S.A.B.R.E - practice animation

[Dragosh89_BZ]

Greetings to all!

LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZsYu5XPlPk

I'd like to present my new character, Sabre. This is a small animation in which i practiced some overall body moves and interactions with other objects. I'm trying to learn as much as possible about animating, so please critise. Thanks.

[Bob Marley]

Well pretty cool character, about the animation is pretty hard to comment as you dont have the frame count, anyway first thing that bothers me is the walk, I know its a robot, but it look pretty stiff, the upper body or the pelvis is not even moving you need to put some rotation in it when you have the foot contact you need to push the hip up, aswell the body should go up and down on steps, he must be pretty heavy so you need to put more weight on him (best ref would be to look at "I RObot"), the upper torso should rotate aswell with the arms. Try to film yourself walking or get references on walk cycle, that should give you a good head start on animation.

The rest of the animation is pretty nice tho, maybe when he crack his finger you could push his upper body back as you would do in real life.

But I reckon your animation is a really good start, spend some more time on it, and it could look real nice.

Good luck

[Dragosh89_BZ]

Hey thanks a lot . I'll pay more attention to those details. I forgot that the pelvis and upper body turns while walking :| and that you push your upper body back while cracking your fingers .

Also how do you put the frame counter on a rendered video ? o_O . I'm using 3ds max 2008. Nice running ninja, btw!

[Bob Marley]

Thanks man, you are welcome.
Well Hmmm I dont know about that one, sorry I use maya and I have a script for it : )

I envy you for using Max, coz with Maya attaching and detaching object to the hand is a REAL PAIN.

[Dragosh89_BZ]

^^" Well yeah.. yo just use something called Link Constraint and the object follows another starting with a certain specified frame.

I've followed your advice and it's starting to look a lot better .

LINK: http://s206.photobucket.com/albums/b...eSabre_v13.flv

Sry for the squareness of the model, but I turned off Turbosmooth and Meshsmooth to cut down the rendering time.

[Bob Marley]

It is looking better indeed (the crack and the walk), but as it is not in quicktime its hard to look at it frame by frame and so hard for me to comment a lot, tho, I have a couple little things you could play with if you want.

- When he walk the feet are lifting a bit to much from the ground and rotate to much as well I think ( it look like he s more in a army kind of walk then just relax going to check out this objects)
- The arms, the elbows shouldnt bend that much the motion should come more from the shoulders than from the shoulders and the elbows. Aswell you could relax his fingers a bit. (but still all this comments are from my point of view you might prefere have him having a hard robotic walk)
-When he stops, the elbows are actually rotating backward a bit to far if he was human you would have a limit that you cant break, otherwise you would brake the bone, so even if his a robot you probably shouldn t let them go that far back.
- With the pelvis well, when the foot touch the ground maybe 2 frames after the pelvis should rotate up like you did but should maybe be a bit more snappy (go up faster then stay up a bit) then do the same for the other foot, but this one is hard to get, you have to play a lot with your tangents, your best friend has to be you graph editor.

That should keep you going I hope : ) , still remember to check some walk cycle references, and keep practicing, my first good walk cycle took me at least 2 days of full work to get it perfect so dont be afraid to feel you r spending to much time, animation take time.

Hope I helped.

[Dragosh89_BZ]

Yes .. it will help, tnx . Walk cycles are indeed very complex =/ , although while we humans are doing it, we don't realize how many moves we are actually doing. And yes, animation do take time... more than i could've imagine. I'll post a new link once i've done something better.

[Dragosh89_BZ]

Worked on the walk. He's more relaxed now. And the pause between the end of the walk and cracking his fingers has been cut down. I haven't gotten into that advice of yours with the pelvis tho =/.

LINK: http://s206.photobucket.com/albums/b..._Sabre_v14.flv

[Bob Marley]

The walk look much better man, really. One thing that still bothers me is the torso, first if think it rotates to much on the walk and probably try to actually flip the curve, so that the rotation goes to opposite way, as when the right arm goes forward, the torso rotates right instead of following the movement of the arm. See how it looks.

About the crack its better too, but the elbows come up a bit too late, when the hands go up make the elbow follow aswell, as it look like 2 different action instead one one merge together.

Keep up the good work : )

[Dragosh89_BZ]

Hey Bob.. I flipped the curve, but it moves a bit ackward :|. The torso was set to rotate 2 degrees left and respectively right. This is set with only 1 degree: http://s206.photobucket.com/albums/b..._cycle_15b.flv
.. and it still looks not right to me =_= .. but I can't see exactly why.


Anywho... meanwhile i've been strapping SABRE with some pieces :

[Osky]

Hey Dragosh89_BZ-this animation is looking nice for starting out animating.

Some of my comments.

The walk still seems a little lifeless, his arms and legs move too evenly, give his left and right side some minor offsets in their spacing. Would help give it some more life. Also when hes walking to the objects he should be looking at them, cause thats where he's going to, not straight ahead at nothing. He should be looking to where he is getting to.

Overall, something that is missing from the animation, is his reason for piling up the objects. He needs to feel like he needs to set these objects up, and when hes done he needs to feel like he has accomplished something great. Give him more personality and character.

When he stacks up the pices his animation should be faster, and when hes done seting them up, (something you could do to show his feeling of accomplishment) is that he takes a step back, crosses his arms over his chest and leaves them there, as he looks at his work with a feeling of, "Nice, I did it"

Also i dont think that you should render all of your animation updates, doesn't that take too long. In Maya we create playblasts of our updated animations, i dont know what Max has.

Keep going. Im also working on making my first, realistic walk cycle animation. Ive made many, but not too many im happy with. Takes a lot of practice and patience, and time. ;p

[Dragosh89_BZ]

Hey Osky, thanks for commenting !

I will attend into using your advice, thanks,... but right now I've been working on a run cycle. It's my first soooo.. lemme know what you think. BTW, during the loop, you might see a small "glitch".. that's because the starting frame doesn't flows 100% with the last frame.

LINK: http://www.4shared.com/file/62876579...v12_persp.html

[tolae]

It's looking really good man, the only thing that I find kind of odd is the body is not moving up and down a little. The body doesn't tend to go up and down too much when running, but there is a little motion. Also, the torso section seems like it should be going back and forth a little more.

This is an awesome cycle for a first try. Keep up the good work.

[Dragosh89_BZ]

Thanks, Tolae !

It is my first run cycle, but you can imagine it's not the first version. I didn't nail all those details from start XD. I fixed the problems you pointed out. The thing was that the camera was linked to the Biped's center of mass, so it jumped at the same time with the biped, and you couldn't see him lifting off the ground. Removed that problem.. and here we are.

LINK: http://www.4shared.com/file/62939606...13_persp.html?


I added some motion blur too. It looks a lot more dynamic : http://www.4shared.com/file/62956020...tionblur.html?

[virut.yooman]

Hi "Dragosh89_BZ".

Yor work is good. i think it's 2 short. u need to put some MOre Animation in dhis
Character.
BUt Nice work duuddee.
All da best.