ABC 7, Play Ball! Options

[amarillospider]

Hey everybody,

So obviously I way over assigned on ABC 6 so I'm trying to be mellower this week.

This week we'll keep working on balance/COG, and anticipation and follow through.

Remember to lead the viewer. Telegraph what's going to happen, so they are prepped for it, and put the follow through after so they know what happened. If you have those two things, the actual action can happen in a single frame and still read clearly. And if your interested in comedy, if you can telegraph well, then you can often get a rise when the actual action is not what was expected.

Thinking about your silhoette's will help make your anticipation and follow through poses more readable.

Anyway..

Excercise A: Start from standing, put your humanoid into a handstand.

Excercise B: Wind up and throw a ball.

Excercise C: Take a swing at a ball (baseball, golf, cricket, tennis, soccer, etc)

Have Fun. And remember that our community is only as strong as you choose to make it. Get in here and mix it up

-Alonso

[Newbert_Zero]

Aha first to post even though im not going to do this for a while since im still on exercise 1and a half/ 2/3.......... um im doing them all sortove at the same time...
um thats all.......

[Heath_Naylor]

Just wondering, is there any way to lock hands in a certain position so when you rotate the body, the hands do not move?

[amarillospider]

Ik Hands Heath. If the rig your using does not have IK hands you can make them by adding a null/bone for each hand that isn't a child of your main heirarchy, and IK constraining the forarm bone to that null. I like to also orient constrain my hand to the null so moving and rotating the null controls the arm and hand. Then you can move your body around and the arms will always try to reach and be at the point where the null is (which is why the null can't be part of the heirarchy, because if it were it would move with the body and defeat the purpose) Does that make sense? Was that the answer to the correct question?

Tip: for the handstand excercise, you might want to make the feet IK/FK switchable, so that once they are in the air you can animate them FK, gaining the same advantages as FK arms, their movement is related to their root.

-Alonso

[Biotron2000]

Well, I'm not done with the previous Boot Camp yet, but I got an idea in my head about how a handstand should look and ran with it. Here's my first attempt:

Attached File(s)

 bc7handstand1.mov ( 75.57k ) Number of downloads: 196

 

[Tunames]

Well I had actually been trying a handstand with the new Basicman rig just to try out switching between IK and FK. It's not easy, is it? Any tips on that Alonso? I too am still gonna work on ABC 6, but here's my handstand...well not mine I'm to old for that s***

Hand stand

[amarillospider]

Patrick:
Pretty believable straight handstand. All the poses seem correct, but it's feeling a little stiff, because he seems to go from pose to pose at the same speed. Pose to pose is a great technique for speed and to help you get good readable animation, but in animation you want to hide that there is an animator, you want the motion to feel as natural as possible so that people can believe your character is alive. Since pose to pose is so common it kind of gives away the animator. So keep working with poses ('cuz you've got that part nailed ) but take it to the next step. This means mixing up the timing on the limbs and offsetting things so that everything doesn't start and stop at the same time, things should always be coming and going, overlapping and stuff. The other thing is that the timing is all very similar, all a quick smooth movement from pose to pose, mix that up, consider ease in and out (or slow in and out), vary the timing. Your making great progress in your animation Patrick, it's fun to watch you improve so quickly. Specifically with this piece, good job shifting the Cog to over the supporting arms when the 2nd foot leaves, good arc on the 1st foot and good putting the 2nd foot more extending up instead of arcing up as well (feels more natural to me at least to have that variance). Joe's got a big ol head and kind of stubby arms, good solution having the head tilted back like that. He sticks that straight up and down so easily, that makes it feel a little fake, even if you extended the piece a little bit and have him sway back and forth once would give him more life. The other thing is that the torso is so straight, very often when people stand on their hands their lower backs curve more. The preperation is to stiff, hands are twinning and he's just not alive cuz its so direct A to B movement in squatting down. Great start, take it to the next level!

Steve:
Looks good! Good avoiding twins, good constant movement to make it feel alive. When I put my hands down that quickly I find that my arms bend as they take the weight and then straighten, bending and recovering joints when they first get weight is 1 of the tricks to showing weight. Yeah we can see that IK/FK pop. Good wiggling to make us feel the balance, but you should counter adjust in the lower back for when the head tilts further back. Excellent anticipation for the spring, and good recovery from it. The actual spring however is stunted, looks like mostly you just rotated the central bone, with that push from the arms it needs to follow an arc, and the legs need to lead it (make the body fit the line of action, which in this case is the arc.) So the 1/2 point the body back should be super arched. Good job, just a little more polish.


As for IK/FK switch. When I build my rigs, I make my legs IK always (which would be a problem with this excercise) and I make 2 poses, a right IK/FK hand and a left, because I have found it's nice to have individual control of that. I put a null in that I call Hand target. My IK pose is ON/Off. On I Ik constrain the forarm bone to the Hand Target Null, and I orient the hand bone like the Hand Target Null, enforcement 100% on all, and then I hide the hand and forearm bones (hotkey J to put it into the pose). Off pose I unhide those bones and enforcement is 0%. I set the Null in the exact same place as the hand bone when I build my skeleton, so nothing has to move in the pose. Then when animating, when I want to make the switch from FK to IK I move the Hand Target Null to where the FK hand bone already is and rotate it to match, key the pose off and the hand and Null, then go to the next frame and key the pose on. There is sometimes a tiny jump, but going back and forth you can usually get them the same (or onion skin it).

Have a good weekend everyone. I think I'm going snowboarding.

-Alonso

[Tunames]

Thanks Alonso. I see what you mean on the arcing. as for the IK/FK switch I basiclly did the same thing except on the hands I keyed the switch over a coupla frames to avoid the little jump. For the hands I just set a orient like constraint and keyed the enforcement on and off

[Animus]

Hi Patrick!

Great posing again! It looks so easy, impossibly easy, but it suits the character. Nice recovery after going past balance point.

Hi Steve!

Good work. I think he is coming back on his feet too fast, and the follow through is a little robotic. Good follow trough with the head. Just an opinion, i would expect such a strong athlete to bring his legs straight up.


Just a general observation here, i think there is big difference in animating either IKman or basicman, and we don't expect the same from basicman than IKman.
I think more fantasy towards physics is allowed more to one more than the other.
Just thinking and having fun in the camp.

Michel

[Biotron2000]

Wow, thanks for the compliments! Here's my second pass for the handstand. It's probably still a little fast. I tried to add anticipation, overshoot and weight to sell the action a little better.

Attached File(s)

 bc7handstand2.mov ( 150.88k ) Number of downloads: 142

 

[Biotron2000]

And the third pass. I slowed it down some and worked on the back arching.

Attached File(s)

 bc7handstand3.mov ( 176.24k ) Number of downloads: 150

 

[Heath_Naylor]

Ok got the constraint but now the hand moves, it doesn't stay still below is a bone right and my constraint setting (this is of an arm)

=====|=====|===
Upper ---Mid-----Hand
Constraint is in the mid arm...

[Tunames]

Well here's my 2nd attempt.


hand stand 2nd pass


Heath I'm not sure I understand your question, what model are you using?

[hypnomike]

Patrick:

Looks good, though I'd like to see a few frames more as he holds his balance.

Of course as a mechanical man he would presumably stay still anyway!?

BTW: Two Joes, isn't that twinning???

How do you get two angles on screen at once Patrick?

Steve:

Very fluid movement. Works well, timing looks spot on to me.

Cheers

Mike

[Heath_Naylor]

BasicMan2 with the modded rig posted. I set IK to mid arm bone between upper arm and hand and everytime I move ANYTHING the hand gets offset.