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

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.......

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

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

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:

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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...

Well here's my 2nd attempt.


hand stand 2nd pass


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

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

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.

Heath go here Basicman 2.1 and download Basicman again I've added a handlock feature in the pose sliders you'll see IK arms set to 100% then set hand lock to ON and your all set. Personally other than this hand stand exercise I prefer FK arms. Hope this helps

Thanks Patrick thats the IK/FK switch I messed with it for a while but decided it was good enough! So I left it it's not so much a pop but to much movement for 1 frame... I guess that's a pop isn't it, Duh

Here's my first pass at a throw I didn't even touch the hands yet but I think I'm missing something so I thought I'd let you all check it out....well what do you think?

Throwing

Patrick:
Looks good! I like the slowed down version better. I like the angle in the back, and I like how the head swings suddenly towards the arm to counter the shift of weight is perfect!!

Steve:
A:The sping back onto his feet definitely looks better! You might try letting him cover more distance, there is still some rotation happening and to me at least it feels like it should be more dragging (does that make sense?)
B: The throw already looks really good. 1 thing to consider is that your torso is staying fairly straight, but when I throw I find myself twisting my torso some to add some extra torque to the throw. Another thing is that when I anticipate I find my upper arm fairly horizontal and away from the body, while yours is mostly vertical and close. The back hand's fingers are a little distracting because they are poking out of the silhoette. Your getting away with it (mostly) in this shot because of the angle, but it doesn't look like he shifts his weight when he moves his foot forward. If you do put the torso twist, don't forget to overtwist for the release, and then come back, and offset the arm recovery from the torso. You could add slightly more arc to the pitch as it travels past the head. But these things are plusses, it looks pretty good already.


Heath, when you have IK the arm will always point at your IK null (or bone) so if you move any part of the body and it effects the torso the arm will change to continue to point at the IK. If you want the arm to always keep the same position until you move the bones then you want FK. (Forgive me if you already knew this, just trying to understand your difficulties)

-Alonso

Hi!

Here is my try at exerciseB.

playball

Michel:
Excellent, way to challenge yourself! Good job moving the hips and torso around to make him feel engaged in what he's doing. Excellent job with his head. I think I would like to see a little bit of twist in the upper body as well, everything is very straight on, but maybe not. The hands have the correct rythm, but there's something off about them. I think it's that the recovery/ entropy of energy when a hand catches a ball is in the forarms sinking, I think you need to have more of that energy caught in the wrist (tipping the hands down with each catch), and then a little bit of that energy dragging the forarm down. The throws look fine, but I think that the balls are going to high, their arcs are higher than the energy given to them would let them go. I think the balls also are distracting because they go offscreen anyway, their exit and entry are so verticial it's confusing because they don't feel like the same ball. (Of couse then your gag won't work ) For a while I was really into motion blur, I thought it made things look great, but then I realized that I was letting it fix flaws for me, just keep that in mind, it's a good tool but don't get dependent on it. But your using it very subtly, mainly to give the balls motion, so that's okay. Well done!

Incedentally I read somewhere recently that juggling 60 seconds a day is good for your brain.

No new Bootcamp tonight, keep working on what we've got so far.
-Alonso

Hi!

Am i the last one still doing these exercises in the camp?
My try at exerciseCstrike 1

Michel:
You always take your excercises to the larger level! The red guy squatting is good, and the little bounce is good too. I think that you could have him a little lower and maybe lean him forward more. Also his wrists seem so straight, I feel like they should be bent up more. The catching is kind of getting lost, what you might try is to anticipate the ball coming by having the arms stretched out a little, and then when the ball gets to the red guy bringing the arms back quickly (w/in a couple of frames) to show the strength of the ball. Good anticipation for his throw, but after he puts his foot back, he doesn't swing his weight over it. The arms also feel funny on the throw, I think because they are kind of staying open and rotating at the shoulder, but when I do the motion I feel like my elbow is folding in and unfolding while my shoulder is rotating. The front hand I feel should be a more solid pose, and then go down after the throw, right now it looks like it just happens to be in front of him, but I know that when I throw I often put my other hand up in front, for balance and aim I guess. Blue guy: The anticipation and swing are great. I think the follow through can be taken further, right now it feels like he's trying to make a large bunt. Something that bothers me is that the tip of the bat isn't making enough of an arc, I feel like you should let the bat swing more and make bigger arcs.The bounces are good, and the anticipation is excellent. That lean back is great and the timing of the swing is pretty good to. And the little foot movement, great. The bat should really wrap much further around him, twisting him up in the other direction I think. Also you might try putting more hunch into his back, exgerate your line of body. The looking up at the tip of the bat is a nice touch.
Don't know what happened to everyone else.

-Alonso

Here's my attempt at a throw. I've never worked with Action Objects before, and its a pain to adjust the timing because I cannot adjust the AO timing with the Action timing. Need to learn more, I suppose. Got any tips?

Patrick:
Good start. The ball is moving to fast for the strength of the throw. The throw feels kind of light because the body is not super involved, and it doesn't snap very fast. That twist you put in is good, feels like it should be there and you unwind it to add strength to the throw. But you can exagerate this much further, by adding on top of what you've got torso tilts and COG movement. (the throw will be more powerful if in addition to the arm unfolding and body untwisting, you can put more forward energy into the body that is suddenly stopped and only carried on by the ball.) 1 foot is moving but I'm not quite believing it needs to. You could put more snap into the throw by making it happen over less key frames.

As for action objects. A simple thing like this, I just save a version of my model with the prop in the model file. But otherwise, any timing adjustments you want to do you should do in wherever the rest of the animation happens. (you can use action objects in regular actions as well, not just in the chor) Other than that, be happy with the more complicated action, and then go to tweaking the 2ndary thing. Hope that helps some.

-Alonso

Thanks for the replies. I think I will start over and work in the chor; I may be able to salvage some poses from the action and work with the timing a little more.

As for doing this in an action, I just wanted to experiment with different ways of doing things. For this, I think animating in the chor will be the way to go, although saving the football model with IKJoe is an interesting idea, too.

I found a neat little video on the Internet about throwing a football, and I was trying to stick with the action/poses as I saw them before exaggerating too much (of course, I had to make it more difficult by making Joe left-handed like me!). I got frustrated because whenever I would move the keys for Joe in the dopesheet, the keys for the football wouldn't move. I had to adjust the rotation, translation and constraint keys in the curve editor individually. I kept having to reposition the football on the frame whre I turned the constraints off. I don't know how many times I adjusted the trajectory as well. I got to a point where I just wanted to render the thing and get some feedback.

Hi everyone! Finally got some time to work on this again had to start over A:M ate my last project!!! kinda cool though the ball disappeared and Basicman was in his own hand I'll post it one of these days. here's my 1st pass again.....

Catch this