
| | 00:41 | So I am going to select Rotate X and type
in 0, and that puts the foot exactly flat.
| | 00:48 | Then I'm going to move, hit W for move,
and we are going to set that foot on the ground.
| | 00:55 | If you notice here, these are going
towards 0. In fact, if we just type 0 in
| | 01:00 | for Translate X and Translate Y,
we'll have it exactly on the ground.
| | 01:06 | Now, we need to move this foot forward.
| | 01:10 | Now, how far forward is going to
determine your stride length, or how far the
| | 01:15 | character moves with each step.
| | 01:18 | So, for this particular walk, I am
going to move it forward pretty far.
| | 01:23 | This is actually going to be a
reasonably long strike length.
| | 01:26 | We can do longer or shorter, depending
upon the demands of the scene, but I am
| | 01:32 | going to move it forward exactly 48 units.
| | 01:35 | This will give me a nice
round number to work with.
| | 01:38 | I'll make sure I have a key set for that.
| | 01:40 | So now I've got that foot with a
keyframe on frame 5, and it's 48 in Z.
| | 01:48 | If you notice when I move this forward,
it totally stretches that foot, and the
| | 01:52 | foot really loses
contact with those controllers.
| | 01:57 | What we'll have to do is we'll
have to move the hips forward as well.
| | 02:02 | So I am going to go ahead and move
these hips forward and a little bit down.
| | 02:06 | In fact, I want to move the
hips a very precise number as well.
| | 02:10 | I want to move the hips 36 units forward
in Z, and that will give me a nice round
| | 02:17 | number, and it will be exactly 12 units behind.
| | 02:20 | Then I'm going to go ahead and
adjust Y so that foot is almost exactly
| | 02:25 | perpendicular there.
| | 02:27 | If you notice here, I have
got this a little bit off.
| | 02:30 | I want to make sure that Translate X is
at 0, and then I am going to adjust my leg.
| | 02:38 | But as I adjust my leg, remember, this
is very similar to walk, and in a walk, as
| | 02:45 | we reach that contact position,
| | 02:47 | when the right foot is forward,
the right hip is also forward.
| | 02:51 | So we need to do a
little bit of a rotation here.
| | 02:54 | So I'll make sure I rotate that hip
forward, and then I am going to go ahead
| | 03:00 | and move it up so that I've
got a pretty straight leg there.
| | 03:04 | Not exactly straight, but just a
little bit shy of perfectly straight.
| | 03:10 | Then I also want to work with the heel a
little bit, because what's happening is,
| | 03:15 | as that foot comes down, it's
actually going to land on the toe.
| | 03:20 | Remember, when people run, they
actually run on the balls of their feet.
| | 03:24 | Most of the time, they
won't contact with the heel.
| | 03:27 | They'll contact with the ball of their feet.
| | 03:29 | So I am going to lift that heel up just
a little bit to make sure that the ball
| | 03:34 | of the foot hits first.
| | 03:36 | So you can see, I have got a little bit
of a gap there, and that will help with
| | 03:39 | selling this particular run.
| | 03:42 | So now that I have all of these in
place, I want to make sure I have
| | 03:45 | keyframes for all of these.
| | 03:47 | Then all I have to do is worry about
this left foot, which is really just kind
| | 03:52 | of pushing off into the run.
| | 03:54 | So basically, what's happening?
| | 03:57 | This foot is contacted,
but basically what's happening is it's pushing
| | 04:01 | the character forward.
| | 04:03 | We'd have a point of contact
here again on the ball of the foot,
| | 04:07 | so what we want to do is push the
body forward while rotating that foot.
| | 04:12 | So the first thing I am going to do is
just go and get my final position here.
| | 04:18 | So I am going to rotate this foot and
move it pretty much into the position I
| | 04:27 | want, which is pretty much right
about here--almost kind of coming up under
| | 04:32 | his rear end there.
| | 04:33 | I want to make sure that I have this heel at 0.
| | 04:37 | So now what I what I have got here is I
have got--well, I really don't have what I want.
| | 04:43 | I have got a good pose here,
but I don't have a good in-between.
| | 04:48 | So what we need to do is in between
this foot to make it look like it's pushing
| | 04:52 | the character forward.
| | 04:54 | Well, what's going to happen here is
that as this foot comes off, it's going to
| | 04:59 | push off at the toe.
| | 05:01 | So I am going to go ahead and select
the right foot, move it back, and rotate it,
| | 05:08 | almost as if he's pushing off of that toe.
| | 05:12 | So you can see that as I scrub this, it
looks like he is pushing off of the toe.
| | 05:17 | So when I push, and then I want it to,
on this frame, frame 3, I want it to kick
| | 05:25 | back, almost like it has pushed off.
| | 05:28 | So what I have got is a nice roll.
| | 05:31 | So I've got from frame 1, frame 2--
| | 05:33 | in fact, I can probably push that
back just a little bit--and frame 3.
| | 05:39 | So it looks like he is kind of a
pushing off of that toe and then coming
| | 05:45 | back into this position.
| | 05:46 | It gives a much better in-between.
| | 05:53 | Now, there's one more thing I want to do and
that's actually play with that toe total here.
| | 05:58 | So as he pushes off, I want to do a
little bit of rotation with this toe.
| | 06:04 | The first thing I want to do is maybe
rotate the toe down a little bit, give a
| | 06:07 | little bit contact, and then as he
kicks off here, I want to kind of drag that
| | 06:14 | toe back, give a little bit of
drag to that joint. It's right there.
| | 06:20 | It feels like right there I actually need
to rotate that around just a little bit more.
| | 06:31 | There we go! So now, I've got my first step.
| | 06:34 | So you can see that I've got my two
major poses: my passing position, and
| | 06:43 | my contact position.
| | 06:45 | Now we need to animate the second half.
| | 06:48 | Well, what's going to
happen here in the second half?
| | 06:50 | Well, this foot will come forward, and
we'll have almost a mirror image of this
| | 06:56 | position again, another four frames forward.
| | 07:00 | So we are going to go to the next
position, which will be at frame 9, and then
| | 07:04 | we are just going to mirror what we did before.
| | 07:07 | So we are going to go ahead
and do this in the next lesson.
| | 07:10 | We are going to go through and we are
actually going to mirror the poses to get
| | 07:13 | the second step of the run.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a run: Mirroring the basic poses| 00:00 | At this point, we should have the
first two major poses of the run complete.
| | 00:07 | At frame 1, we have the passing
position, and then at frame 5 we have the right
| | 00:14 | foot contact position.
| | 00:16 | So, the next phase in animating this
run is to do the exact same thing for the
| | 00:22 | opposite side of the character.
| | 00:24 | In order to make this a little bit easier,
I'm going to animate this as a cycle.
| | 00:30 | Now, we can delete this later, but this
will make the run a little bit easier to
| | 00:34 | understand, and we can make sure that
it's exactly the same on both sides.
| | 00:39 | So, in order to do that, I'm going to
animate the character moving backward, just
| | 00:45 | as fast as he is moving forward.
| | 00:47 | So if we take a look at this right foot,
you'll notice that he moves 48 units
| | 00:53 | forward in the Z axis.
| | 00:56 | That means in order for him to run in
place, which is what a cycle is, he needs
| | 01:02 | to move backwards at the same rate.
| | 01:04 | So what I'm going to do is I am going
to make sure I select this character root
| | 01:08 | node and then set a keyframe at frame 1.
| | 01:13 | Then I'm going to move halfway through the
cycle, to frame 9, and then move that back.
| | 01:21 | Now, how far back do I move it?
| | 01:23 | Well, how far forward is he
moving? He's moving a 48 forward,
| | 01:27 | so I just need to move him -48 back in
Z. And if I do that, it will make him
| | 01:35 | look like he's running in place--
| | 01:37 | well, up until this point,
but we'll get to that a little bit later.
| | 01:42 | Now, we are going to animate
not just one, but two steps.
| | 01:46 | so we need to do this one more time
at the end of the cycle, at frame 17.
| | 01:52 | So instead of 48 back, we are going to
move him another 48 back. So, 48 times 2? 96.
| | 01:57 | So I am going to go ahead and move him back
-96; in fact, I'll just type that in as well.
| | 02:06 | So once I have this in place,
he will actually run in place.
| | 02:10 | Now, I can obviously delete these
keyframes to have him run forward through the
| | 02:14 | actual scene, but for right
now, this will make it easier.
| | 02:18 | So now that we have the first two poses, we
can just mirror those poses on the opposite side.
| | 02:25 | So for example on frame 1, we have the
right foot kind of up and passing the left foot.
| | 02:32 | We want to do the same thing on
frame 9, but for the opposite foot.
| | 02:37 | We want the left foot passing the right.
| | 02:39 | Well, we can do that just
by making a mirrored pose.
| | 02:43 | So the easiest way to do this is
to take some sort of Screen Draw tool--
| | 02:47 | I am using this particular one,
Linktivity--and I am actually going to go into
| | 02:52 | my side viewport, and I'm going to
turn off my grid so I can see exactly what
| | 02:58 | I'm doing here, and I am
going to go back to frame 1.
| | 03:01 | And I am just going to go ahead and
trace out the key parts of the character.
| | 03:10 | So I want to make sure I get the angle
of the knee, the position of the hips,
| | 03:14 | that angle of the foot.
| | 03:17 | Now, again, I'm looking mostly for angles.
| | 03:20 | That's really what the eye picks out.
| | 03:25 | Eyes are little more keen on seeing
angles than it is on seeing exact positioning,
| | 03:30 | so I want to make sure I
get the angles pretty close.
| | 03:33 | And once I do that, then all I have to
do is move forward and make sure that the
| | 03:41 | positions of the character's parts match.
| | 03:44 | So I'm going to go to frame 9, and I
am going to go ahead and move the hips
| | 03:50 | up, grab that left foot, and I'm going to
go ahead and rotate that around a little bit.
| | 04:01 | And one of the things, you can see how
when I get that foot right in place, it's
| | 04:07 | not exactly correct.
| | 04:09 | Well, that's because the hips are
still rotated--remember, we rotated the hips
| | 04:13 | forward here--but they are
still rotated a little bit forward,
| | 04:17 | so I am going to go ahead and rotate
them square, and that should put that
| | 04:23 | knee right into place.
| | 04:26 | Let's go ahead and zero out this, just
to make it match the left toe. And then
| | 04:32 | I'm going to go ahead and make sure
that that heel is up a little bit, and I also
| | 04:36 | want to make sure that I set
a keyframe for the right foot.
| | 04:40 | So let's go ahead and erase these
little marks on the screen, and you can see
| | 04:46 | that already, I've got
that second half right there.
| | 04:52 | So now, in order to get the subsequent
contact position for the left foot, I
| | 04:58 | just need to move forward to
frame 13 and do the same thing.
| | 05:03 | So again, I am just going to go ahead
and bring in my little Screen Draw tool,
| | 05:07 | and I'm going to go to frame 5, which
is that first contact position, and we're
| | 05:12 | just going to mirror that on the opposite side.
| | 05:14 | So I want to make sure I understand where
the hips are, right there, kind of get that.
| | 05:19 | I like looking at the back of the heel
because that's a good angle there, and
| | 05:29 | again, this, then that.
| | 05:32 | So that should give me a pretty good guide.
| | 05:35 | So I'm going to--actually, let me
move this off the screen here, and let's go
| | 05:40 | ahead and mirror this on the opposite side.
| | 05:43 | So we are going to go four
frames ahead of frame 9 to frame 13.
| | 05:47 | And the first thing I want to do is to
take this left foot and put it into place.
| | 05:53 | So just like we did before, I need to
unwind it. So I am going to go ahead and
| | 05:57 | rotate it to zero, make sure my
Translate in X and Y are zero, and then I am
| | 06:03 | going to move it forward.
| | 06:06 | Now if you notice, when I move it
forward, it comes very close to a number that
| | 06:10 | we have used before, 96, and that's
exactly how far we need to move it forward.
| | 06:16 | Remember, we're doing 48 units per step, so
the second step will be 48 times two, or 96 units.
| | 06:24 | So I am just going to type that in, and
now I am going to take the hips and move
| | 06:30 | them forward and get them in to place.
| | 06:33 | Notice how when I am moving this,
the knees are bending backwards.
| | 06:36 | That's because--let me jump out
here--you can see I have got these knee
| | 06:40 | locators, and they need to be ahead of the knees,
| | 06:42 | so I am going to go ahead and grab both
of those and move those and then go back
| | 06:47 | into my side view and position my character.
| | 06:49 | I am going to go ahead and position him,
and I want to make sure that I rotate
| | 06:55 | that forward, just about like that.
And then, just like I did with the last one,
| | 07:02 | I want to lift that heel just
a little bit off the ground.
| | 07:08 | Again, he's running on the balls of
his feet. Same thing for the right foot.
| | 07:13 | So I'm going to go ahead and rotate
this around and move it into place.
| | 07:21 | Notice how that heel is a little bit
lifted here, so I want to make sure that I
| | 07:25 | make the right heel zero, and then
fine-tune my positioning. Pretty close.
| | 07:34 | Maybe a little too far. There we go.
| | 07:38 | And then one more time.
And then rotate this a little bit back.
| | 07:46 | So I am going to go ahead and erase that,
and that should be a pretty accurate
| | 07:50 | pose there, but notice how I'm getting
the same thing I had before, which was
| | 07:57 | that I'm not getting that
push-off off of the toe.
| | 08:02 | And also, another thing is I'm
rotating this one here, so I want to make sure
| | 08:06 | I keep that at zero. There we go.
| | 08:09 | So as this goes back, we are going to do
the same thing we did for the opposite foot.
| | 08:16 | We're going to go ahead and rotate this up.
| | 08:21 | Again, we want to make it look like he
is pushing off of that. I am going to
| | 08:26 | do this in this view here.
| | 08:28 | So we want to make sure that it looks
like he is rolling off of that toe, so I
| | 08:34 | want to go ahead and kick this foot out,
rotate it back maybe even a little
| | 08:43 | more, and then he goes into position.
| | 08:49 | So now I have got 1, 2.
| | 08:50 | So now, all I have to do to to finish
off the basics of the cycle is just do
| | 08:56 | one more pose which mirrors our very first pose.
| | 09:01 | So another way of doing this,
instead of mimicking the pose,
| | 09:04 | we can actually just copy and paste
keyframes, because the only difference
| | 09:09 | between these is going to be
how far forward these move.
| | 09:12 | So in the original pose, this one here
is at about 11.2. In fact, let's go ahead
| | 09:17 | in the original pose and make this 12.
| | 09:20 | So it's 12 units forward.
| | 09:22 | So we know that over the course of 96 frames,
it's going to move 96+12, or 108 units forward,
| | 09:30 | so all we have to do is copy this
keyframe which includes the rotations, paste
| | 09:38 | it, and then add 96 to this. So, 12+96 is 108 units
forward in Z. We can do the same for the hips.
| | 09:48 | Let's go over here to the hips.
And again, the hips are about the same.
| | 09:52 | In fact, I am going to round that off.
| | 09:54 | I am going to make the hips at 12 units
here, and then I'm going to copy, scroll
| | 10:01 | forward to 17 and right-click and paste.
| | 10:06 | Notice how that jumps back, but again,
I just want this to be, instead of
| | 10:10 | 12, 12+96, which is 108.
| | 10:15 | So now I've got that pose
almost exactly mirrored.
| | 10:22 | All I have to do is copy a few other
things, such as the left foot position and
| | 10:30 | the left heel position.
| | 10:31 | I want to make sure I get that.
| | 10:34 | Once we have that, we have a pretty
good lower body run, so let's go ahead and
| | 10:39 | take a look at this in
perspective and do a quick play-through.
| | 10:46 | So this is just the basics.
| | 10:48 | We need to do a little bit more with
this, but it's a really good start.
| | 10:53 | So now that we have both footsteps
in place, we can really start to refine
| | 10:58 | the run.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a run: Hip and foot motion| 00:00 | At this point, we've got the basic
footsteps of the run blocked out,
| | 00:05 | so let's go ahead and
play what we've got so far.
| | 00:09 | And if you notice, the character's
feet are moving okay, but the character
| | 00:13 | really doesn't have a lot of weight.
| | 00:15 | There's not really a sense of
the character jumping and falling.
| | 00:20 | There's not a lot of squash and stretch.
| | 00:22 | So let's go ahead and add some of that in.
| | 00:25 | In order to see this a little bit
more clearly, I am actually going to go
| | 00:28 | into the side viewport.
| | 00:30 | So I am going to highlight my side
viewport, and let's take a look at what's
| | 00:34 | happening with this character.
| | 00:35 | On frame 1, he is about to take a leap;
frame 3, he is in the middle of that
| | 00:43 | leap; frame 5, he catches his weight;
and in frame 7, he places all of his body
| | 00:52 | weight on that foot.
| | 00:54 | Let's go to frame 3 and animate that pose.
| | 00:58 | So what he has actually done is he has
actually pushed himself into the air, but
| | 01:03 | if you notice the motion of my hips,
they are actually moving down slightly.
| | 01:09 | Well, if he's pushing himself up in
the air he actually does need to go up,
| | 01:14 | so I am going to grab the hips
and move him up a little bit.
| | 01:22 | That should give me a little bit
more of a sense of weight. But when he
| | 01:27 | catches himself, he also needs to move
down, because what's happening is he is
| | 01:33 | catching his weight.
| | 01:35 | And if you notice, between frame 5 and
frame 7 he is actually moving upwards a
| | 01:41 | little bit, and that's really
the opposite of what we want,
| | 01:44 | so I'm going to go ahead and push him
down a little bit, and I am also going to
| | 01:48 | rotate him forward--just so he feels
like he is kind of catching his weight.
| | 01:54 | So now, he jumps up, comes down.
Same thing on the opposite side;
| | 02:03 | he jumps up and then he is going to
squash down a little bit and rotate forward.
| | 02:13 | Now let's go ahead and take a look
at how this looks in perspective.
| | 02:17 | So now we have got a little
bit more up-and-down motion.
| | 02:22 | Now his spine is pretty stiff,
but we'll get to that later.
| | 02:25 | Let's go ahead and do another
pass, but this time on the feet.
| | 02:29 | Again, I am going to go into my side
viewport because this actually is a little
| | 02:32 | bit easier to see what I'm doing.
| | 02:35 | Watch the motion of this
foot as it goes through the run.
| | 02:39 | Now what's happening here is again,
he's leaping, but this foot is doing a
| | 02:42 | straight in-between between frame 1
and frame 5, and we really don't want that
| | 02:48 | because what's going to happen is that
foot is going to flip up to kind of catch
| | 02:54 | the character's weight.
| | 02:56 | So it's going to be more like that,
and then the character will come down--
| | 03:03 | we could probably play with it a little bit--and
then he's going to land on his toe.
| | 03:14 | And then as he catches his
weight, that heel is still up.
| | 03:19 | Well, we need to kind of drop that heel down,
| | 03:21 | so right after that contact position,
I am going to go ahead and rotate
| | 03:26 | that heel down to zero.
| | 03:29 | So it feels like he lands on his toe and
then puts his weight right on that heel.
| | 03:36 | And again, I want to make sure it's 0
here, and then as he moves back, that heel
| | 03:42 | is going to lift again.
| | 03:45 | You can see how that heel
at least contacts the ground.
| | 03:49 | It gives him a good solid connection
with the ground, which is what we are
| | 03:52 | wanting. And let's do the
same for the other foot.
| | 03:55 | So I am going to go ahead over and
select the left foot and then go to frame 11.
| | 04:01 | And again, what we are going to do is we
are going to flip that foot up, move it
| | 04:05 | forward just a little bit, so he's trying
to catch his weight, and I may have to
| | 04:12 | tweak it here. And then I am going to
take a look at that heel, and then one
| | 04:18 | frame after the contact position--in
this case at frame 14--it goes to 0, stays
| | 04:25 | at 0, and then it lifts up again.
| | 04:30 | So that pretty much should give me a
good sense of motion for that lower body,
| | 04:35 | and again, we're just
playing with the lower body.
| | 04:38 | So let's take a look at this. It looks pretty good.
| | 04:42 | In fact, I'm going to turn off the
upper geometry, as well as the control, so we
| | 04:47 | can just take a look at what that
looks like as just the legs and the hips,
| | 04:53 | which is really all that we've animated;
| | 04:55 | and that looks pretty good.
| | 04:57 | So now that we have all of this in place,
we can actually turn on the upper body,
| | 05:02 | which is what I am doing here in the
Layers palette, and we can proceed with
| | 05:07 | working with the upper
body, which we'll do next.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a run: The upper body| 00:00 | So, now that we have the lower body animated,
let's go ahead and work our way up the character.
| | 00:06 | We're going to start with the spine.
| | 00:08 | So before we do that, let's just take a look
at what the character is doing at this point.
| | 00:12 | So we've got the lower body animating, and
it looks like that spine is really stiff,
| | 00:18 | so let's go ahead and
give that some flexibility.
| | 00:21 | So I'm going to select my one, two, three spine
controls here, and we're going to animate
| | 00:29 | those pretty much all at once.
| | 00:31 | So the first thing I want to do is make
sure I set a keyframe at 1 and at 9, just
| | 00:37 | to kind of lock them in just a little bit.
