3D Animals in Motion

24.1.14

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.