3D Animals in Motion : 2014

19.3.14

Finished dog

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfyV484JePo

Rendered out ready to be put into the show reel.

Motion trails and bouncing balls

I'm using motion trails to smooth out the movement of the feet.

And for getting the ball bouncing with a nice curve.

Squash and stretch

Parenting the ball to the dogs head, then animating the switch on when he catches it, so the ball isn't permanently stuck to his mouth.

Using grease pencil to get the tail movement down.

And afterwards, putting an expression on the face with the eyebrows.

17.3.14

Remember to keep files on more than one system and backup more frequently, especially when the soul files are on a mobile device.

I lost 2 days of animation, thankfully I have an online backup that automatically backs up else it would've been a lot worse and I had the report outline on my U drive in uni.

I've caught up with the animation and just need to upload my progress on here, put them all together on a showreel and start fleshing out my report.

10.3.14

Dog playing fetch work so far

Getting reference from Youtube and sketching out some poses to get a general feel for it.

So I baked the run cycle for just under 200 frames and added the grabbing the ball and stopping.

Next I'll animate the ball bounce and improve and tweak the stopping animation some more.

23.2.14

Dog run

And the running part of this animation is done. Can't believe how long that took. I had an animator friend help critic it all the way and it's become so much better than before and has been a learning curve for not only animating the run cycle but also the work flow.

16.2.14

Redid the dog run kinda

So the run didn't look quite right and the graph editor was all over the place. So not only did I remove keys that wasn't needed, but adjusted the legs to match and be offset.

Here's the graph editor of before and after looking at one paw.

And where I am currently.

Now running in place.

I had a lot of trouble when I moved onto cycling the run, even taking off the foot roll (which is poorly made as the actual foot moves too when used) so it still kept going weird.

So with motion trail and moving some keys in the graph editor I made it run in one spot.

Next step is to redo the foot roll to make it look better and space out the tongue and blinking so it's not everytime it cycles. And then work on getting it moving or at least animate in the part where he catches his ball. Which I also have to animate.

15.2.14

Dog run progress

This rig does not have a decent facial rig. But I've just carried on regardless.

This shows the chest control moving back and forth to imitate the squash movement of dogs.

mouth open and closed

and added the tongue coming out.

It's a pity the facial rig isn't that good because I wanted him to make this face while running:

11.2.14

Rig problems and progress

One of the important things I need for a running rig and this dog one doesn't have it. I can't curve the back to show squash.

And I figured it out, the chest handle just needed to slide down the body for the affect.

10.2.14

Dog running refs

Maybridge photos of a dog running, I compiled the second one into a video

Sketches to get the feel of the dog running and it's variations from the photos.

Done in Flash to get a clearer idea of cleaner images of a dog running.

A few running reference on youtube

slow motion dog running

dog playing ball in epic slow motion

slow motion dog

After watching one of the dog youtube videos I found another way for a dog to run. I wonder if running without touching the ground when stretched is a greyhound trait?

This one always has at least one paw on the ground at any one time. Even in full gait.

I had to draw her ridiculous face.

I think I could get it down to 9 images as 2 and 3 are very close in looks.

9.2.14

Horse walk done

I've animated the tail, eyes and blinks and I'm going to finish with this one to move onto the next.

6.2.14

Horse linear

I'm onto the hips and shoulders and as you can see the shoulders and front legs still need a lot of work. I'm finding the front half harder than the back half to do for some reason. I think once I get the tilting of the hooves it may look better and no popping of the knees.

Still getting the weird knee pops, I've adjusted the shoulders and height of the hoof lift so now I'm just cleaning up the graph editor to see if that makes a difference.

I've cleaned up the graph editor and at the beginning I've got rid of the knee pop.

Working on the tail movement now.

30.1.14

Horse Stepped

My progress with the stepping. Just need to add more frames then I'm onto linear.

Some linear

24.1.14

Blocking

I'll post my blocking progress here for the horse animation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyJksD2P_fE

This is before the horse walks forward.