| | 00:39 | The first thing that you'll notice is
that as the character is moving, the hips
| | 00:44 | are rocking back and
forth at frame 5 and frame 13.
| | 00:49 | So when the right foot is
forward, the left hand is forward.
| | 00:56 | It's just the same as a walk.
| | 00:57 | We want to create the shoulders
moving in opposition to the hips,
| | 01:02 | so I'm going to select those controls
and I'm going to rotate his shoulders
| | 01:09 | a little bit forward.
| | 01:12 | So now when this foot is forward, the
opposite shoulders is forward, and let's do
| | 01:17 | the same thing for the other side.
| | 01:23 | So now we should have that, and one of
the things we need to do is actually give
| | 01:29 | an end keyframe, but because we're not
doing translation, we don't have to worry
| | 01:33 | so much about him moving out of place. I can
just take the keys at frame 1, copy them,
| | 01:41 | and paste them at frame 17.
| | 01:44 | So now his shoulders are moving along
the vertical axis in the proper direction.
| | 01:51 | But we still don't have a
lot of looseness to the spine.
| | 01:54 | In fact, I'm going to go ahead into my
side view, so we can actually get a little
| | 01:59 | more flexibility in the spine.
| | 02:00 | So again I'm going to select my one, two, three
spine controls. And then at frame 1,
| | 02:08 | I'm going to go ahead and rotate him so
he has a little bit more arched, because
| | 02:14 | what I really want to do is get a nice
line of action from that heel all the
| | 02:18 | way up to the head.
| | 02:19 | If I want to accentuate it, I can
do it like that, but I don't want to
| | 02:22 | accentuate it too much, but just
enough to give it a little bit of
| | 02:25 | flexibility to that spine.
| | 02:27 | And in fact, I can copy this and
paste it to frame 9 and frame 17.
| | 02:38 | So what we've got is he is leaping
up here, landing, and then quashing.
| | 02:46 | So when he leaps at frame 3, I want to
arch his back just a little bit more,
| | 02:52 | because what's happening is that
he is resisting that forward motion.
| | 02:56 | So he is being pushed forward, and his
head wants to stay back, which is going to
| | 03:02 | bend that spine back just a little bit.
| | 03:04 | In fact, we can almost bend
but we'll hyperextend it,
| | 03:07 | so there. And then as he falls forward,
the spine is also going to flex forward.
| | 03:14 | So we're going to flex the spine forward
a little bit this way, so we can do that
| | 03:23 | same on the opposite side as well.
| | 03:25 | So bend him forward at the height of it
and then squash him down and bend him in
| | 03:31 | the opposite direction here.
| | 03:33 | When you actually look at it frame by
frame, it seems a little bit extreme, but
| | 03:37 | when you actually play it, it's pretty good.
| | 03:40 | One of things we have, his head is
actually kind of bobbing around a little bit
| | 03:44 | too much, and we can actually kind of
treat that almost as an extension of the
| | 03:48 | spine. And one of things I like to do is just
to make sure his head stays pointed forward,
| | 03:53 | so I'm going to go ahead and
set a keyframe here at frame 1.
| | 03:58 | Make sure I have that
same key at frame 9 and 17.
| | 04:04 | Then, as he goes up, I'm going to try and
keep his eyes facing forward, and right
| | 04:13 | there--this is actually the real key one--
| | 04:16 | I want to make sure that he
is looking where he is going.
| | 04:20 | So again, I want to kind of tilt it down
just slightly here and then at frame
| | 04:25 | 15, I want to make sure he is facing forward.
| | 04:38 | So now I should have this--a little bit
more realistic. But his arms are still out.
| | 04:45 | Well, we can get those in the next section.
| | 04:48 | So what we've done here is we've
animated his spine so that the shoulders mirror
| | 04:55 | the hips, and we also have some
front-back flexibility to the spine.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a run: Left arm motion| 00:00 | Now, we're in the homestretch of the
run; all we have to do is get the arms
| | 00:04 | moving and we should pretty much be done.
| | 00:08 | So at this point, we've got the legs,
hips, spine, and head pretty much
| | 00:13 | working all together.
| | 00:17 | If you notice, those
arms are still pretty stiff;
| | 00:19 | they're just sticking straight out.
| | 00:20 | So let's go ahead and start working on those.
| | 00:22 | When we start working with the arms,
we really should animate the extremes.
| | 00:28 | But in this case, we kind
of started in the middle.
| | 00:31 | We started in a passing position where the
arms are actually also passing the hips,
| | 00:37 | so we need to go to an extreme.
| | 00:39 | We have two extremes here.
| | 00:41 | We have frame 5, which is where the
right foot makes contact right here, and
| | 00:49 | then 8 frames past that, at frame 13,
we have the left foot making contact.
| | 00:55 | So those two extremes
will also apply to the arms.
| | 01:00 | So let's start at frame 5, and we'll
also start with our left shoulder.
| | 01:07 | So I am going to select the left
shoulder, and let's kind of figure out
| | 01:11 | what's happening here.
| | 01:12 | Well, the right foot is forward, so
that means the left shoulder needs to be
| | 01:18 | forward, which it is, and so let's go ahead
and dial in that pose. So what happens?
| | 01:25 | Well, the arm is going to swing
forward, and the elbow will go ahead and bend
| | 01:31 | into position, and that hand
will be in front of the characters.
| | 01:34 | So let me just go ahead
and kind of tweak in this pose.
| | 01:38 | So I am turning the shoulder, and I am
also going to turn that wrist a little bit.
| | 01:45 | And also, when people run, they really
don't run with their hands straight out
| | 01:48 | like that, so I am just going
to go ahead and curl in the hand.
| | 01:54 | So, that's a pretty good pose here.
| | 01:57 | I may actually have it a little too
far forward, so something like that.
| | 02:01 | So what I've got is I've got the arm is
pretty much coming in front of the torso.
| | 02:08 | So I want to make sure I set
keyframes for all of those.
| | 02:11 | So I can set a keyframe for the
elbow, the wrist, and the shoulder.
| | 02:17 | So that's my first key.
| | 02:21 | So let's go to the other extreme where
the left foot is forward, which means the
| | 02:26 | left arm will be back.
| | 02:28 | So I am actually going to go
ahead and select the shoulder,
| | 02:32 | and the first thing I am going to do is I
am going to kind of zero out the Rotation
| | 02:35 | here and then just rotate it back
again. And then I am going to select the
| | 02:41 | elbow and straighten it out,
| | 02:44 | but I am not going to straighten it
out all the way, because what's happening
| | 02:47 | here is that arm is moving back.
| | 02:52 | Now, this elbow and the
hand will drag behind that.
| | 03:00 | So they're actually doing secondary motion.
| | 03:03 | This is pulling this,
| | 03:04 | so this will drag behind
this by a couple of frames.
| | 03:11 | See how that works.
That looks pretty good.
| | 03:14 | We have another thing that we need to
worry about, and that is at frame 7 he is
| | 03:18 | collapsing--he is kind of squashing down.
| | 03:21 | So when he does that, I want to bend
that elbow up just a little bit to kind of
| | 03:27 | accentuate that squash, like that.
And then as he comes up, that elbow is going
| | 03:35 | to straighten out just a little bit.
| | 03:37 | Now, I don't want to straighten
it out more than it is at frame 13,
| | 03:45 | so I want to make sure that
frame 13 has about that same angle.
| | 03:50 | So that looks pretty good.
| | 03:51 | So now that I have this, I have got
basically from frame 5 to 13, but I don't
| | 03:57 | have the outer edges.
| | 03:58 | I don't have the keyframes or the positions
for the rest of it, as it starts to move forward.
| | 04:05 | Now, remember, what's happening here is
this arm is rotating back, and then after
| | 04:13 | frame 13, that shoulder is going
to start rotating forward again.
| | 04:18 | So, let's go ahead and rotate it
forward to a middle position almost.
| | 04:23 | As this rotates forward,
the elbow will drag back,
| | 04:29 | so this is where we start to
straighten out the elbow--and that wrist will
| | 04:33 | also drag back as well.
| | 04:36 | So now we should get something like this.
| | 04:40 | So what I'm going to do now is select
all of these frames, so this is my new
| | 04:45 | pose for that middle
position, for the passing position.
| | 04:51 | Copy, paste, and then do the
same for the elbow and the wrist.
| | 04:59 | So again, I am going to copy and paste.
| | 05:06 | That should be pretty close.
| | 05:09 | Okay, so I have got this
wrist as a little bit off here.
| | 05:12 | So again, copy and paste, and there we go!
| | 05:18 | So now, I should have a pretty good cycle.
| | 05:20 | So let's take a look at this.
| | 05:25 | So all I have to do now is do the
opposite side for the right arm.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a run: Right arm motion| 00:00 | Once we get the left arm moving,
the right arm will be even easier,
| | 00:04 | so let's go ahead and do that.
| | 00:06 | I am going to select the right
shoulder, and what we want to do is basically
| | 00:11 | mirror what we just did on the left arm.
| | 00:14 | So, when the character's right foot is
forward, the left shoulder and left arm is
| | 00:20 | forward, and the opposite.
| | 00:22 | So this pose we want to
mirror with this arm on this side.
| | 00:26 | So let's go ahead and start at frame
13 instead of frame 5, and let's get that
| | 00:31 | very first position.
| | 00:32 | This is actually the strongest arm
position, so we want to make sure that we get
| | 00:36 | this right, so I typically start
with that arm in front of the body.
| | 00:45 | So I'm going to go ahead and
start setting keyframes here.
| | 00:48 | I am setting a keyframe for the right
shoulder, the right elbow, the right wrist.
| | 00:58 | I want to make sure that I get that
hand in front of the body, and then also,
| | 01:03 | I want to make sure that I curl up those fingers.
| | 01:06 | Make sure I get a
keyframe on that. Pretty good.
| | 01:12 | I think I want this out just a little bit.
| | 01:15 | There we go. Now what I am going to do is I am
going to jump between frame 5--actually,
| | 01:27 | it's pretty good because actually
I don't have any more keyframes.
| | 01:29 | You'll see that I actually made it
pretty, pretty close to what I had before.
| | 01:34 | So frame 13 looks about right, so let's go
and get frame 5, which is where the arm is back.
| | 01:41 | So I'm going to go ahead and select
that shoulder, move it back, and straighten
| | 01:55 | out that elbow just a little
bit, as well as that wrist.
| | 02:08 | In this case, it's a little bit of the
opposite, so I've got this arm as moving
| | 02:11 | forward, so this elbow
and the hand will drag back.
| | 02:16 | So at frame 9, I'm going to
have this a little bit straight.
| | 02:22 | So, see it straightens out. Then it comes here.
| | 02:27 | Again, the character is going to
squash, so I want to make sure I bend this
| | 02:33 | hand up to accentuate that squash,
and then it's going to straighten out and
| | 02:41 | move back just a bit.
| | 02:50 | So I'm coming from here, frame 5. The arm is
straightening out, starting to bend, and
| | 02:59 | now the arm is starting
to move back a little bit.
| | 03:01 | So once I have this, again, what I
can do is the same thing that I've done
| | 03:10 | with the other arm, is once I get frame 17,
I can copy, move to frame 1, and paste again.
| | 03:20 | But again, I need to do those a frame at a time,
| | 03:23 | so I need to take the elbow, copy,
paste, and the same for that wrist--
| | 03:31 | frame 17, copy; frame 1, paste.
| | 03:37 | So that should do pretty well.
| | 03:40 | So let's take a look at
this and see how well it plays.
| | 03:48 | So that looks pretty good. So by extending the run
in this manner, we've done a couple of things.
| | 03:53 | First of all, we saved
ourselves a lot of time and energy.
| | 03:56 | We didn't have to re-animate all that
much in order to get a lot of time on the
| | 04:02 | screen. And also, the run is consistent,
which can help in certain situations.
| | 04:08 | And also, this acts as a
really good test of the run cycle.
| | 04:12 | Sometimes the run will look good when
the character is running in place, but
| | 04:15 | when you actually get him running
across the screen, it might not look right,
| | 04:20 | so this is actually a really good test for this.
| | 04:23 | Also, these sorts of techniques lend
themselves to other types of cycles that
| | 04:28 | you can use in many other situations with
character animation and other types of animation,
| | 04:35 | so go ahead and use these to
your advantage in other scenes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a run: Cycling the animation| 00:00 | So, at this point we have
the character running in place.
| | 00:03 | Now, I've tweaked the animation just a
little bit, but you can see that we have
| | 00:07 | this nice little cycle going
where he is running in place.
| | 00:12 | But what I really want to do is have
him run through the scene, so we're
| | 00:16 | going to do that, and then we're
also going to do another little trick
| | 00:19 | that'll allow him to run forever.
| | 00:22 | So the first thing that I want to
do is actually have the character run
| | 00:25 | through the physical scene.
| | 00:28 | As you remember, we have our character
root node, and we've animated that back
| | 00:34 | so it looks like he is running in place.
| | 00:36 | Now, this really helped when we animated
our run, but we don't need that anymore.
| | 00:42 | So I want to make sure that character
root is selected, and then I'm going to
| | 00:46 | Shift+Select all of the keyframes for
character root and then just right-click
| | 00:52 | over the timeline and hit Delete.
| | 00:54 | So now, he should run through the scene,
because we're not animating him backwards;
| | 01:01 | he is just running through the scene.
| | 01:05 | Now, the next step is to actually keep
him running, because, if we look at this,
| | 01:11 | he is only running for 17 frames,
and he is only running for two steps.
| | 01:15 | We would like him to keep running.
| | 01:18 | We can do this in one of two ways.
| | 01:20 | We can continue to animate keyframes,
but that can get kind of tedious.
| | 01:25 | So I'm going to show you a little trick that
allows him to just run for as long as you want.
| | 01:30 | Now, first thing we need to do is to
give ourselves more frames to work with,
| | 01:35 | so let's go ahead and bump up the
number of frames to 100 and make sure that
| | 01:39 | we're viewing 100 frames.
| | 01:41 | So now you can see he runs up
to frame 17 and then just stops.
| | 01:47 | So I want to keep him going.
| | 01:51 | So the first thing I want to do is
select all of those objects that are actually
| | 01:58 | moving forward in space.
| | 02:01 | So what is actually moving forward?
| | 02:04 | Well, his feet, so his right foot, his
left foot, so I'm going to Shift+Select
| | 02:09 | those, and then I'm also
going to Shift+Select his hips.
| | 02:13 | Those three objects are the only
ones that are actually translating.
| | 02:18 | So let's go into our Graph Editor
and we'll make some cycles here.
| | 02:22 | So I'm going to go into Window >
Animation Editors > Graph Editor, and those are
| | 02:27 | all of my curves that I
created for those objects.
| | 02:31 | So if I want, I can just
do a real simple thing here.
| | 02:34 | I can just select all of my curves.
| | 02:37 | Or I can select them here in the sidebar here;
| | 02:41 | I can just Shift+Select all of the curves.
| | 02:43 | Either way, it will work.
| | 02:45 | And then I can do Curves > Post Infinity >
Cycle, but when I do just cycle, what
| | 02:53 | happens is, well, it cycles.
| | 02:56 | He runs forever, but he always keeps jumping
back to the start every 16 frames. Not what I want.
| | 03:06 | I want him to go instead of on frame
17 jumping back, I want him to actually
| | 03:12 | just keep going forward.
| | 03:15 | So we can actually affect that by
going back into our Graph Editor and just
| | 03:20 | working with the translation keys,
because really, I just want his translation
| | 03:25 | to keep going forward.
| | 03:26 | I'm going to select the right foot,
Translate Z, Ctrl+Select or Command+Select
| | 03:33 | left foot Translate Z,
and the same for the hips.
| | 03:37 | Because he is running in the Z axis,
what I want him to continue to do is to
| | 03:42 | continue running in that Z axis.
| | 03:46 | Then I'm going to go Curves > Post
Infinity, and instead of doing Cycle, I'm
| | 03:52 | going to do what's called Cycle with
Offset, which means that it's going to
| | 03:56 | pick up where it left off, but only in
the Translate Z direction--everything
| | 04:01 | else will be the same.
| | 04:04 | So now let's go ahead and zoom out,
and we can see what we've got.
| | 04:09 | So now he is running off the screen,
pretty much, but we've only done this for
| | 04:18 | the hips and the feet.
| | 04:20 | So you can see that we haven't done it for
all the rest of the objects in the scene.
| | 04:26 | The first thing I'm going to do is
select these knee direction locators, and
| | 04:31 | then I'm going to go through and
just Shift+Select everything else.
| | 04:35 | I'm going to Shift+Select the spine,
the head, which I animated, as well as the
| | 04:41 | shoulder, the elbow, the wrists of both
arms, and as well as the ankles, or the
| | 04:54 | heels, as well as the toe.
| | 04:56 | So now I've selected everything
but what I've selected before.
| | 05:01 | Then let's go back into our Graph
Editor, select everything in here.
| | 05:09 | We can actually go through here and select
it all and then do Curves > Post Infinity.
| | 05:19 | And because we're not doing
translation, we just do a regular cycle, and
| | 05:25 | that should fix it.
| | 05:34 | Now, I'm still not getting these locators here.
| | 05:38 | So let's go ahead and set a
keyframe for those and move him forward.
| | 05:42 | Let's go to frame 17 and just move him forward.
| | 05:46 | Make sure they're ahead of there,
and then let's go back into our Animation
| | 05:51 | Editor, our Graph Editor.
| | 05:53 | Make sure that we have these all selected.
| | 05:56 | Curves > Post Infinity > Cycle.
| | 05:59 | I actually want to do Cycle with
Offset because we want them to keep moving
| | 06:04 | forward, and let's go ahead and do that.
| | 06:09 | So now, I've got my character
running as far as I want him to run.
| | 06:14 | So now he is running over
the course of a hundred frames;
| | 06:17 | in fact, we can make him more straight
into the camera if we position it properly.
| | 06:24 | And there he goes.
| | 06:26 | So as you can see, by using Cycle
and Cycle with Offset, we can take our
| | 06:32 | character and make him run as long as we want.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
7. Facial Animation and DialogueAnimating blinks| 00:00 | Up until this point, we've been
animating mostly the body of the character.
| | 00:04 | Let's go ahead and look
at some facial animation.
| | 00:08 | We're going to start with one of the
simplest tasks you can do in facial
| | 00:11 | animation, and that's the blink.
| | 00:13 | Now, blinks shouldn't be dismissed;
| | 00:15 | they actually can give a lot of
information about the character.
| | 00:18 | The rate that the character
blinks will determine his mood.
| | 00:21 | A blink can also draw the
audience's attention to the eyes.
| | 00:25 | So if you have a change in eye
direction or something like that, a blink
| | 00:29 | can signal to the audience, hey, look at
the eyes because something is going to change.
| | 00:33 | Blinks also let the audience
know that the character is alive.
| | 00:37 | If a character stands in a scene for
a long period of time without a blink,
| | 00:41 | it'll appear like a doll,
and it won't appear like it's alive.
| | 00:44 | So blinks have a lot of different uses.
| | 00:46 | So let's go ahead and just
do some very simple blinks.
| | 00:49 | I have my full character up here.
| | 00:52 | The actual scene is called
Head CU, and it's basically just a
| | 00:55 | close-up shot of the head.
| | 00:57 | So all of the facial controls
are here in this little box here.
| | 01:02 | So the controls that we're going to
be concerning ourselves here are the
| | 01:06 | eyelids, and you can see here
we have upper and lower lids.
| | 01:09 | So let's take a look at how these
work before we actually animate them.
| | 01:12 | So we can bring these down, and we can
actually only bring these down about three
| | 01:16 | quarters of the way, and that's fine
because we actually have lower lids which
| | 01:21 | can complete that lower part of the blink.
| | 01:24 | So in order to completely close his
eyes for a blink, we do have to work with
| | 01:27 | both lids on this character.
| | 01:29 | Now, other characters may be different,
but this particular character is built this way.
| | 01:33 | So one of the things you want to make sure
is that you don't overextend the lower lids.
| | 01:39 | There is a point where they
start to poke through the upper lids.
| | 01:43 | So go ahead and play with that and get
used to it, and let's go ahead and move
| | 01:47 | on to the actual blink.
| | 01:50 | Now the most important thing with
a blink is the timing of the blink.
| | 01:54 | So let's go ahead and do just a
standard stock timing, and that's usually about
| | 01:59 | a quarter second down and a quarter second up.
| | 02:02 | So at 24 frames per second,
which is how we're animating,
| | 02:05 | it's six down, six up.
| | 02:08 | So let's go ahead and
select the upper and lower lids.
| | 02:13 | So I'm going to select both of these,
| | 02:14 | all four lids, and we're going to
go ahead and set a keyframe at 1.
| | 02:19 | So I'm just going to hit S to set a keyframe.
| | 02:22 | And then let's go ahead and
start the blink at frame 10.
| | 02:25 | This will give us a little bit of
run=in time, so that when the blink starts,
| | 02:29 | we'll have a sense of who the character is.
| | 02:31 | So let's go ahead and hit S again
to set another set of keyframes.
