3D Animals in Motion : maya

Showing posts with label maya. Show all posts

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

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.

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.

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.

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

15.1.14

Wing improvement

7.12.13

Back to basics

A list of tools and where they are on Maya. I will update this as and when.

Shortcuts

Alt W = Move tool

Alt E = Rotate tool

Alt R = Scale tool

Shift E – Set keyframe rotate

Shift R – Set keyframe scale

Shift W – Set keyframe translate

Shift and drag = Highlight timeline and right click snap

E & left mouse button = choose different rotate settings

Useful settings

Show > Nurb curves on

Preferences > Settings > keep keys at current frames = when the framerate is changed it adjusts it to match and keep to a whole frame.

Key Modified Attributes = Will only keyframes in the selected controller (ie translate X or Rotate Z)

Rotation Interpolation > New curve default > Quaternion = to prevent gimble lock where the rotation axis overlaps

Tangents > change tangents like auto, linar, stepped

Camera Sequencer > good selections for camera cuts in a scene.

Time Slider > Key ticks > selection for channel box will show only selected controller.

>Tick span = set to 1 and can see all frames numbered, 4 every 4^th frame and 0 is default.

Playback > All = playback animation in all views

Set key options > Set keys at: prompt will transfer a key to another frame(s)

Graph editor

pin rotate or translate to keep showing on graph editor

Shift, Alt & right mouse button to stretch view in GE (like using F)

View > Buffer curves = outlines the last place the graph editor was

Breaking tangent – tangent > break tangents

Re-timing tool (stop watch icon) > double click to create a timer handle = space out to speed up an animation or slow down

Preferences > Settings > Animation > Graph editor: Snap value to adjacent keys

Cycle animation tips:

First and last frame the same
playback range – last frame off timeslider
33 frames is good for breathing cycle, halfway (frame 17) for down
Graph editor – shift click on both first and last keys and hold shift to grab both out tangents and adjust
more important to get look rather than have clean values

Bake Cycle Animation

Getting an animation to stop after a walk cycle:

highlight all character's controls and go to graph editor
Graph editor > Curves > Baked Channel > reset settings
set start and end time
sample by > click sparse curve bake channel – to match the keys done already
Bake
Curves > Pre and post-infinity >constant
done

Motion Trails

Animate > Create editable motion trail > reset settings > create

Highlight key on the screen to change keyframe of position

Turn on modify keys > put to 1 > click on screen to add a key frame > don't forget to turn off

Pinning keeps the control in view when de-selected

Beads on are useful

17.11.13

Horse walk wip

Very slowly getting there. Though far too many setbacks when I think I corrected something.