Grease pencil to mark out the walk cycle, I did it without but got confused near the end, so I went over it when the pencil to see where I went wrong. It helped a lot.

Back to the horse walk cycle

I will be going back to continue with the horse walk cycle, although I think I will start again and have the horse move it's head like I have in the sketches before I animate the walk cycle. The current one I have makes it look like it's sliding. But it's a learning curve from all the horse walk cycles I've attempted.

Finished Eagle flying animation

I have finished the eagle animation, and thought it would look nicer to add a sky background and add the textures that came with the model.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYHipoTp4M8

There are a few more tweaks I would've liked to have done, like animating individual feathers for wind movement, but I needed to get this done so I can move onto another animation. If I have time at the end, I will go back to this. Overall I'm really pleased with how this turned out and enjoyed animating wings a lot!

22.1.14

Most recent progress

And this is where I have got to now.

Next I will animate the feet to give it more of a natural feel and move the whole of the body to make it feel there is wind.

Lastly I will look at animating the individual feathers to make it look like there is some wind. I don't know how that will look.

And I will want to add a sky background and add the textures and material to make it look better.

Progress so far

I decided to go back to the slower flapping version as it felt easier to animate in.

After I was satisfied with the wing flaps, I started with the up and down movement of the body. (blogger does not want to properly link these for some reason)

The feathers just fixed themselves sometimes, and I chose to ignore them in hopes they will fix themselves.

They did, every so often.

This one is where I made sure the head was as level as it could be compared to the movement of the body.

I tweaked the feet to give it a more natural feel as well as rotating the body a tiny amount.

I wanted to have the eagle flap a few times before soaring, so that was my next step and I cycled all the keyframes, then baked them so I had 3 wing flaps and stopped the cycle to work on the gliding part.

The next step was to animate the eagle coming out of the wings beating down into a glide with the wings outstretched. When I chose to bake the animation I kept half a wing flap where it was coming down to mid-point. I started with the wings to move slightly as birds don't keep them still in a glide, then worked on the body movement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_3L9CuiAY4&feature=youtu.be

21.1.14

Flight cycle sketches

Here are the sketches I was using when I was animating the wings flapping from online reference.

This was comparing real bird wings to the rig I was using.

15.1.14

Wing improvement

Flying animation

The horse animation is on hold for a little while.

So I moved onto the flying eagle this week, which I suppose would be a bit simpler. Rig is still a bit dodgy, but workable and there are plenty of references for it such as;

http://www.brendanbody.co.uk/flight_tutorial/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thEkFMaB5CA&list=PLFBsfzVsWWmlTB-N_iLVVYK4-U-As6ULC

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVfFOcxJf2k

So here's some process videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVfFOcxJf2k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAqBMEZTW94&feature=youtu.be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E1mByB0hoM&feature=youtu.be
This one has some feathers sticking out. This rig is pretty delicate that if I move a wing wrong or just move it, a feather would randomly poke out which slows down my progress to try and correct it so it doesn't look as bad.

bottom view
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8qx_T1_8MA&feature=youtu.be

Here's the most recent
Front - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnzYYm0NS6A&feature=youtu.be
I've rotated the wings on the up and downward beat.

Side - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNKs24649PQ&feature=youtu.be
At the base of the wing there is a weight error, I think. Where it pops up. I'm struggling to correct that, but I think I'll leave that until later. The wings folding back doesn't look right, it makes it look like it's swimming rather than flying.

Top - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmDGSZJZmDM&feature=youtu.be
This view makes the wings folding back more obvious and not as good as I thought it would be, so I will have to move them forward again and not fold them as much. I think it would've looked ok on a smaller bird, not an eagle.

7.1.14

key frame roughs

Unfortunately my PC has died. These aren't the best photos of the sketches, but it's all I have until it's fixed.

These are the main key frames for my animation to get an idea of how I want them to move.

3D Animals in Motion