| | 02:35 | So, now we have the eyes open at 10.
| | 02:39 | So let's go six frames, in to frame 16,
and we'll go ahead and close the eyes.
| | 02:45 | So I'm going to select the upper lids,
bring them down, somewhere around
| | 02:50 | there, and then take the lower lids,
and then just match them, so that they're
| | 02:55 | pretty much closed.
| | 02:57 | So now we have the eyes closing, very simple.
| | 03:02 | Now if we want to open those again, all we
have to do is basically select all of these,
| | 03:07 | so I'm going to select the upper and
the lower lids, and I can basically
| | 03:12 | just copy this keyframe.
| | 03:14 | So I can right-click here, Copy, go over
to frame 22, which is again, another six
| | 03:20 | frames in, and just paste those keyframes.
| | 03:22 | So again, we're just pasting the open-eye
pose or the keyframes that define the open eye.
| | 03:29 | So now we have our blink.
| | 03:30 | So let's go ahead and
take a look at how it plays.
| | 03:33 | Okay, it looks pretty good.
| | 03:36 | So again, this is just a standard blink.
| | 03:39 | Now if we want, we can slow this down or speed
it up to give a different mood to the character,
| | 03:46 | so let's go ahead and slow it down.
| | 03:49 | I'm going to select these keyframes, these
last two keyframes, so from frame 16 to frame 22.
| | 03:55 | So I'm Shift+Selecting on the timeline,
and let's go ahead and move those back,
| | 04:00 | say four frames, to frame 20.
| | 04:01 | Then you'll select the one at frame 26
and move those another four, to frame 30.
| | 04:08 | So now we've got a 10-frame blink.
| | 04:10 | So this is actually going
to be a very slow blink.
| | 04:12 | Let's see how this plays.
| | 04:13 | So you can see that this plays a
little bit differently than the other blink,
| | 04:19 | and this one is kind of more slow.
| | 04:20 | It's more like a blink of realization,
like he's suddenly coming up with an idea
| | 04:25 | or something like that.
| | 04:27 | As easily as we can slow it
down, we can also speed it up.
| | 04:31 | So let's select our upper and lower
lids again, and let's go ahead and move
| | 04:36 | those keyframes around one more time.
| | 04:38 | Now, another timing I like
to do is called fast open.
| | 04:42 | Basically, it means you close a lid as
at a fairly standard rate and then you
| | 04:46 | pop them open a lot more quickly.
| | 04:48 | So I'm going to select the keyframe
in the middle, the one at 20, and let's
| | 04:53 | just move it back to 16.
| | 04:54 | So again, we'll have six down,
and let's make the up a lot faster.
| | 04:59 | So instead of at 16, let's put it
to 19, so six down and three up.
| | 05:04 | So it's going to open twice as fast as
it closes, and this will definitely give
| | 05:08 | a different feel to the blink.
| | 05:10 | So, you can see it gives a much brighter feel.
| | 05:17 | He opens his eyes a lot more quickly.
| | 05:19 | So the whole point of this is that
the timing of the blink is important.
| | 05:23 | It conveys a little bit
about the character mood.
| | 05:26 | It also conveys a little bit
about who the character is.
| | 05:30 | So a more alert character will blink faster;
| | 05:33 | a slow, lumbering character may blink slower.
| | 05:37 | So I'm going to go ahead and
put this blink back to normal.
| | 05:39 | I'm going to go ahead and select this
keyframe at 19 and move it to frame 22.
| | 05:46 | And let's go ahead and do a
little bit more with this.
| | 05:49 | So with this blink here, it's basically just
the character is pretty much rock solid;
| | 05:55 | there's really not much else going on.
| | 05:58 | And again, this makes the character
look more alive, but it doesn't make them
| | 06:02 | look completely alive.
| | 06:03 | So one of the things I like to do is
when the character blinks, I also like
| | 06:08 | to add a little bit of head motion
just to, again, give you the sense that
| | 06:13 | the character is alive.
| | 06:14 | So what I'm going to do is select this
head control, and again, we're just going
| | 06:19 | to mimic that motion with the head.
| | 06:22 | So I'm going to set a keyframe at frame 1.
| | 06:25 | The start of the blink is at 10,
| | 06:27 | so let's go ahead and set a keyframe there.
| | 06:29 | He blinks at 16, so I'm going to
rotate this, and I'm just going to dip his
| | 06:35 | chin just a little bit.
| | 06:37 | So now, as he blinks, his head comes down.
| | 06:41 | Now you can do this in extreme,
or you can do it just subtly.
| | 06:45 | I'm going to do a little bit more subtly.
| | 06:47 | And then we just need to return him it to normal.
| | 06:49 | So again, I'm going to right-click, copy
the keyframe at 10, and paste it at 22.
| | 06:56 | So now in addition to the blink,
I've got a little bit more head motion.
| | 07:00 | So let's see how this plays.
| | 07:05 | And again, just adding in a little bit
of head motion really gives a much more
| | 07:10 | realistic sense of how the character is playing.
| | 07:14 | So we can go back to frame 16, and we
can dip this a little bit more to give a
| | 07:20 | little bit more of an effect.
| | 07:22 | So let's go ahead and make this a
little bit more extreme. In fact, we can
| | 07:24 | even tilt the head so he is not
exactly on axis, and let's see how this works.
| | 07:35 | As you can see, you can make this
either subtle or extreme, and you can
| | 07:39 | play around with it.
| | 07:40 | So those were the basics of blinks.
| | 07:43 | Now remember, just close the eyes, and the
most important thing with the blink is timing.
| | 07:48 | And if you want to add a little bit
more realism, just a little bit of head
| | 07:52 | motion along with the blink
will help to sell the motion.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating changes in eye direction| 00:00 | Another common task in animation is
changing your character's eye direction, so
| | 00:06 | your character needs to be able to look
at one thing and then look at another.
| | 00:11 | Now, this is really just
involves moving the pupils of the eye.
| | 00:15 | Now different types of character rigs
will have different controls for doing this.
| | 00:19 | I selected this way of controlling
the eyes, which is to select these two
| | 00:24 | circles here, and then you can
just move them however you want.
| | 00:28 | Other types of rigs will have objects
that the character is looking at, so
| | 00:32 | you place a null object in the scene and
character will always be looking at that object.
| | 00:36 | But however you adjust your
character's eyes, the principles are the same.
| | 00:41 | So let's do a simple change in eye direction.
| | 00:44 | So I'm going to start with my
character's eyes on one side, so let's say he is
| | 00:49 | looking to his right.
| | 00:51 | So I'm going to select both pupils,
and then I'm just going to set a
| | 00:55 | keyframe here at frame 1.
| | 00:57 | And again, let's just start this at
frame 10, so I'm going to set another
| | 01:01 | keyframe at frame 10.
| | 01:03 | So he is looking this way, and then
he is going to look the other way.
| | 01:09 | So let's do this over the
course of about a half second.
| | 01:11 | So I'm going to it over the course
of 12 frames, because I'm animating at
| | 01:15 | 24 frames per second.
| | 01:16 | And let's just go ahead and
move his eyes to his left.
| | 01:21 | So this is all we need.
| | 01:24 | So basically, he just changes his eye direction.
| | 01:29 | Now one of the things when you change eye
direction is that they can kind of float.
| | 01:34 | So typically when a character changes
eye direction, unless he is like looking
| | 01:40 | at a clock or something like that--
let's say he is doing that, he is looking at
| | 01:43 | the clock--but typically when he is
changing eye direction, we will cover that
| | 01:47 | change in eye direction with a blink.
| | 01:50 | And that can really help to sell that motion.
| | 01:53 | So I'm going to go to frame 10, and
let's go ahead and add in a blink.
| | 01:58 | So I'm going to select my upper lid, set
keyframe at 10. Then let's go ahead and
| | 02:04 | close the eyes and then open them again.
| | 02:09 | And the easiest way to open them is to copy
the keys at frame 10 and paste them at 22.
| | 02:17 | And we can do the same for the lower lids.
Set keyframe at 10, close up the eyes,
| | 02:27 | and then Copy, Paste.
| | 02:33 | So now what I have is I have a blink
on top of that change in eye direction.
| | 02:40 | Now when that happens, it gives
a much stronger sense of motion.
| | 02:46 | Now one of the reasons is because when
the eyes blink the audience's attention
| | 02:51 | is kind of drawn to the eye, so we can
see that the eye is changing direction.
| | 02:56 | The other reason is that the blink
kind of covers up that floatiness.
| | 03:02 | So as the eyes kind of move from one
side to the other, the blinks kind of
| | 03:08 | almost give like a comma, or a pause, in that,
so you don't see them float all the way over.
| | 03:14 | Now another thing you can do, again,
is you can add in a little bit of head
| | 03:21 | motion to help sell that.
| | 03:24 | So I'm going to go ahead and set my
keyframe at frame 1, set it again at frame
| | 03:29 | 10 and then as he blinks, I'm going to
dip that nose just a little bit, and again,
| | 03:37 | I just want to pull him back where he was.
| | 03:39 | So I'm going to copy the frame at 10
and paste that keyframe at frame 22.
| | 03:46 | So now I should have a reasonable motion.
| | 03:54 | So this looks a little bit more
realistic, but again, we can add a little
| | 03:58 | bit more if we want.
| | 03:59 | We can certainly tilt his head a little
bit as he is moving, so we can certainly
| | 04:06 | rotate this a little bit.
| | 04:09 | So now we can actually make him rotate this way.
| | 04:16 | So as he is moving, he is
doing a slight head turn.
| | 04:19 | So we can copy and paste this,
| | 04:22 | so now he is starting here, and then as he
moves, his head adjusts just a little bit.
| | 04:28 | And again, these little details will help make
that character's animation sell a little bit more.
| | 04:36 | So those are some of the
basics of eye direction change.
| | 04:39 | The basic concepts here: You can move
the pupils within the eye, but they will
| | 04:45 | tend to float, so typically we do that
for specific applications, such as when
| | 04:50 | the character is watching a fly buzzing
around the room or something like that.
| | 04:53 | Generally, we tend to cover eye
direction change with a blink, but again, this
| | 04:58 | is a stylistic choice; you may or may
not want to do this depending upon the
| | 05:03 | needs of your scene.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a head turn| 00:00 | Another common task that you'll be
faced with is turning your character's head.
| | 00:05 | Now, head turns are not as
simple as they seem on the surface.
| | 00:10 | Let me show you some of the basics and
some of the mechanics of a head turn.
| | 00:14 | Well, the first thing we need to do is
we need to turn our character's head in
| | 00:17 | one direction and then turn it in another.
| | 00:20 | So let's go ahead and select our
character's head control and let's rotate this
| | 00:25 | head--let's say a few degrees.
| | 00:28 | In fact, let's go -20 degrees to the right.
| | 00:33 | And I am going to go ahead
and set a keyframe there.
| | 00:35 | And let's go ahead and
set another one at frame 10.
| | 00:37 | We're going to start this at frame 10,
| | 00:41 | and then we're going to
rotate him the other direction.
| | 00:44 | So if I am doing negative -20 in Y,
let's do +20 in Y. So let's just turn him
| | 00:49 | from one side to the other.
| | 00:51 | Now, this seems like it's
simple; you just rotate the head.
| | 00:56 | But when we actually play this back,
you'll notice that the head really doesn't
| | 01:01 | have a lot of realism.
| | 01:03 | It looks more like a mechanical object that's
just turning from one direction to the other.
| | 01:09 | That's because as a head turns, it also dips.
| | 01:14 | So it doesn't just turn in one direction;
| | 01:16 | It dips and rises as it
moves through the head turn.
| | 01:21 | So we've got a keyframe
here and a keyframe here.
| | 01:25 | Let's go in the middle of this, at frame
16, and dip the head just a little bit.
| | 01:33 | And when we do that what's going to happen
is it's going to be a lot more realistic.
| | 01:38 | Now, just that alone gives a much more
realistic sense that he's actually turning his head.
| | 01:43 | It's not so doll-like;
| | 01:46 | it has a lot more anatomical correctness to it.
| | 01:49 | Now, we can add to this by
doing in a couple of other things.
| | 01:55 | One of the things that characters do
when they turn their head is they also look
| | 01:59 | in the direction that their head is turning.
| | 02:01 | We can do this very
easily by selecting the pupils.
| | 02:05 | So all I have to do is set a keyframe
here at frame 10 and then as he's starting
| | 02:10 | to move we can actually adjust those
a little bit, so that he looks in the
| | 02:15 | direction that he's moving.
| | 02:18 | Then as he gets into that
final pose, we can get rid of that.
| | 02:26 | So I can just copy again,
copy and paste my keyframe.
| | 02:32 | So now he's looking in the
direction, so let's take a look at this.
| | 02:40 | So this gives a much better sense
of where the head turn is coming.
| | 02:44 | Now one of the things I'm noticing here is that
the eyes should be leading the head motion.
| | 02:52 | In other words, the eyes' motion should
almost happen before the head starts turning.
| | 02:57 | So I'm going to go ahead and select
these and I am going to select this first
| | 03:00 | keyframe, and I'm going it move it back
a few frames. I'm going to move it back
| | 03:04 | to 8, so it has a
two-frame lead on the eye motion.
| | 03:09 | So you can see that as he starts to move,
the eyes actually kind of start the
| | 03:17 | motion, and a lot of times
characters will lead with their eyes.
| | 03:23 | Now, I'm going to add one more little
piece of animation here, and that is I'm
| | 03:28 | going to cover this eye
direction change with a slight blink.
| | 03:31 | So again, I'm just going to go to
frame 8 where that starts to change.
| | 03:36 | I'm going to go ahead and set a keyframe here,
| | 03:40 | go forward, blink, and then bring those back up.
| | 03:48 | In fact, I'm going to open this a
little but sooner, so I'm going to go
| | 03:51 | ahead and open it here.
| | 03:53 | Then let's do the same for the lower.
Select my lower lids, go to frame 8,
| | 03:59 | close up those eyes at frame 14, and then by
frame 18 they should by pretty much wide open.
| | 04:08 | So now, we've got a
little bit of a blink as well.
| | 04:13 | So again, just adding these
different layers, we started by animating the
| | 04:18 | head, then we lead that head turn with eye
direction, and then we added in a blink as well.
| | 04:26 | So each one of these adds in an
additional layer of believability and
| | 04:32 | realness to your animation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with audio| 00:00 | Now let's go ahead and focus on
animating the mouth and animating dialog.
| | 00:05 | Now dialog is probably one of the most
important things in character animation
| | 00:08 | because it allows your character to talk.
| | 00:12 | Now before we actually start
animating dialog, we need to understand a few
| | 00:15 | things about how to set
up a character for dialog.
| | 00:19 | Now, the first thing we need
to do is import a soundtrack.
| | 00:23 | Maya does allow you to have
multiple soundtracks in a scene.
| | 00:27 | Let me show you how to do that.
| | 00:30 | We're going to go ahead and go File > Import.
| | 00:33 | Now, in this project that I have--we're
in Chap07--there should be a standard
| | 00:39 | directory called sound, and this is
really where you should be storing your
| | 00:43 | sounds in Maya, and I've got a
couple of audio files in there.
| | 00:47 | The one we are going to play
with initially is called Vowels.wav.
| | 00:51 | So I'm going to select that and hit Import.
| | 00:54 | Now, when we do that, you can see that
a waveform shows up on the timeline.
| | 01:01 | Now I know that this waveform is longer
than our maximum length here, which is 48 frame.
| | 01:07 | This dialog is actually 155 frames long.
| | 01:11 | So let's go ahead and expand our
timeline to encapsulate the whole bit of dialog.
| | 01:17 | So I'm just going to type in 1-5-5, or
155, into this little box here, and that
| | 01:23 | should zoom out enough so that we can
actually see the whole bit of dialog.
| | 01:28 | We can actually go ahead and hit play and
it should play the dialog.
| | 01:32 | (Male speaker: A, E, I, O, U, Y!)
| | 01:38 | Now, these are basically just the vowel
sounds and we will animate these a little
| | 01:42 | bit, but I just want to show you a
little bit about how to work with audio.
| | 01:46 | So once we have this audio in the
timeline, we can do a number of things.
| | 01:50 | If you right-click over this, we can
go into Sound and we can actually turn
| | 01:54 | off and on the sounds.
| | 01:57 | We can go Sound, we can turn it off, or we
can turn on this sound or any other sound.
| | 02:03 | So if I've loaded more than one
soundtrack, these will show up on the list.
| | 02:09 | I also have an option here.
| | 02:10 | So if I click on that, you can see
this is my option for my actual vowels.
| | 02:17 | So this is the actual sound.
| | 02:19 | It tells me it's 152 frames long.
| | 02:21 | Okay, well I estimated that at 155.
| | 02:24 | You can also say it's two
channels and so on and so forth.
| | 02:28 | So this allows you to actually
select the sound and work with it as well.
| | 02:31 | So I'm going to go back in my channel box here.
| | 02:36 | Now, another thing you can do with
audio is that you can actually make this
| | 02:40 | a little bit taller.
| | 02:41 | So we can go into our Settings/
Preferences, into Preferences, go into Sound here,
| | 02:50 | and we can actually have our waveform
display at the Top, the Bottom, All,
| | 02:57 | so that way we can
actually show it in different ways.
| | 03:01 | Okay, so these are just
different ways to actually look at sound.
| | 03:04 | Now I'm just going to keep this at the
default for All and then for the time
| | 03:08 | slider, we can actually make it taller,
which will give you a better view of the audio.
| | 03:14 | Now this may or may not be helpful to
you, but again, you can make it taller or
| | 03:18 | shorter if you want.
| | 03:21 | So again, these two, Sound and Time
slider in our Preferences, will help you deal
| | 03:26 | with your audio as well.
| | 03:28 | So now that we understand a little bit
about how to work with audio and get it into Maya,
| | 03:33 | let's start animating
against it in the next section.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Overview of mouth controls| 00:00 | Now let's take a really quick look at
the controls we have for animating dialog.
| | 00:05 | So I am going to go ahead and zoom
in to this character, and we have two main
| | 00:10 | controls that are going to be used for dialog.
| | 00:13 | The first one is called Jaw,
so we can actually move that.
| | 00:19 | If we move it down, it opens his Jaw.
Left and right gives a little but of
| | 00:23 | left and right bias.
| | 00:25 | If we go above zero, you can see you
can actually give almost like a pouty lip
| | 00:30 | or actually bring his
lower lip above his upper lip.
| | 00:33 | Now with this, you'll notice that there
are two controls here: one is Translate
| | 00:37 | X and Translate Y. Y is up and
down, so Y is open and close mouth.
| | 00:43 | X is left right, which is the
kind of that left-right bias.
| | 00:47 | Now for one, I can zero this out just by
selecting them and typing in the number 0.
| | 00:52 | Now, the same applies for this dialog control.
| | 00:56 | Now, this actually goes
through several different mouth shapes.
| | 01:01 | So I'm going to start by
going bottom right corner.
| | 01:04 | So we go bottom right, you'll notice
that we have an 'oh' or more of an 'oo' sound,
| | 01:10 | kind of that open O mouth, and then
as we move this up, it goes into an 'oh',
| | 01:17 | and then it closes.
| | 01:18 | Now if you go the other way, if you go
to top-left, you can see it goes into
| | 01:25 | kind of bared teeth, almost like a 'ch'
or an S kind of sound. Then as we come
| | 01:31 | down, you'll notice how it closes.
| | 01:33 | We have a neutral position here,
and then we go into M, and if we come across,
| | 01:39 | we go back over to 'oo'.
| | 01:41 | Typically with this, sometimes you want
to go to a neutral and then to another
| | 01:45 | one, but you can pretty much get from
almost any specific shape to another just
| | 01:50 | by moving this in the X and Y axis.
| | 01:53 | Again, we have two Translate controls
here, and all I have to do is just zero out
| | 01:58 | those attributes to center it.
| | 02:01 | Now, the other two that are involved
with the dialog are the F sound, which
| | 02:05 | is really very specific, and the 'sh' sound,
which you are going to may or may not want to use.
| | 02:11 | The rest of these are for emotions.
| | 02:14 | So we have a smile/frown control here, so
you can make him smile while he talks.
| | 02:21 | We also have what's called the sneer.
| | 02:23 | So you can sneer left or right if
you want, and then this one here kind of
| | 02:28 | works the bottom part.
| | 02:29 | But for most dialog, we will be able
to do almost everything within these two,
| | 02:36 | with the addition of these
other two if we need them.
| | 02:39 | So now that we understand this,
let's go ahead and start actually
| | 02:43 | animating dialog.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating vowels| 00:00 | Now let's go ahead and
actually animate some vowels.
| | 00:03 | So what we're going to do is we're
going to animate the vowel sounds first, so
| | 00:07 | we understand how they work,
then consonants, then dialog.
| | 00:10 | And so by animating some vowels and
some consonants separately, you'll get an
| | 00:15 | idea and an understanding as to how
each is formed in terms of animation, and
| | 00:21 | then stringing them together into
dialog should be a lot easier.
| | 00:25 | So let's go ahead and work on the vowels first.
| | 00:28 | Now vowels are open-mouth sounds,
and there are basically six of them in
| | 00:34 | the English language. Here, let's play the track.
| | 00:36 | (Character: A, E, I, O, U, Y!)
| | 00:43 | Okay, so A, E, I, O, U, sometimes Y, and
let's go ahead and start working on them.
| | 00:50 | So the first thing I'm going to do is
zoom in, so that we can actually see
| | 00:53 | these individually.
| | 00:54 | So I'm going to go ahead and grab my
little time slider here and zoom it in to
| | 00:58 | about 27 or 28 or so, and that
way I'll have just the 'A' sound.
| | 01:03 | (Character: A.)
| | 01:04 | Okay, so we A. Now notice
it starts at about frame 7.
| | 01:10 | So in order to get this started, I
need to go a frame earlier and make sure I
| | 01:14 | have a keyframe for everything
in the lower part of the face.
| | 01:18 | Now if I want, I could set up a
mouse script to select all this,
| | 01:21 | but I can also just rubberband-select
all the stuff in the lower part of the face
| | 01:26 | and just hit S for set key.
| | 01:29 | In fact, if I want, I can zoom in here so
we can see this a little bit more closely.
| | 01:33 | Now by setting a key here, I've set a
neutral position that we can start from.
| | 01:39 | This sound actually starts pretty
quickly, and this is typical for vowels.
| | 01:43 | Vowels tend to open quickly, close slowly.
| | 01:46 | So 'A' is a really good example of a
vowel that typically opens quickly.
| | 01:51 | So by frame 8, you'll notice that
it's pretty much at maximum volume.
| | 01:56 | So it goes from zero to full volume in about
one to two frames, and then it tapers off.
| | 02:04 | So typically, vowels such as 'A'
and I open quickly, close slowly.
| | 02:10 | So the way that we're going to actually open
the mouth on this is to use the Jaw slider.
| | 02:14 | So I'm just going to move this, and we
can just open up the jaw, and then as
| | 02:22 | this fades out, you can
even see it on the timeline.
| | 02:25 | You don't even have to listen to it.
| | 02:26 | You can close that jaw.
| | 02:27 | In fact, if you want, you can just
type 0 to completely zero it out.
| | 02:32 | So all we've done is we've
opened and closed the jaw. Let's see how this works.
| | 02:36 | (Character: A, A, A, A.)
| | 02:40 | It looks pretty good.
| | 02:41 | Now one of the things with the 'A' is that
sometimes we have a little hint of a smile in there.
| | 02:47 | So we can do that just by
working with the Smile slider.
| | 02:50 | So I can just grab that, and again
as he comes in, we can actually add a
| | 02:55 | little bit of smile.
| | 02:56 | So we can do this at frame 8, or
we can delay it a little bit to give a
| | 03:00 | little more variation.
| | 03:02 | So I am going to go ahead and
smile him as he comes into this A.
| | 03:05 | (Character: A.)
| | 03:08 | Then I want to make sure I zero out that smile.
| | 03:11 | Again, I want to just end
each of these with a neutral pose.
| | 03:18 | So let's go ahead and play this.
| | 03:19 | (Character: A, A, A, A.)
| | 03:25 | Okay, so that looks pretty good.
| | 03:27 | Let's go ahead and move on to E. Now E,
if you make this sound with your mouth,
| | 03:33 | E, you'll notice that it's a wider sound.
| | 03:36 | In other words, the mouth is a little
bit wider, and there are more teeth showing.
| | 03:41 | So let's go ahead and just animate that.
| | 03:44 | I'm going to start at frame 28.
| | 03:45 | Again, I'm just going to zero
everything out by selecting all of my lower-face
| | 03:50 | sliders and hitting S to set key.
| | 03:54 | Now notice how this starts right around
frame 29 or 30, and again, this is one
| | 04:00 | that opens up fairly quickly.
| | 04:02 | So at frame 30, I am going to do two things.
| | 04:06 | First of all, remember that it's a
wide mouth with some teeth showing.
| | 04:11 | So in this Dialogue slider, I am going
to go ahead and move it to the left, so
| | 04:17 | that I have those teeth showing, and then
I do need to open the mouth a little bit,
| | 04:23 | so I'm going to go ahead and open
up the mouth a little bit like this.
| | 04:26 | (Character: E.)
| | 04:29 | And then keep it open for the
duration of that E. Again, I am just setting keyframes here.
| | 04:37 | (Character: E.)
| | 04:39 | Then from about frame 34 to 40
or 41 is when the sound fades out,
| | 04:46 | so again, I am just going
to zero those out at the end.
| | 04:50 | So I'm going to select Dialogue,
zero it out, Jaw and zero that out as well.
| | 04:54 | So let's go ahead and see this.
| | 04:56 | (Character: E.)
| | 04:58 | Okay, so remember, the 'E'
sound has teeth showing.
| | 05:03 | The mouth is wider.
| | 05:04 | So this is the shape we're looking for,
and let's play this one more time.
| | 05:09 | (Character: E, E, E.)
| | 05:14 | Now let's go ahead on to the next sound,
which is I. Now with the way I like to
| | 05:20 | think of 'I' is as A and E.
So 'I' or more like aye, A-Y-E.
| | 05:27 | Now, it starts with an A and it ends with an E.
So typically we start this almost the same.
| | 05:34 | So let's see, where does it start?
| | 05:35 | It starts 54 to 55.
| | 05:38 | So I am going to actually start this
at 54, which is my zero point, and again,
| | 05:44 | starting from that neutral position, I'm
just going to make sure I lock in all
| | 05:47 | of my mouth sliders here, and then let's
go two frames in. And in this case, I am
| | 05:54 | going to just open up the jaw just like
I did with the A. So I am just going to
| | 05:59 | go ahead two frames and open this up.
| | 06:02 | (Character: I.)
| | 06:05 | So right around here, you can see it
kind of transitions into kind of an
| | 06:08 | 'E'-ish kind of sound.
| | 06:10 | So it's somewhere around say frame 62 or so,
| | 06:13 | I want it to be on kind of an E shape.
| | 06:16 | But in order to do that, I need to
move the Dialogue slider over to more of an 'E'
| | 06:23 | sound and then close that jaw.
| | 06:26 | So let's take a look at that.
| | 06:27 | (Character: I.)
| | 06:31 | Okay, that looks pretty good,
but there is actually a little mistake here.
| | 06:35 | If you go to frame 56, you'll
notice that this Dialogue slider already
| | 06:39 | moving over to the right.
| | 06:42 | We want to keep that at
0 as that mouth first opens.
| | 06:47 | So I want to make sure it in-betweens from
56, which is the completely open jaw,
| | 06:53 | over to the point where
we've got that kind of 'E' sound.
| | 06:56 | (Character: I.)
| | 07:02 | Then we want to go ahead and close that mouth.
| | 07:04 | I want to zero out the jaw,
then return Dialogue to neutral.
| | 07:09 | Again, I am just zeroing it out.
| | 07:10 | So let's take a look at that.
| | 07:13 | (Character: I, I, I, I.)
| | 07:17 | Now, one of things I have is it looks like
I've got this Jaw slider over a little bit.
| | 07:21 | I want to make sure I
have that reasonably centered.
| | 07:24 | I can center it just by typing 0 into
Translate X. Make sure that that's centered.
| | 07:29 | (Character: I, I, I, I.)
| | 07:35 | So that looks pretty good.
| | 07:36 | Now remember, I is A-Y-E.
| | 07:39 | So it starts with an A, ends with an E--aye.
| | 07:45 | Okay, I've scrubbed over to our
next consonant here, which is O.
| | 07:50 | (Character: O, O.)
| | 07:52 | Now, 'O' is kind of different from most consonants.
| | 07:56 | It's probably one of the more unique ones.
| | 07:58 | We're going to start by playing with
this Dial slider, and what this does is it
| | 08:03 | goes into 'O'. But if you think
about 'O', it's actually 'oh' and 'oo'.
| | 08:08 | So it starts here at 'oh' and then goes to 'oo'.
| | 08:13 | So the first thing I want to do is
make sure I start at a neutral place.
| | 08:16 | Again, we're starting at frame 80.
| | 08:18 | You notice how the sound
starts somewhere between 80 and 81.
| | 08:21 | So let's at 80, set a keyframe
with a neutral mouth, go to 82.
| | 08:28 | It takes at least two frames to open a mouth.
| | 08:30 | If you open the mouth within one frame,
it's going to start popping, and it's not
| | 08:35 | going to look realistic to the audience.
| | 08:40 | So I'm going to go into an O. Now this
is your choice, but you can pop open that
| | 08:46 | jaw a little bit more to
give it a little more volume.
| | 08:48 | So you can combine this
'O' sound with an open jaw.
| | 08:53 | (Character: Oh.)
| | 08:56 | But it will eventually come into an 'oo' sound.
| | 08:59 | So if I bring this down and as I go to
an 'oo', you'll notice that the open jaw
| | 09:05 | and the 'oo' don't really work well together.
| | 09:07 | So you need to make sure you close that
Jaw down as it transitions into the 'oo'.
| | 09:13 | (Character: Oh.)
| | 09:17 | Then we need to close that out.
| | 09:19 | So I'm going to close that
out somewhere around frame 95.
| | 09:21 | You can see it tails off here.
And again, just on that Dialogue slider, select it
| | 09:27 | and hit 0 for both of those.
| | 09:29 | So let's play that.
| | 09:30 | (Character: Oh, oh, oh, oh.)
| | 09:35 | So with 'O', basically you're starting
with 'oh', which is a wide open 'oh' mouth and
| | 09:41 | your transition into an 'oo'.
| | 09:43 | Now with the open mouth, you can add
a little bit of jaw motion to pop that
| | 09:49 | mouth open a little bit more, if you
need it for the volume of the sound.
| | 09:56 | Now, let's move over to
the next sound, which is U.
| | 09:59 | (Character: U.)
| | 10:01 | So 'U' actually opens up a
little bit some more slowly.
| | 10:06 | This is one of the rare vowels
| | 10:07 | that doesn't open quickly and close slowly.
| | 10:10 | It's kind of has a soft open and a soft close.
| | 10:14 | But again, we start this exactly the same.
| | 10:18 | So we need to start from a neutral
position, and then here we need to go 'U'. So
| | 10:24 | with the E, it's almost
like an E and an O, E-oo, EU.
| | 10:30 | So I am going to start by taking my
Dialogue slider here, kind of a top-right
| | 10:37 | a little bit, which gives me kind of a smile,
and I'm going to open my jaw just a little bit. So--
| | 10:44 | (Character: U.)
| | 10:49 | Then as we go into 'oo', I am just
going to run this down the side and go
| | 10:55 | transition to an O sound. And as I do
that, I'm going to also select the Jaw
| | 11:01 | slider and zero that out.
| | 11:03 | (Character: U.)
| | 11:08 | That works pretty well, and again,
let's go out beyond the end of it, somewhere
| | 11:11 | around frame 118, 119,
and let's zero that out as well.
| | 11:18 | So, let's play this.
| | 11:21 | (Character: U, U.)
| | 11:23 | Okay, we can do this a little bit longer.
| | 11:27 | So we can actually open this mouth up a
little bit more and maybe try and get
| | 11:32 | a little bit more smile there. There we go.
Top-right. There we go.
| | 11:35 | (Character: U, U.)
| | 11:44 | That should be better.
| | 11:45 | (Character: U, U, U, U.)
| | 11:50 | So remember, U is almost like E and 'oo', E-U.
| | 11:54 | You want to start a little bit with the
teeth showing and then end up with kind
| | 11:58 | of that pursed lips.
| | 12:01 | Now, the last one is the sometimes Y. So
I am going to scroll over here, and let's
| | 12:06 | go ahead and play the Y.
| | 12:07 | (Character: Y, Y.)
| | 12:11 | It starts slow and ends slow,
| | 12:13 | so it's more of a soft vowel.
| | 12:16 | So it goes 'oo', I. Okay, 'oo', I.
It's almost 'oo' and I. Okay, so let's
| | 12:23 | start those with an 'oo'.
| | 12:25 | But before we start, we need to
just actually start with nothing.
| | 12:28 | So I'm going to go ahead and select all of the
lower face, go right where this sound starts.
| | 12:33 | You can even see it here at
frame 126 and set some keyframes.
| | 12:39 | Now we want to make sure
we get into an 'oo' sound,
| | 12:42 | so I am going to go ahead and dial that
in, and you notice how it kind of ramps
| | 12:46 | up to about frame 130.
| | 12:52 | Then it goes into an I. So you need
to open the jaw and kind of move the
| | 13:01 | Dialogue slider, so I'm
starting to get kind of an 'I' sound.
| | 13:05 | Okay, so I think I'm actually going to make
this 'oo' sound come in a little bit closer.
| | 13:12 | So we're going to select the one I had at 130.
| | 13:14 | Let's move it back to 129, and also
notice here the jaw is actually in-betweening 126 and 133.
| | 13:26 | But this actually is not working for me,
because what's happening is that this
| | 13:30 | jaw is opening on this 'oo' sound.
| | 13:33 | So we want to make sure that that is
at 0 when this is at maximum 'oo'.
| | 13:39 | Okay, so that would be at frame 129.
| | 13:41 | So I will make sure that Jaw is at 0
and that this Dialogue one is at bottom-
| | 13:48 | right, which is 1, -1. So let's see how this works.
| | 13:51 | (Character: Y.)
| | 13:54 | So, then as this comes in, we're going
to go ahead over to more of an 'E' sound
| | 14:00 | and then close this.
| | 14:02 | (Character: Y.)
| | 14:05 | Then we can go beyond the end here,
somewhere around 144, and let's go ahead and
| | 14:10 | zero everything out.
| | 14:12 | Make sure that we've got a neutral position.
| | 14:15 | So let's play this.
| | 14:16 | (Character: Y, Y, Y.)
| | 14:21 | Okay, that looks pretty good.
| | 14:22 | So these are just general rules
of thumb for each of the vowels.
| | 14:26 | Of course, as your characters speak,
they may have different inflections or
| | 14:32 | different moods, so your vowels
will have to adapt accordingly.
| | 14:35 | But let's go ahead and just play all
of this and just get a general sense of
| | 14:40 | how these vowels are constructed.
| | 14:41 | (Character: A, E, I, O, U, Y!)
| | 14:48 | Okay, so those are pretty good.
| | 14:50 | Now I've just done this very, very quickly.
| | 14:52 | You can certainly tweak these a little bit more.
| | 14:55 | But this is just general rules of
thumb for how to animate vowels.
| | 15:00 | So go ahead and go through this track
and animate them yourself, get the feel
| | 15:06 | for how to animate each of the vowels,
and then let's go ahead and we'll move
| | 15:11 | on to the consonants next.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating consonants: B, D, and G| 00:00 | Once you understand how to animate
vowel sounds, we can move on to consonants.
| | 00:06 | So let's take a look at
some very simple cases here.
| | 00:09 | I have got a very simple piece of dialog.
| | 00:12 | So let's listen to it.
| | 00:13 | (Character: B, D, G, F, M, so, no.)
| | 00:21 | So let's go ahead and
work on these one at a time.
| | 00:23 | So I am going to zoom in, and let's
go through this very first one here.
| | 00:28 | So this is--
(Character: B.)
| | 00:29 | B. So B starts with a
letter B, which is a closed-mouth sound.
| | 00:37 | So the thing about consonants is you do
need to have that shape before the mouth opens.
| | 00:44 | So in this case, the mouth is opening
somewhere around frame 3, so I need to
| | 00:49 | make sure that the consonant is
visible for a few frames before that.
| | 00:55 | So that means in frames 1 and 2
that 'B' sounds needs to be there.
| | 01:01 | So let's go ahead and
start with a neutral position.
| | 01:04 | We are going to do the same
thing we did with the vowels.
| | 01:07 | So I am going to select all of this
lower face, set a keyframe here, move
| | 01:10 | forward to frame 1, and I am
going to grab that dialog slider.
| | 01:15 | That's going to be kind of the 'B' sound,
| | 01:16 | so I am just going to move it over
right about there. I just want to get
| | 01:20 | that closed-mouth shape.
| | 01:21 | Now if I want, I can actually use the
Jaw slider to even close that mouth a
| | 01:27 | little bit more. And again, I want
to make sure that that's in place,
| | 01:31 | so keyframe it again on frame 2,
so you can see I have got a bit of a
| | 01:36 | transition there, and then the mouth opens.
| | 01:39 | So within two frames, we are going to start
here and then the mouth is going to open into 'E'.
| | 01:45 | So 'E' is the Dialogue E plus the jaw open.
| | 01:51 | So let's play that.
(Character: B)
| | 01:54 | Okay, then of course we need to
close the sound. So we have got--
| | 01:57 | (Character: B.)
| | 01:59 | And so that closes down
by right around frame 16.
| | 02:02 | So I want to make sure my jaw closes
and then that Dialogue slider goes to 0.
| | 02:11 | (Character: B.)
| | 02:14 | Okay, if I want, I can keep this open a
little bit longer. So if I want, I can go
| | 02:18 | into this and make sure that maybe I
have my jaw opened just a little bit more,
| | 02:23 | and let's take at look what this looks like.
| | 02:25 | (Character: B, B, B.)
| | 02:29 | So what happens here is that because we
have tightened up the lips beforehand, it
| | 02:34 | accentuates the opening of that mouth,
and we are get a nice good pop open when we
| | 02:39 | do B. Okay, let's go on to
another consonant that ends in E and in this
| | 02:45 | case it's the letter D.
(Character: D)
| | 02:48 | Now with D, it's a little bit different.
| | 02:51 | We are not starting with closed lips;
| | 02:52 | we are starting with a slightly open mouth.
| | 02:54 | D is actually the tongue against the
back of the teeth, so the teeth actually
| | 02:59 | need to be a little bit visible.
| | 03:00 | So we are going to go to frame 30, and
we are going to start with our neutral
| | 03:04 | position, and I am going to select
all my lower face and set a keyframe.
| | 03:08 | Then I want to make sure I get a 'D'
sound, so I want to make sure I see the
| | 03:15 | teeth. So, again, that's going to be
this dialog slider here, so I am going to
| | 03:19 | bring it up here so I have the teeth
kind of showing, and as it goes into 'E',
| | 03:27 | we're pretty much there on the Dialogue slider.
| | 03:30 | All we have to do is just move
it over and then open the jaw.
| | 03:34 | But we want to make sure that the jaw
is closed when we have that 'D' sound.
| | 03:38 | So I am going to go back to 32, make
sure that the jaw is at 0, and then come
| | 03:43 | out to 34, and open.
(Character: D.)
| | 03:50 | And then we can play with this a
little bit, and then we can close it out.
| | 03:56 | So again, I am going to zero out my dialog
and my Jaw slider somewhere around frame 48.
| | 04:03 | So let's take a look at this.
(Character: D, D, D.)
| | 04:07 | So with D, and lot of other vowels,
you want to show teeth just a little bit
| | 04:12 | before the mouth opens.
| | 04:15 | So D, T is another good one, so
those kind of show a little bit of teeth
| | 04:20 | before the mouth opens.
| | 04:22 | Now another one very similar one is G.
But G has a little bit of a pursed mouth to it.
| | 04:28 | It shows teeth, but the lips
are in a slightly different shape.
| | 04:32 | So if you have G, so let's take
and listen to this sound of G.
| | 04:37 | (Character: G, G.)
| | 04:40 | Okay, now with G, you have got a
little bit of sound here coming out. Then it
| | 04:48 | goes into E. So we are actually going
to start this at frame 63 or so. So I am
| | 04:54 | going to go to a frame before that, to frame 62,
start it in a neutral position, then
| | 05:00 | go to frame 64, and I want to get that 'G' sound.
| | 05:05 | It's almost more of a pursed-lip sound.
| | 05:07 | So for D, you get kind of this.
| | 05:10 | But for G, you would actually get,
this is actually the 'sh' slider, but this
| | 05:17 | actually gives a pretty
good representation of that.
| | 05:20 | You could actually combine this a
little bit, somewhere around there.
| | 05:24 | So you can see we get a little of this
kind of pursed-lip action and then maybe
| | 05:30 | add in a little more smile
from this Dialogue slider,
| | 05:35 | a little bit more teeth smile.
| | 05:38 | And then it goes into, again, an E. So
here I want to make sure my SH goes to
| | 05:44 | zero and then again we are going to go
into an E, and then I am going to push
| | 05:49 | this Dialogue slider all
the over and open up that jaw.
| | 05:55 | But again, I've got this jaw opening, so
I want to make sure that I keep that jaw
| | 05:59 | closed until that 'G' sound is open.
(Character: G.)
| | 06:06 | And then again, we can just close this out.
| | 06:11 | So let's go ahead and play this.
| | 06:13 | (Character: G, G, G, G.)
| | 06:18 | So these are thee basic vowel sounds.
| | 06:20 | So we have 'B', which is lips closed; 'D',
which is teeth exposed; 'G', which is teeth
| | 06:30 | exposed with a little bit of a lip shape.
| | 06:32 | So let's go ahead and play all these
three, and then in the next lesson, we will
| | 06:36 | move on to the rest of these.
| | 06:39 | (Character: B, D, G, B, D, G.)
| | 06:45 | So you can see they are slightly
different, but each one has their own
| | 06:49 | individual character.
| | 06:51 | Now again, your character may speak a
little bit differently. Different shapes
| | 06:54 | may work better or worse for your character.
| | 06:57 | So just play around with these and
see if you can get some really good
| | 07:00 | mouth shapes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating consonants: F, M, and S| 00:00 | So now that we've animated some
consonants, let's move on to ones where the
| | 00:03 | consonant is after the vowel, such
as F and M, as well as other types of
| | 00:09 | consonants, such as S. So we have got some
additional ones at the end of the scene,
| | 00:14 | so let's take a look at these.
| | 00:16 | Starting around at frame 85
or so is the rest of these.
| | 00:19 | (Character: F, M, so, no.)
| | 00:24 | So let's go ahead and animate these,
| | 00:26 | zoom in, frame 84 or so,
and then zoom in here frame 108, 109,
| | 00:34 | somewhere around there.
| | 00:35 | So let's go ahead and play this.
| | 00:37 | (Character: F.)
| | 00:38 | So this is F. Typically, that starts
with a short vowel, such as 'ah', 'eh' and then
| | 00:44 | goes into this 'F' sound.
| | 00:46 | Now, this is the slider that we need to play with,
| | 00:48 | so let's go ahead and see what this does.
| | 00:50 | Okay, so we have to incorporate this somehow.
| | 00:53 | So we're going to start at frame 91
and then by frame 93, we are going to
| | 01:00 | be into the 'eh' sound.
| | 01:01 | So that can just be the jaw open.
(Character: eh)
| | 01:07 | Open that jaw up a little bit, and now
we need to transition into this F sound.
| | 01:12 | But we want to make sure that that jaw is
open, so I don't have a keyframe for the F yet.
| | 01:17 | So I want to make sure I set one at 93,
and then over the course of two frames, I
| | 01:23 | am going to close this jaw.
| | 01:24 | So I am going to zero that out
and then dial in the F sound.
| | 01:31 | So what I am doing is I am going
over two frames from this to that.
| | 01:39 | (Character: F.)
| | 01:41 | Okay, so then once we have done that, we
can fade it out by bringing that slider
| | 01:47 | to 0 sometime after this end.
| | 01:50 | So let's see how this works.
| | 01:52 | (Character: F, F, F.)
| | 01:55 | Okay, that looks pretty good.
| | 01:57 | Okay, so let's go on to something very
similar, and this is M. So let's listen to this.
| | 02:04 | (Character: M, M.)
| | 02:06 | So, again, we're going to start with the 'eh'.
| | 02:08 | So I am going to go to frame
115 or so, and start with neutral.
| | 02:15 | So I am just setting a keyframe to
neutral. And then I am going to go two
| | 02:19 | frames in, so 115 to 117, and again I am just
going to open the jaw a bit to get that 'eh' sound.
| | 02:30 | So the M comes in by about 120.
| | 02:34 | So again, one easy way of doing
the M is just to close the mouth.
| | 02:40 | So what I can do is I can
just, say around 120, 121,
| | 02:44 | I can just zero out that mouth.
(Character: M.)
| | 02:48 | But that doesn't really give me a
convincing M. What I can do though is I can
| | 02:53 | actually use another blend shape or
whatever I'm using to get more of a tighter
| | 03:00 | lip, almost the same as we did with that
B. So I am going to go to this Dialogue
| | 03:04 | slider and I want to set a
keyframe when the mouth is open.
| | 03:09 | So when that jaw is open, it's open at 117.
| | 03:12 | So I am going to go over to this Dialogue
slider, set a keyframe at 117 so that it's at 0.
| | 03:19 | As that mouth closes, I want that to
kind of tighten up, so now it's got--
| | 03:24 | (Character: M.)
| | 03:26 | Okay, so now we have got that 'mm' sound, and
so we've got the lips a little bit tighter.
| | 03:32 | But also notice that the 'M' sound.
| | 03:34 | It can be a long vowel.
| | 03:36 | Some vowels such as T or D, they are
just pretty much a short length, but M, you
| | 03:41 | can do that for a very long time.
| | 03:42 | You go 'mm' and make a really long M sound,
so we need to understand how long this is.
| | 03:48 | So let's play this through.
| | 03:49 | (Character: M.)
| | 03:52 | Notice how it goes 'em', 'ah'.
| | 03:55 | So, there is actually a mouth
open right here at frame 125.
| | 04:04 | So, what we want to do is go to 125,
continue this, and again zero out that jaw,
| | 04:12 | so this is where he does the 'mm' sound.
(Character: M.)
| | 04:19 | Then he does the 'ah', so then we can open up
the mouth a little bit and then zero out
| | 04:26 | that Dialogue slider.
(Character: M.)
| | 04:27 | Then close the jaw.
| | 04:40 | Let's see what we have here.
| | 04:43 | (Character: M, M.)
| | 04:47 | So that works pretty well.
| | 04:48 | So the M since we have exaggerated
it here, it reads very strongly from a
| | 04:53 | visual context, and then we have a
little bit of an open mouth to give that 'ah'.
| | 04:59 | And I don't even need to open it that
much, but I do want to see a little bit of
| | 05:02 | space between those teeth.
| | 05:04 | (Character: M, M.)
| | 05:07 | And that works for that.
| | 05:08 | Now, the last one I want to show you
is the S, which is something you'll
| | 05:11 | encounter a lot in animation.
| | 05:13 | I want to make sure that you understand
some of the mechanics of animating the
| | 05:19 | letter S. So with S, again, it's
like M; it can go on forever.
| | 05:24 | So like with an M, you can
go 'mm', then S you can go 'ss'.
| | 05:27 | Okay, so you can do that for a very long time.
| | 05:30 | So if we play this, let's see what we've got.
| | 05:33 | (Character: So.)
| | 05:34 | So we have got a couple of frames of--
So, from 138 to about frame 144, we have
| | 05:45 | got S, and then we have got O. So
let's go start at this before 138.
| | 05:51 | So, I am going to start at
137 and set everything up.
| | 05:59 | Then by about frame 140,
that S can be really heard,
| | 06:03 | so let's go ahead and dial in an S sound.
| | 06:06 | So I am going to use my Dialogue slider
and get that kind of teeth open, and
| | 06:15 | then we're going into S to O.
So somewhere around 143 or 144, I want to make
| | 06:25 | sure I still have a keyframe for this.
So now I am going to have to open my
| | 06:28 | character's mouth and make him say
the letter O. So I am going to go to my Jaw
| | 06:35 | slider. Make sure I have a keyframe there.
| | 06:38 | Now, I want to understand
where that mouth is open the most.
| | 06:40 | It's going to be open here at 145.
| | 06:42 | You can even see it.
(Character: So.)
| | 06:46 | So I want to make sure I get into an 'O' shape, O,
here, but I also want to open my jaw a bit.
| | 06:59 | (Character: So.)
| | 07:01 | Then the 'O' goes into the 'oo',
and then that jaw closes down.
| | 07:10 | So I am going to keep it in that 'O'
shape until almost the end, and then I am
| | 07:15 | going to fade it out at
the very end by typing in 0.
| | 07:18 | So let's see what we have.
| | 07:19 | (Character: So, so, so.)
| | 07:23 | Okay, there is a bit of a hop there.
| | 07:25 | Let's see what we have got.
| | 07:26 | Okay, right there you can see how this
Dialogue slider is moving over, and I
| | 07:33 | want to keep it there on
that S. Let's try that again.
| | 07:37 | (Character: So.)
There we go!
| | 07:40 | Okay, let's try that again.
Let's see how that plays.
| | 07:42 | (Character: So, so, so.)
Okay, there is a bit of a hop here, too.
| | 07:48 | Okay, so again, I want to make sure that
that Dialogue slider is at the bottom corner
| | 07:57 | when it does that 'oo'.
(Character: So.)
| | 07:58 | I am going to see how this works.
| | 08:09 | (Character: So, so.)
| | 08:11 | So by now, you've gotten used to
animating consonants and vowels at the same time.
| | 08:17 | So now that we have a little bit of
practice in this, let's go ahead and move on
| | 08:20 | to actually animating some dialog.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating lip sync: Assigning phonemes| 00:00 | So now let's go ahead and use the
knowledge we've gained to actually animate a
| | 00:05 | full line of dialog.
| | 00:06 | Now, I have a file here called
Pancakes, so let me go ahead and play this
| | 00:09 | dialog, and you'll see why.
| | 00:11 | (Character: I've sworn off pancakes.
I'm having French toast instead.)
| | 00:17 | Okay, so that's a very simple line of dialog.
| | 00:20 | So let's go ahead and start working our
way through this and actually assigning
| | 00:24 | phonemes to the sound.
| | 00:27 | So the first thing we want to do is we
want to work on this a bit at a time.
| | 00:30 | I notice there is a big space here
around 45, and so let's go ahead and zoom in
| | 00:35 | so that we can actually see this
timeline a little bit more clearly.
| | 00:39 | So let's go ahead and focus on the first word.
| | 00:42 | So of course, it starts at silence,
which means we can select our starting face,
| | 00:47 | or starting expression.
| | 00:49 | In this case, I'm just going to do a
neutral expression, but we can certainly
| | 00:53 | change that if we want to make
him look more surprised or whatever.
| | 00:56 | So let's go ahead and select all of the
lower face sliders, and hit S to set a keyframe.
| | 01:04 | So now let's go ahead and scrub through this.
| | 01:07 | Okay, so you notice the first bit of sound
starts at 3, and this first word is 'I've'.
| | 01:13 | (Character: I've.)
Okay, so let's take a look at this.
| | 01:19 | The I starts at 3, and the V, it comes
in right towards the end, right around 6.
| | 01:26 | So let's go ahead and dial in the 'I'. We
can do that simply by selecting this Jaw
| | 01:32 | slider and opening up the jaw.
| | 01:33 | Now, remember the 'I' is kind of more like
an 'IE'. But in this case, it's going to
| | 01:39 | be an 'IV', as in Victor, so we're just
going to go from a wide-open mouth to a V.
| | 01:46 | So we're going to go--
(Character: I've)
| | 01:48 | So here we need to go to the 'V' shape,
which is pretty much the same as that 'F' shape.
| | 01:53 | So first thing I'm going to do is 0 my jaw
and go ahead and set a keyframe at frame 6,
| | 01:59 | close it down, and then I'm going to
dial up the F slider, so that we get a
| | 02:07 | nice strong 'F' shape.
| | 02:12 | One of the things you're going to
notice here is that because I set a key at 6,
| | 02:16 | I also have a key at 1 for this F slider.
| | 02:19 | There's nothing in between this.
| | 02:21 | So it's already starting to in-between
that F. You can see here, it's starting to
| | 02:27 | move even at frame 2.
| | 02:30 | So what we want to do is make
sure that that goes back to 0.
| | 02:34 | We want to make sure that the I is pure,
or basically we have that open mouth is
| | 02:39 | without any hint of that F,
because it will be stronger.
| | 02:42 | (Character: I've.)
| | 02:44 | And then as it comes down, it
morphs into the F. So now we have--
| | 02:50 | (Character: I've.)
| | 02:53 | Now the next vowel is S, so it's I've
sworn off pancakes, so it's going to be
| | 02:59 | "I've 'S'." So the next vowel
comes in right around 8.
| | 03:03 | So what we need to do is take out the
F. I'm going to slide this down to 0.
| | 03:10 | In fact, I can just type in the number;
| | 03:12 | I'm going to slide this down to 0.
| | 03:14 | And then I'm going to start bringing
in the S sound, and I'm going to do that
| | 03:21 | using this Dial slider.
| | 03:23 | But notice we have the same problem we
had with the 'V' sound and this F slider,
| | 03:27 | which is there's nothing keeping
this at 0 until we get to frame 8.
| | 03:34 | So if I were to put this into
kind of at the start of an S,
| | 03:38 | we'd already have it here at 6,
and you can see that, again, we've got these
| | 03:46 | teeth showing, so we really don't want that.
| | 03:48 | So I want to make sure
that that's at 0 here at 6.
| | 03:52 | So now what we want to do is accentuate
that S a little bit, so I'm just going
| | 03:58 | to move this over a little bit more.
| | 04:01 | And now the next vowel is going to
be a W, or an 'oo' sound, so sworn.
| | 04:06 | So as we go into --
| | 04:10 | you can hear the--
| | 04:12 | S, S, S, right there at 11 it starts
to change, and it's full on by frame 12.
| | 04:20 | So what I need to do here is bring
this Dial slider all the way down here.
| | 04:26 | Now the one thing that you're going to
notice here is that there is going to
| | 04:29 | be an in-betweening problem because this
is just going to be sliding straight across.
| | 04:32 | So you can notice how it kind of closes,
and so it doesn't really give a proper
| | 04:39 | in-between, so we may have to
do this one a frame at a time.
| | 04:42 | So I'm going to go from this to this,
and at frame 9, I'm going to open this up
| | 04:48 | a little bit, and then we should have that.
| | 04:53 | Now remember this is a W, so it
starts with a closed 'oo' and it opens up.
| | 04:59 | Okay, so we're going to open this up
right around frame 14, and of course with
| | 05:05 | this, we can also open up the jaw.
| | 05:08 | So again, we have the same problem
here with the jaw, which is, we don't have
| | 05:13 | any keyframes for it.
| | 05:14 | I need to make sure that it's at 0 at
frame 12, and then when I go to frame 14,
| | 05:20 | is when I open this up.
| | 05:21 | So it's only going to in-between
over these two frames, not from frame 6.
| | 05:26 | (Character: I've sworn.)
So now the next vowel is N.
| | 05:33 | So an N is kind of an open consonant
sound, so we can actually bring this all
| | 05:38 | the way here, all the way up. So I'm
going to grab the Dial slider and just
| | 05:42 | bring it up to the top right
corner and then close down the jaw.
| | 05:46 | In fact, if I want to, I can 0 that out.
| | 05:48 | That encloses it a little too much, so
let's go ahead and open it up a little bit.
| | 05:51 | So now we've got--
| | 05:52 | (Character: I've sworn.)
| | 05:54 | Sworn, and then again, we have 'off', which
is basically back to where we were at 14.
| | 06:00 | So I need to again bring this into an 'oo'.
| | 06:04 | (Character: Sworn off.)
| | 06:10 | And then we go into an F. So again,
what we need to do here is get rid of this,
| | 06:15 | so bring that Dialogue slider to 0.
| | 06:17 | So I'm going to go ahead and just type
those numbers in here, just zero that out,
| | 06:24 | and then I'm going to bring up the F again.
| | 06:27 | But remember, we need to start at 0.
| | 06:30 | If I start this in here, it's going to
be in-betweening from 8, so I'm going to
| | 06:33 | go back about two frames, make sure I
set a keyframe for it, then go to 23, and
| | 06:40 | again make that off sound.
| | 06:41 | But again, I've got the jaw.
| | 06:43 | Notice how the jaw is still open.
| | 06:45 | So let's go ahead and close the jaw as well.
| | 06:50 | (Character: Sworn off.)
| | 06:57 | So I'm going to close that, and
it needs to be closed by frame 23.
| | 07:00 | (Character: Sworn off.)
| | 07:08 | So here at frame 20, 21, I think at 21 we still need
to have it a little bit more of an O shape, so here we go.
| | 07:17 | (Character: I've sworn off.)
That looks good.
| | 07:20 | I've sworn off.
| | 07:22 | Now we need to go to P for pancakes.
| | 07:26 | Again, what we need to do is have a
closed-mouth sound, so I'm going to bring my
| | 07:31 | F slider to 0 at frame 25.
| | 07:35 | I want to close this off
before I start the P sound.
| | 07:39 | And then at frame 26, I
want to get that tight lip.
| | 07:42 | So I'm going to bring my Dial in a little
bit like this, so somewhere around here.
| | 07:52 | I just want to make sure that those lips
look like they are kind of tightened up.
| | 07:57 | But again, I'm getting a little bit of
an in-between here, so I want to make
| | 08:00 | sure that I still keep that at
0 for a couple of frames before.
| | 08:06 | And now we've got P. In fact, if I want,
I can take this Jaw slider and kind of
| | 08:11 | smash it down a little bit, so I
can close those jaws a little bit.
| | 08:14 | And then we're going from the
letter P into the letter A, pancakes.
| | 08:19 | So you can see how the dialog is growing here.
| | 08:21 | Pan. This is mostly A and then N, cakes.
| | 08:27 | Okay, so you can see the A is kind of
coming up here right around frame 28.
| | 08:35 | So again, all we need to do for that is to
drop the jaw and zero out that Dialogue slider.
| | 08:43 | So now we've got --
| | 08:54 | Okay, so N. N is kind of almost like that, so--
| | 08:59 | (Character: Pancake.)
| | 09:02 | And then A again, K--
| | 09:10 | And then if want a S, we can
actually bring that in on the Dial slider.
| | 09:15 | But again, we need to make sure that
we zero it out before we bring it in, so at
| | 09:18 | frame 37, I'm going to zero the Dial
slider, and then bring it into more of an
| | 09:24 | 'S' shape, and then make sure that my jaw is at 0.
| | 09:29 | (Character: cakes.)
| | 09:30 | Okay, and then once we have that,
we can close everything out.
| | 09:39 | So I'm going to zero out my Jaw
and zero out my Dialogue slider.
| | 09:45 | So let's go ahead and play this.
| | 09:47 | (Character: I've sworn off pancakes.
I've sworn off pancakes. I've sworn off pancakes.)
| | 09:53 | So that looks pretty good.
| | 09:55 | As you can see, it's just a very simple process.
| | 09:57 | I'm going to leave the last half of
this for you to animate, and then we're
| | 10:02 | going to come back and I'll show you
what I've done, and you can compare that
| | 10:05 | to what you've done.
| | 10:06 | The process is really very simple.
| | 10:08 | Just read the track, understand where
the phonemes are lying, and make sure you
| | 10:13 | get your dialog to match.
| | 10:16 | Some rules of thumb are make sure that
each shape is at least two frames long.
| | 10:20 | If it's shorter than that, the
mouth is going to appear to stutter.
| | 10:24 | So try and keep every shape on
for around two frames at least.
| | 10:27 | Of course, if there is a longer
vowel, you can go longer with that.
| | 10:31 | And also, there may be times where the
dialog is faster than one phoneme per frame.
| | 10:37 | In that case, you just need to approximate.
| | 10:39 | So go ahead and work
through the rest of this track.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating lip sync: The head| 00:00 | So now at this point you should
have animated the entire dialog line.
| | 00:04 | So what we're going to do in this lesson
is we're going to take the dialog and
| | 00:08 | then we're going to add
some acting on top of it.
| | 00:11 | Now I have also animated the last half
of this dialog, and let's go ahead and
| | 00:16 | just take a look at what I have done.
| | 00:17 | (Character: I've sworn off pancakes.
I'm having French toast instead.)
| | 00:23 | Now this computer doesn't play exactly
real-time, so let me scrub through this a
| | 00:28 | frame at a time just so you
can kind of see what I've done.
| | 00:30 | (Character: I'm having French toast instead.)
| | 00:37 | Now your animation may be similar, it
may be a little bit different, but the
| | 00:40 | most important thing is
that it looks good to the eye.
| | 00:43 | Dialogue animation, there is some science.
| | 00:45 | There is some art to it, so there is
room for interpretation, but regardless, the
| | 00:50 | next step for this is to
actually bring the character to life.
| | 00:54 | All we've animated is his mouth.
| | 00:55 | We haven't animated the entire character.
| | 00:58 | We need to animate the body,
the head, the eyes, and so on.
| | 01:02 | So the first thing I want to do is
get an idea as to what I want to do
| | 01:05 | acting-wise for this character.
| | 01:07 | One of the things I like to do is I
like to move the character's head to
| | 01:11 | the beat of the dialog.
| | 01:13 | Now I think we can also add a
little bit of acting to this to make the
| | 01:16 | whole scene read better.
| | 01:18 | So let's go ahead and play this, and
let's play it with the intention of
| | 01:22 | understanding how the
character is going to move.
| | 01:24 | (Character: I've sworn off pancakes.
I'm having French toast instead.)
| | 01:29 | One of the big concepts in this
is that he's sworn off pancakes.
| | 01:32 | That's a negative connotation.
That means he is shaking his head.
| | 01:36 | And actually, I think that would help
to sell this little bit of dialog is to
| | 01:39 | have him kind of shake his head
no as he says the word 'sworn off'.
| | 01:44 | Let's go ahead and animate his head.
| | 01:46 | So I'm going to select the head
control here, and I'm going to set a keyframe.
| | 01:50 | Now we need to understand where
exactly he is going to shake his head.
| | 01:58 | (Character: I've sworn off.)
| | 01:58 | So sworn off, somewhere
around 10 to 20 is he is saying--
| | 02:02 | (Character: sworn off.)
| | 02:05 | Okay, so we want to start him
moving somewhere in this range.
| | 02:10 | I'm going to go ahead and keep him
centered until about frame 6, and then at
| | 02:17 | frame 10, I'm going to rotate his head
over a little bit. And then when you rotate
| | 02:23 | the head, a lot of times it's best, for a
more natural pose, just to kind of tilt it
| | 02:27 | a little bit like that.
| | 02:29 | So that gets his head ready to swing
the other direction, which is where he is
| | 02:35 | going to say the word, or he is
basically mimicking the word 'no'.
| | 02:49 | (Character: I've sworn off.)
| | 02:50 | So what we have here is a classic head-turn.
| | 02:53 | So in the middle of this, between 10 and 20,
what do we do in the middle of a head-turn?
| | 02:58 | We dip the chin.
| | 03:00 | This will, again, add a little bit more realism.
| | 03:01 | (Character: I've sworn off.)
| | 03:04 | And then we also need to
kind of return him to center.
| | 03:07 | So what I'm going to do is go a little
few frames out, say around frame 30 or so,
| | 03:12 | and let's go ahead and
just center him a little bit.
| | 03:15 | (Character: I've sworn off.)
| | 03:19 | So here at frame 6, I'm actually
going to lift his chin just a little bit.
| | 03:22 | (Character: I've sworn off pancakes.)
| | 03:30 | And then somewhere around frame--right
towards the end of this, I'm going to
| | 03:33 | just go ahead and move the head just a
little bit, just to give him a little bit of life.
| | 03:36 | Again, this is almost like a blink or
something where you just keep--it's
| | 03:40 | almost like a moving hold, actually.
| | 03:41 | (Character: I've sworn off pancakes.)
| | 03:44 | Now one of the things is that as the
character turns his head, typically what
| | 03:49 | happens is that the character will blink.
| | 03:54 | So let's go ahead and add in a blink.
| | 03:58 | So this kind of starts somewhere around frame 6.
| | 04:01 | This is where he starts to
turn his head into the head-turn.
| | 04:05 | So at this point, I want to make
sure that I get an open-eye keyframe.
| | 04:11 | So I'm going to select the upper and
lower lids here and hit S to set a keyframe.
| | 04:17 | I'm also going to go back to
frame 1 and set a keyframe for that.
| | 04:20 | As the character moves into this head-shake, he
is going to blink. So a blink is about 6 frames.
| | 04:30 | So I'm going to go ahead and go 6
frames in, so frame 6+6 is 12, drop his lids
| | 04:37 | here, bring his lower lids up.
| | 04:41 | (Character: I've sworn off.)
| | 04:47 | Now one of the things is, I would
like to actually keep his eyes closed
| | 04:50 | through most of this.
| | 04:51 | This will actually add a little bit of emphasis.
| | 04:53 | So what I can do is just select again
both lids and just hit a keyframe again, so
| | 04:59 | I'm keyframing this at
somewhere around 12 and 18.
| | 05:03 | And then again, 6 frames to open, so at
frame 24, I want to make sure they're open.
| | 05:08 | Well, I know I already have a keyframe
with the eyes open here at frame 6, so
| | 05:13 | I'm just going to copy and paste that.
| | 05:15 | So copy and paste that to
frame 24. So now we've got--
| | 05:22 | (Character: I've sworn off pancakes.)
| | 05:26 | which is really good.
| | 05:27 | Okay, so this works really well.
| | 05:29 | Then the thing I like to do is once I
start with the blink, I like to just kind
| | 05:33 | of toss in a few other blinks
just to keep the character alive.
| | 05:38 | Now one of the places I typically like to toss
in a blink is where there is a break in dialog.
| | 05:43 | This will keep the character alive.
| | 05:46 | So we have a nice little break here,
somewhere around frame 42 to frame 50, so
| | 05:50 | we can put in another blink there.
| | 05:52 | The easiest way to do this is
to just start copying keyframes.
| | 05:56 | So I've got a keyframe here at
frame 24 with the eyes open, so let's go
| | 06:01 | ahead and paste that.
| | 06:02 | I've got another one here at frame 12
with the eyes closed, so I can copy that.
| | 06:09 | Let's go to frame 48, paste that.
| | 06:15 | Okay, so six down. And then we can
open them up again, so I can copy the one at
| | 06:20 | 42, and let's open them up a little
bit more quickly, so I've got at 48.
| | 06:25 | Let's do open in 4 and do that at 52.
| | 06:29 | So now I have a complete blink
here, so let's take a look at this.
| | 06:32 | (Character: I've sworn off pancakes.
I'm having French toast instead.)
| | 06:33 | Okay, so I want to add one more blink
here, and I think the best place to put a
| | 06:41 | blink is right before the word
'instead'. I am having French toast instead.
| | 06:47 | So that's actually kind of an emphasis,
so I think I'm going to need a blink there.
| | 06:51 | So let me go ahead and select all these,
copy them, so I'm actually selecting
| | 06:57 | all of the frames for that blink,
and then I'm going to copy, go to about
| | 07:03 | frame 80 and paste.
| | 07:06 | Actually I think I want to
move those over just a little bit.
| | 07:12 | I want his eyes to close on the word instead.
| | 07:21 | So let's go ahead right around here.
| | 07:23 | (Character: I'm having French toast instead.)
| | 07:25 | So that works pretty good, but now
we still need to finish up the head.
| | 07:28 | We need to animate a
little bit more of the head.
| | 07:31 | Now one of things when you animate the
head is, a lot of times when the mouth is
| | 07:34 | open, the head will tilt back to open the throat.
| | 07:38 | So one of the things you can do to
give a little bit more of a realistic head
| | 07:42 | motion is tilt the head back a little
bit as the character opens his mouth, so
| | 07:47 | let's go through and do some of that.
| | 07:52 | So one of things I do like to do is to
make sure that I just kind of work with
| | 07:56 | the head a little bit. And sometimes
when I open the mouth, or when I tilt the
| | 08:01 | head back, I want to make sure I tilt it
forward beforehand to make sure that we
| | 08:05 | have a little bit more room to tilt it back.
| | 08:09 | So when it goes 'I'm', you want to kind
of tilt that head back a little bit so
| | 08:14 | that he has more room.
| | 08:15 | It's almost like he is singing.
| | 08:17 | You can see if I do it really extreme, he
has this kind of tilted-back motion here.
| | 08:23 | But we don't want to tilt back that much, just
enough to give a hint that it's doing this.
| | 08:30 | In fact, I can probably
move this a little bit more.
| | 08:33 | (Character: I'm having French.)
I think we do that for French.
| | 08:38 | Toast is the next one.
| | 08:40 | And so we've got the eyes closed on
'instead', and so I want to make that a little
| | 08:44 | bit more of a broader motion.
| | 08:45 | I'm going to tilt that back a little
bit and then just return him to kind of a
| | 08:50 | neutral position by the end of this.
| | 08:51 | So this is just the head.
| | 08:54 | Okay, so this is just the head and the eyes.
| | 08:56 | (Character: I've sworn off pancakes.
I'm having French toast instead.)
| | 09:00 | (Character: I've sworn off pancakes.
I'm having French toast instead.)
| | 09:04 | Now we still need to
animate the body a little bit,
| | 09:10 | so let's go ahead and do
that in the next lesson.
| | 09:13 | So let's go ahead and
review what we've done here.
| | 09:15 | We've animated the head to indicate
the word 'no', when he says, "sworn off."
| | 09:20 | We've also animated the head to open up the
throat a little bit as he says the large vowels.
| | 09:26 | Now, typically when a character says the
large vowels the head will bob up just slightly.
| | 09:31 | Now I'm exaggerating this a little bit,
but you can be more subtle if you're
| | 09:35 | doing it for a more realistic character.
| | 09:38 | So keep these little tidbits in
mind as you animate your characters.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating lip sync: The body| 00:00 | So now let's go ahead and pick this up
where we left off and just animate the
| | 00:04 | rest of the character. So we're going to
animate the body of the character, just to give him a
| | 00:09 | little bit more life.
| | 00:10 | Now in a shot like this, where we're
actually just kind of giving a head-and-
| | 00:14 | shoulder shot of the character,
| | 00:16 | we don't have to worry too much about
the things that are off the screen, the
| | 00:20 | things that we don't see.
| | 00:21 | All we'd really need to do is give the
character a little bit of body motion,
| | 00:25 | just to understand that the
body is alive and that it's moving.
| | 00:29 | In the next chapter, we'll go
through full-body animation,
| | 00:32 | but for this we're just going to do just a
little bit, just to kind of give you a taste of it.
| | 00:36 | So first thing I want to do
is I need to select the body.
| | 00:39 | Now typically, for a shot like this,
I'm going to actually zoom in here, so I
| | 00:43 | just want to animate the hips of the
character to give him a little bit of
| | 00:47 | bounce in this shot.
| | 00:49 | One of the most important motions
in this is when he shakes his head.
| | 00:53 | Let's go ahead and play that.
| | 00:57 | (Character: I've sworn off.)
| | 00:59 | So in this we can actually add a little bit
of body motion to actually help sell that.
| | 01:05 | So I'm just going to select the hips,
and I am going to set a keyframe at 1.
| | 01:09 | Then I am going to go a little bit further in.
| | 01:13 | We want to anticipate that motion a
little bit, so I'm going to go ahead and
| | 01:17 | move him up just slightly.
| | 01:20 | Now what this does is it lifts his
shoulders, okay, so it's almost showing
| | 01:24 | like a shift of weight.
| | 01:26 | So as he comes down, I want to drop
those hips and maybe even rotate him
| | 01:34 | forward a little bit.
| | 01:35 | So I want to make sure I've got a
keyframe for rotation at frame 5 and then
| | 01:41 | maybe even just tilt him forward just a hair,
just to give him a little bit more life.
| | 01:46 | So let's go ahead and see what that looks like.
| | 01:49 | (Character: I've sworn off.)
| | 01:52 | Then we can again bring that back to 0.
In fact, we can type 0 into Rotate X
| | 01:57 | here and then just kind
of bring him back to normal.
| | 02:02 | So what we've done is we've dropped,
essentially, we've dropped the hips, which
| | 02:06 | makes it looks like he's doing
a little slight shift weight.
| | 02:09 | (Character: I've sworn off pancakes.)
| | 02:11 | That gives a much better sense of motion.
| | 02:14 | Let's go ahead and show this in full.
(Character: I've sworn off.)
| | 02:18 | That gives you a sense
that his whole body is moving.
| | 02:21 | (Character: I've sworn off pancakes.)
And let's go ahead and do this one more time.
| | 02:33 | So the next big one is 'French toast instead'.
| | 02:36 | I want to go ahead and accentuate that as well.
| | 02:39 | So I'm going move here to
right before he says 'instead',
| | 02:42 | somewhere around frames 75 or 76,
and again, I want to anticipate this,
| | 02:49 | so I'm going to go ahead and
set a keyframe here at frame 76.
| | 02:55 | Then as he says, "instead,"
I want to drop the hips.
| | 03:05 | And then as he says, "instead," I want
to bob him up a little bit and then
| | 03:10 | settle him back down.
| | 03:11 | So now we've got something like this.
| | 03:15 | (Character: I've sworn off pancakes.
I'm having French toast instead.)
| | 03:19 | So you see how he says--
(Character: toast instead.)
| | 03:24 | So that gives a much better sense of motion.
| | 03:27 | Now we can also do a little
bit of motion here in the middle.
| | 03:30 | So where he says, "I'm having,"
then we can also add a little bit of a
| | 03:40 | bump there as well. So let's go ahead.
| | 03:42 | We're at before frame 50, somewhere around
frame 46, and then we want to set a 0 point.
| | 03:51 | Then we want to anticipate this, by
moving it down, so at frame 48, I'm moving it
| | 03:57 | down, and then I want to pop him up
somewhere around frame 51 or frame 52, and
| | 04:04 | then again bring him back to 0
| | 04:06 | to kind of settle him back down.
| | 04:09 | Okay, so this is just rough,
but you get the idea here.
| | 04:17 | What I'm doing is I'm just giving a little
bit of body motion to accentuate the dialog.
| | 04:23 | It's the dialog that is
really driving this animation.
| | 04:26 | So let's go ahead and take one more look at it.
| | 04:29 | (Character: I've sworn off pancakes.
I'm having French toast instead. I've--)
| | 04:35 | So there we go. So we can continue to
fine-tune this and tweak this, but you
| | 04:40 | get the basic idea.
| | 04:42 | So the basic process for animating
this type of dialog is, we can do the mouth
| | 04:47 | and the lips first, then we need
to make sure we get the head motion,
| | 04:51 | then the body motion.
| | 04:52 | Now there are other ways to animate this
sort of dialog, but the goal here is to
| | 04:58 | show you that it's not
just getting the lips correct;
| | 05:01 | it's getting the entire character correct.
| | 05:04 | Okay, so go ahead and tweak your
animation and get something that looks good
| | 05:09 | to you.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
8. Animating a SceneCreating the main poses| 00:00 | In this last chapter,
we're going to work on acting.
| | 00:04 | What we're going to do is take a full
piece of dialog and animate the full
| | 00:08 | character acting to that dialog.
| | 00:12 | Now typically, we do this pose by pose.
| | 00:15 | When you read out a track in dialog,
what you want to do is get the basic poses
| | 00:20 | that the character will hit
at various points in the track.
| | 00:23 | So let's listen to the track that
we're going to use for this lesson.
| | 00:27 | (Character: Ha! It worked. Prepare to meet your doom!
Ha! It worked. Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 00:35 | So this track is fairly broad.
| | 00:37 | It's actually a little over the top.
| | 00:39 | So it will have some broad acting to go
with it, and this will be good because we
| | 00:44 | can actually see these points fairly clearly.
| | 00:47 | When you go through a track like this,
you want to understand exactly what the
| | 00:51 | character is doing at each individual point.
| | 00:55 | Now, you may listen to the track many
times and kind of act it out yourself.
| | 01:00 | I like to thumbnail-out poses; you
may want to work out the poses in Maya.
| | 01:04 | Whatever it takes to get a rough idea
as to what you want the character to do.
| | 01:09 | So let's go through this track a little
bit at a time to try and understand what
| | 01:13 | the mood of the character is
and what the major points are.
| | 01:16 | And then we'll look at some poses,
and then we'll move on from there.
| | 01:20 | So the first one is, well,
what is he doing before?
| | 01:23 | What is the moment before this track hits?
| | 01:27 | Well, obviously, he is looking at
something and reacting to something.
| | 01:31 | So in the very first frame we want
him to be kind of looking offscreen at
| | 01:36 | whatever it is that he is reacting
to, and then he's going to react.
| | 01:43 | So that's actually going to be a very
broad motion. He is going to be looking
| | 01:46 | and then he's going to react,
then he is going to say, "Ha!"
| | 01:49 | And then we have a little bit of a realization.
| | 01:53 | So he realizes that
whatever happened, it worked.
| | 01:57 | Okay, so he's going to get happy.
| | 01:59 | So he's going ha, react.
| | 02:01 | It worked, realization.
| | 02:03 | Then after that, he makes this declaration.
| | 02:06 | (Character: Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 02:09 | So with this, I would like to have at
least two major poses, which is, when he
| | 02:14 | says "prepare," I almost want him to be
declaring almost like he is in a speech.
| | 02:19 | Then when he says "doom," I like him to
actually point at the person he's threatening.
| | 02:24 | So with all that in mind I'm going to
show you very quickly what the poses are
| | 02:30 | that I think would work for this scene.
| | 02:31 | So I've just sketched these out on a
piece of paper and scanned them in.
| | 02:36 | So basically, he starts by looking offscreen.
| | 02:39 | He is kind of focusing intently on
something that's happening. Then he reacts.
| | 02:44 | He says, "Ha! It worked."
| | 02:46 | So now he is really happy.
| | 02:47 | So he has kind of got his hands up
to his chest, almost like he's proud.
| | 02:51 | Then he goes into this
declaration, "Prepare to meet your doom!"
| | 02:56 | And then when he has doom,
we're going to have him point.
| | 02:59 | So, however you get your poses, you
want to make sure that you have a pretty
| | 03:04 | clear roadmap as to what
you're going to do in the scene.
| | 03:08 | The next step after this is to actually
block out your poses and actually pose
| | 03:13 | your character for each
individual pose that you want in the scene.
| | 03:19 | Now, I've already done this just to save time.
| | 03:21 | We don't want to go through the
process of making all these poses.
| | 03:24 | We've been through posing
and the process of that before,
| | 03:27 | so I don't need to rehash all of that.
| | 03:29 | So let's just take a look at the
poses that I've created in Maya.
| | 03:33 | Now, this actually starts on frame 0,
but I've put the poses every 2 frames.
| | 03:39 | So here he is looking
offscreen, and he goes, "Ha!"
| | 03:43 | So basically, he just kind of comes up.
Then he says, "It worked. Prepare to meet your doom."
| | 03:51 | So all told, I think I
have about six poses in here.
| | 03:55 | Now this one I'm not going to use
because it's actually at frame 0, but I like
| | 03:58 | having that neutral pose at frame 0.
| | 04:02 | Then we've got a couple of different poses.
| | 04:04 | What I want you to do is to go
through the scene and block out your poses.
| | 04:09 | Now what I've done is I've blocked
these out just every couple of frames, so
| | 04:13 | then we'll actually time them against
the soundtrack to begin the animation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Blocking poses to dialogue| 00:00 | So, now once we have our poses blocked
out, we need to time them to the actual
| | 00:07 | soundtrack to create our animation.
| | 00:10 | Now, I've got this character in his basic poses.
| | 00:15 | So, if we scrub through, we can
see I have got a pose every two frames.
| | 00:19 | If we are going to start timing these
poses to the soundtrack, we need to be
| | 00:24 | able to select everything of the
character so we can select an entire pose.
| | 00:29 | We've done this before, where we've
actually created a MEL script, or a button on
| | 00:34 | a shelf using MEL scripting,
to create a Select All button.
| | 00:39 | Now, I have that right here, and
this actually selects everything in the
| | 00:43 | character. But let me show you how to do
this, just so we can refresh our memory.
| | 00:48 | I am in the Camera view, so it's
probably easier for me to go into another
| | 00:53 | view because I have locked off this camera.
Because we are actually acting to this camera,
| | 00:58 | I don't want to move that.
| | 00:59 | So, let's go into another view here,
and then I am just going to make it into
| | 01:04 | a perspective view.
| | 01:08 | Then I need to open the Script Editor,
so I am going to go to General Editors >
| | 01:13 | Script Editor, and let's go
ahead and play with this here.
| | 01:18 | And so what I need to do is select
everything in the character. So I just want
| | 01:24 | to Shift+Select all of the
objects that represent this character.
| | 01:35 | And I'm just going to work my
way through this fairly quickly.
| | 01:37 | I hope I don't miss anything, but we will see.
| | 01:42 | Try and get everything here. Get the
hands and then get the arms as well.
| | 01:49 | So, I should have everything.
| | 01:50 | Now, once I have everything selected,
you can see that everything is here in the
| | 01:56 | Script Editor. So I just need to go up
to where I started selecting and then
| | 02:00 | just highlight all of these and
then use this to save it to the shelf.
| | 02:05 | And then I can just do something like SelectALL.
| | 02:08 | And once, I have this button saved--I
am going to save it as MEL script here--
| | 02:13 | it makes it much easier to work with poses
because I can select the entire character.
| | 02:18 | So, go ahead and do that. Make sure
you have a button to select everything in
| | 02:23 | your character, and then we are going to go
through and actually time this to the soundtrack.
| | 02:29 | Right-click over the timeline, make sure
that the file Doom is activated, and the
| | 02:34 | waveform should show up in the timeline.
| | 02:37 | And if you have everything selected,
you should see some red ticks here on the
| | 02:40 | timeline that show you that
the poses are also animated.
| | 02:44 | Now, let's take a look at this
very quickly in the Animation Editor.
| | 02:49 | We are going to go into the Graph Editor.
| | 02:51 | Now, when I created the poses, I
created a keyframe for every part of the
| | 02:57 | character, and then what I did was I
went into the Graph Editor, I selected all
| | 03:06 | of these keys, and I set them to Step tangents.
| | 03:10 | Now, this is important because
this allows us to do our timing pass.
| | 03:15 | If I don't have Step tangents, if I
have some other form of tangent, what's
| | 03:20 | going to happen is that everything is
going to in-between as you scrub.
| | 03:25 | And I don't want that.
| | 03:26 | I just want to see that the poses
are hitting on the marks that I want.
| | 03:30 | So, in this case, I am going to go
ahead and make sure that it's Step tangents.
| | 03:33 | So, now let's go ahead
and start blocking this out.
| | 03:39 | The very first pose I have is kind of
this neutral pose, and I don't want that.
| | 03:43 | And actually, my animation starts at
frame 1, so I am just going to go ahead and
| | 03:47 | first off, just start this at frame one,
which kind of hides that initial pose.
| | 03:52 | So, the first thing I want to do is
select all of these keyframes, and let's go
| | 03:56 | ahead and get this one back to 1.
| | 03:58 | I am going to select everything
here and move it back one frame,
| | 04:03 | and that starts him at this pose where
he is kind of just looking off screen.
| | 04:08 | Now, the major pose is where he says, "Ha."
| | 04:13 | So, what I want to do is go ahead and
drag these so that I've got this pose
| | 04:18 | pretty much in the middle of where he says, "Ha."
| | 04:25 | And I'm suspecting it's
right around frame 8, so he goes.
| | 04:32 | The next major thing is where he says, "it."
| | 04:37 | When he says, "it," he is basically
anticipating the next pose, so it's actually
| | 04:41 | going to be, this second pose is going to be
it, and then the third pose is going to be work.
| | 04:48 | Let's go ahead and select
all and get those in place.
| | 04:50 | So, now I am going to slide the second
keyframe, which is now at frame 10, to frame 16.
| | 05:04 | And then the keyframe after that,
which is this kind of proud pose, I want
| | 05:08 | that to be at "worked."
| | 05:10 | You can even see the waveform, "it," "worked."
| | 05:13 | So, I am going to go ahead and slide
this keyframe over, somewhere around there,
| | 05:22 | and then the next major part of the
animation is where he says, "prepare."
| | 05:29 | So, we want this pose for where he says prepare.
| | 05:33 | So, I am going to put this key at
the beginning of where he says, "prepare."
| | 05:38 | And then we've got two more poses.
| | 05:40 | We have got this home where he
anticipates the word 'doom', and then we have
| | 05:44 | that one as well, so I am going to go ahead
and move those over, and here is the word 'doom'.
| | 05:49 | Now, I want to make sure that this
keyframe here 40 is somewhere over here,
| | 05:56 | right around 70, where he says the word 'doom'.
| | 05:59 | So, let's go ahead and slide that over.
| | 06:04 | And then I need to anticipate that,
so that's what's going to be this pose.
| | 06:09 | So, the pose at frame 38, I want to move that--
| | 06:12 | oh, I don't know, say
about 6 frames or so before.
| | 06:16 | So, now this should be a
reasonably good blocking of the poses.
| | 06:24 | So, let's take a look at this.
| | 06:26 | (Character: Ha, it worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 06:30 | (Character: Ha, it worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 06:34 | Now, we can take this and
you know slide things around.
| | 06:38 | So, if you don't like where one thing
is, you can move it, and by having these
| | 06:44 | Step tangents, you can see how it
just pops from one post to another.
| | 06:48 | This makes the broad
blocking of the scene much easier.
| | 06:53 | Now, I want you to go ahead and take
your poses and time them against the
| | 06:56 | soundtrack so that you
have reasonably good timing.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| In-between blocking pass| 00:00 | Now in this point, we should have the
blocking pass done, and we should have the
| | 00:05 | rough timing of the major poses of the scene.
| | 00:08 | Now we've used Step tangents to make sure
that the character jumps from pose to pose.
| | 00:13 | So let's play what we have at this point.
| | 00:16 | (Character: Ha, it worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 00:20 | So the next step is to actually start animating.
| | 00:23 | We need to release the curves which
allows Maya to do the in-betweening.
| | 00:28 | So we can do that by
selecting everything in the character.
| | 00:31 | We notice we have our poses here.
And let's go in to our Graph Editor, and when we
| | 00:38 | see that, we can see, okay, we do have
Step tangents and I should have everything
| | 00:44 | selected. And when I do that, I can just
go ahead and grab everything and then
| | 00:50 | just change the curve type.
| | 00:52 | Now typically, I go for either
Plateau or Clamped; either one should work.
| | 00:59 | The difference is that Clamp tangents will
in-between two like poses with a straight line.
| | 01:05 | So it will make sure that
it holds those poses exactly.
| | 01:09 | Plateau will do the same
thing for similar poses.
| | 01:13 | So if the two poses are identical in
value, they will be in between with
| | 01:18 | pretty much straight line.
| | 01:19 | But Plateau does one more thing, and
that's if the poses are off slightly,
| | 01:25 | it'll make sure that the pose
doesn't overshoot that pose.
| | 01:28 | Now this particularly good for when
you're moving feet around, so that the feet
| | 01:32 | don't set below the floor.
| | 01:34 | But for this instance, either one should work.
And once we do that, let's see what happens.
| | 01:40 | (Character: Ha, it worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 01:44 | So this is a decent pass,
but there's a lot of work to do on this.
| | 01:49 | The first thing is it's really soft,
because he's just floating from pose to pose.
| | 01:54 | So let's take a look at this one more time.
| | 01:56 | (Character: Ha, it worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 02:00 | So one of the things that I notice is here
between 36 and 60, he is just kind of leaning back.
| | 02:05 | We need to add in some holds.
| | 02:07 | Then the thing I've noticed is that
there are a couple of errors in the rotation.
| | 02:14 | Notice this elbow here.
| | 02:16 | It rotates backwards.
| | 02:20 | Now sometimes depending upon how you
pose the character and where the joint
| | 02:24 | limits are, you may get little errors like this.
| | 02:27 | So you can fix them very easily either
in the Graph Editor or by copying keys.
| | 02:33 | Let's go ahead and try to
fix it in the Graph Editor.
| | 02:35 | So I'm going to go ahead and select
this left elbow, and you'll see that this is
| | 02:39 | actually almost like a
computation error in Maya.
| | 02:42 | So I'm going to go ahead and select
those keys and instead of these Clamped
| | 02:47 | tangents, let's just using Linear
tangents and see what happens. So now.
| | 02:57 | So that actually fixed that elbow.
| | 02:59 | Now if that didn't work, I could
certainly delete that key and re-animate it, and
| | 03:05 | it should go back to normal.
| | 03:06 | Now sometimes it's just an issue with
switching from different types of tangents and
| | 03:10 | sometimes that can confuse Maya.
| | 03:13 | (Character: Ha, it worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 03:18 | Now that we've released the curves, we
need to take the next step, which is to go
| | 03:21 | through and add in our moving holds,
and we will do that in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating moving holds| 00:00 | At this point, we have the
animation blocked out, and we're starting to
| | 00:05 | in-between the poses,
| | 00:06 | but we really don't have any moving
holds, which is what we'll do in this lesson.
| | 00:12 | So let's go ahead and play what we
have, and then let's start working on it.
| | 00:17 | (Character: Ha, it worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 00:21 | Now, as we've said before, this
animation looks little floaty.
| | 00:24 | It's not really holding any of the
poses that are important to this animation.
| | 00:29 | So what we want to do is take all of
the key poses and extend them a little
| | 00:34 | bit so that they hold long enough for the
audience to actually see them and so that they read.
| | 00:40 | So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm
going to select everything in my character,
| | 00:44 | and I'll see that I have all of
these poses blocked out on the timeline.
| | 00:48 | So let's work through this one pose at a
time and add in moving holds as they are needed.
| | 00:55 | So the first moving hold we need
to do is for this very first pose.
| | 01:00 | So I've got this pose here at frame 1
where he's looking offscreen, and I want
| | 01:05 | to make sure that registers. If I just
keep it the way it is, he is going to
| | 01:12 | start moving into that
'ha' before he even says it,
| | 01:15 | and I don't really want that.
| | 01:17 | So I'm going to go back to frame 1
and just copy all of the keyframes--
| | 01:22 | now remember, I have everything
selected here--and then just paste. And again I'm
| | 01:27 | just right-clicking on the timeline.
| | 01:32 | Now he doesn't start moving
up into that 'ha' until frame 4.
| | 01:36 | So we have a couple of frames
where we're holding this first pose.
| | 01:40 | Now in order to get a little bit more
realism, I like to actually have a moving hold.
| | 01:46 | So what I do is I select this last frame
and I figure out where are the hips going.
| | 01:51 | Now typically the hips will tend to
sink a little bit, and it could actually
| | 01:55 | also act as a little bit of anticipation to
what comes next, which is where it comes up.
| | 02:01 | So the character is moving up here, so I want
to move him down to contrast that beforehand.
| | 02:09 | So I'm going to move him down and maybe
even just tilt him forward just a little bit.
| | 02:17 | So now he moves up.
| | 02:19 | Now when he says, "Ha," again I
want to hold him at the top of that.
| | 02:24 | So I want that pose to read.
| | 02:26 | So I'm going to select
everything in that character.
| | 02:28 | You can see it starts of frame 8 and then the
word 'ha' and somewhere around frame 11 or 12.
| | 02:36 | So let's go ahead and copy, right-
click, Copy, go to frame 12, and paste, and
| | 02:42 | again, I just want him to
be up in that position here.
| | 02:50 | Now this is a little too much.
| | 02:52 | It actually to feels a little frozen,
| | 02:53 | so I'm actually going to go ahead and
drop his hips down just a little bit,
| | 02:57 | so he is going to kind of jump up and
then sync down a little bit, which will
| | 03:02 | give him a little bit more of a natural motion.
| | 03:06 | Then he moves almost immediately into
what I call an anticipation, which is the
| | 03:10 | pose that he has before he
comes up into this proud pose at 24.
| | 03:15 | Now, this is a very important pose, and I
want to hold this for a longer period of time.
| | 03:22 | So I'm going to make sure I select
everything in the character, copy this, and
| | 03:29 | then paste it a little bit further down
of a timeline, which should hold that pose.
| | 03:34 | So let's see how this scrubs through.
| | 03:40 | If feels like this is actually coming a
little too slow into this pose, and we
| | 03:45 | can actually hold this pose for longer.
| | 03:48 | So what I'm going to do is just
Shift+Select the pose at 24 and slide it over a
| | 03:54 | little bit, to either 21 or 22.
| | 03:55 | Let's just go ahead and scrub through this.
| | 03:58 | So, this looks pretty good.
| | 04:05 | I can actually hold this a little bit longer.
| | 04:08 | So I'm going to select keys at
28 and drop them back to about 30.
| | 04:15 | So that feels about right in terms of
an in-between, but now I've got this
| | 04:19 | really long space where I've got this
important pose here where he has got his finger up.
| | 04:25 | Then the next pose is where he
has got his foot off the ground.
| | 04:29 | Now, I really don't want that to in-
between over a course of about 30 frames.
| | 04:35 | I would like to actually have him come
up into this pose a lot more quickly.
| | 04:39 | So again, I'm going to do a hold, and
I'm going to make sure I have everything
| | 04:42 | selected, copy the pose at frame 36,
move to about frame 60 or so, and paste.
| | 04:52 | So now he is kind of holding this.
| | 04:57 | So now we've created some moving holds
which should allow the animation to read better.
| | 05:02 | Let's take a look at what we have now.
| | 05:04 | (Character: Ha, it worked!
Prepare to meet your doom! Ha!)
| | 05:09 | So this looks pretty good.
| | 05:10 | We have our poses reading better.
| | 05:13 | So let's go ahead and add the next
layer of refinement onto this animation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating weight| 00:00 | The next step is to worry about weight shifts.
| | 00:03 | So, there are a couple of places where
the character moves his weight from one
| | 00:07 | foot to another, and we need to make sure
that that shift of weight is realistic.
| | 00:13 | So, let's take a look at what we have so far.
| | 00:15 | (Character: Ha, it worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 00:15 | I am actually going to turn off the sound, so
we can scrub and just see the shift in weight.
| | 00:25 | So, basically, he comes up, so his feet
are still flat on the ground, which is fine.
| | 00:34 | This shift in weight is actually pretty
good, because he anticipates and then he
| | 00:40 | puts his foot down, so really, a shift
in weight is where he moves his foot.
| | 00:43 | So, let's take a look at
this foot. That was okay.
| | 00:50 | The next one, however, is
this foot, the left foot.
| | 00:55 | In this case, I think we need to
accentuate that shift in weight a little bit
| | 00:59 | more, so we can do this
by creating an in-between.
| | 01:03 | So, the foot starts at frame 30 and ends at
frame 36, so we have got about six frames here.
| | 01:12 | Now, actually, I would like to have a
little bit more time in this, so what I am
| | 01:16 | going to do is I am actually going
to push back this pose a little bit.
| | 01:20 | So, I am going to select everything in the
character, and I am going to push this back.
| | 01:25 | I would like a few more frames to create this
motion, so I would like at least four frames.
| | 01:31 | So, I am going to create a keyframe
right in the middle between 30 and 38,
| | 01:36 | which would be at 34.
| | 01:38 | So, the first thing I want to do
is I want to lift this foot up.
| | 01:46 | And I want to make sure that the knee
is in the right position here. So I want
| | 01:50 | to make sure I lift the foot and
also rotate it down a little bit.
| | 01:54 | So now, he's lifting the foot as he
twists it over. But when he lifts that foot,
| | 02:12 | his weight has to be supported on the other leg.
| | 02:17 | So, when he lifts his left foot, the right
foot is going to be holding all of this weight.
| | 02:22 | So, I am going to go ahead and bend
him down a little bit and push him a
| | 02:30 | little bit to his right.
| | 02:34 | And then another thing I am going to
do is I want to actually turn this into
| | 02:37 | more of an anticipation.
| | 02:39 | So, I am going to go ahead and select
his spine and rotate that down. So again,
| | 02:47 | I am going to kind of crunch him down.
| | 02:49 | So now he is going to go
down before he comes up.
| | 02:58 | And what this does is it
gives a little bit more contrast.
| | 03:02 | So he moves down before he moves up, and it
crunches down a little bit before he straightens up.
| | 03:12 | So, we can also play with his head a little bit.
| | 03:15 | Now, these are just roughs.
| | 03:20 | I'm just roughing in this pose.
| | 03:22 | So, then as he comes up, his head
will kind of roll into this pose.
| | 03:32 | So, the head is the last thing to
come up, which will be like this.
| | 03:43 | Go ahead and delete this frame here.
| | 03:45 | So, now we should have--he comes
into that pose a little more gently.
| | 03:53 | Then again, we've got
another shift of weight here.
| | 03:56 | Actually, this is a really big shift in weight.
| | 03:59 | So, when the character does a shift of
weight, he actually has to put his weight
| | 04:03 | on the other foot. But I do want to
anticipate his a little bit, because as he
| | 04:07 | shifts his weight, he means to kind
of give himself a little bit of a hop.
| | 04:11 | So, what I am going to do is right before
this, I want to dip his hips and then come up.
| | 04:18 | So, in order to do that, I need to set
a key for his hips at frame 56 and then
| | 04:23 | at frame 60, I need to drop his hips
just a little bit, so that when he comes
| | 04:31 | up, he's got a little bit more life.
| | 04:43 | So, now the next thing we
will look at is the foot.
| | 04:46 | So, as this foot comes up,
this is actually pretty good.
| | 04:51 | I can probably drop it down just a
little bit, but then when it comes forward,
| | 04:57 | I want to kind of flip up that toe.
| | 05:02 | So, I'm going to bring up that toe
a little bit, give it a little bit
| | 05:12 | of secondary motion.
| | 05:15 | And then as it comes down, I want
to make sure that I keep this toe.
| | 05:24 | I want to get a little bit more of a
sense of snap to this foot, so I want it to
| | 05:29 | set down fairly quickly.
| | 05:31 | So, I am going to go ahead and flip
that foot up, so when it slams down, it
| | 05:48 | slams down with more apparent force.
| | 05:51 | So, let's go ahead and play this.
| | 05:56 | Okay. So, all I am animating in
this pass is the shift in weight.
| | 06:01 | Now, when you animate a shift in
weight, you need to make sure that the
| | 06:05 | character anticipates that shift, so
you typically want to drop the character's
| | 06:10 | hips before he takes a step, so that way
you have the momentum to actually shift
| | 06:17 | the weight of the character.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding secondary motion | 00:00 | Now, that we have the character's weight
distributing properly and we have his feet moving,
| | 00:05 | we pretty much have the basic
foundation of the animation.
| | 00:10 | The next step is to add in the
finer details, such as overlap,
| | 00:15 | follow-through, secondary action--
| | 00:17 | those sorts of things.
| | 00:18 | So we're going to go ahead
and do a little bit of that.
| | 00:21 | I'm not going to do all of it,
but I'm going to show you some of the finer
| | 00:24 | points of where to look for secondary
action and how to refine that animation.
| | 00:29 | So let's take a quick review as to
where we are currently in the process.
| | 00:34 | (Character: Ha, it worked.
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 00:39 | Okay, so the animation is
pretty well blocked out.
| | 00:42 | It still needs more overlap,
follow-through, that sort of thing.
| | 00:46 | He still looks a little bit stiff.
| | 00:48 | So in order to make this a little bit
easier, I'm going to go ahead and turn off
| | 00:52 | the sound, so that way I can talk over this.
| | 00:54 | One of the first areas we want to
look at is this really broad action here,
| | 00:58 | where he says, "Prepare to meet your doom!"
right there where he tosses his finger out.
| | 01:04 | Let's go ahead and play through that.
| | 01:08 | You can see how this is really stiff.
| | 01:11 | So if we take a look at this arm,
there's really no secondary action.
| | 01:15 | T here's no overlap.
| | 01:17 | There is no follow-through.
| | 01:18 | We can actually make this a lot better.
| | 01:20 | So the first thing I'm going to do
is let's go ahead to this pose here,
| | 01:25 | right around frame 66.
| | 01:26 | And if you notice here, we've got this arm.
| | 01:32 | It's really kind of tucked up against
the face here, and there's really no
| | 01:36 | clarity of this pose,
| | 01:38 | so let's go ahead and fix that.
| | 01:41 | What I'm going to do is I'm going to
extend this a little bit more, so I'm going
| | 01:44 | to rotate this shoulder up, and I'm
going to extend the arm a little bit more.
| | 01:51 | So what I want to do is
get this hand in the clear.
| | 01:54 | I want to make sure that this hand is
pointing about as straight up as we can
| | 01:59 | because this will give a much
stronger motion when he moves down.
| | 02:04 | So now he comes up.
| | 02:07 | But as he comes up, remember, we're
going to have drag on the way up as well,
| | 02:12 | so I want to add in a little bit of that,
so I'm going to go to the wrist here.
| | 02:18 | And between frame 60 and 66 is when this moves up,
| | 02:21 | so I'm going to go ahead and just
start to straighten this out a little bit.
| | 02:27 | Now remember, with secondary action,
the body is moving this way and the
| | 02:33 | hand wants to stay here,
| | 02:35 | so the overall result is that there's
going to be a rotation in the elbow that
| | 02:40 | allows the hand to stay where it is.
| | 02:44 | So now as we do this, you can see how
that hand kind of rises up a little bit
| | 02:51 | more, and then as he comes down, this is
where we really want to get a sense of action.
| | 02:59 | So what we want is we want
this to be almost in a curve.
| | 03:04 | We want this hand, again, to drag
back, and bend the elbow right here.
| | 03:10 | So let's go ahead and do that.
| | 03:11 | So what I want to do is bend this
elbow and also bend this wrist back.
| | 03:17 | So I want to give kind of a nice arc here.
| | 03:20 | So as this comes down, we
have a stronger line of action.
| | 03:27 | Then once he hits here, his
weight just kind of stops.
| | 03:31 | If you scrub this, you see
right there, he just kind of freezes.
| | 03:34 | Well, again, we're going to have a
little bit of overlap here because his
| | 03:38 | weight is going this way.
| | 03:40 | So it's going to overshoot this point,
and then it's going to kind of settle back.
| | 03:46 | The same is going to happen with his
arm, and in order to make this a really
| | 03:49 | strong pose, I want his arm
to be as straight as possible.
| | 03:53 | So let's go ahead and do that.
| | 03:56 | So I'm going to go to frame 72,
and let's go ahead and make this arm straight
| | 04:02 | out, and make this arm pretty
much as straight as possible.
| | 04:07 | I may have to rotate this wrist a
little bit to get a really strong pose.
| | 04:12 | Then I'm also going to take this
hip and I'm going to move it forward.
| | 04:17 | But before I do that, I'm actually
going to go a few frames forward and set a
| | 04:21 | keyframe so I know exactly
where my resting place is.
| | 04:25 | So what I'm doing is I'm just
duplicating this key at 72 to 75, and now I'm
| | 04:31 | going to adjust the one for
that at 72, so that it overshoots.
| | 04:37 | So basically, now he goes
over and then he comes back.
| | 04:42 | Let's go ahead and overshoot him.
| | 04:44 | He's actually going to be
a little bit higher here.
| | 04:46 | Then as he comes back into this
pose, the arm is going to relax.
| | 04:52 | So now I'm going to relax it into that
final pose that I have with a little bit
| | 05:09 | of bend in that arm.
| | 05:14 | Now what I've got here is I've got
a nice little bit of an S shape here
| | 05:18 | through the shoulders.
| | 05:19 | And again, this is just a nice line of
action that will kind of guide the eye
| | 05:24 | towards that pointing finger.
| | 05:26 | So now what I've got here is I've got this.
| | 05:29 | You can see how it goes over,
and then it settles back.
| | 05:38 | Now one of the things I'm
noticing is that it still kind of stops,
| | 05:42 | so I'm actually going to take the
shoulder and the wrist, and I'm actually
| | 05:47 | going to move those back a little bit,
maybe to frame 76, so that it doesn't
| | 05:53 | all stop at the same time.
| | 05:55 | Then I'm going to create another moving hold.
| | 05:57 | So what I'm going to do is on the hips,
I'm just going to keep them, maybe move
| | 06:03 | them back just a little bit, and sink
them down just a little bit, so he has a
| | 06:07 | little bit of motion.
| | 06:09 | Again, we want to just kind of keep
him alive, and actually, I can do that a
| | 06:14 | little bit more, and maybe even
a little bit of rotation there.
| | 06:24 | This is just real subtle.
| | 06:27 | Again, just that little bit
makes it look like he is breathing.
| | 06:31 | Now, another thing that happens with an
arm, particularly an arm that's extended,
| | 06:37 | is that gravity will be pulling down.
| | 06:39 | There's a big weight hanging out here
which is called a hand, and its gravity
| | 06:44 | is going to pull that down.
| | 06:47 | So we have an effect called drift.
| | 06:50 | What drift does is basically it says
if something is out there, it's going
| | 06:54 | to tend to drift down.
| | 06:55 | So again, I'm going to go out to
somewhere around frame 86 or so and I'm just
| | 07:00 | going to rotate that hand down just a hair--
| | 07:04 | again, just to indicate that
gravity is pulling it down.
| | 07:09 | You can see how that just gives it
almost like he is breathing or something;
| | 07:12 | it gives a nice sense of aliveness.
| | 07:15 | So let's go ahead and play this.
| | 07:21 | Okay, so that end part looks really good.
| | 07:24 | Now, we can go through
the rest of the animation.
| | 07:27 | Now, another part here is where he comes up.
| | 07:33 | So there is another place where we
can have a lot of drag, and overlap,
| | 07:37 | follow-through, a little
bit of secondary motion.
| | 07:39 | Again, let's take a look at this wrist.
| | 07:41 | So as this wrist comes up, we've
got some forces working on this.
| | 07:46 | We've got the shoulder is moving up,
but again, this hand wants to stay where it is.
| | 07:52 | So let's go ahead and add a little bit of
drag here to give it a little bit more realism.
| | 07:57 | So what I'm going to do here is let's
go ahead and find, okay, let's find the
| | 08:02 | wrist here. And then as he moves up--
Okay, so he's going to start moving up
| | 08:09 | somewhere around frame 34, so
I'm going to set a keyframe here.
| | 08:13 | Then as he moves up, I'm going to drag
that wrist down. And then as he comes up,
| | 08:20 | I'm actually going to bring that
wrist into position a little bit later.
| | 08:24 | So right now I have it at 38.
| | 08:25 | I'm going to bring it back to 40,
and this frame here at 36, let's bring it to 37.
| | 08:33 | So now we've got, he is kind of almost
rotating down and then that hand pops
| | 08:40 | up after the shoulder stops, which gives,
again, a little bit of overlap to that motion.
| | 08:48 | We can also do the same thing with the elbow.
| | 08:52 | So what I'm going to do is pull that
second keyframe for the elbow back to 40,
| | 08:58 | and that gives a little bit more overlap.
| | 09:01 | So let's go ahead and play that.
| | 09:02 | Just that little trick will
actually give it a little bit more realism.
| | 09:09 | So we can go through the rest of the
animation and add these little effects,
| | 09:12 | understand where every joint is moving.
| | 09:16 | So, as a joint moves, if it's moving
fast, it's going to have a lot of drag.
| | 09:21 | If it's kind of falling down, like for
example here, this hand, as it moves down,
| | 09:26 | it's almost falling.
| | 09:28 | So when it kind of moves down here,
there's not going to be a lot of drag,
| | 09:33 | because really, he is just relaxing.
| | 09:36 | A lot of times you'll get drag
when there is a lot of force applied,
| | 09:39 | so when a character is moving quickly
or when he is under the action of a force.
| | 09:47 | So go ahead through the rest of the
animation and add in secondary motion, and
| | 09:53 | make sure that the character flows
from pose to pose smoothly and easily.
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| Animating dialogue| 00:00 | So now we should have
most of the animation done.
| | 00:04 | We're still going to do one or
two more passes on the animation,
| | 00:07 | but the next step is to actually
animate the dialog, or the lip sync.
| | 00:13 | Now notice how in this process, we've
actually done most of the acting with the
| | 00:18 | body, and then the mouth comes second.
| | 00:22 | So let's go ahead and take a look at
what we have so far, and notice how the
| | 00:26 | acting pretty much plays with the body.
| | 00:28 | The mouth is just going to add a
little bit more on top of that.
| | 00:32 | (Character: Ha, it worked!
Prepare to meet your doom! Ha!)
| | 00:38 | Okay, so now we've got the
basic animation blocked out.
| | 00:42 | Now we can start to add in the mouth motion.
| | 00:45 | And after that, we'll go ahead and
fine-tune the body once more, add in a
| | 00:49 | few blinks, and we should be pretty much done.
| | 00:52 | So let's go ahead and
start animating the lip sync.
| | 00:55 | Now one of the problems you're going to
find with this is that, well, the head
| | 00:58 | is moving all over the place.
| | 01:01 | How do you animate dialog when
you really can't see the face?
| | 01:05 | If I'm in a front view or whatever, the
character is not really looking at the camera,
| | 01:12 | so it's kind of hard to
see the dialog to match it.
| | 01:15 | Now if you want, you can use the Camera view,
but here's a little trick that I like to do.
| | 01:20 | Now typically, what I do is I go into a
front viewport, or really any viewport,
| | 01:26 | and I create a camera.
| | 01:29 | We can create a new camera in the scene
by going to the Rendering tab and just
| | 01:34 | clicking on the Camera icon,
which will create a camera.
| | 01:37 | We can go into that camera by going
Panels > Perspective, and selecting camera2.
| | 01:43 | And I position it on the character's face.
| | 01:46 | Let's turn on Smooth Shading
by pressing 5 on the keyboard.
| | 01:49 | And I want to get the
character's face centered in my camera.
| | 01:57 | So when I do that, now I can actually
see the character's control panel, and his
| | 02:04 | face pretty much in my Camera view.
| | 02:08 | Open the Outliner by
selecting Window > Outliner.
| | 02:12 | Find the camera and make it a
child of the character's head control.
| | 02:17 | So I'm going to go into my hierarchy
here, so I have the head control here, and
| | 02:28 | I'm just going to select the camera,
middle-click, and drag, so that the camera
| | 02:33 | is now a child of that head control.
| | 02:37 | I'm going to go ahead and turn
off sound here, so we can see this.
| | 02:42 | So as the character's head moves, the
camera is actually moving with the head.
| | 02:48 | So we can actually see this in a
perspective viewport, so let's go into
| | 02:51 | perspective view here.
| | 02:55 | So this is the camera that I have.
| | 02:58 | So as you can see, when the
character is moving, this camera is always
| | 03:04 | looking at the face.
| | 03:05 | That's because the camera
is parented to the head.
| | 03:08 | So what I can do is I can use this
camera to actually animate my lip sync.
| | 03:15 | So I'm going to go ahead and turn on my
sound, and let's start working with lip sync.
| | 03:20 | So the first thing I'm going to do is
select the lower part of the face, and just
| | 03:25 | set a keyframe for everything.
| | 03:27 | And now we can start to animate lip sync.
| | 03:30 | So it starts somewhere around frame 3,
and the first word is "Ha," which is
| | 03:36 | basically just an open jaw.
| | 03:37 | So I'm going to go ahead and open
the jaw, just go ahead and move that so
| | 03:44 | that the jaw is open.
| | 03:49 | And then go ahead and close the jaw.
| | 03:52 | Now at this point, he is actually pretty happy,
| | 03:54 | so I'm actually going to dial in a smile.
| | 03:59 | So he is pretty happy; he goes--
| | 04:00 | (Character: Ha!)
| | 04:04 | And now we have "it worked."
| | 04:07 | So again, I want to make sure that I
have a neutral point here, so I'm going to
| | 04:10 | go ahead and set some keyframes here.
| | 04:12 | So we're staring here at frame 16.
Actually, let's move those back to frame 15,
| | 04:20 | because "it worked," the maximum volume
here is at frame 17, so I want to give it
| | 04:25 | two frames to work "it."
| | 04:28 | "It T, it" worked.
| | 04:37 | Now worked is a 'U' sound, so I'm actually
going to have to take out that smile at
| | 04:42 | this point, and go into 'oo'.
| | 04:48 | Actually, I want to make sure this Jaw is
pretty much at 0 here when he go into this 'oo'.
| | 04:53 | And again, "wor."
| | 05:06 | And then in the end, we have a
more of a consonant sound, "worked."
| | 05:10 | So that's going to this kind of bare-teeth pose.
| | 05:13 | (Character: It worked!)
| | 05:16 | And then we can add in some
smile into that if we want.
| | 05:20 | So I'm going to go ahead and hit, set
key for smile at 27, and by 29, I'm going
| | 05:25 | to go ahead and put in some more smile.
| | 05:28 | (Character: Ha, it worked!)
| | 05:32 | Now we have the word "prepare."
| | 05:34 | So in this case, we need to
again, tighten up the lips;
| | 05:38 | we've done this before.
| | 05:39 | So in this case, we need to create the
letter P, so I'm going to go ahead and
| | 05:45 | bring the Dialogue slider over here.
| | 05:46 | I want to make sure that my Jaw is at 0,
| | 05:50 | and let's go ahead and turn down the Smile.
| | 05:55 | Actually, I'm going to keep the
smile up here. Let's go ahead.
| | 06:01 | So I want to make sure I've
got a P here, so let's go ahead.
| | 06:05 | I may have to close the jaw. There we go!
| | 06:08 | There we go. "Prepare."
| | 06:15 | So "prepare", it actually has kind of an 'R'
sound, so it's almost like to an 'oo' sound.
| | 06:20 | We have to purse the lips a little bit,
so I'm going to go ahead here, and let's
| | 06:25 | go ahead and take that smile out,
and also close the jaw. So we've got,
| | 06:31 | "Pre." Okay, let's move it.
| | 06:53 | And then go back to another P, so
right around 40 I need to close everything.
| | 06:58 | So again, I just want to dial that in.
| | 07:00 | So again, we're going to bring this down.
| | 07:03 | (video playing)
And then "air"; big A, and let's take this slider out.
| | 07:15 | So as you can see, it's pretty
much like animating any dialog.
| | 07:19 | So all I'm doing is just going
through and basically following the phoneme.
| | 07:26 | So let's go through what we have so far.
| | 07:28 | (Character: Ha, it worked! Prepare to--)
| | 07:38 | And we can go through the rest of it.
| | 07:39 | I don't have enough time here to go
through everything, but let's take a look at
| | 07:42 | how it looks on the full body.
| | 07:44 | (Character: Ha, it worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 07:50 | Okay, so we can just go through the
rest of this and animate it.
| | 07:53 | So that's what I want you to do.
| | 07:55 | So you understand the process here,
and that is, let's go ahead and look through
| | 07:59 | the camera that we created for the head--
in this case, camera2--and finish out
| | 08:05 | the rest of the dialog animation.
| | 08:08 | And then we'll go ahead and do some
more refinements in the next lesson.
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| Finalizing the animation| 00:00 | So now we should have the dialog
animated, and the rest of the steps are to
| | 00:05 | add in some blinks as well as the final
head motion, and we should pretty much be done.
| | 00:10 | So, let's go ahead and play what we have so far.
| | 00:13 | (Character: Ha, it worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 00:17 | (Character: Ha, it worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 00:22 | Okay, so he looks pretty good,
but his eyes are still a little bit dead, and
| | 00:26 | there still needs to be a
little bit more head motion.
| | 00:30 | So, let's go ahead and start with that
head motion, and again, I am going to turn
| | 00:33 | off the sound to little bit
easier to talk over what we are doing.
| | 00:38 | So, the first thing I want to do is, as
he comes up, that head is going to
| | 00:43 | actually start to drag,
| | 00:45 | so I want to make sure I rotate that head down.
| | 00:49 | When I'm looking to do is make sure I
get a nice kind of an arc here, so that
| | 00:54 | head is going to be part of that.
| | 00:57 | And so as he comes up, he is opening
his jaw, and so when he opens his jaw, I
| | 01:03 | actually want to kind of
extend that a little bit.
| | 01:05 | So, as he comes up to this top, I want
to make sure I open up this throat area
| | 01:11 | so that he can actually say that word.
| | 01:13 | Now, remember, when you have big vowel
sounds, a lot of times people will tilt
| | 01:18 | their head back to open their throat,
and we want him to do that at this point.
| | 01:24 | And again, we're doing the same thing here.
| | 01:26 | He is moving up. He has got a really
big motion here, and his head is very heavy,
| | 01:32 | so the head is going to want to
stay here as the body is moving up.
| | 01:38 | So, again, we are going to have a
little bit of overlap, a little bit of
| | 01:40 | secondary motion here.
| | 01:42 | As he moves up here,
his head is going to dip down.
| | 01:48 | Then he has got another big valve here,
so again we want to make sure we tip
| | 01:53 | his head back so that it can say that word.
| | 02:00 | So, now we have the rest of the dialog here.
| | 02:03 | So, let's go ahead and actually turn
this on, so we can see what we've got.
| | 02:16 | So, again, the word 'prepare', we
probably want to accentuate that a little bit,
| | 02:21 | so what I am going to do here is, as
he's coming up into prepare, I want to make
| | 02:27 | sure that that head is dipped down a little bit.
| | 02:29 | Again, I am just doing this
for contrast. Right there.
| | 02:39 | So, that's actually a stronger pose.
| | 02:41 | This is stronger than this, so
let's go ahead and tilt that head back.
| | 02:45 | I am going to tilt it down
when he says the P for prepare.
| | 02:55 | And again, I've got a very big
vowel here in the 'pare' in 'prepare'.
| | 03:00 | So, again, I want to make sure I tilt
that head back a little bit so that
| | 03:04 | the throat is open. Meet.
| | 03:17 | Now, here's another situation where
we are going to have secondary motion.
| | 03:21 | The body is tilting back, but again,
this head is going to want to stay here.
| | 03:27 | So, let's go ahead and do that.
So as he starts moving back, this head is
| | 03:34 | going to kind of rotate.
| | 03:40 | And then we have the opposite situation here.
| | 03:43 | The body is starting to move forward,
but again, the head is still kind of
| | 03:50 | going in that direction, so we are
going to have to tilt the head back to
| | 03:53 | compensate for this.
| | 03:54 | So, this is somewhere around frame 69.
So again, this just gives a little bit
| | 03:59 | more of a sense of motion here.
| | 04:04 | And again, we have more overlap here where
the head is going to overshoot this position.
| | 04:13 | So, now we should have this motion here.
| | 04:25 | Let's see how this works.
| | 04:26 | (Character: Ha, it worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 04:31 | So, now all we have to
do is add in a few blinks.
| | 04:34 | So, let's go head back into that
camera view here, the face camera.
| | 04:40 | Now, I have it on here. I renamed it.
| | 04:42 | So, I have got a camera here called FaceCam.
| | 04:45 | In the other lesson, it was called
camera2, but I actually renamed it so that it
| | 04:49 | was a little bit more explicit
as to which camera we were using.
| | 04:52 | So, let's go ahead and do some blinks.
| | 04:56 | Let's go ahead and take a
look at this in camera1.
| | 04:58 | I am going to turn off my
sound just for a second here.
| | 05:03 | So, as he comes up, actually, I
want to do a blink right here.
| | 05:08 | So, let's go ahead and just do this in
this window here. So I am going to set a
| | 05:12 | keyframe for the lids at frame 4, and
then let's close them down by frame 10.
| | 05:20 | So, that's a six-frame blink,
which should be pretty much standard.
| | 05:24 | So, now watch what happens.
| | 05:28 | It almost looks like he's laughing.
| | 05:29 | Just by having the eyes closed, it
almost looks like he is laughing;
| | 05:34 | in fact, I should probably close those
one frame sooner, just because that's
| | 05:39 | really the top of his motion.
| | 05:45 | And actually, it works to have his eyes
closed almost through this whole part.
| | 05:50 | And then what I am going to do is as he
rises up again, that's when I am going to
| | 05:54 | open his eyes again.
| | 05:55 | So, what I am going to do here is I am
going to select both lids and on frame
| | 05:59 | 18, I am going to set a
keyframe, so that keeps them closed.
| | 06:04 | And then somewhere around frame 23-24,
I am going to go ahead and copy the
| | 06:09 | keyframes at frame 4
and paste them at frame 24.
| | 06:14 | So, now what we have is they start closing at 4.
| | 06:20 | They're close by about 10 and they open up again.
| | 06:26 | So, now let's go ahead and play this with sound.
| | 06:28 | I am going to turn on that sound here.
| | 06:35 | Now, again I have a little bit of an open
space here right before he says prepare.
| | 06:40 | This is actually a pretty good place
for another blink, so I am going to start
| | 06:44 | another blink at frame 30.
| | 06:46 | Again, I am going to go into my FaceCam
and this time I am just going to copy
| | 06:50 | and paste keyframes. So I am going to
start this at 30, so that means I am just
| | 06:54 | going to set a keyframe here,
| | 06:56 | go into frame 36, find a closed-eye
keyframe, which is here at frame 18, copy,
| | 07:06 | paste those somewhere around 36 and
then copy the ones at 30, and let's go ahead
| | 07:13 | and paste those at 40.
I want a little bit of a faster open for this.
| | 07:16 | So, let's see how that works.
| | 07:26 | Okay, again, he is doing this broad motion
here where he says, "Prepare to meet your doom!"
| | 07:31 | I think I want to do one more blink
there, so as he's throwing his hand forward,
| | 07:36 | I want his eyes to be closed again.
| | 07:38 | Let's go to frame 62 right on
this little lull in the dialog.
| | 07:42 | And again, I'm going to select my eyelids,
upper and lower, and let's go ahead and
| | 07:49 | set a keyframe to leave them open.
| | 07:51 | So, now I need to copy a closed-eye
keyframe, so I am going to find that
| | 07:56 | somewhere around frame 36, copy that,
and then let's paste that at frame 68.
| | 08:02 | Now, let's take a look at this.
| | 08:10 | And then as his head rises up here,
that's when we are going to open his eyes.
| | 08:16 | So, there, I want them to be closed, and
then as he rises up, I want to open them.
| | 08:22 | So, I want them open by frame 80, so
subtract 6. 74 is when I want them closed;
| | 08:28 | 80 is when I want them open.
| | 08:31 | So, let's go ahead and select the lids,
set a keyframe to keep them closed, find
| | 08:37 | an open one at frame 62, copy, paste at 80.
| | 08:43 | So, I am copying the keyframes from 62
to 80, and that should pretty much be it
| | 08:49 | for the head and blink motions.
| | 08:51 | Let's take a look at this.
| | 08:52 | (Character: Ha, it worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 08:56 | (Character: Ha, it worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 09:00 | Actually, I think that open of the eyes
is a little bit late, so let's go ahead
| | 09:04 | and select that, and let's just move it back.
| | 09:07 | So, I am going to select these eyes
here, and I have got this blink kind of
| | 09:11 | coming in at frame 62 to 80.
| | 09:13 | Actually, I am going to turn off sound
because I am going to scrub this here, so I
| | 09:18 | don't want this to be too loud.
| | 09:20 | Select these keyframes, and then I am
going to move them back a little bit.
| | 09:23 | I am going to move them back to
say starting at around frame 56.
| | 09:26 | So, let's see how this works.
| | 09:32 | Actually, let's moving back another
two frames, so 56, 57, 58. There we go.
| | 09:41 | That looks good.
| | 09:42 | So, let's see how that works.
| | 09:44 | That looks good, okay.
| | 09:45 | So, let's turn on the
sound and see what we have.
| | 09:50 | (Character: Ha, it worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
0:09:54.26]
(Character: Ha, it worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 09:58 | Okay, so that looks pretty good.
| | 10:00 | Now, we are pretty much 90% of the way there.
| | 10:02 | We can go through a little bit more and
refine this a little bit more, clean up
| | 10:07 | the loose ends, but this
is pretty much the process.
| | 10:11 | So, I am going to go ahead and
actually load up my final version.
| | 10:15 | So, I've got a version out here called
Acting_08, which is my final version, and
| | 10:20 | let's see the final version
that I have actually created.
| | 10:25 | (Character: Ha, it worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 10:29 | (Character: Ha, it worked!
Prepare to meet your doom!)
| | 10:33 | So, we have got a pretty good animation here.
| | 10:36 | So, remember, this is what the process is.
| | 10:39 | First off, read the track, understand
what you are animating, then block out the
| | 10:45 | poses, then time those poses to the
timeline, loosen up the curves, make sure we
| | 10:52 | have our moving holds, our shift of
weight, overlap and follow-through, then
| | 10:57 | dialog, and then a final pass for
head motion, blinks, and then any other
| | 11:02 | ancillary things that we're doing.
| | 11:05 | So, hopefully, this whole
process is a little bit more clear.
| | 11:09 | Now, each scene is obviously going to be
a little bit different, but now we have
| | 11:13 | a little bit of a workflow that we can
use to animate other types of scenes.
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ConclusionGoodbye| 00:00 | Well, that should be it for this course.
| | 00:03 | I'm George Maestri for lynda.com, and I
hope this course gave you a good overview
| | 00:08 | of character animation in Maya.
| | 00:11 | Now, character animation is a very deep subject.
| | 00:14 | We've really only grazed the surface.
| | 00:16 | It requires a lot of practice.
| | 00:19 | So go ahead and start animating
your own characters using these skills.
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